Article Review: "Sending My Child Away"

I saw this article yesterday on Facebook.  The rest of the title is, "It was hard, but best for our family."  This blogger mom went through a hard divorce that sounds like really put her kid in the middle.  It sounds like her son didn't really know how to deal with that divorce.  These kind of students are the stories that I hear about at my job. Cedar Ridge Academy receives a wide variety of students, and visit our website to learn if you/someone you know would be a good fit.  But this is why I work at this job as hard as it is.  Families are important and we help them put their lives back together.  And if for whatever reason they maybe can't go home again, I like to be able to set them up for their future.

This is a debate that I have with my fellow teachers too...we are not decreasing the expectations even though students want us too.  We need to hold the line with them, because we need to prepare them for life beyond high school. I always love teaching where I do because we focus on the learning--the body, mind, spirit idea.  We have a great school because we can deal with all of the parts of the student.

I hope that my readers never "need" our great school, but if you do find yourself in need, know that there are options out there.

J is for Joel, like Billy Joel

Time to share another lesson plan idea! Though I can't take full credit it for it....I stole and combined.    With April being National Poetry Month, I have been trying to bring poetry into not just my English classes more but also my Social Studies classes as well. What a perfect way to do that than with a song like We Didn't Start the Fire.  How many history teachers love the fact that it is a whole list of historical events (even if they might not be really historically significant in everyone's mind).

This week, in U.S. History and Government we started a project that asks the students to figure out what all of the events/people are in the song.  In preparing this lesson I learned that Billy Joel actually wanted to be a history teacher at one point and was shocked when someone told him that nothing happened in the 1950s. So he wrote a song (If you believe Wikipedia that is).  I also learned while preparing this is that he actually does it in order by year through the 1950s and 60s. A great place for the lyrics is here because it has the years listed.  If you watch the music video that Joel made it is really kind of random and the kids won't fully appreciate the song...so I actually show this historical based video.

So what did we actually do? I passed out the lyrics with a bit of an introduction and we watched the video.  Then as influenced by this facts list I split the students into groups and split the lyrics into sections.  Each group researched what each person/event was.  Later on we will write our own lyrics to the song for present day as influenced by this site.

I was a little bit worried about what the kids would say...it is an old song and maybe not readily appreciated.  But they actually thought it was pretty cool and enjoyed the scavenger hunt idea of it.  And they actually asked if they could come up with their own and were pleased that eventually we would.
 

From the actual video...thank you to http://www.metrolyrics.com/we-didnt-start-the-fire-lyrics-billy-joel.html 

My Response to CNN: We are ALL a Team

So this weekend, I saw this article from CNN about the 10 things parents and teachers should know about each other.  I have talked on here before how parents and teachers should be a team, and that parents shouldn't demand things of teachers--just as teachers shouldn't demand things of parents. And again...these opinions are mine alone, but I wanted to respond to this article.

Briefly, this article is a response to an article that they did probably about a year ago about what teachers want to tell parents.  I saw that article then and liked it enough to share it on Facebook.  To me, this new article discusses that parents and teachers are on the same page--some of the time.  They give a couple of quotes--some I agree with and some that I don't. As the article asks at the end: "What do you think about this list and what would you add?" I will do a list of three quotes from the article with my own commentary.

Quote #1 from the article states:
"Parents need to know we're in it for the kids; obviously not for the money," said Facebook user and Florida teacher Cindy Hoffman. "We're in a partnership, trying to do the best for the children as possible. Please don't treat us as adversaries."

I agree because as I have mentioned before, no teacher is in it for the money.  If parents know that we are a team--things go so much better.  Students drive the train (especially in high school) while the parents and teachers work as the staff on the train to help support the engineer.

Quote #2 states:
"As a teacher (oh yes, I am both) I want parents to stop blaming teachers and start working with us," Williams-Solod said. "We can't fix everything, but remember we are humans and we aren't perfect. Also, teach your kids to respect us."

I like this quote because it comes from a teacher-parent.  Sometimes teacher-parents are the worst--because we know what we would do as a teacher for our own kids.  But I think this mom hits the nail on the head--teachers are only human.  And one thing that I have to remind myself of everyday is that parents are only human too. I deal with a lot of kids who might not be in the situation that they were if there were different choices made in their upbringing.  So...again we are a team.

Quote #3 states:
"ADHD is not an excuse; it is an explanation."--Melynda Hartley Johnson, parent

I disagree with this quote to a certain extent. I agree that in some cases ADHD is a real thing--and something that the student needs to learn how to overcome.  However, I think that it can be used as an excuse even when it is a real thing.  No kid that is in a wheelchair or has glasses or any other visible difference says that they can't do something just like everyone else.  They figure out how they can do it their way.  That's what I as a teacher wish the parents that come to me with, "My kid has ADHD." would understand.  I wish I could hear, "My child has ADHD; can we help him learn despite of that?  I want him/her to be able to reach their potential and not be a kid defined by this."  That's really is the biggest thing--we can't define our kids by an explanation--they have to define themselves by what they CAN do, not what they CAN'T do.

March UCSS Conference

Teaching at Cedar Ridge Academy in Roosevelt, Utah, I sometimes feel out of the loop a lot from the Wasatch front--I teach in my departments alone and then there is the rural aspect.  It takes a lot more planning to get us involved.  I think we do a good job of taking advantage of things though as our Facebook page and blog page show. (P.S. Go like our Facebook page please---it helps us be more searchable).  So I plan on attending this conference every six months.  UCSS stands for Utah Council for Social Studies teachers, which I am a proud member of.  (P.S. Follow them here on Facebook and on their blog).

Biggest reasons to go to a conference (at least for me) are #1. the interaction with fellow teachers and #2. ideas for my classroom. So I went to three different session--one that focused on U.S. History, another that focused on World Geography/World History/Government/U.S. History, and another that focused on World History/Government.  That was the great thing about the sessions that I went to this time--I teach everything...so being able to deal with everything was great.

My favorite all-time session was with the teachers from Diamond Fork Junior High.  They have worked with their department and made huge strides in cohesive teaching across the grades.  I loved what they do with story-telling and teaching concepts like the 5 Themes of Geography, three branches of government, and types of government.  This idea of story-telling brings me to the close second: Dr. Crowe and Dr. Nokes--they talked about teaching history in context and with novels.  This really sparked my ideas to write historical fiction more that teachers can teach in their classroom as Dr. Crowe has done.  The close third with my favorite sessions was with Dr. Brown--she is a smart smart women.  I saw her last time so she didn't get the favorite spot because she was really favorite last time.  I love her Russia stories and her clear way of explaining the difference between communism, socialism, and Stalin's version of socialism (fondly known as Stalinism).

If you ever get a chance to go to a UCSS conference...totally do it!!!

The official logo of UCSS

The Spirit of Collaboration...Needs Understanding

One of the things that has become a new role for me at work is Lead Teacher.  In a way, I am the teacher that everybody goes to..but with as small of a faculty that we have I am like the Assistant Academic Director.  It describes my job waay better and well lets just be honest it sounds cooler :).  Weekly, all areas of the program get together to touch base about students, plan for upcoming events, and figure out how to make things work better around the company.

Sometimes I walk out of these meetings feeling like we got nowhere, and other times I feel like things are going to be okay at my job and we are all working together.  But one thing that I have learned about these meetings is that everyone has to be willing to listen to the other side.  If I think there is an idea that will be perfect for the problem, and I suggest it sometimes it doesn't work for someone else.  This might be because there is a part of the picture that I didn't see because I am not in their shoes all the time.  The key is to listen when the other department expresses that and not to just bulldoze right over them.

So here's to good collaboration and no bulldozing--just try to understand!

Thank you to http://www.construction-machine.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/Bulldozer11.jpg for the picture