A Victory for a Girl Named Hope

There is a girl in my class that I’ll call Hope that is a very sweet girl.  She is the kind that sits at the carpet and looks like she is paying close attention to the lesson and so at times I call upon her to have her share an answer with the class.   It is at this time that I discover that even though she is listening, the words are just bouncing around in her head.  So I wrap up the lesson and spend some more time talking with Hope and a few others to make sure that they understood what we were talking about.   I know that with low performing students, like Hope, that they can struggle to hold onto even the most basic of concepts. 

                Hours of tutoring, teaching, and conferencing have helped to give Hope a tenuous grasp of the basic concepts.  The blank stare that I used to see is slowly being replaced by bits and pieces of understanding.  Today my day was made when I had my students turn and explain a math concept to each other and I listened in on the conversation of Hope and her partner.  It seemed like she would be stymied again, but slowly she pulled from her mind the proper things to say and was able to explain today’s concept to her peer.  I made sure that I praised her for her excellent explanation and made sure to write a note in her agenda.  A broad smile remained on her face for the rest of the day. 

                The greatest joy in teaching is when we see one of our students who has not been blessed with much, gain understanding, because of our help.  To think that even though this one lesson is but a fragment of the learning that our students will need to be successful, the concepts we teach them are  more than the they had when they entered our classroom.  We have had the opportunity to improve a life forever.   So today I celebrate the little victory that meant the world to a girl named Hope. 

(In the comments below, please tell me of a little victory you had this week)

Celebrate the Little Things

     In my classroom I have a chart that displays the student’s basic fact knowledge.  These facts are probably one of the most boring things to learn in school, but extremely important to being successful in 5^th grade math.  If I simply said, “Learn these facts,” then most of the students who didn’t have photographic memories would not learn them ever.  

    After four previous years of teachers asking my students to learn their facts, I find myself having to foster in them a desire to accomplish this mundane task.  To this end, I posted a poster on the board to put my student’s progress toward their goal. We call them Math Fact Masters and you would think there wasn’t a cooler accomplishment in the world.  As each student passes a level we congratulate them in the front of the room.  As students complete all four levels they become famous for a day; sitting in the teachers cushy chair and getting a nice note in their agenda.    All the attention makes the students beg to practice their facts.

     As teachers we become the greatest motivator in our student’s lives.  The students look to us to teach them what they don’t already know and to encourage them to learn more.  As we celebrate our student’s successes we are showing them that even the most boring things in life can have great rewards.       

(In the comments below, please tell me how you make your students feel special)

When Home is Not Helping

      I have a girl in my class with a sweet smile and a great deal of spirit.  She comes in most days cheerful, but as the year has progressed she has lost some of her chipper spirit.  Her grades have slipped and she is not focusing in class.  After handing back papers I took a moment to talk with her about her low test score.  I asked her how she had studied and if her mother had reviewed any of the material with her.  She looked at me and said, “My mom doesn’t have much time to help me, because she spends all her time yelling at my dad.  They are getting a divorce.” 

      Everyone has experienced or knows someone who has had a family that has been torn apart.   Kids naturally look to their parents to provide them with help and security.  When this family environment blows apart children experience stresses that can consume their emotional and mental strength. 

     As teachers we cannot fix the home environments that our students are coming from, but we can make an effort to understand our students.  As we understand what is going on at home, we can better understand why the students are acting the way they are at school.  Once we have this knowledge we can begin to develop support to meet the needs of our struggling students. 

   For the little girl in my class I know that I have to work hard to maintain her attention and I might have to recue her at times.  I’m going to provide extra tutoring opportunities since she will not be getting help at home.  It also brings home to me how important our classroom culture is.  I have to create a caring environment where my students feel safe.  I can’t change the hurt my students experience at home, but for 7 hours a day I can provide my students with attention, encouragement, and the skills they will need to be successful.  

Help Me to Learn So I Can Improve

      I’m amazed at how much we celebrate fake in our society.   On television we see many characters that have no ability, but work to convince the public otherwise.  My daughters have come to accept that musicians on the radio are auto tuned so that whether they can sing or not the computer just fixes it.   We touch up our photos to make us more of what we are not.  People lie to get jobs stretching their resumes; the list could go on and on. 

    In my classroom I am always amazed how everyone knows everything until it is time for a test.  It makes our job harder to divine out the truth when children think they already know everything.  So we  have to constantly assess after our lessons to make sure the students  have learned what we intended for them to learn.  Even more important than our efforts to police our students is our constant effort to get kids to honestly assess their ability and become self-motivated to learn what they don’t know. 

     Today I had a student come to me before the end of school and said, “Mr. Smith, I don’t understand the math you taught me today. “  So while the other students were packing up for the end of the day I sat down and reviewed the lesson again.  She started to figure out where her misunderstandings were and I was able to get her on her way as the other students began to file out of the room.  I’ll make a point of praising her to her parents and in front of the class.  She is a student who is going to succeed because she realizes that to improve we must admit our weaknesses and make an effort to improve those areas. 

     What areas of our lives are we pretending to have mastery when we have so much more to learn?  What are we doing to improve in our weak areas?  Are we willing to ask for help?  These are all questions that we need to foster in our students.  It also doesn’t hurt to practice what we are teaching our students as well.

(In the comments below, please tell me what you do to motivate students to evaluate their abilities?)

The Fear of Failure

     Wouldn’t it be fun if we could just teach and the kids could just learn whatever they wanted to?  The classroom would be buzzing as everyone investigated topics that fascinated them.  I’ve had a taste of this for the first two weeks of school.   We have experienced learning with no pressure.  This joyous time may come to an end next week as I begin to hold my students accountable with grades.  As soon as I mention the word test, I’m sure my students will begin to show me their fear of failure.   

     In the lower grades students often don’t even have grades, but use checks, smilies, and letters such as V, S, N.  In third grade students are introduced to the A-F grading system and learn that grades are important to adults.   In our state students have the added stress of hearing that if they don’t pass the end of the year test they will “Flunk” third grade.  The students quickly learn that grades are something to be fearful of, or at the very least, something to be very nervous about receiving. 

    Now, I know grades aren’t all bad, because they can be great motivators for smart kids.   However, they can become anchors for students who have struggled.   With all of this in mind, I have been working hard the last two weeks to establish the culture that the reason we are all at school is to learn and not to earn grades.   I hope to take some of the fear of failure out of our educational experience.

     I gave a pretest today to gauge where my students were in division.  Those who have listened to their teachers and learned multiplication over the past two years have had no problem learning what I have been teaching them.  Others that never got around to learning multiplication are having a terrible time with division.  I now have a week to teach my students what they didn’t learn over the past two years.  Regardless of the educational background of my students, I work hard to assure that my student’s first experience in my class produces some success.

     One technique that I use to avoid test anxiety is to give students the chance to retake any of their assessments that they do poorly on and then average the new score with the old. This won’t make a poor student a straight “A” student.  However, it takes some of the fear out of tests, because the test does not become an end, but a springboard to another learning experience.

      It is my hope that  the fear of failure will be removed from my students by providing them the ability to earn the grade they want through hard work in addition to their smarts.  For me, I have seen far more people in the real world be successful by working hard than by being successful, because they were a stellar student.   When we have cultivated our student’s desire to learn, we will have achieved more success than any grading system can assess.   

(In the comments below, please tell me how you help students avoid the fear of failure)

Teaching High ,Teaching Low and Everything Inbetween

     What a balancing act we play as teachers.  We have students that need to be pushed hard in order to excel, others that think they know it all and we have to show them how little they know, and still others that are so lazy they wouldn’t accomplish anything without our constant prodding.  On the other hand we have to nurture students, we need to make them feel good about themselves, and not stress them by pushing them too hard or fast.  Every moment of the day we are dancing between these two extremes in an attempt to educate our students.

     As I looked at my class today during our math lesson I saw the eyes of my students and realized the magnitude of what I try and accomplish each day.  My smart students were struggling to stay engaged with the content being covered, because they had figured out the answers a long time ago.  My lower end students were glazing over from information overload, and I was thinking about how much more we needed to cover before the class ended. 

      I tried to get the advanced students involved by tutoring the lower end students.  My advanced students set to work reviewing content with their peers.  At the conclusion of their tutoring session I had them return to me to check on their progress before allowing them to play an educational math game.  I found that although the students had a good review.  The low end students were only able to repeat what they had been told and could not make any adjustments if I changed the way the information was presented.  They had not gained full understanding and my brighter kids had wasted some of their time. 

    As I sit here tonight my mind relives the moment and I mull over how I will teach differently tomorrow.  I’ll have to revisit the concept and look at it from different angles.  I’m going to try to work the concept with manipulatives, in different arrangements, use student examples, and look for the way that works.  I’ll try and give my lower kids more practice and exposure and expand my advanced kids thinking by letting them look at the concept from all angles. 

      As I return to school tomorrow, I’l l continue to push as hard as I can to get as much as I can from each individual student.  I’ll continue to monitor my student’s progress and seek ideas to help them to learn.  Until my students have reached mastery,  I’m stuck trying to find the right balance that works.

      

(In the comments below, please tell me what you do to help you keep sane with teaching the broad spectrum of kids in your classroom.)

Holding Your Tounge vs Speaking Your Mind

     When I was a young boy my mother taught me that, “If you don’t have anything good to say, then don’t say anything at all.”  The older I get the more I find that I have nothing to say.  Not that everything that I think is bad, but I try and be careful with my words because my opinions are not always beneficial. 

    Last year I had a student whose parents withheld behavioral related medicine, because they deemed “That their child didn’t need it and only used it as a crutch.”  In my classroom the boy had violent episodes, frequently yelled at other students, and made few friends.  When tests came along the child would end up crying because he was unable to focus long enough to complete the assessment.   His behavior outbursts outside of my class caught the administrator’s attention and as his parents realized that their son might be expelled from our school they resorted to putting him back on medicine.  The next morning the child came in to my classroom, sat down and quietly began working.  The medicine enabled him to finish tests and focus in class so that his grades improved to honor roll status.  The students saw the change and began to invite him back into their lives.  This student ended the year strong, but could have had a much better year with a little help from his parents.  I would love to be able to sit the parents down and show them video of before and after and ask them, “Not everyone benefits from medicine, but your kid needs it!”

    After school today the same student showed up in my classroom.  When I said, “Hello, it’s good to see you.”  The boy began to tell me how he hates middle school, his teachers are so stupid, and he has so much work to do etc.  I sat and looked at the child and concluded that he was obviously off his medicine again this year or just perpetually under a personal rain cloud.  With my mind filling with thoughts as to how I should respond, I thought of telling him,” To quit being a baby and suck it up, he is now in middle schooler.”  I could have put him down and said, “You were such a big pain last year I didn’t have any doubt that the teachers would chew you up.”   Both of these comments might of felt good for a moment, but would surely have caused future guilt. 

     I could have wasted valuable minutes after school trying to solve the many layers of problems this child has.  If I thought I could have made a difference, I would have.   At last I opened my mouth and gave him a little encouragement, “I’m glad you stopped by and I hope that your week goes better. “ 

   There is a time to be straight forward and time to be quiet.  There is a time to encourage and a time to speak our mind.  As professionals we are given strict orders to speak in certain ways.  I guess being a professional requires a person to be able to respond according to protocol even under duress.  However being wise requires us to know what to say at the right time.

     As I get older I hope to become better at saying the right thing at the right moment.  Until then, I guess I’ll continue to be the quiet teacher down the hall.   

(In the comments below, please tell me how you avoid speaking your mind when parents and students are in your face. Or share a time when speaking your mind led to something good)

There is More to School than Teaching

      As I began a Sunday school class today, we begun by chatting about interesting events that took place in the lives of the students over the past week.  A girl that has recently begun to come got up and sat in the chair beside me.  A few moments later she tilted her head and rested it on my shoulder.  At that point I stood up and crossed the room to sit in an empty seat while keeping the conversation going.  In some ways my moving could be construed as rude, but the students understood this move because teachers are not allowed to come in contact with students, and most students wouldn’t come in contact with a teacher. 

   Later in a small group activity my female co-teacher was talking with a small group of students about how their parents had helped them in their lives.  When the little girl had the opportunity to talk she described how her father was in jail, her mother had left, and she now lived with her grandma.  This information made her previous actions a little more understandable.  

     In our current world where families are becoming more splintered and society is becoming more distant in their relationships we find many children who are longing for comfort.   When they enter our classrooms they are fed, they are protected, and are cared for in ways that many children never experience outside of school.  For many students the classroom is the most functional family they will ever experience. 

     As teachers we can never replace the role of parents in the lives of troubled students.  At best, we can be a friend or mentor.  Yet, it is completely within our power to fill some of the emotional needs of these students.  To show troubled youths that conflict can be resolved, that their existence is important, and that they can have a positive future.  These lessons will never show up on our state tests and won’t earn us a bigger paycheck.   However, I feel that our investment in the emotional lives of the students we teach will be more important than any other lesson we’ll cover this year.

(In the comments below please tell me how you have touched the lives of students in your classroom.)

The Calm Before The Storm

      Today I spent most of my day pouring over my state standards and county pacing guides to plan my teaching for the year.  Outside my classroom a violent lighting storm raged, but in my classroom it was quiet and peaceful.  I couldn’t help but imagine that on Monday twenty-two excited students would storm my classroom filling it with activity, noise, and excited children ready to learn.   The peaceful days of preschool are almost over.

     On the first day of school, hundreds of sugared-up children will be dropped off by their thankful parents and will manage to find their way to our classrooms.  In the ensuing chaos we’ll begin our first day of school by meeting our new students and beginning to establish our routines.  The morning will fly by with lots of instructions on everything from how to walk, how to speak, and hopefully something close to educational.  The students will eat lunch, we’ll head back for a few more activities and the day will come to an end.  The school will quickly drain of kids and the teachers will be left to put the room back in order and plan for the next day. 

     As I sat alone in my quiet classroom today, I was tempted to wish that it would stay empty and quiet forever.   Yet, one of the great parts of elementary teaching is that as you stand in front of a class of children, you’re always a breath away from unpredictable chaos.  A teacher is like a lion tamer who accomplishes amazing feats when others would be torn apart in minutes. 

      Although I love my quiet time, I look forward to the excitement and energy that the kids will bring.   My worst day of teaching has to be better than my boring lesson planning.  Bring on the kids.     

(In the comments below, pleasetell me what you love about the first day of school.)

The Joy of Johnny

     As I prepared for summer camp this summer, a teacher warned me about an autistic student who would be joining us at our camp.  My initial thought was of the challenges I would face dealing with a child who was defiant, uncontrollable, and incapable of participating in our class activities.  As always I tried to have an open mind, but I sure didn’t have high expectations for this student. 

     As camp began I was introduced to a small child with a head slightly larger than normal.  Johnny* had dark eyes that twinkled and an elfish smile like he was contemplating something funny.  Johnny approached me and with a sing-song voice proceeded to ask me question after question.  “What is your name?”  “Where is Mrs. Hamly?” “Why is Mrs. Hamly on vacation?” “What is the schedule?” As I answered each question he had another question ready like when Johnny asked, “What is our schedule?”

     I responded, “First you’ll be going to my class to learn about building houses.”

     Johnny replied, “What comes after building houses?”

     I said, “Then we have playtime.”

     Johnny then said, “What comes after playtime?”

     The pattern continued until we had gone through the entire schedule.  I then broke off the game so that we could move on to our first class.  As we entered our first class I started my lesson and got the students working on a project.  Johnny was not interested in the project and would stand up and go skipping around the room waving his arms and swinging his head side to side.  He wasn’t bothering anyone so I allowed him time to move before calling him back to his seat.  When Johnny returned to his seat he asked for paper and pencil, which I gave him to keep him busy while I worked with some other students.  For ten minutes Johnny was focused on his paper.  His tongue moved to the corner of his mouth as he concentrated hard on the words he was forming.  When he was done he proudly came up to me and said, “Is this the schedule?”  To my amazement Johnny had written the schedule from memory in an organized list using perfect spelling.  I knew that few of his peers in the class could have copied it off a piece of paper, let alone pull it from memory. 

      Over the course of this summer I have looked forward to seeing Johnny each day.  He is very different from his peers.  Like a puppy dog that greets you at the door, Johnny is always glad to see you.  He is inquisitive, curious, simple, even childlike, and loved by all of his classmates.  My initial opinions were based on my limited experience and incorrect assumptions.  The label that Johnny had been given did not do him justice.

      As a new school year approaches I can thank Johnny for increasing my wonder of how our brains work, showing me that it is important to smile, and helping me to keep my opinions in check.  I guess one reason why I teach is, because it teaches me so much as well.  Thank you Johnny. 

(In the comments below, please tell me what one of your students has taught you.)

*I've changed the child's name for this article.

Scissors are for paper-not for hair

     Every teacher has preferences about what grade level they would rather teach.  I feel it is good to get experience in all of the grade levels to be a more rounded teacher that better understands the flow of learning.  However, experiences like I had in a first grade class this summer make me glad that I’ll be teaching fifth grade in the fall. 

    I always marvel at kindergarten and first grade teachers who at the beginning of the year look like they are herding cats down the hall way.  Their little students wander aimlessly in the great wide world trying to get from point A to point B.  Yet, by the end of the year they manage to teach their primary students complex activities such as walking in a line.

     My class of first graders looked no different as I managed to get them into my classroom and seated.     We had a short lesson and then we began a craft to further the lesson objective.  Each child in my class was working hard coloring paper and then cutting it so that we could begin assembling our project.  I sat down with a discipline student to help him get his project done when another boy I’ll call Gregory came up to me and said, “Hey Mr. Smith, look at this!”  As I turned to Gregory I noticed two things.  First, in his outstretched arm he held a few fingers full of fuzzy brown strands.  Next, I noticed a bald spot where his bangs used to be!  I didn’t know whether to laugh or to shout out, “What are you thinking?”  I managed to stay calm and ask Gregory why his hair was in his hand.  With a big smile on his face he proudly said that he had told the cute little girl he sits next to that she could cut his hair. 

     In the next few seconds the cute little girl looks up with fear in her eyes as she realizes that she may have done something wrong .  Gregory tries to parade around showing his friends his hank of hair and soon discovers that the hole in his cool hair style may not be as fabulous as he had originally thought.  I’m thinking how I’m going to explain to the parents how a child four feet away from me managed to get a partial hair cut. 

     In the end Gregory’s dad thought it was hilarious, Gregory’s mom was mortified and made Gregory wear a hat until his hair grew back in, and my two little first graders learned that it isn’t a good idea to cut each other’s hair.

    We have all done things that at first seemed like a great idea, and later we found out that it wasn’t our best decision.  By leaping before we think we sometimes find ourselves in a mess, but we hopefully learn from the experience.  As I begin this school year I am going to continue to use the mistakes of my students as teachable moments to help them to avoid bigger mistakes later on in life.  I’m also going to tell my primary colleagues how much I respect their efforts, because who knew that you have to tell students that school scissors are for cutting paper not your neighbors hair. 

(Please tell me in the comments below of something a student in your class did that utterly amazed you.)

I HAVE TROUBLE CONTROLLING THE VOLUME OF MY VOICE!

     Whether at the beach, mall, or classroom I’m noticing an increasing number of people that are HAVING TROUBLE CONTROLLING THE VOLUME OF THEIR VOICE.  As a teacher I used to pass this situation off as a mere personality flaw, thinking that some people must be more outgoing than others.  So I worked in the classroom to encourage students to have different levels of conversation instead of using playground voices all day.  However, today as I sat on the beach relaxing I saw a display that made me wonder. 

    The sky was blue, the waves lapped repetitively upon the shore and the only sound was an occasional gull laughing into the wind.  It was the picture of serenity.  A group of parents came to our left and camped out.  Even with more than six adults my peace and quiet was undisturbed.  Then the kids that the new families brought ran down to the beach and began to build a sand castle.  It was a few minutes later that the kids began to “talk” with their parents.  Instead of running back up to their parents presence they screamed their request from the shore.  The children’s parents, obviously well adept at ignoring their child, didn’t hear the caterwauling coming from the shore.  So the kids tried to solve their problem by screaming even louder.  At this, the parents responded by yelling back down the beach an answer to the child’s question.  It was like an impasse, neither party wanting to get up off the ground and spare us the agony of their air war. 

    It is a free country and I don’t hold it against them for being noisy.  The families with rowdy kids have just as much right to sit on that beach as I do.  Yet, I think that in times past people may have had a little more consideration for their neighbors.  Maybe it’s just me recovering from being around kids too much? Or maybe, in our age of remote controls and lethargy we are getting too lazy to get up and handle simple tasks such as talking.

      If I were perfectly honest I would have to admit that I found the same problem starting to creep into my teaching this past spring.  Instead of calmly walking across the room to address a student I would, at times, speak over the heads of my class to answer or talk with a student.   This may seem insignificant, but today I saw first-hand the potential outcome of my laziness.  As a teacher it falls on my shoulders to model even the simplest of activities, talking.  Hopefully this modeling will lead to a calm and peaceful classroom conducive to learning instead of THE CHAOTIC NOISE WE HAVE TO DEAL WITH EVERY WHERE ELSE.

(How are you encouraging students to communicate appropriately in your classroom?)    

Where should I wash my hands?

     While working on a project today, it became very clear that I didn't have the attention of the students in my class.  In my earlier days I would have kept on going, but I've learned to use the traditional phrase of "eyes on me," or "if you can hear me put your hands on your shoulders."  This worked well to gain my students attention, but it wasn't two minutes before we had to repeat the whole process over again. 
      After completing our project we all lined up and trooped down to the restrooms down the hall.  I told the students to wash their hands, use the restroom, and get a drink.  One little boy came up to me and said with all seriousness, "Where should I wash my hands?"  My first thought was to shoot back, "Where do you think?"  Sarcasm wouldn't have accomplished anything other than confusing the student further so asked the student, "Where would be the best place for you to clean your hands?"  His solution was to go in the bathroom to wash his hands. 
      Each day as teachers we handle hundreds of questions in which we simply want to respond, "Duh." I think that students today are taught learned helplessness, where they are unable to solve the simplest of problems, because they have rarely been asked to think or do anything on their own. As teachers we can become guilty of taking the short cut of giving students answers and teaching them to parrot back to us a certain response upon command.
      This year feel free to take the time you need to help students think.  This practice may take a little more of our time initially, but down the road we'll reap the benefit of students with the ability to solve problems even as difficult as, "Where should I wash my hands?" 

(What are your ideas for keeping your students attention?)