A 102 Year Old Teacher

I found an article today about a 102 year old teacher.  She teaches cooking and sewing, home economics, at a pre-k to 5th grade private teacher. She is just a sweet little old lady, and I don't know if I could keep teaching at her age....but she does it because she loves it! Thank you Granny for reminding me to love my job :)

https://www.the74million.org/article/must-see-americas-oldest-and-most-adorable-teacher-turns-102-tuesday

Stress--How do you deal with it?

So I was searching through Pinterest for inspiration today and I saw this quote:

http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/classroom_qa_with_larry_ferlazzo/2013/11/response_using_self-compassion_to_recover_from_a_bad_day.html

This quote caught my attention, because I have been thinking a bit lately about the stress that comes with my job.  How much it wears me out--and I wonder if it is because I don't handle my stress right. Which gets me thinking that if I handled stress better, would my overall life be better? The obvious answer to that one of course is yes---but then it circles back to the only way I can think of to control my stress better is quitting my job.  Currently that is not something that I am contemplating (though my more faithful readers know that I do contemplate this at my low points). So I clicked on this quote.

It came from an article on Education Week that is the third part of a series answering the question of how do you deal with a bad day as teachers. After reading the responses from various teachers, I realize that they are talking about the days in which the lesson doesn't go well, or the kids are driving you crazy, or you have those moments that just make you want to walk out.  And yes I still have those--but these articles didn't give me completely what I was thinking it was.  My job is stressful--as the quote says---it is the nature of the beast.  And it confirms what I have been thinking all along--it is not just this particular job.  So how do we deal with it? We can't just stop being teachers.

Some people offered the standard answers of taking care of yourself and leaving work at work--including in your mind.  And I agree with those, but others talked about things to do to prevent the bad days and when in the middle of them.  What about when you just get so tired of getting up in the morning? So in response to this response article....I thought I would offer what I try to do to deal with my stress.

1. As much as leaving at 3:00 when you get off is good for you...sometimes it is helpful to just stay a little longer so that you actually can leave work at work.  Even though some days I get home at 5...I go home without having to worry about anything.
2. Be willing to say no to things...having too many things on the plate along with teaching is hard.  Don't feel guilty just because you can't do it all.
3. I have noticed that if I don't take time for myself every night the next day is harder.  Even if it is a couple minutes of TV watching, book reading, Facebook, etc.--I recharge so much better.
4. In line with 2 and 3--make the important things a priority.  For me--church is a huge priority.  It helps me to deal with the stress of work--and it is a priority in my life.
5. Put your life in perspective.  Now this might sound really like a strange way to do so....but sometimes I say to myself, "Well at least I am not having to go through this like so and so is." I have a teacher friend right now who is teaching a full course load, directing the school musical that opens this week, and getting ready for basketball season that starts as soon as the play is over. And to top it all off her mom is currently fighting cancer.  Seriously....I have it easy compared to that.  It makes my stress not seem so over-whelming.  When none of you have horrible things happening in your lives (which is preferable don't get me wrong)--TV is a great replacement for--see my life isn't as horrible as it could be--especially medical dramas like Greys.

How do you relieve your stress?

An Interesting Week for Teachers

This was a perfect picture to express what I was feeling when I opened up this window tonight....

http://www.pinterest.com/pin/516225176007666234/

So I went looking....and I found an interesting article on Education Week called: We Need a National Teacher Monument.  This got me thinking about this week for teachers.  This author's opinion is that we have a lot of monuments in Washington D.C. and not even ones that you could think of right away...just a little statue or plaque.  But among all of these monuments there isn't one for teachers, and there should be--especially if the president and Secretary of Education we are going to say that it is the greatest job to have and we should do more than just give them gifts on Appreciation Week. 

Then I started thinking about the fact that two teachers died this week...because of their students. These news stories always hit close to home.  Thankfully, I work at a pretty safe school--either that or I'm just naive. But you always wonder--"Will that ever be someone I know?" This might be a place to start....honoring the teachers that have lost their lives in the line of duty....just a thought today as my brain struggles for ideas :)

Perfection

Today's prompt is:

Write about a time you screwed up - a mistake you made

This prompt actually started me thinking about perfection.  So many people try to obtain perfection throughout life--and they hate admitting their mistakes.  It is even worse when our mistakes become public knowledge.  There is a bit of the fact that we have this idea that we like to be right.  We also don't like admitting that we're wrong....but I read this article today and I thought it was amazing.

There is a BYU football player named Spencer Hadley that has been suspended for five games for drinking alcohol.  Now at other schools this is nothing, but at BYU that is breaking the honor code.  We commit to it and consequences happen for our actions.  The sad thing is that he has to deal with this mistake in front of the whole world.  It really is too bad that he has to deal with that along with his mistake. But his story is so powerful....go read the article.

Teaching....Harder Than It Looks

The picture from the article

Today I found an article called, "Why Teaching is Harder Than It Looks" and it was a great day for me to find this article.  I have been really struggling with my burn out at my current job....not just the teaching but everything around it.  This article really spoke to me...that my job is suppose to be hard---that I picked it knowing it was going to be hard.  Though I still maintain that no teacher really knows what they are getting themselves into until they get there. But this article really spoke to the fact that the outside world does not understand what it is like to be a teacher.

The author is a PhD. and she had decided to leave the laboratory work and become a teacher--first of that is awesome!! This is what more experts need to do! It takes such courage to do so and the students benefit from their experience in their field.  But this teacher had a wake up call to the lack of respect that teachers feel.  It is so true. We put our heart and soul into our job, and try to prove to everyone that we can do it.  She mentions that a lot of people try to tell her how to do her job--been there! She mentions how we try to quantify teaching so we know how people are doing....but you can't do that! So as school starts up again for a lot of people...go thank a teacher!  We work hard and could use that thank you.

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.

Are Grades Important?

I read an article on Education Week today that seemed to discuss this very same idea.  Now I just got done reading the comments from everyone on the article, and wow.  People have a lot of different opinions.  I really don't like confrontation on the Internet. And these people sound belligerent so I am not commenting in the box.  But it got me thinking about how we doing grading at our school.  We still do grading, as I'm sure everyone here is aware.  And it is still very subjective with moments of objectivity just as every other teacher.  However, we do focus on competency and mastery. 

How do we do this?  We make sure the student knows the material.  Cs and Ds don't fly anymore....they just get As and Bs.  Most of our students have just "done what they had to" and tried to just barely pass before.  By actively creating these guidelines, the students reach for a higher standard. I saw comments on this article about schools that just let students retake as many times as they want so kids don't even try the first time.  WE also have things against that in the fact that they can only really take the tests twice until they need to go back and prove mastery to the material that they are being tested on.

But the cool thing to me is that the power of the letter grade gives these students confidence to go on to their next school with more confidence whether that be in college or another high school. I know that they are actually having to learn something to go through what I make them do :) unlike other schools where they could just skate by.  So it is definitely something that is worth considering in the constant debate of education reform.

Picture courtesy of: http://www.legaljuice.com/2011/07/post_245.html

Shakespeare Plus Autism

So my only actor friend (well at least that I know of...there might be some high school friend that acts but I clearly don't talk to them that often) shared this article on Facebook [yes you Katie :)] The article is called "The connection between Shakespeare and autism" And we taught Shakespeare together once for a MAGNIFICENT summer at Cedar Ridge Academy.  So of course I clicked on it because I want to know what is out there. This is actually quite the interesting article.

Our school does not teach highly autistic students, but we do see students on the other end of the autism spectrum (like NLD and Asprerger's).  As this article points out, with these students you are not going to immediately think of Shakespeare. But I have seen students that would have NEVER tackled Shakespeare on their own, take it and run with it.  They immerse themselves in the language and let them try it out and guess what they are getting at--and suddenly they are not scared and they can handle it.  

So go check out the article...what Shakespeare play would you try with students that aren't great with language?  Hmm....what about with ESL?

Thank you to shakespeare.mit.edu for the picture which is also where I get my copies of plays when I do it in class.  Printing them for a small class like mine is cheaper than buying books.

Day 26: Critical Thinking v. Analytical Thinking

So today's prompt is actually a lot of what I have done on this blog before

Something you read online. Leave a link and discuss, if you'd like.

So totally stole this from the article!

Because I do a lot with my LessonCloud about teaching....lesson plans, education policy etc.  You know where I find most of my articles that I read about is actually Twitter.  A lot of people retweet articles or tweet their own articles that they have written.  The key to a good article to tweet?  A good title! (Feel free to follow me on Twitter here)

This article is called Teaching Students to Dig Deeper (very catchy I think).  It actually turns out to be a blog post about this guy's book....which he actually convinces me that I should maybe look into buying it. He talks about how a lot of people mix up critical thinking with analytical thinking or give them the exact same definition. This article asserts that in order to "dig deep" or thinking critically....students have to do analyze it first.  Once they understand their subject then they can think critically about it.

My question for my fellow teachers...which is why this guy wants you to read his book...is how do you give students the opportunity to follow these steps?  What real-world scenarios can we give them that they can solve and think critically about?

P.S. I really should update my tabs!

Five Favorite Front-Page Features

With it being Sunday, we take a day off from A to Z Challenge...so I bring my current events post to Sunday for this month instead of Friday :)

5. Margaret Thatcher died...a great example to women everywhere---you can run a country! http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1034634/Lady-Thatcher-honoured-State-funeral.html

4. The weather!! Goodness gracious...how crazy is it?  This was my "favorite" video from the week...I grew up near there!  http://www.ksdk.com/news/article/374535/3/Shenandoah-Valley-Elementary-School-damaged-no-class-Thursday

3. Catholic Priest earns Medal of Honor....this is a very cool story.  It is great for those that he was with were able to see this awarded http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/video/catholic-priest-medal-honor-18936141?tab=9482930&section=1206853&playlist=18936680

2. Gun Control....more discussion this week. The big thing that happened? The Senate voted to debate the issue....and apparently this is a huge deal.  I liked SNL's skit last night....and I don't even watch this stuff usually.



1.  It would be nice to not have North Korea on here again next week....but I kind of doubt that.  Do they have a missile?  Don't have one?  On Thursday I was "attacked" by my students to find out if our security threat had increased to Def-Con 2 with everything that had happened. The only thing that I had heard was the South Korea had increased theirs to Def-Con 2...if we had it was for a short time because by the time I was able to look it up it looked like we were at Def-Con 3.  The interesting thing is that today/tomorrow is the anniversary of the founding.  Sounds like another "enemy" that likes to play chicken...

How long will you keep playing?

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.