A Little More Inspiration...

Always a sucker for quotes...

This reminds me of direct instruction and the 'I do it,' 'We do it,' 'You do it'...

I cracked a smile...

"If a doctor, lawyer, or dentist had 40 people in his office at one time, all of whom had different needs, and some of whom didn't want to be there and were causing trouble, and the doctor, lawyer, or dentist, without assistance, had to treat them all with professional excellence for nine months, then he might have some conception of the classroom teacher's job." ~Donald D. Quinn

Is this not the truth, or what?

Way Cool

Happy Thanksgiving!!

In my 'Blog Roll' I just added a link to a blog created by a parent of one of the kids in my dyad. She was adopted from China over 7 years ago, and they are back there now visiting the orphanage where she lived as a baby. It's a heatwarming story and I love how tech-savvy this parent is!

Also, the second blog I added is a really cool site, too. While I don't think any of us want to teach middle school, I find the laid-back style and humor of this site to be refreshing. Sound like a fun Thanksgiving? Check it out!

Teachers Make a Difference

I know we have heard Taylor Mali's Slam Poem, Teacher's Make a Difference, but I always seem to run across it while looking at teacher sites. It has such a great message, especially for those of us that have already had to defend our choice of profession. Mali is an inspiration for how invested teachers are in every one of their student's lives. He provides motivation for us all to be the best teachers we can be; and also to be proud and confident in our choice to be a teacher.

Personal Days

You know how when we are going to school there are just days that we can't get out of bed and know we will not do well in school...so we skip it? I wonder if kids ever feel that way. When I was younger, I loved school, but as the years went on, I wanted to skip so bad, but my parents were the boss. I did not have the right yet, even when I was 18, to skip school because I felt I needed a day for myself. Is it fair for us as teachers to always expect the best out of students day after day after day? Are we really getting the best out of them? Maybe they were do need a break when they are begging for one, but we just need to get through the day too much to give it to them.

Conferences

So I attended conferences at my main placement on Thurs and Fri. Wow! I can't even begin to tell you the things I learned. My teacher did a great job is guaging the parent's reactions to certain things she said about them. Many kids needed their behavior addressed (partly disruptive, partly being a kid), and some were struggling a great deal with their academics. Some interesting highlights of my week were: 2 Spanish speaking conferences with a translator, a drunk mom, and receiving a Thanksgiving pumpkin loaf from a happy family! It was also interesting to hear what the different parents had concerns about. One of the Spanish speaking families was very uncomfortable attending the conference. The mother kept her head down the whole time my teacher told her how bad her child was struggling with reading. She also stressed the importance of the child attending a morning program for English Language Learners, but the parent refused due to transportation. She also did not ask one question about her child. I got the feeling that she just wanted to leave the room, and she did not seem to care all that much about her child's progress in school. On the flip side, many parents came in with a list of questions about their child. We even had a parent send a note ahead of time asking if we could discuss the HOTS of his son. Both my teacher and I did not know what HOTS meant, but googled it to find: Higher Order Thinking Styles. Okay....really? 2nd grade! I am happy I attended these conferences because it allowed me to get more familiar with the parents, but it also gave me insights on how to handle different parenting styles and their many questions and concerns!

An Emergent Litercy Activity

In light of what we have been learning in our literacy class about emergent literacy I thought I would share one activity I have seen used in my student teaching. This is in a kindergarten class at the beginning of the year. As the class is focusing on different letters of the alphabet students with a particular letter in the name get to present their 'star name'. What this means is they have a star with their name written on it. They also have an index card for each letter of their name. They choose classmates to come up and each hold one letter of their name. As they all stand in a row next to each other they spell the name and then say the sound for each letter. Then they clap the number of syllables in the name as they say it again. They think of other words that start with the same letter as the name. This is a great activity for students to get exposure to letter-sound relationships as well as notice beginning sounds and syllables. Below is a picture of some students doing this activity. Their parents have all signed waivers to take pictures at school. The child who's name is shown is not in the picture.

A Little Inspiration

After looking over our syllabus and realizing I have yet to post a video, I came across this today. It is a quick, sharp clip showing what can happen when a teacher doesn't give up on her students.

Yes... it is Whoopi Goldberg. Yes... it is Sister Act II. Yes... it still gives me goosebumps.

Enjoy.

The Perfect Classroom

While I was at my Dyad yesterday, I couldn't help but daydream a little bit about what my perfect classroom would look like. What would be on the walls? Would there be lots of borders with colors or would it be relatively plain? Would art work litter the walls or would writing assignments be posted? Would I have a color scheme? Would I have a fully stocked library?

Then I started thinking... Would we be just as excited about teaching if we weren't allowed to decorate classrooms? What if we worked at a school that had no resources for us? I know all of our answers of course are, "Yes." Look at the picture above. Imagine teaching in that classroom in Rwanda. Chalk and black and white number lines. It simply shows how teaching still occurs without the Lakeshore Learning Center. It's slightly hard to imagine isn't it? It's a nice thing to see though.

Twitter

I have been wondering lately-what is the deal with this twitter thing? All I'v seen of it so far is people constantly updating their status. Generally with information I don't care about like "watching TV" or "going to work". It seems like facebook 'status' gone crazy. Take a look at this blog: http://theopenclassroom.blogspot.com/ She has a lot of excellent links that talk about how we as teachers can use twitter as a tool. There are a lot of ideas that i never would have thought of. Its pretty neat.

A Favorite

Throughout my days at Evergreen Academy, Rosa Parks Elementary, and Einstein Elementary, I have always developed a few favorite kids at each school. You know what I mean. They are the kids that are just so cute, so smart, so wonderful. They are the students that are always helpful, always funny, and always smiling at you. As a teacher, I feel slightly guilty when I have a favorite. Yet, it happens uncontrollably. It's almost as if that "favorite" child picks you as well.

With this information in mind, I feel that teachers are viewed as objective beings. There is a silent rule that states that we should not have favorites. We should not lean towards one child and not the other. But then again, we are human. If one child is nicer to us than another child, how can we not favor them? I have heard that it's important to find something wonderful about each student. In other words, look for the good in every student.

Come on though... we do that anyway. I have tried and I do find something great about every student in my classes. For example, a boy in my Dyad is a constant disruption to the classroom. He gets out of his seat, rolls on the floor, sits in the teacher's desk, etc. Though this is the case, this student adds a lot to the classroom community. He has a magical spirit. He really brings life to the classroom. Without this student, the class simply would not be the same.

Yet there is always that one student, that one favorite. What are your thoughts on this?

Thoughtful Kids

At school today I had the task of matting students' artwork onto colored paper. I was almost done with the project when the glue stick I was using ran out. Realizing I was on the final piece, I banged the stick on the paper and tried my best to use whatever remnants remained. Next thing I know, a student in my class appeared at my side with a new glue stick in hand. He had been on his way to pack up his belongings when he must have seen me struggling. Kids in this class rush to their cubbies to pack up and go home. He had taken time out, sacrificed being the first one (a highly coveted position!), to help me.

Maybe this doesn't seem like anything to any of you. But to me, it was a really nice gesture that hit me at exactly the right time. No one asked him to help. He noticed that I was in need of some assistance, and took it upon himself to help. My question is this, how do you raise kids to be like this? If 'raising' is too big of a concept to address, how do you foster this behavior in your classroom--- to encourage a type of kindness that seems to stem from the core?

Invisi-bubble

The vast ranges and differences in abilities, talents, socioeconomic backgrounds, and ethnicities that exist among students in the walls of one small classroom never ceases to amaze me. As an adult, we are sorted and categorized and labeled in ways that separate us into distinct spheres that rarely meet (think: socio-economic distinctions), so that through lack of experience we forget that one of the founding goals of public education is to create a mini-democratic society, that is by default diverse in many ways, even for students who are raised by parents who are similar in socioeconomic status.

As adults, we settle into what society expects of us, and soon we take on this identity and find a way to make it our own, to make peace with the lives we find ourselves living. We may have come to terms with the reality of our lives----who we are versus who we thought maybe we could be----we are not famous: writers, artists, millionaire entrepreneurs, athletes….and we have learned to live in this space and tailor our expectations and goals to it. We live on that level, a level that excludes those we can’t relate to but have power to exclude, and accepts that fact that there are whole worlds that we ourselves are excluded from (when was the last time Melinda Gates invited YOU to a dinner party?). We move to neighborhoods with people who look like us, believe what we believe, make the same amount of money we make, and have the same level or type of education.

Our students, on the other hand, spend all day long in a room full of future Bill Gates’ and future cab drivers. Day in and day out, they have to navigate a very complicated social scene. We, on the other hand, often spend the most emotionally and psychologically charged moments of our day with people with whom we can relate on some level---whether it be socioeconomically or ethnically. It is no wonder, then, that our students’ interactions in the classroom are often unintelligible to us as teachers, and it is no wonder we often fail to understand how significantly they impact the learning experiences of those involved. For myself, I am working at being more cognizant of this. It would be wise for me to remember that my daily interactions do not demand near as much diplomacy as those of my students.

Good Plan

Elle-

I like that plan:

Just don't get sick

Im game for that.

PS-thanks for the encouragement on the hand-washing and breath-holding ;)

The Joys of Being Sick

Jenn and Lo,

This is one of the things I worry about as we venture into this wonderful profession of teaching. As teachers, what on earth are we going to do when we get sick? It is inevitable that this is going to happen to us. Lo, you can wash your hands a million times a day, hold your breath throughout an entire conversation, and sanitize your house four times a day, but unfortunately, we are going to get sick.

When we do get sick, some teachers have told me that you simply call the substitute hot line and stay home. But other teachers have told me that it is virtually impossible to find a substitute and that it takes so much time to create substitute plans, teachers might as well just stay in the classroom and work through the sickness. I'm not very good at working when I'm sick to be quite honest.

This is going to be interesting to see how this all pans out. Let's just never get sick! :)

Right?

Wondering the same

Jenn,

I am wondering the same thing. In the primary grades it does seem like teachers really dont like to have subs but if they left every time they had a cold or cough the might be out all the time. My main placement teacher has said to me that its almost better to come in when you're sick than to make plans for a sub. This does not take into account how they are going to get better and how they are going to make sure they dont pass any illness along to the class.

What I really want to know is how to avoid catching everything the kids have. I spent this weekend with a sore throat eating chicken soup. I feel like I am washing my hands often and not touching germy things. There is no avoiding all the germs in the air from the students coughing. I can only hold my breath so much!

What do you all think?

Sick, Sick, Sick

So... my dyad teacher took half a day off from school last Tuesday to nurse a nagging cough. However, she insisted on going to school at the beginning of the day to check the kid's homework and going back to school in the afternoon for parent-teacher conferences. By the time I saw her on Wednesday, she was still coughing and we were missing 5 students. Parents have been encouraged to keep their sick kids home (and from these numbers it looks like they may have finally got the message), but what about us teachers? I feel like my teacher should have stayed home. For everyone's benefit. I have spent the entire weekend in bed. Is is really that hard to relinquish control to a sub?

Trying hard not to judge...