What are we doing as a community?

Today had a great beginning! There is nothing like being up in front of a class and having kids excited about what you are doing. Its amazing!!!

Kindergarten had a hard day. We have a couple of kids who really have a hard time staying focused. They run around and yell out. I am not a doctor, but clearly there is something really wrong.

Question of the day: What can we do as a community to help these children succeed and NOT make it impossible for the others in the class to do so, as well???

They're reading!! Wahoo!!!!!

One of my second grade classes has a hard time staying focused and on task. Today I went through the difference between a steady beat and a rhythm using the Note Knacks Method and I was excited to see that they could read the rhythms I put before them. It was amazing!!! They could read quarters, 2 eighths, 4 sixteenths and halfs. They remembered the correct way to say each color and were reminded by seeing the actual color. It was awesome! They felt successful, as did I!!! They even said a whole note while I was putting a new rhythm together.

Now they can write their own rythms and decide on instrumentation. Wahoo!!

Question of the day: Who decided that kids couldn't learn all the notes in relation to each other instead of piece meal????

We Need Balance!!!

The problem arises when children need to learn 1st and 2nd grade basics in 5th grade and the standards tell you otherwise. Now they are telling us that our lesson plans need to be much more detailed explaining every single standard used, how you will teach it and how you will asses it. Looking from a desk point of view, it looks great, BUT in the actual classroom it is ridiculous! Do children need even to be present in the room or can they just send robots instead. These standards are NOT creating self thinkers, they are creating clones.

When a class meets and children get the idea that the ONLY important information is that of what the school demands, what interest are they going to have in learning the material at all? I know that others will say that it is my job to make it interesting, but I am not an entertainer, I am a facilitator, a teacher. My job is to SPARK children's learning and then direct it to where and how they can find the information. Teachers are entertaining now because they need to in order to survive. What kind of thinkers are we creating when children have NO say in what they learn. More and more everything is being scripted for us. Kids don't have a chance.

Of course the question then becomes, how can we monitor teachers to see if they are doing their job? The answer is, look at the work they have produced and what the children can tell you about what they have learned.

Granted, there needs to be some guidelines on what to teach when, but when it is so specific and so rigorous, it leaves no room for the children to explore what they WANT to learn about. There needs to be a lot more room in the day for that!

Question of the day: How do we have balance between a base knowledge that every child knows and that which children get to create themselves?

Faculty unite!

I tried something with the kindergartners: I showed them how to represent 3 sounds on paper using the Note Knacks, instead of just one. For this group of kids, I think I overwhelmed some of them. Most of them got it, but, as expected, those few that have issues had a hard time. The interesting thing was that they understood the concept of tracing the sound, but not that you couldn't put one sound on top of another. There needs to be space in between like writing words. How similar writing music is to writing words and how seldom we make that connection for kids.

Question of the day: why don't we, as a school faculy, work better together so that we can help children make the necessary connections in their learning?

Codes and Symbols

The first graders' work with the Note Knacks were really cool! They stacked them in all sorts of configurations and said them in a steady beat, but touched each one as they said it: one to one correspondence. They were really staring to get the idea that that particular block = a certain sound. Eventually when they are only writing the symbol, they will have a frame of reference. I was so fired up!

The thing is...isn't everything about understanding the symbols...whether they are written or not? It is always about breaking a code. We, as a society, are always trying to find the meaning behind whatever; from written languages to placements of monuments to body make up. Our children need to start getting the idea that knowledge is knowing the meanings behind the codes and it is these codes that will open up doors for them later on in life!

Did I Find the Answer to Happiness???

I can't put my finger on it, but classes have been going much better in the last couple of days. Tuesday is my hardest day, so we'll see, but I am so excited at how well my students have been behaving and how much they are learning. So the question is why???

1. I have been a lot more animated in my teaching.
2. I have been giving out praise regularly and acting what looks like "astonished" when they get it right. I say things like "wow, did you just really just get that right?"
3. I have been talking to them outside of my class as much as I can to find out what interests they have ourside of school.

I know that any teacher reading this is saying "duh", but I think that as you go on in your everyday life, it is easy to lose sight of the first days of teaching; the days of enjoying being with the children. With all these government regs, our heads are so busy being filled with what children need to learn that we forget that in the end it really doesn't matter if kids can rattle off a bunch of facts. The BIG question is, can they think for themselves, can they find the info if they need it and MOST importantly, are they excited about learning. No child will retain any of these facts after a test if they themselves weren't interested in learning it. I don't care what the Standards say!!!!! Children must come out of elementary school with a feeling of "I can and want to learn and I can work successfully with others". This, in my opinion, trumps anything and everything else.

So the question of the day is "how do we get the people making the rules understand the TRUE needs of our students?

Today is Why I Teach

Its days like today that remind me of why I teach; the children behaved well, they participated and they were excited about what was being taught. I can go home today knowing that I did a good job and that I was effective. It is a rare thing in a Title 1 School when the whole day goes by and all is well....no major catastrophes...what a concept! I swear, sometimes I feel like I have a drug addiction. I get such a high when all goes well and the world is coming to an end when it doesn't, but those highs are soooo high. There is nothing like a child looking back at you smiling and participating in whatever it is you are trying to teach. Even if they have a hard time getting the concept, the mere fact that they are trying and wanting to succeed is enough to send you to the moon. It is amazing!!!!

So the question of the day is, how to we survive the low days? (Teachers are quiting in their first 5 years.) How do we stay positive in an atmosphere where we get little or no support??? Where teachers are at their wits ends just to get kids to behave, much less learn??

I can only say this: we MUST stick together, we MUST support each other and we MUST work together, because we are all we have.