May 2012
43 posts
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Positive discipline
Every so often, I stay up really, really late to finish a book. Throughout school, this always made me proud—I figured if I sacrificed significant sleep just to read, then it must have been a REALLY good book. I loved that I could rearrange my priorities that way, give up a portion of a fundamental human need in the name of venturing onward through magical literary worlds. I figured that...
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What do you want in a middle school teacher?
One nice perk of throwing very little away is that now I have an awesome set of papers, readings, essays, creative projects and memorabilia from my school years. I spend hours sitting on the floor and poring over old writers’ workshop stories, book reviews, science tests with diagrams of ears and eyes, etc.
I found this one handout about “what kind of teacher you want” from 6th grade (ELEVEN...
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Funding priorities
The other day, at a staff meeting, we had to vote between a 1% salary reinstatement or a fleet of 15 mid-range laptops. Last year, the entire staff had accepted a 5% salary cut to help offset statewide budget cuts, with the hopes that the Board would ultimately come up with money to return salaries to their former level. As for the laptops, they would help supplement the 10 mostly-functional acer...
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“Once a little boy sent me a charming card with a little drawing on it. I loved...”
– Maurice Sendak
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What Schools can Learn from Summer Camps →
The researchers were looking at the teenagers’ “goal orientations”—were they interested in learning for learning’s sake, or in showing off their smarts? The first type of attitude, called a “mastery orientation,” has been linked to high levels of motivation and engagement, while the second, known as a “performance orientation,” has been tied to greater anxiety and less resilience in the face of...
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Spoken like a true middle schooler
Seventh grade boy 1: [musing] Do you ever get tired of being so random?
Seventh grade boy 2: [thinks for a moment] Nah, not really.
Seventh grade boy 1: [happily] Yeah, me neither
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What Teachers Really Want to Tell Parents →
I’ve been really lucky to generally have parents who are supportive and trusting. But every once in a while, the office tells me I have a parent on hold on Line 1, and I can’t help getting a little nervous.
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Logical consequences: forest to classroom
I was so lucky as to help lead the 8th grade adventure trip last month — three days of backpacking in the woods. It ended up being great fun, and I loved the opportunity to chat and bond with my students on trail. My background is actually in outdoor leadership, and I had been missing that special bonding that comes with spending time together without front-country distractions.
The other...
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“The object of education is to prepare the young to educate themselves throughout...”
– Robert M. Hutchins (via theinsidelane)
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Sally Ride, On Teaching Tomorrow's Scientists →
jtotheizzoe:
Sally Ride has an op-ed at Mashable detailing the challenges facing our STEM education system, and how the Sally Ride Science Academy is working to overcome them.
But we must start early with students. In fact, fourth through eighth grade is critical. This is the age where many students, particularly girls and minorities, begin to disengage from these subjects. They feel and...
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Who DOESN'T love a good, nerdy, science joke?
When I was student teaching in an 11th grade science class, my mentor teacher would always include a bonus question at the end of every quiz/test: “Make up a pun/joke about [subject here].” At first I felt a little wary — weren’t we supposed to be testing them on their knowledge of the scientific content, not their wittiness?
After grading the first set of assessments,...
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Global competition
Odie (7th grade): [Looking up from a poster he's making on Newton's Laws of Motion] Ms. Leah, I'm disappointed.
Me: Why is that, Odie?
O: Well, if you think about, our country is known for things like hamburgers, hot dogs, apple pie. But now it seems like other countries are taking that away from us!
Me: What do you mean?
O: I read an article this weekend about how in the Middle East, which is really far away, they started making pizzas with hamburgers as the crust!
Me: Oh my, so, like, beating us at our own game.
O: And in some other place, I think China, they have little hotdogs baked into the crust.
Me: Wow, we're really slacking here. How does this make you feel?
O: I just feel deeply, deeply disappointed in my country. We really have to step it up.
http: //www.newsareweird.com/pizza-hut-middle-east-debuts-pizza-with-12-hamburgers
Overheard in art class
Sixth grade is doing an art project where they have to represent a specific water or environmental quote/proverb using collage.
Stevie: [reading over his card again] Don't SWAP horses in the middle of the river?! Oh! At first I thought it said don't SWAMP horses in the middle of the river!
Teacher: [chuckles] What would it mean to "swamp horses"?
S: Well, I THOUGHT it was weird. But how does "don't swap horses" make any sense?
Teacher: Well, you tell me. Let's think it through.
S: I'd think it WOULD be a good idea to swap horses in the middle of the river.
Teacher: Uhh...have you ever been to a river?
S: Yeah! This way, if you fall, you'd just land in the water as a cushion!
Teacher: Hmm...
S: And you'd have a horse. That's like a mobile flotation device!
Teacher: Well, they CAN swim...
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Why can't we be more like Finland? →
The speaker who I found most fascinating, however, was Anu Partanen, a journalist and author of “What Americans Keep Ignoring About Finland’s School Success.” If you haven’t read this article, it’s worth taking the time. Finland is outpacing the US in education success, and their model is quite different from our own. Many of their practices are easy to digest for me; they are what I regularly...
Decomposing Classroom: Frequencies of sound →
adventuresinlearning:
decomposingclassroom:
The 8th grade boys have discovered that if you blow through a pen cap a certain way, it makes a super-high pitched whine that is, apparently, inaudible to people over the age of 30. This brings out the ages of all the middle school teachers quite well: the math teacher is completely oblivious to the drone, the humanities teacher thinks she hears...
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Teaching me about Teaching →
Favorite quote of the article:
“Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.”
- Albert Einstein
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Frequencies of sound
The 8th grade boys have discovered that if you blow through a pen cap a certain way, it makes a super-high pitched whine that is, apparently, inaudible to people over the age of 30. This brings out the ages of all the middle school teachers quite well: the math teacher is completely oblivious to the drone, the humanities teacher thinks she hears something weird, and I hear it loud and clear. And...
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“Every child is born an artist. The problems begin once we start to grow up.”...”
– Are We Wringing the Creativity Out of Kids? | MindShift (via infoneer-pulse)
Oh man, I’m so aware of this. As a teacher, I try to make a point of giving assignments that allow for a good deal of creativity. I definitely have some students that get freaked out by this, because they’re...
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Favorite things to call my students when they are...
Hooligans
Rapscallions
Hoodlums
Whippersnappers
Does this make me sound like an old British curmudgeon or what?
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Authentic audiences
When I was a student, I always valued schoolwork and projects that felt like they had some sort of “authentic audience.” Why was I writing a paper that only my teacher would read? I would consistently put more effort into assignments that would be peer reviewed and shared with the class, and even more into ones that I knew would be viewed by the larger community.
Now that I’m a...
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Creating Innovators: Why America's Education... →
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Teacher of Many Hats
Wearing various clown wigs, silly hats, elephant heads, etc. for my different class “personas”: Great idea
Letting my 6th graders use them for their Egg Drop commercials: Feeling generous
Learning the next day that one 6th grader has lice: Uhhhhhhh… I think I’ll be keeping my head paraphernalia to myself from now on…
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“I’ve found that first-year teaching is way less stressful when I think of...”
Spritz
Spritzing students with water when the air-conditioning is broken: great idea
Almost accidentally spritzing one with clorox solution in nearly identical container: narrowly-avoided catastrophe and job termination.
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April 2012
36 posts
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Getting hot in here...but Teacher is prepared
Temperature: 80 degrees
Classroom air-conditioner: Broken
Repair technician: Who knows when he/she will arrive.
Cheapie plastic spray bottle: 99 cents
Misting students to wake them up and reward correct answers/valiant efforts/insightful comments: Priceless.
