Going to Bed with Smiles on our Faces

Today was a good day. We all got a lot of things done. Coupons were cut. Shopping was done. Help with homework was given. And after a month off after surgery, workouts were begun.

Pleasantly worn out from a very productive day, everyone was ready to call it a goodnight and head out of sight when low and behold little Lily arose with an Apples to Apples game to play for Family Game Night.

One-by-one we were slowly recruited, until all six of us around the table were seated. And as the game began and later a winner was sung, everyone ignored the end-of-game rules and play continued.

When we finally broke camp and hugs and kisses were exchanged, a warm glow overtook my heart and I saw that we were all going to bed with smiles on our faces.

Be Afraid of Being Afraid

Teach Thought 30 Day Blogging Challenge ~ Day 30 ~ What would I do as a teacher if I weren’t afraid?

 I’m not afraid. I’m not afraid of anything! Who, me? No way.

OK, seriously, What would I do?

Well, first, what am I afraid of?

It’s not receiving a bad evaluation. I care more about being an
effective teacher than I do about being seen as one.

So I’m not afraid of that.

 I’m not afraid of what others think. I am excited that they do think. Not about me, but about what they can do to be the ultra-effective teacher they dream of in their hearts.

 Hmmmm. Parents? No

I guess I’d keep doing what I keep trying to do, no matter the problems it causes; identify what each child needs to know, and provide exciting and as individualistic lesson plans as possible.

This is very different from what most parents know, and often we fear what we don’t understand.

 So, I guess I’ll continue being unafraid of parents being fearful of my teaching style at the beginning of every year.

Teaching ~ Fire Fighter Style

Teach Thought 30 Day Blogging Challenge ~ Day 29 ~ How have I changed as an educator since I first started teaching?

 

How have I changed?

Clear learning goals and targets to get those goals, and teaching in digestible chunks.

By deconstructing learning goals I now am able to create leveled learning targets to help more students achieve the learning goal.

By teaching these learning targets I force myself to teach in digestible chunks. Because of my love and excitement for learning and discovering new knowledge I tend to “teach everything all at once”.

Although my students have always loved the excitement and fun of my classroom, they sometimes came away feeling overwhelmed and incapable of achieving the learning goals.

Some parents even pulled their kids from my class saying they, “weren’t smart enough to learn the way I taught”, which told me something was missing from my teaching, something important.

Like a firefighter whose job it is to put out every fire, my job as a teacher is to reach and teach every student.

Firefighters don’t hope to put out a fire. They use all of their intelligence and courage to do their best to put out every one.

I’ve had to find the courage to increase my teaching intelligence in order to make improvements in my teaching.

Deconstructing learning goals into achievable steps, and monitoring myself to teach in those steps, has made big improvements towards my fire-fighting teaching style of putting out the fires of doubt in my students and helping them all achieve the learning goals, step-by-step.

Thank you, Dr. Marzano for your research into the areas of effective teaching practices, and to my principal, Mary Hool, for implementing those practices in our school.

The Data Tells me What to Teach Them ~ Their Passions Tell Me How

Teach Thought 30 Day Blogging Challenge ~ Day 28 ~ Should Technology drive curriculum or vice-versa?

I think neither should drive the other, but used together, with data driving both.

I know there are certain standards, big ideas and anchor standards that students must master in their various grades.

But for me it's their DATA that tells me WHAT specific curriculum they need on an individual basis, and not based solely their grade level. 

And it's their PASSIONS that tell me HOW to teach them. 

Some are script writers and PowerPoint creators while others are Lego Master iMovie makers. 

The challenge is to combine WHAT they need to know with HOW they are most likely to learn it. 

Working Hard ~ Playing Harder in our School Of Rock

Teach Thought 30 Day Blogging Challenge ~ Day 26 ~ What Role do Weekends and Holidays Play in my Teaching


The role they play for me is to play. Work hard ~ Play harder.

Either I take the entire weekend off to play; to rest, recuperate and recharge,

or I work hard the entire weekend to create lessons that allow us to play at school.

And not just academic games, but to play with science and math and reading and writing through an historical adventure.

The goal, or desired effect, is for my students to play with knowledge through experiential discovery in order to understand it well enough to perform it. 

As I'm planning, I envision them as musicians of all different kinds

 applying their new knowledge to play the instruments of their choice in new and exciting ways,*

resulting in a passionate performance!

*Taylor, Florencia and Katie doing well enough on their in-class reading assignment to take time off and play a little Spanish air guitar to the music of The Gipsy Kings (I got to play just because I'm the teacher - and, well, I need to have fun too). 

Favorite Teacher Resource Go-To Sites

Teach Thought ~ 30 Day Blogging Challenge ~ Day 26 ~ What are my 3 Favorite Resource Go-To Sites?

CPALMS.org

Teach Thought

Edutopia

Forget Everything You Learned in School ~ Unless You Learned to Collaborate

Teach Thought 30 Day Blogging Challenge ~ Day 25 ~ What would the ideal collaboration between students look like?



Depending on the teacher, student collaboration can look and sound calm and creative........or chaotic and scary.........or even calmingly chaotic and so creative it's scary.

lifeconfusions.wordpress.com

We tend to fear what we don't understand. One of my favorite questions I had to answer this summer during Marzano training was, "What does this look and sound like?"

In order to answer I had to first understand what my unit plan looked like in action. To achieve the learning goal/targets, what would I see and hear my students doing?

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Since my unit adventure was filled with student collaboration, this thought-provoking exercise helped me understand better what student collaboration really was.

And I found out, thanks to both Marzano, and the movie, Dan in Real Life, that it's not so much a process or event as it is an ability.

Collaboration is an ability to use academic vocabulary while working together to explain, analyze, evaluate, infer, rethink, retool, create, design, illuminate, critique and question.*

And this ability to collaborate sounds pretty familiar, as it's a highly-valued skill in the real world. 

I did not learn to collaborate in school, and the first thing I was told when I graduated and got my first job was, "Forget everything you learned in school, it doesn't apply in the real world."

It is my job to make sure that this isn't true for any of my students, and that all of them are gifted collaborators..

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*http://www.teachthought.com/learning/project-based-learning/project-based-learning-cheat-sheet-authentic-learning/

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