Educon Encienda

Today at Educon were most of the Encienda presentations. These are 5 minute presentations with slideshows of 20 slides each, auto-advancing every 15 seconds. This is the fourth one I've done and I love it (for reasons I have not been able to identify yet). Here is my slideshow and I'll upload video of the Encienda when I get a chance. (My dad wants to watch it. No one else has to!)

My big idea is to try to see through children's eyes before making decisions that impact them.

Encienda 2013 from Jennifer Orr

Thank You Donors' Choose & Generous Folks

Donor's Choose has been fabulous for my class. I've put up four projects and they've all been funded (usually pretty quickly). We've gotten cameras, copies of The Dot for Dot Day, awesome chairs, and now books by Jan Thomas and Mo Willems.

I pulled the stack out and showed them one-by-one to my students. There were many gasps, cries of "I've read that book!" and much making of the connection sign (thumb and finger out pointing at yourself and then the other person, back and forth to show a connection between you). I wish I recorded that part.

After we oohed and aahed over the books I put them all out on a table and kiddos grabbed one and found a place to read. When they finished one they put it back and got another. They could have done it all day. It was a book celebration. I did record a bit of that.

(The video doesn't show up in Google Reader. Sigh.)

L.A.B.

That's what we call our Language Arts Block. I love that it abbreviates to L.A.B. It just feels right to me.

My school has worked hard over the past 15 years to establish powerful reading and writing workshops. Folks come from other schools to observe what we do. I love it. I'm really proud of it.

But in the past few years I wanted to take it further. So three years ago I tried an integrated block, reading and writing together. I had a few reasons for doing this:

1. Time - with only one focus lesson and one share we have more time for the real work of our reading and writing - reading groups, independent reading, independent writing, guided writing groups, writing conferences, work stations to practice various literacy skills
2. Student independence and responsibility - in the reading and writing workshop model we are telling students what they should be doing and for how long - write until we tell you to stop for share - work at your work station until we call you for guided reading - it didn't matter if kids felt finished before that or if they wanted more time
3. Linking reading and writing - with separate reading and writing workshops students begin to see those two skills as separate - I wanted them to see all the ways reading and writing are linked and support one another

Setting up this integrated block is no small task. We start the year with separate reading and writing times to solidly establish routines and expectations for both. Just before we begin integrating the two we spend a couple of weeks looking at what we are doing during our reading and writing time and how those activities help us to become better readers and writers. We really dig into this. Not just, "I was writing." or "I was reading." We end up with a great list that includes things like, "I reread." and "I thought about what I wanted to write." and "I used the word wall." and "I talked to a friend about my book."

In the first few weeks of L.A.B. students have a half-page with three sections: Guided Reading, Independent Writing, and Work Station. When they finish one of those tasks they write about what they did there to become a better reader and writer. After a few weeks we phase out the paper as they begin to internalize these ideas.

Of course, there are times when I need to talk with a student about spending all their time at their work station and not doing any writing. Or vice versa. That's fine. We have those conversations, as often as we need to. Throughout the year we also revisit expectations and routines. Of course we do that in other parts of our day as well.

A few upper grade teachers have also given this a try and now our administration is interested in learning more. So our literacy coaches, a couple of us classroom teachers, and our administration will meet next week to talk about this idea.

In talking with a fourth grade teacher I found one comment really interesting. I was saying how much time I spend early in the year establishing routines and pushing students to think about what they are doing and how it is helping them become better readers and writers. The other teacher said that this seems to be harder in fourth grade than in first. After four years of school, four years of teachers telling students what to do and when and for how long, students have a rougher time being responsible for this themselves. It just makes me more determined to keep doing this with my students and making it better all the time.

Arming Teachers

Back in December I wrote a few posts about the various parts of my job and what they really look like. After the horrific events in Newtown, Connecticut I did a bit more reflecting on my job. Yesterday I wrote about our lockdown drill, our practice in case of such a terrifying possibility.

In related news, one of the blogs I enjoy reading is The Educated Reporter, from the National Education Writers Association. It helps me keep up to date on policy issues and other educational issues around the country.

Earlier this week Emily Richmond wrote about the current interest in arming teachers. My state, Virginia, is one of the states with bills proposing something along these lines (of course).

I find this possibility terrifying. I have fired guns before, skeet shooting with my mom when I was younger. (She used to hunt quail with her father, if I remember correctly.) I enjoyed that but I've never felt a need to shoot regularly or to own a gun. In fact, the idea of a gun in my house gives me nightmares. I have two daughters and the risk, in my mind, is just too great. A school with 700 students is even worse.

There are many aspects of my job I do not greatly enjoy. Some aspects I actively dislike. But if being armed becomes a part of my job it will be time to find a new job.

Lockdown Drill

We had a lockdown drill today. For those not in the know (and lucky you), this is the drill we practice in case of a dangerous person(s) in our building. We close and lock all doors, cover any interiors windows with dark paper, turn off the lights, pull down all blinds, gather in one corner, and be as quiet as possible.

When we told our little darlings about the drill some remembered doing this in kindergarten. That helped. We presented it in comparison with fire drills and tornado drills - drills that I don't think cause a lot of stress for our students. We explained what we would need to do without any drama (I hope).

Our principal announced the drill over the loudspeaker and the kids (mostly) quickly and quietly moved to the carpet. My intern and I took care of the lights, doors, and windows. Then we joined the kids on the carpet.

I pulled a book from nearby to whisper read to them. It seems unreasonable to ask first graders to just sit together silently. With my back to the door and a great distance between it and me I felt comfortable no one outside would hear me reading. I did pass on some really funny books though because I didn't want gales of laughter. I picked a sweet story.

On the whole my little darlings were fabulous. They were quiet the whole time. Even when someone knocked on our door as a test.

I felt a surprising level of stress given that it was a drill. I knew it wasn't real, but I still felt anxious. (I'm not a naturally anxious person.) I'm not sure how my students felt but I observed and overheard some things that were both concerning and humorous.

Two little girls sat beside one another on the carpet holding hands. I think they needed that physical reassurance of their safety. One child remarked after the drill about how scary it was. Another boy decided it was a drill in case zombies came. After we opened the door and pulled up the blinds he said, "Oh no, the zombies will come! Go hide!" and ducked off around the corner of our couch. I don't think he was really worried but it's hard to be sure.

I'm not a fan of this piece of my job. I don't think our students feel more reassured by the practice of these drills. That doesn't mean I question the importance of them. But I think students either feel anxiety as a result or don't really feel anything about them. I don't like doing anything that raises my kiddos' anxiety levels, even when I know we need to.

I'm Not Too Busy

Last year I wrote about getting my own box of grapefruit from my grandparents and my mother's offer to cut it for me. She was concerned that I was too busy. (I did manage to cut up my own grapefruit and did so again this year.) I am also often concerned that I'm too busy.

But I've been thinking a lot about this lately. A post Dean Shareski wrote a couple of years ago came to mind. (I don't know how many blog posts stick with me over multiple years but this one did.)

The language we use is something I am acutely aware of these days. This may be a result of reading both Choice Words and Opening Minds last summer. I'm working on changing my language about this issue. Instead of saying "I don't have time for that." I'll say "I'm not prioritizing that."

I may not say that directly to other people in certain instances, such as when I am unwilling to help with something, but I will still make the effort to recognize it for myself.

It is easy to feel overwhelmed with tasks and busyness. When I remember that I am so busy because of things that matter to me it is easier to take. Being busy also quickly becomes an excuse. It's the reason I don't get up and go to the gym. It's the reason I haven't unpacked the boxes that sit in our dining room from the holidays. It's the reason I haven't worked with our oldest on some strategies for stress we've thought about. I'm just too busy.

But I'm not. I have time to watch an hour or two of tv each evening. I have time to go to dinner with friends. I have time to read books I want to read. I have time to sit at the piano with my girls and play and sing.

It's not busy. It's priorities. Remembering that may also help me ensure that I am prioritizing the things that truly matter to me. This week will be a busy week. But it will be that way because it is full of things I very much want to do.

Give Me a Good Reason, Please

I know it is sweeping the nation and we are far from alone, but I still don't understand the idea of common pacing. Planning together I get. I've been doing that for years and it is wonderful. Multiple brains talking about ways to teach and what different students need is much better than just one brain. Collaboration is an amazing thing in education.

But common pacing? We're doing this in math right now - to some extent. We're planning as a team once a week. No one is checking in to make sure we are following it and we've talked about the fact that we won't all be teaching the exact same lesson on the exact same day. This makes a lot of sense to me. We're benefiting from the co-planning piece, all the brains working together, but we can adapt to student needs and changes in schedules.

We're also working on planning a unit together about writing reports. Again, we're talking about what our students need, how to support them as they learn, what resources are helpful, and some ideas about assessment. All useful conversations. But it's unlikely we'll be teaching it all at the same time. Or in the exact same way.

In a meeting today it was said that we should know that the expectations for common pacing will be tighter as we move forward. Why? What is the benefit? What am I not seeing?

My perspective on common pacing is that it is focused on content rather than on students. That is wrong to me. Our learners should drive the learning they are doing, not the other way around.

Please, please, please tell me if you have another view. I cannot see another perspective here.

Firefighter is to Teacher as...

My morning commute takes me past a volunteer fire station. It's a place we've come to know well in recent years as we've taken our daughters there for the open house during Fire Safety Week and to a pancake breakfast with Santa each December. One of our neighbors drives an ambulance for the station.

There have also been a number of firefighters in the periphery of my life for many years. A family friend was lucky enough to be on duty one evening to answer a call at our home after a minor bathroom fire. His son, a boy I babysat as a teen, is now a firefighter. One nephew of ours is trained as a firefighter, although I don't think he is actually doing that work at the moment.

For the reasons above or for reasons I don't understand, I've been thinking a lot about volunteer and career firefighters. After a bit of research I've learned that often they have the exact same level of training.

Now I have more questions than I had before. Why do we as a society need volunteer firefighters? We don't have volunteer police officers. What would it cost us to have all career firefighters? Are there reasons other than financial that explain all of the volunteer fire stations across the country?

Of course, I can't help but compare this to education. Volunteer firefighters have the same level of training as career firefighters. They may not get paid for the job but they are still expected to be fully competent to do it. The analogy to groups like Teach for America seems obvious to me. Not only do those teachers not have the same level of training as career teachers, they also cost their school districts more because of the costs involved with Teach for America. Why is it possible to require full training for volunteer firefighters but not for teachers?

Complexities of Learning to Read

This morning I headed down to our phenomenal book room to find some new books for my guided reading groups. I was looking for titles at pretty early reading levels (about end of kindergarten, early first grade benchmarks).

In spite of the wealth of titles in our book room, I struggled to find good books for my little readers. Many of my students speak English as a second language (or 3rd or 4th). They are still gaining vocabulary and a firm understanding of the language structure. As a result, some books are much more challenging than their level would suggest.

When kids are learning to read there is so much going on, so much that we take for granted once we learn to read. They are thinking about how the words look, how the sentences are formed and organized, and the meaning behind the text. It's a bit overwhelming when you step back and analyze it.

Learning to read is much easier for students who have a lot of vocabulary, lots of background knowledge about things, and have a solid understanding of the structure of the language.

I rejected books today because they had unusual animals in them, like slugs or because they called animals by less common names, hen rather than chicken. These words are unlikely to be known by my students.

I rejected books that rhyme because creating that often involves using words or language structures that are not typical in our spoken language.

I rejected books because they involved activities or places that my students are unlikely to know anything about, such as riding a train or New York City. The vocabulary and ideas become challenging when one has no background knowledge.

These are not bad books. (Well, some of them are but not really for these reasons.) They are not even books that are impossible for my darlings to read, they are just much easier for some kids to read than others. My little first graders are pretty brilliant. They have a lot of background knowledge about certain things but not always the things that are valued by publishers of early reader books. They can speak multiple languages, something I, sadly, can't do. They will learn to read, I have no doubt of that. I'm just acutely aware of all the challenges facing them in that process.

Gratitude

Cause and effect are often difficult to determine. When I think about who I am as a teacher I wonder what caused certain things. Am I a reflective educator because I went through the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards process in my fourth year teaching? Am I more thoughtful now about living the Golden Rule with my students because I have my own children and I want to be the teacher I want for them? Am I willing to share materials and ideas because I have always taught at a school where that is the norm?

I find myself somewhat at odds with many of my colleagues in recent months because I seem to question everything. Our school is adjusting to new leadership at many levels (our own administration as well as that of our cluster in our district) and that has meant many changes. For whatever reason I push back about pretty much all of these changes. It isn't that I am unwilling to change. At least I don't believe so. I just want to be sure that what we are doing is best for our students. And best for them beyond simply their test scores. Best for them as people and learners.

Am I pushing back while others don't because I am in my 15th year at this school and I feel comfortable not just going along? Am I pushing back simply because I'm ornery? Am I pushing back because I fear change?

Honestly, I believe this space and those of all the other teachers, administrators, and educators online are the reason I push back. I believe the reading of others' reflections, questions, and thoughts and the conversations that have ensued from those is the reason. I believe my time spent here (online in the education sphere) has pushed me in ways no one school could ever do.

Thank you to everyone who continues to share of themselves as educators here online. Thank you for your thoughts, your conversations, and your openness. I'm sure I am not alone in believing in the value it has for me and for all of us.

Terms I Hate: Classroom Management

One of my recent reads, thanks to the recommendations of several people, was Imagine: How Creativity Works by Jonah Lehrer. Just a quick aside, I ended up abandoning the book even though I was intrigued by it because I found it impossible not to question everything I read based on the author having fabricated quotes. Not knowing what was truthful and what was not made it too hard for me to get anything from the book. I'm sorry I didn't read it when it first came out, before learning all this. Had I done so, I would have had to rethink some things when the truth was revealed but I wouldn't likely have dismissed it all out of hand as I seemed to do when I read it.

Anyway, my point in mentioning the book had nothing to do with the above ramblings, although it does involve a quote from a source so take it as you will. There is quite a bit in the book about 3M, the company that makes post-it notes as well as a plethora of other products.

"It's a little amusing that people think Google invented this idea," Wendling says. "We've been doing it here forever. At first, people thought we were crazy. They said employees need to be managed. They said the scientists would just waste their free time, that we'd be squandering all our R and D money. But here's the thing about the fifteen percent rule; it works." (p. 30)

While I love the idea of the 15% rule, or 20%, or whatever, that's not what struck me. "They said employees need to be managed."

I struggle so much with the term 'classroom management' because it seems to suggest a level of control over other people that I have no interest in having. I use the term, hesitantly, when I talk about choices I make in the classroom to improve flow in our space and our time as well as ways I try to help students make positive choices and grow in their independence. But I don't like it. The connotations in education today simply give me the heebie-jeebies.

I appreciate the fact that this company believed in their employees and trusted them. Show people that you have faith in them, be they students or employees, and the majority of the time they will live up to that faith.

I think I may be back to the idea of treating students like people. Of course, if we feel a need to manage adults it's possible we aren't treating them like people either.

My nine-year-old loves to remind me that I am always lecturing her about the Golden Rule. She brings it up when someone else is treating her badly as her reasoning for doing the same. It never holds water with me but it's an interesting argument. Regardless of her take on it (although I am still working on that one) the Golden Rule is always there for me. If I would not want to be treated in a certain way then I should not be treating my students, my daughters, my coworkers, anyone else in that way. It's not a standard I live up to by any means, but it is a worthy goal.

The Brilliant Donalyn Miller

Just before the winter holidays I had the opportunity to hear Donalyn Miller speak. There are so many reasons I enjoyed my day - she is a classroom teacher, right now, she was in her classroom with her students the day before she was with us - she is a Texan with just enough of an accent to remind me of my home state but not so much that it drives me nutty - she sings the praises of twitter and online networks - she loves books and reading and teaching.

Donalyn is highly reflective, a quality I believe to be critical for educators. She asks herself why about everything she does. If there isn't a good reason for doing it, she stops. Sounds simple but it truly brilliant.

She's also highly reflective about her students. If a child is not reading during their independent reading time, she spends a few days observing closely. She looks for why the student is not reading and what they are doing instead. Then she is able to talk with them and work with them to create a plan for reading. She watches what students are reading in order to help them find new books, books similar and books that will stretch them.

While the basics of Donalyn's book, The Book Whisperer, should be in place in classrooms everywhere, they aren't. Sadly. However, even if all classrooms allowed book choice and instituted significant amounts of independent reading time at school there would still be much to learn from Donalyn. I just finished rereading The Book Whisperer and found myself reflecting on ways we use our time in my classroom and my expectations for my first graders. It's certainly got me thinking.

Children are People Too

A kindergarten teacher friend was chastised by an administrator because a couple of her kindergarten students were talking about Christmas rather than whatever their task was at that given moment. This was in the week before Christmas. I can't put into words how absurd and surreal this feels.

My frustration with this is immense. I am left with the sense that either this administrator does not have an understanding of five-year-olds and/or does not respect them as people. Is the expectation that students can only discuss topics of their choice during recess and lunch? Is that how human beings function?

We began our school year with the StrengthsFinder. The idea is to recognize and build on the strengths of our staff. Every teacher, instructional assistant, and administrator took the survey and identified their top five strengths. We charted those across teams and school-wide. We found similarities and areas we lacked as a staff. We talked about ways to use our strengths to grow individually and as teams and as a school.

We do just the opposite with kids. From stamping out their natural excitement about things, including Christmas, to seeing them only as test scores on whatever sort of assessment we are using at that time, we do not recognize or build on their strengths. Why on earth do we do one thing for adults and exactly the opposite for children? Do we truly think that they are a completely different species and need completely different treatment?

Children are people. They are younger than the rest of us but still people. We need to put ourselves in their shoes.

Parents are Always Teachers

Today is my parent’s 44^th anniversary.* I have been blessed to grow up with a model of a marriage worth emulating. I’m not saying that my parents have a perfect marriage. I don’t believe such a thing exists. They have been through difficult times in those 44 years but they are together and they are happy. This is clear because they just spent a good amount of the past four months traveling together around the U.S. in a Prius. That's a pretty good test of a marriage in my mind.

The saying goes that parents are their child's first and most important teacher. From personal experience I know that to be true. Even now, at nearly forty, I can see everyday things that I learned from my parents. Some of that is because I am now a parent and I watch and hear my parents in myself. I hear my father as I tease our stubborn, stubborn five-year-old. I hear my mother as I work through homework with a frustrated nine-year-old. 

I hear my parents in my interactions with my husband. This, too, is not surprising. Aside from my own marriage there is no marriage I know as well as I know my parents'. I am lucky to have that marriage be one that I want to look to rather than one to fight against. It's easy to continue a pattern that exists. I'm also lucky, I believe, to have seen some of the rough patches (likely not all of them) and seen my parents come through them. I expect rough patches in my own marriage but I also expect we will come through them together.

My mother has long been someone worth copying. I've watched her organize people at church to help one person going through a rough period or to help entire families and groups. She was, by profession, a nurse and I saw her in emergency rooms and nursing homes, patiently listening, gently caring for both patients and families. She can be hot headed and quick to anger when someone weaker has been wronged or hurt. She will make phone calls and write letters and speak out loudly and clearly. She can be stubborn (maybe we see a trend with the little five-year-old) in all the ways I hope my own daughters can be. Holding one's ground and standing up for what she believes in. 

My father has been my model as a reader (although my mother reads nearly as much). For years he took three different newspapers - mostly for the comics - and more magazines than I can count. He has cut back on those things but still has more reading material delivered to his home than some entire communities do. He will read anything you put in front of him and give you his honest opinion about it. He is also a natural teacher (as is my mother). Watching him with my daughters I see in him the reasons that all three of his siblings are teachers. He is not, at least not by profession. When my girls ask questions he responds with questions. When they say things that don't make sense he questions them, gently, carefully, pushing their understanding.

As a teacher I am grateful to have learned questioning rather than telling and reading widely and often from my father, and patience and care and speaking out and standing up from my mother. I am a better teacher for having grown up with them. I am a better wife, a better mother, and a better person as well.

*Yesterday was my 15^th anniversary and tomorrow is my grandparents’ 67^th anniversary. In case that’s not crazy enough, the other grandparents shared my anniversary.

I'm an Elementary School Teacher

Last week I wrote about what my job entails. One of my posts focused on the academic pieces, another on the students, and one more about the flotsam and jetsam that must be handled.

In all of my thinking and writing about my job, safety never crossed my mind. I’m not sure why that is, especially since I've had many conversations with my first graders in the past week about keeping bodies and selves safe (there has been a lot of very physical play at recess and some unkind words at other times).

Even when I do think about what I need to do as a teacher to keep my students safe it is focused on their emotional well-being and managing minor bumps and bruises. Life and death situations do not cross my mind.

I sincerely hope that will continue to be true in the future. After the horrifying events at Sandy Hook Elementary on Friday I don’t know. It’s not that I have any question about what I, my colleagues, and every teacher would do in such a situation, it’s simply that it has never occurred to me that such a need would arise.

I learned of the tragedy during lunch and spoke with two colleagues about it before having to teach again. I was in shock and I believe that one of the first things I said was, “This happens in high schools. This is a high school thing.”

Believing that has allowed me to live as though this could never happen to me, to my daughters, to my students. I can live that way no longer.

Tomorrow I will follow our regular routine. We will read, work on word study, go to P.E., play, and get through our day. Those routines will help all of us to believe that things are normal. But I will also be hyper award of my students’ sense of safety, physical and emotional. I will be prepared to have tough conversations if they bring up questions, worries, or stories they have heard. I will do everything in my power to keep them safe and to ensure they feel safe.

I've written twice about how September 11th impacted me as a teacher. My most vivid memories are not of that day but of September 13th, the day we returned to school. Based on those memories I am expecting tomorrow to be exhausting and emotionally draining. In spite of that, I'll just be glad to be together.

Behind the Scenes

Here comes day three of me babbling on about what a teacher's job entails. Day one was about societal views of said job, day two focused on more up close expectations (parents and such), and now we'll look at realities that most folks may not realize happen.

Now that we've covered the basics of instruction and the work involved in knowing our students we can talk about what a teacher's daily life looks like. Those first two parts of my job are what I love. I love figuring out each individual student so that I can help them find books they want to read, topics they are excited to write about, and make connections to math and science and history with them. I genuinely love digging into the skills and facts they have to learn to understand what that means for a six-year-old and how to help them understand it. Those things are challenging and exciting and keep me going everyday.

These others are not. Some are just time consuming. Just coordinating schedules with an occupational therapist and a speech teacher can get complicated. Then actually supporting the student in using the skills he is learning with those teachers is a struggle. Mentoring new teachers and working with pre-service teachers is wonderful to me because it pushes me to be the best teacher I can be. But it also consumes precious planning time and requires me to think about what those teachers need as well as what my students need.

Some of these items are both time consuming and of questionable worth. Administering the myriad of required assessments takes many days out of each year. The reading assessment we use is given two to three times a year (depending on the student) and is done so one-on-one. It is, however, a pretty useful assessment so I don't begrudge the time. The math assessment we give twice a year (I do it in small groups) feels much less useful to me. I don't feel as though I learn much about my students from it so it doesn't help me as a teacher. Then there are the other random assessments for which I see little to no value for different reasons - we don't get the scores back in a meaningful time frame or the assessment doesn't seem to be developmentally appropriate (often a problem with young children).

Many meetings also fit into the time consuming and questionable worth category. Not all, some are well worth the time, but many. I'm lucky enough to be at a school that only holds school-wide staff meetings once a month and our team meetings are once a week for an hour. There are plenty of other meetings however. Plenty of these meetings are now focused on PLCs which require extra assessments and paperwork at other times.

Finally there are the tasks that I wish I had a secretary for: collecting picture or field trip money, collecting forms, stuffing Wednesday folders, hanging up artwork around the room and in the hall, and such.

I'm sure I'm forgetting plenty of what teachers do. It's a complex job that requires one to be constantly on their toes, thinking back and ahead at the same time while still being patient, thoughtful, and compassionate. I wouldn't have it any other way.

My Job When It Matters

Yesterday I wrote about what society expects of me as a teacher. What I didn't mention there, but came to mind as I reread what I wrote is that those societal expectations all come down to getting my kiddos to pass standardized tests.

However, when society comes in contact with schools, because they have children there or volunteer or something that brings them in, their expectations change. Those instructional expectations remain, although they may not be quite as powerful, but they are joined by other expectations.

When school stops being purely theoretical, as it is for most newscasters and politicians, different things matter. Students are people rather than standardized test scores. Parents want me to care about their children. This looks different for every parent and child. It might be supporting a shy student to help them find their voice in the classroom. It might be making sure a child is wearing their glasses everyday. It might be reminding a student to make eye contact as they talk to me. It might be making sure they don't get anything with meat in it at lunch. It might be listening to their stories when they walk in each morning.

Some of these expectations are ones parents specifically ask about, such as the glasses or eye contact or meatless meals. Other expectations are never voiced aloud, may not even be conscious thoughts for the parents. But they are there and they are important.

This part of my job is about really knowing each student. Not just what they can and can't do academically, but who they are. Without this the academics don't happen.

More tomorrow...

One Facet of My Job

Lately I've been thinking a lot about what is expected of me in my job. In my mind it seems to be broken into three parts: what society in general sees as my job, what society more specifically sees as my job, and what my job really seems to look like when you're up close and personal.

For today I'm going to focus on the first one. Expectations for teachers, as seen in news report after news report, seem pretty clear. We must ensure that our students meet specific academic benchmarks. Sounds pretty simple.

When I look at it more closely it is a lot more complicated. Let's just take reading, a critical piece of first grade. There is a very specific benchmark for my kiddos in reading. Getting them there requires a cycle of assessment and instruction.

In case those words don't conjure up specific images for you, this means continually assessing what each student knows. In reading this means listening to students read out loud and then talking to them about what they read. Knowing where they are as readers allows us to then teach. The assessment tells us what skills they need more support in so we can teach for those. Then we have to assess to see if they have learned them. Assess, instruct, assess, instruct, assess, instruct, ad infinitum.

We're doing this for each student on and on. Plus, we're doing it in each subject area.

Teaching well requires knowing what students do and don't know at all times. That's no small task. Then creating instruction to meet those specific, individual needs. Another big job. Just standing up and telling students something does not, in any way, guarantee they have learned it.

Of course, this doesn't begin to cover what a teacher does each day. Tomorrow I'll tackle the more specific societal expectations, the ones that come when society actually comes in contact with school.

Weathering the Storm

As teachers (and maybe just as people) we struggle when it comes to sharing the good vs. the bad. While there are folks who seem to enjoy complaining, most of us often sugarcoat things. Teachers especially tend to celebrate the positives, even as they note and inwardly cry over the failures.

I believe recognizing the positives, talking about them, and, yes, even celebrating them helps. It's too easy for teachers to obsess over what isn't working, progress that isn't happening, and lessons that went wrong. It can wear one down.

This is on my mind as a result of reading John Spencer's post about ways to handle a tough period. Not everyone is as willing to share the hard parts and that got me thinking. (As always his thinking and writing are worth reading.) I'm not having a rough year with my class (as I've mentioned they're pretty darn darling) but we're in a bit of a rough patch as a school.

It's not something people want to talk about openly. Our problems are discussed in whispers, while eyes dart back and forth. We don't really like to admit that we're having such a tough time.

I'm in my 15th year at this school. I've been lucky enough to be a part of growing this school into a powerhouse, a well-respected school with a fabulous staff. We're feeling that slipping away and we don't know what to do.

Part of the reason we stay mostly quiet, I think, is that we aren't sure where the problems originate. Teachers are feeling micromanaged and disrespected in a variety of ways. Is that something our administration could remedy or is this coming down from our cluster or even a district-wide problem? An insane amount of our time is spent in meetings, meetings for which we have minimal control over our agendas. Who is dictating this? It's not clear.

Maybe some openness about the tough times we are in would go a long way towards improving the situation.

So Emotional

Back at the end of October Clarence Fisher tossed out an idea. I wasn't sure how to do this with my students. For whatever reason I had trouble wrapping my head around it. In spite of that I joined in. My inability to picture this (along with life in general) made me hold off for a while. This week I finally got started. Each day I sent home three flip cameras with kids to record whatever they wanted that afternoon/evening.

My reactions to this (which is not yet complete as I have more students still to participate) have varied but all been strong. Initially I was astounded by how excited they were when they returned the cameras to school the next morning. I didn't have to ask for them. They pulled them out of their backpacks with a flourish, ready to share their lives.

Then I watched a few and loved seeing what six-year-old filmographers do. The joy was so obvious and infectious. I wanted to just sit and watch but had to pick the kids up from music.

Finally when I had the chance to really dig into the videos I was overwhelmed by the generosity of my students' families. They allowed my students to record their homes and their lives. I watched them reading bedtime stories, making dinner, playing with siblings, and giving tours of their homes. My perception may be off, but I feel like I know these students so much better now than I did before watching these.

Here's a brief taste:

I did not edit that in any way. That's what you get when you give first graders a video camera and set them free. I am in love.