Oct 9, 2016
(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YqehGlg6m8)
Happy Leif Erikson Day today! (and Indigenous People’s Day tomorrow)
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(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YqehGlg6m8)
Happy Leif Erikson Day today! (and Indigenous People’s Day tomorrow)
Some days I come home and I'm just too tired to live. I think to myself that what I do keeps me from having any sort of life, and that 60 hours of work a week for 36,000 a year isn't worth it. Other days I come home and think through my day. Within 12 hours I've seen a massive art project come to fruition from kids' hands, I've seen a room full of 12 year olds completely engaged in learning economics by using technology, I've had kids give each other a spontaneous round of applause during a debate about African Americans serving during the Revolutionary War, and I've counseled frightened teens on what to do if they encounter a scary clown (truth). Now I'm home drinking tea and about to eat pizza, and I'm thinking about how much I love my job. A day like today doesn't cancel out a day like yesterday. I don't know what the answer is and what I should do long term. But I do know that today was a good day.
Exit ticket time!
And now the school week is over... time to relax, listen to some records, drink some wine, and read. :)
Check it out! Students who master all the standards on a unit test get a nerdy locker dec :)
Today we voted on who from our first unit should go on our American Heroes wall. This is my regular unit wrap up activity, where the students look at a list of all the people we studied in the unit and categorize them as either heroes, not heroes, or both, backing up their opinions with evidence. Then they pick one to put up on the wall, and the top two get posted. The enthusiasm and debate reminded me why this is one of the best lesson ideas I ever invented for my class. Our first place winner? The Revolutionary War poet and slave, Phillis Wheatley. It was a powerful moment in my seventh hour, when most of the students, largely students of color, raised their hands for her, and one girl said determinedly, “We’re gonna put a black girl up there!” Anyone walking into the classroom at that moment would have thought I had lost control of my classroom, but if you listened carefully to the tumult, they were all arguing about whether or not you can vote for someone just because of their race or their gender. #representationmatters
For six days, the angry young man talked back to me. For eight days, the angry young man sat silent and angry. Yesterday, for the first time he smiled at me. Today he gave me a marble
A Hard Nut To Crack
I have a student who is new to our school and is, simply put, a total mess.
The first week of school she came late every day and racked up disciplinary consequences for noncompliance and disrespect. All her teachers were saying the same thing, J***** is a mess.
(I should say that problem cases aren’t rare at my school. It’s a Title 1 school, mostly free and reduced. It’s not under the same amount of pressure as some other Title 1 schools, yes, but our clientele are needy kids for sure.)
Her mom got mad at me for writing up her daughter and demanded a parent meeting. Most everyone at the school connected with her child, including some of her other teachers, agreed and we set up a time. But the mom didn’t show up. (Maybe she had her reasons...)
Since we were all there though, enjoying the comfy chairs in the conference room, we teachers and her administrator read through the behavior plan from her old school. Suddenly a bigger picture opened up, of loss and and disappointment. We were realizing that this is a girl who sees something hard, has no faith in herself, and gives up. She’s lost loved ones--recently--violently. Her IQ and skill tests say she is capable of doing the work, but at age 13 she’s given up.
So in that brief meeting, after school and beyond contract hours, we had a conversation about positive reinforcement and ways to motivate this young woman. And the next day when she flipped out in my class, instead of writing her a referral and putting her in ISR for a few days (making her even further behind and more frustrated), I asked her administrator to organize a meeting with just the three of us. He and I showered her with care and positivity and second chances, and so today... well, today she was wonderful in class.
I don’t think that this will magically cure all J*****’s problems, but I do think that if she gets positively reinforced and supported by 10 adults a day all year long, her life could change.
And that’s why it’s time for #appreciation. Because even with all the stuff we have to do, working 10 or more hours a day every day, the culture at my school is that we take time to think about that one kid. We talk about what that kid needs on a deeper, logical, pretty much psychological level. And to have an administration that is willing to take time to have “positive reinforcement” time when a teacher needs it? I really can’t stop appreciating. We figure them out. Even the hard nuts to crack.