The wall of policy

I recently read one of Spencer's blog posts Why aren't teachers more innovative? that one of my classmates had put up on diigo and it really got me thinking about what I will have to face when I have my own classroom. I keep thinking that once I have the opportunity to teach by myself, without my CT's strict, "follow the curriculum" mindset, that I will have the freedom to teach how I want. Spencer reminded me, however, that I will still have to face the "wall of policy" when I am out on my own. What Spencer wrote was a real reality check for me:

"I do what I can. I find loopholes. I blend the learning into a project-based framework. I use technology and advocate for a more authentic pedagogy. However, ultimately, even a bolder teacher like myself must face a wall of bad policy. True, we can stand up like the teachers in Washington. However, we are also in a hyper-red state, in a low-income area. Standing up will cost us our jobs. And I have a hunch that they would rather have a compliant warm body than a non-compliant professional. "

 

That last sentence is truly frightening. How, as a brand new teacher, am I to stand up for what I believe in without losing my job? I don't want to spend the first 5 years of my teaching career being a "compliant warm body", but is this the compromise I will have to make?

"Dealing" with Parents

photo by Mom's Clean Air Force

Spencer's section on Parents this week reminded me of a situation I was in recently.

We have one girl in our class who has repeatedly not turned in math homework. When I went to talk with her about it, she told me that she does her homework but fogets to to put it in her backpack. I was skeptical if this was really the case but she is a very bright girl and always does well on her math work in class. So I told her to put it in her backpack right when she finishes it, that way she will not forget it. We also informed her mom of her missing assignments and she told us she would work on helping her daughter stay organized.

Fast forward a few weeks and we have seen some improvement, but still many missing assignments. I am constantly reminding her to bring her math homework, but there is only so much I can do. I started to get really frustrated with the mom. Obviously this girl needs a little help with organization. Yes, it is partially her responsibility to turn in her homework, but in 3rd grade I believe it is also a parent's responsibility to help their children develop good habits. Doesn't she care about her child's education?

Then I met up with one of my friends last week for coffee. I was telling her about my difficulties with my student not turning in her homework and she confessed to me that they recently had a similar problem with their son. They currently have 5 children with another one on the way. She has been sick the whole first trimester with the baby and her husband is a firefighter with obviously very long and stressful shifts. I know them both to be wonderful parents who are totally committed to their family and to their children's education. It was eye-opening to hear about a similar situation from a parent's point of view. All of a sudden I felt ashamed of the way I had judged my student's mom. I have no idea what is going on in her life right now or what she might be dealing with. Without any background knowledge I had come to the conclusion that she didn't care about her daughter's education and that was completely unfair.

Parents are one of our biggest assests as teachers. Who else knows our students in the way that they do? We need to stop seeing them as a hinderance and start to see them for the assests that they are. It is not always easy, I will be the first to admit, but they ultimately want the best for their children, the same as us.

Garage Band in the Classroom

Picture by Ed Yourdon

 

I had such a fun time creating our podcast this last week on garage band that I wanted to know what else I could do with it. I found this article on 14 ways to use garage band in the classroom, which had some great ideas and it also made me think of a few other ways to use garage band. Here are a few that I thought might be neat:

• Informational writing. My students have to write an informational piece this year and as a fun way to present their final draft, I thought they could record a reading of it with background music to fit their writing topic. (For instance, if they chose to research a person, they could look up the style of music that was popular at the time and choose a song from that genre.)
• For studying different genres in reading, you could have students work in groups to create a podcast that teaches the rest of the class about their assigned genre with appropriate music or sound effects.
• For help with tricky math or science vocabulary, have students create songs that use the words in the correct way.
• With imovie and garage band, instead of creating a final poster at the end of a social studies unit, students could create a commercial for next year's students describing and showing all the things they will learn about during the unit.

These are just a few ideas that are starting to form in my mind, but they already seem much more engaging than traditional types of lessons. The best part is that I don't need to have an ipad or computer for every single child in the class. These are all ideas that could be worked on at different times with different groups of students. I hope this gives others some ideas as well!

Writing Conferences

It was interesting to me that this last week I had a 3 1/2 hour meeting at my placement school on writing conferences with students and one of our readings this week in Literacy class was Routman's Chapter 9 "Conference with Students". While I got some good ideas from the meeting, I really pulled a lot out of the reading. Routman has some fantastic ideas about different types of writing conferences, different goals for writing conferences, effective modeling, content vs. editing conferences, and helpful language to use.

Before, when I was conferring with students, I didn't even know where to begin. They are only in 3rd grade, so of course there are going to be lots of mistakes with spelling, conventions, and grammar. I tried not to focus so much on those things, especially for rough drafts, but often times their sentences didn't even make sense. Their writing is also very mechanical right now with basically the play-by-play type of narrative. First this happened. Then this happened. Then this happened......and so on. It was all so overwhelming! So I would try to make suggestions like, "Can we choose a better word here?" Blank stare. Reluctantly I would offer a few suggestions and of course the student would pick one of those because I had suggested it. I would also say things like, "Read this sentence aloud to me and tell me if it sounds right." The student would do so and realize that it didn't make sense, but again, when asked how they might reword it, I would get the blank stare until I would finally offer up some suggestions.

I realized after reading this chapter that we are not scaffolding our instruction enough for our students to feel confident in their writing. In our lessons we model our teaching point for the day and then just release the kids off on their own. This is not consistent with the gradual release system that is supposed to be implemented though. Our students need to have the chance to work through a piece of writing together as well. I loved Routman's idea of a whole class share. One or two students share their writing to the entire class and the teacher (as well as the students when they are ready) give compliments first and then give one or two teaching points that might help the writer. By doing this with the whole class, the other students also benefit from the teaching points. Eventually, when the students become more involved, they learn how to give helpful peer feedback as well.

This is one of many helpful teaching strategies I got from the chapter. I hope to implement a few when I return to my placement and am actually looking forward to writing conferences now that I actually have a few ideas of how to help my writers!

Being a "Warm Demander"

I am in the process of reading Lisa Delpit's "Multiplication is for White People: Raising Expectations for Other People's Children" and was struck by the notion of what she calls a "warm demander".  Warm demanders are teachers who push their students, who demand that they perform and who insist that each individual is capable of doing whatever anyone else can do. This is especially important with students who have been told repeatedly that they are not good enough or smart enough.

I have seen this type of deficit thinking in schools before. A student who falls behind or that simply needs more time is considered "slow".  Students who come from low income families are already labelled as "at-risk". Students who have different skin color than their peers are looked at as if they are behind already, and if one or two show the same intelligence as the rest, then they are considered the exception. It had always frustrated me that we seemed to be encouraging these students to do as little as possible. Instead of offering up the same challenges that we demand of others, we convince ourselves, and them, that they are simply not smart enough to do it on their own. When we expect so little, we are likely to get little in return. Then, we continue this type of "hand-holding" throughout grade school, and sometimes through middle school, and wonder why they are still not capable of doing anything on their own come high school.

But it is not enough to simply demand more of these students. Yes, we need to raise our expectations and yes, we need to push them to achieve more than they thought they could, but we also need to show care and concern for each and every one of them. Delpit writes that, "When students believe that teachers believe in their ability, when they see teachers willing to go the extra mile to meet their academic deficiencies, they are much more likely to try." Our students need to see that we push so hard because we know that they can do it. Whether they come from a background of poverty, whether they have never been expected to do well before, whether things at home are a mess, we still believe that they can excel as a student. We need to not only demand excellence, but we need to give them the tools and the necessary support so that they can meet those demands.

I would love nothing more than for my students to see me as a warm demander. It is definately not the passive approach to teaching, and I know that it will sometimes be overwhelming, but isn't this why a person should go into teaching? Why else would anyone be crazy enough to take charge of a classroom of 25+ children? It is certainly not for the money or the prestige of the job. To me, though, nothing is more gratifying than seeing my students engaged and challenged by the work that is in front of them.

Evernote

As I headed down to the copy room to make copies of all of our students math tests so that my teacher could have a copy on file, I thought once again of how much paper we go through in our classrooms. I find it interesting that with all of the technology we now have at our fingertips, most teachers continue to make copy after copy of homework, tests, newsletters, and so on. Now, I know that we need paper for many things and I also know that not all schools have computers for their students to use very often. Even so, I think we could cut down on our paper waste. With this in mind, I started to "play around", as Jane says, with Evernote. I downloaded the app on my ipad and then made a notebook for each subject: math, reading, writing, word work, social studies, and science. Then I put each of my 5 focus students in the subjects. I chose one student for our project in Nancy's class and so, with my ipod touch, I took some pictures of his writing and filed it under his name. In this way I didn't have to make any copies of his work and I always have it right there on my itouch.

What really surprised me was how fast and easy it was to make these different notebooks. I think it took maybe ten minutes to create the different subjects and add each of my students in. Even with twenty more students in the class, it still wouldn't take much time to add them all in and snap pictures of their work. Definately a lot less time than making copies of every single page of their tests and filing it away. A lot less storage space as well. I am excited to see what else I can use my new Evernote app for!

Reflecting on the good side

All too often it is easy to focus on all the negative things that are going on in our lives. It can seem like the entire world is working against us. "If only....." we tend to think. "If only I had more time....if only this one stressful piece of my life were gone.....if only I didn't have this or that to do......" And when we become completely overwhelmed "If only..." becomes "Why me?" If we are not careful, this mentality can eventually come to define our character. John Spencer wrote about this in the first part of his book "A Sustainable Start..." and recommended creating a journal of all the things that you are thankful for in teaching. This really struck a chord with me because I have often done similar things when going through particularily difficult periods in my life. It really can help to refocus your attention to all the wonderful things that are going on around you. In a country full of wealth and prosperity, we can sometimes take it for granted how truly blessed we are.

As I sat down to write this blog I happened upon another blog written specifically for teachers to record one good thing that happened to them that day. Some of the entries are huge and momentous and some are little things that just made the author smile. Here is the link. Read through some of the entries and try to think of some good things that happened to you this week. When you are bemoaning those few troublesome students, remember the other 20-something wonderful kids you have! When half the class forgets to turn in their homework call out and celebrate the ones that remembered. When you are not feeling well and don't know where you will get the energy to teach an entire day remember to be thankful that you have such an exciting job and don't have to sit at a desk in a cubicle all day. Reflect on the good and you will see the good.