Synergy! Finally!

The American Heritage® Stedman’s Medical Dictionary defines synergy as “The interaction of two or more agents or forces so that their combined effect is greater than the sum of their individual effects.”

My classroom demonstrated nothing remotely close to resembling synergy until today.  In fact, while individual behavior was good, for the most part, I was noticing an increasing trend toward disrespect and a growing inability to work cooperatively together.  I gave this issue some thought and in collaboration with my student teacher, we decided to create situations that forced students to work cooperatively together in the hopes that students would gain the necessary skills to work with a group of people to complete a task. 

The first activity involved the students working in small groups to solve an open ended math problem.  Each group was tasked with choosing a leader who would guide the discussion and report back to the class.  We noticed several interesting things.  First, some groups were able to choose a leader, but there wasn’t much discussion about the process.  The leader was chosen because that person was the only one who wanted to do it.  That worked.  The group was able to get the task done with the  cooperation and inolvement of most of the students in the group. 

Other groups had more difficulty selecting a leader and were able to do it, but not everyone in the group was in agreement.  It was kind of legislated by one or two people with others getting upset and hostile to the point that problem solving was pointless.  Yet another group couldn’t decide on who to select as leader and never did choose a leader.

My student teacher, who was leading these activities, did not get discouraged.  This was crucial to the success we noticed today.  Instead of getting discouraged and backing off, she forged ahead.  She did not concern herself that the task for some groups did not get finished.  She brought the groups back together as a class and lead a discussion where the kids evaluated themselves.  Did they choose a leader effectively?  What reasons could they give for their thinking?  What could they do next time that might work better? 

After asking these questions, she demonstrated the solution of the problem on the overhead, discussed that and moved on to the next segment of the daily schedule.  The entire process took about twenty minutes. 

The next day, the same process occured with different problem to solve, this time different groups.  The same discussion followed.  The next day and the next day we went through the same process. Some days the groups remained the same, other times they changed.  Today after lunch, my student teacher popped her head in to the inner office of our classroom and exclaimed, “Well, they’re not solving the problem but they are working together!”  Then she buzzed out to wrap up the lesson.  Later, she led the class through a discussion and the solution of the problem the same way she’d been doing for about two weeks.  In the end, every single group solved the problem accurately and collaboratively. 

Synergy!  Finally, the sum total of all the members of our class worked together to create a group experience where everyone was involved and the tasks were completed accurately.  It was especially thrilling, when we reminded the students of their first experiences with these activities two weeks ago.  As the students pondered how they used to interact, with how they currently interacted the light bulbs went on all over the room.  There literally was a moment of stunned silence as the students thought about their negative interactions in light of how good and safe they all felt now.  It was an amazing experience for us all. 

I guess the lesson I took away from this is, that when getting students to work together, over focusing on task completion instead of attending to the process can spell the death knell to a positive climate.  It truncates the communication and discussion needed to get students to open up and feel safe.  It also sends an underlying message that the only thing that matters is task over people.  I’m not sure that’s good instruction in spite of today’s pressure to perform for the sake of the test results.

Sources: 

synergy. (n.d.). The American Heritage® Stedman’s Medical Dictionary. Retrieved April 23, 2009, from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/synergy

Spring Fever

I have done a horrible job of keeping up this blog.  It doesn’t help that I have been working on a number of other projects in addition to this blog, so this one slid to the bottom of the priority pile. 

I am going to change that.  I think it is always good to reflect on one’s practice and I have many reasons to need to do that lately.  It’s been a good year, a fun year, a positive year.  However, there are those areas I want to do better tomorrow, and next month and next year.  This will help me reflect daily on the things I try.

So, for today the topic is Spring Fever.  We had a bitter cold winter, and freezing temps up until Monday, when it suddenly soared to 90+ degrees and stayed there three days straight.  I’m not sure who has more spring fever, the kids or the teacher?

On days like this it is really important to keep students’ attention focused and to provide opportunities for movement and interaction in the classroom.  I do this by allowing students to work together in pairs, changing seats if necessary and by delivering lessons with lots of opportunities for active participation. 

What I ideas do you have to keep kids motivated on class activities when they’d rather be outside playing?

Toxic Teams

Gasp!  Huge sigh. 

It’s already Winter Break.  This school year is screaming by.  Oh, you know what I mean.  There are years in every teacher’s life that just seem to drag tediously by.  This is not one of those years for me. 

This year I’m having fun.

The kids are all geniuses, of course, and I never have any behavior problems, right?

No, sadly, this is the year that I probably have some of the most interesting behavioral issues to deal with.  I also have a broad range of academic abilities and skillsets to deal with just like any other teacher in just about any other classroom. 

No, the thing that is really great about this year is that I am out of the other grade level I was in and teaching older children.  My students now understand their bodies well enough that they make it to the bathroom before things start flowing out of their orofices.  Students this age can do things a little faster than younger students can.  Like cleaning up, for example.  It takes us less time to clean up, thus, we have more time for instruction.  I enjoyed teaching the younger students.  I mean, I did it for 8 years and thought I’d be there till I retired.  Not so, and I’m glad for the change.

What I’m finding out, though, is that more than changing the grade level of the students, getting away from the toxic team dynamics at my old grade level was the healthiest move I made.  Sometimes groups or teams can just be draining.   They don’t mean to be.  If you were to ask the other members if they were being negative or if they were complaining about every little thing, they would look at you like you were voluntarily applying for the state mental institution.  They just don’t see how their behavior is damaging, toxic, draining, non-productive and energy sucking.  Even though I tried to distance myself as much as I could emotionally, I still felt like the enthusiasm, life and motivation to really excel for my students were being sucked out of me daily.  These are not bad people I’m talking about. These are not poor teachers either.  They do their jobs very well and they do rise to the challenge of changing and adapting.  The problem is they complain about it all every step of the way and they bring everyone around them down in the process.

I don’t have to deal with that ever any more.  I’m far away from that, with people who might complain about something once, or make a little comment, but they leave it there and don’t revisit it.  There is virtually no drama in my work existence now.  Except…except when the new teacher they hired to take my place comes over and asks me, “Was it like this for you and how did you put up with it all those years?”   I just smile and say, “It was like that for me and I just kept my mouth shut, went into my classroom and shut my door whenever possible.”

One Month Down, 8 And A Half To Go!

It’s a gloriously cool first Saturday in October.  My favorite month of the entire year!  The intense heat has cooled, it’s rained and the air is definitely cooler, more moist, but not cold.  There is not yet, that frosty bite in the air that signals the onset of winter here.

School has been underway for a month.  It’s been an intense start-up to the school year.  My school went through a remodeling project this summer and I was unable to get into the school ahead of time to do the required unpacking and set up of furniture and materials.  So, I had to add that to my list of things to do in addition to the usual meetings, planning and tasks associated with the first week back to school for teachers.  The pace hasn’t slowed much till just now. 

In addition to teaching, I’ve been asked to teach a professional development course on Technology In The Classroom.  This has absorbed a great deal of my time and energy since the first session was yesterday, only a month into the school year.  Teaching technology to children is tough enough, teaching it to adults is worse and teaching it to educators is the worst of all.  I am seriously wondering about my sanity in agreeing to do this.  In the end, it was a fabulous experience for me.  The teachers, most of them, appeared to benefit from the content.  I have some areas I can improve and that’s what it is about. Getting better.  Helping others get better at what we do for kids.  Putting whatever available technologies there are into the hands of kids is just so important, but so many teachers are hesitant to do so, for a variety of reasons.  It’s my hope that through this class they will be able to be more skilled and more confident in helping students use technology.  After all, if we consider technology a tool, just like a pencil or pen is a tool, is the teacher the only one with the tool?  I think not.

In addition to changing grade levels from first to fourth grade and teaching a professional development course, I have also agreed to do a series of presentations to parents at the school.  This will mean three additional presentations along with the three professional development presentations.   This is great for me, though it will mean some extra effort up front.   My parent presentations focus on assisting parents to effectively and positively implement the strategies and philosophies of Positive Behavior Support at home.  I’ve been applying these principles in my own home with my own four children with excellent results.  As a single mother of four, with a demanding career and after a pretty bumpy divorce, the consistency and positive impact of applying these strategies has really helped my children and I heal and grow much closer together.  I hope to share these successes, as well as the successes I seen others experience with parents.  The stress reduction alone for families, kids and parents, is tremendous. 

With all that going on, it has been tough to make time to write regularly.  I am ready to change that trend.  My classroom is a fantastic environment.  I’ll soon be posting pictures of what I’ve done.  Hopefully, other teachers will respond with ideas and suggestions about what they’ve done as well.  I’d really like to see this become a sort of online professional learning community where we can exchange ideas, get encouragement, and inspire each other to keep at it, even when maybe our energy and motivation are flagging.   I was talking to a friend yesterday, who is not an educator, but who is very savvy and perceptive in life.  He said, “I think it is exceptionally tough to be an educator these days.”  I had to agree with him.  I hope this little blog will help make it easier for all of us.

Updates

It has been mach 5 with my hair on fire since reporting back to work.  Changing grade levels, moving rooms, unpacking after our school was remodeled, hunting down misplaced possessions like my office chair and planning for a very demanding year has left me with little time to write, let alone blog. 

I will be posting updates soon.  Great things are happening in my class.  I suspect this might be one of those, “once in a teaching career” years.

School Is Definitely Back in Session!

Seven days into the new school year and all I can do is quote Charles Dickens, “A Tale of Two Cities”:  It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”

That’s how this year has been so far.

The worst is the remodel my school has gone through which is not completed yet.

The best is my class and the grade level I teach.

The worst is how much time I’m having to spend to prepare materials since it is my first year through.

The best is the kids are really responding to my efforts.

The worst is no afternoon recess.

The best is my new classroom rocks.

The worst is getting to know a new curriculum.

The best is no Reading First breathing down my neck.

The worst is the scheduling snaffoos.

The best is…I played PE with my kids today and actually won a couple of rounds of Wall Ball. 

The worst is having to test them so much.

The best is getting love letters on the tops of the tests that say, “Ms. B, You Rock!!!!”

It doesn’t get any better than that!

Back To School Checklists for Teachers

  I remember coming back to school my first several years of teaching.  I remember the ends of those first years also.  They are somehow connected, but it took me a while to figure out the best way to organize the end of my school year so that the start of the next year was smooth, efficient, and relatively stress-free.  In the next few posts, I will be sharing ideas that I have learned over the last decade and a half.  Most of these ideas are not my own, but are gleaned from having worked with some very fine educators far more efficient than I am when I’m left to my own devices.  If you leave comments about what has worked for you, then we’ll all have a larger resource base of knowledge and experience to work from.  So don’t be shy!  Share your great ideas and experiences.

To start it off, I find that a checklist can really help me focus.  I tend to be easily distracted and end up focusing on the non-essentials and then run out of time for the essentials.  A checklist helps me stay with the essentials and only do the non-essentials if time allows.  I’ve done a little bit of research on some checklists you might want to refer to as you create your own.  The links to these sites are provided below. 

In general, a good checklist, should have the following elements for starters:

A Good Checklist…

…will be easy to follow. 

…will provide reminders for things that must be done, before the first day of school, on the first day of school, the first week of school, the first month of school for starters

…will remind you to begin planning now for your parent Open House or Family Night

…force you to consider routines, procedures, traffic flow, and how you plan to teach these things the first few weeks of school

…remind you to revisit your substitute notebook and make any relevant updates for the year

…remind you to prepare any forms, hall passes, incentives, charts, graphs, syllabus, you need to

…remind you to organize your own day so that everything as much as possible is an automatic routine.  For example, every morning, before school,  I have the same routine, every afternoon after school I have the same things I must do before I leave to prepare for the next day.  Revisit these each year to make sure they still hold or if they need to be revised.

…remind you to take time for digital organization:  organize your inbox, document files, group lists for people or committees you routine have to email to, etc.

You will probably be able to add your own based on the needs of your current teaching assignment.

Some helpful sites:

ProTeacher Directory

Back To School Checklist For Teachers

First Day Checklist

Scholastic’s Get Off To A Smart Start

Teacher Planet’s Back-To-School Page

Education World’s Back-To-School Checklist

Back-To-School Checklist: Organizing For Success

First Day Checklist — Primary Teachers

Kathy Schrock’s Guide for Educator’s — a list of more checklist links here 

Tools and Templates from Education World

First Days of Middle School

First Days of School — links to tons of sites especially designed with the new teacher in mind

ABC Teach Directory of Back-To-School stuff

Teaching Heart’s Ultimate Back-To-School Stop

Busy Teacher’s Cafe — I think this might be one of my new favorite sites!

I Love That Teaching Idea — not really a checklist, but some good back-to-school resources

Most of the links (though not all) above are geared for elementary teachers.  It would be wonderful to have you comment and provide links to your favorite back-to-school sites or give us your back-to-school checklists.

Happy planning!

Ms. B

P.S. Clipart on this page is created by Philip Martin at http://www.phillipmartin.info/clipart/school.htm

 

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A Writer Is Only So Good As Their Chair

Technorati Tags: Writing,Personal,Life,Pain,Learning,Students,School

I once heard someone say that a student can only learn as long as their butt doesn’t hurt.  Pain does have a way of distracting us doesn’t it?  I really want to write, but I can’t.  My chair is uncomfortable, my back, bottom and legs are screaming in pain after sitting here for only a few minutes.  Okay, that was a slight exaggeration to make a point.  Hmmm.  What point would that be?  It’s unclear.  Pain in my lower extremities is distracting me from doing the serious concentration I need to do in order to write anything coherent let alone intelligent. I’m getting fidgety and I’m uncomfortable.  I can’t think, even though I really, really, really do want to write.  Okay, forget it.  I’m going to go do something different for a while. 

Hmmm, I bet this is how my young students feel when they have to sit for hours in their desks doing worksheets…(Gak!  Exactly the reason I don’t expect them to sit for hours doing worksheets! Painful!)

When Does School Start For You?

It’s late.  I just finished watching the last of the Harry Potter movies. (It was my goal to read all 7 of the books this summer for the first time and I’m pleased to report, mission accomplished.)  I need some time to unwind after that.  So, I just logged on to check emails and get rid of the many notices from www.freecycle.org that usually clog my inbox. 

There I saw it.  Yahoo changed their header to a back to school theme!!! 

Gak!!!  How stressful is that?

I might need another few hours and some really heavy sedatives to get to sleep after that alarming sight and the trauma associated with it. 

School starts for me on September 4…still over a month away.  When does it start for you?  What are you most concerned about as you face this upcoming school year?

Writing: Conventions vs. Creativity

I’ve never done this, but I was over at MySpace today checking out “Most Popular Blogs” when I stumbled across the blog titled “Do English Teachers Stifle Creativity?” You know I just had to check it out being a teacher who loves to write and teach young writers. You can read the blog in full at : http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=28378610&blogID=419344288&Mytoken=EEDAB064-6518-4AB2-9C8120AD98A7E6CD195365375

Hopefully, that will get you there even if you have to cut and paste..

English Teachers Don’t Make Up The Curriculum

The blog itself is interesting enough reading. Stephanie, the author, apparently a journalism major, decries the woes of writing education and specifically the conventions vs. creativity argument. Of course, English teachers would have a heyday with her blog because that is what English teachers are supposed to do. Doesn’t anyone take into account that English teachers, just like every other working professional have goals and objectives they are mandated to accomplish and they are evaluated on these goals and objectives in order to keep their jobs? These goals and objectives are called standards. Teachers’ success is often indicated by how well students master these standards and, yes, the standard do include a knowledge of the conventional rules of writing. Any state department of education in this nation will likely have a website with a list of standards in each subject area and unfortunately the standards will include conventions. The English teacher doesn’t get to just make up whatever they want to teach. They are told. They must do it, it isn’t optional if they want to teach for very long.

A Balanced Instructional Diet

Skills are not always fun or interesting or entertaining to learn. Creativity is. It’s fun to be loose and wild and free. It’s exhilirating to let the words just flow and take you where they may. It’s exciting to see the results, especially if they are good and others are entertained or enlightened by it. It can even be a bit humorous when it all goes badly in the creative writing exercise. But, yes, the big but, while creative writing is useful, powerful and effective in getting students to write and possibly even to enjoy writing, an instructional diet of just creativity is like feeding children a diet of fruit, pasta, bread and processed sugar. It is fun, it tastes good, it is filling, but it doesn’t build a strong body. Some essential nutrients are missing in a diet of that kind.

All writers, even the mediocre ones who are only writing profiles or comments on MySpace or eHarmony or any number of other social networking sites, need a fundamental grasp of what educators term “writing conventions”. Clearly, I could laundry list pages worth of instances where a good grasp of the conventions is vital to successful communication. It is certainly not the goal of this post to review the research about the entire coventions vs. creativity argument. That will take more research and time to develop than I have today. It is my goal to encourage educators to keep doing the fabulous job they attempt to do when they take a very dry and often meaningless (to the student) task and make it relevant and meaningful. It is my goal to encourage discussion about ways educators at all levels have found to make this task meaningful, relevant and achievable to their students. It is my hope that non-educators who stumble across this post will recognize that English teachers, especially high school English teachers don’t have a choice here. Could they allow more creativity? Hmmm, well, yes, I suppose they could. That question implies a state of affairs that, quite frankly, I don’t believe exists. And, when time is at an all time premium in the instructional day, teachers who are seriously committed to preparing their students for college are going to do their professional level best to make every minute count. Just like the growing body needs a balance of proteins and veggies, so the writing teacher will ensure that each student is provided a balanced diet of conventions and creativity.

Browse the Blog Comments

In addition, to just reading the blog, I encourage you to browse the comments to the blog as well. It is enlightening to read how others perceive what we as teachers do in the classroom. It is interesting to see how they view education and how informed people are, or are not, about educational issues in our country. And that is where the argument always ends up. Education in our country is bad, teachers don’t know what they are doing, it is always someone else’s fault. Interesting how no one (including me sadly) suggests the idea that education and learning is something each individual can take responsibility for themselves. It is toward this end, I suggest, all educators, politicians and neighbors talking over the back fence or in Starbucks should work.

My Response To The Question

Anyway, I digress. Here is my response to that blog, written on the fly, possibly breaking many of the rules, maybe using a few well, but nonetheless, written and, hopefully, read.

DaniDe said, “I agree. Education in this country sucks and no one is really pushing to fix it because people are happy with being intellectually mediocre. Ignorance is bliss.”

I must admantly disagree. The problem isn’t that education in this country sucks, even if maybe you think yours did. I thought mine was less than the best too, at least, until college. The problem isn’t that no one is pushing to fix it (hell, what was NCLB, Reading First, and the whole educational standards movement about?). The problem is also not that people are happy with being intellectually mediocre.

The problems more accurately stated are that our country values other things more than they value education, (e.g., entertainment and experience). If you question that Google the salaries of sports figures as opposed to the kindergarten or first grade teacher at the school down the block who is giving our neighborhood children their first love or hate of formal learning. We pay for what we value.

Another problem is that we as a nation cannot agree on what constitutes a quality education. And, we cannot agree with each other on how to fund or deliver that quality education. People are not valued or rewarded for being academically skilled or intellectually gifted. In fact, they are more often mocked, abused, insulted and picked on in neighborhoods and in playgrounds across the nation. The attitude by many young people today is that they don’t need to go beyond high school to make good money. Never mind what the research correlating salaries and education indicates. Hmmm, ever wonder why loan officers don’t worry so much about debt if it is in the form of a student loan? Intellectual mediocrity is rewarded, for the most part, and only the few who are gifted with the foresight and, maybe parents, and, yes, intellect to recognize that being smart and skilled with your smarts will give you better odds in the marketplace and workforce than being popular, will survive.

Finally, the value in education and being able to use the skills gained through formal training is that you, hopefully, have mastered the rules and have learned how and when to break them so that you can operate skillfully, successfully in a variety of settings and for many purposes. I can write effectively and casually to my friends on MySpace making all the mistakes I want and I can submit my graduate thesis for publication with all the rules precisely followed. It’s about audience. It’s about skill. It’s about knowing when and where and how to get your point across.

But…even more than all of that…it is about having the world open up to you in ways you can’t imagine if you didn’t have the skills to imagine it and living an enriched life. Writing is like art and every artist has to master technique to some degree.

As in all things, the issues and problems are complex, intricate and the ties that bind teachers to the material they must present in the classroom wind way beyond mere preference or student entertainment value. Do we want our students to enjoy learning and, in this case, writing? Yes, I don’t know an educator worth his or her salt who wouldn’t. It is unrealistic in the extreme, however, to think that they will always enjoy every lesson every time. Sometimes learning is just downright dry, difficult and dull. That is, after all the difference between the process of being educated vs. being entertained.