Veteran's Day

Veteran's Day is a day set aside to honor all of those, living or deceased, who have served in the Armed Forces, while Memorial Day is a day set aside to honor those who lost their lives protecting the very freedoms we are blessed to have as Americans.

I would like to honor my family members at this time.

My biological father, Roger O Clemens, who served in the Air Force. He lost his life in Vietnam. The impact of this tragedy had lead to making me the kind of teacher I am today.

My brother, Roger O. Clemens, Jr. (Chip). Chip served for four years in the United States Army. After leaving the service, he became a paramedic/fire fighter, climbing his way to the top, becoming a captain.

My adoptive father, John S. Kruse. He served in the US Navy as a Seabee. Seabees were a construction battalion responsible for building the infrastructure necessary during WWII. He served on the island of Guam.

My nephew, Kyle A. Kruse. He served in the Marine Corps during the Afghanistan War. He was later a government private contractor, also in Afghanistan.

My Uncle, Paul H. Kruse. He was a Navy pilot.

My nephew, Richard A. Kruse. Was a Navy pilot, graduating from the Naval Academy in Annapolis, MD. He was a flight instructor for the Navy, and later served in the South Dakota Air National Guard.

I am grateful to them for the sacrifices they made for my freedoms and for their service to our country.

Then What IS the Answer?

      Unless you've been living under a rock, you have heard all about how this year's students need more Social/Emotional Learning than ever before! Many will blame it on the pandemic.  Others will blame it on the home lives of the students, or a host a many other reasons.  As I was lamenting about this in a chat, a principal put the blame on the classroom teachers. He said that the kids are dysregulated because teachers are dysregulated and that the students feed off the teachers' energy. While this may be true, it's also very unfair, in my opinion.

     I have to admit, this response really pissed me off! Teachers are working harder than ever before. The responsibilities that have been heaped on them are staggering!  "You need to catch those kids up!"  "There is a learning gap!" You've all heard it. Listen! We've ALL been trying to adjust to life in the midst of a pandemic. I get it! But, to put the burden of "catching kids up" fully on the shoulders of the teachers is just plain WRONG! What if we just accept the fact that there is a learning loss. through no fault of anyone, and assess their growth rather than putting unrealistic expectations on them?  Or better yet, let's not assess at all and just build strong relationships with our students and let them guide the instruction?

     There is a teacher shortage. I know of several districts that are still trying to solve staffing issues.  Who suffers?  The kids! The needs of those kids that we teach every day are being slighted without enough staff to support their varying academic and social/emotional needs.

     And another thing: Our kids' ability to have meaningful connections is suffering. Why? I've shared about this before. Readily available technology.  This was a problem, pre-Covid. It's a bigger problem now.  Kids don't know how to have a real face-to-face conversation. Their manners are horrible. Their eating habits are even worse. And peaceful conflict resolution? Forget it! Many kids spend more time on a device than they do engaging with their own families.  Sad, but true.

     You're blaming dysregulated teachers for their dysregulated students? Seriously?  If that's the case, what's being done for those teachers to help them be less dysregulated? Smaller class sizes?  Nope.  Decreased assessing? Nope.  Decrease in the number of "hats" the teacher wears? No. Time to relax and reflect? No.

     I'm so tired of the assumption that teachers will do more than is expected of them. We always have. When you push too hard for too long something's going to give. There are so many excellent teachers that just can't handle the pressure anymore. We should have never let it get to this point. So, what IS the answer?

Please stop! I Don't Like It!

 ***OPINIONS ARE MY OWN***

     Can we just please stop with the whole "Learning loss" and "It's because of the pandemic" narrative?  It's not like our kids are the only ones who suffered from the pandemic. The pandemic is world-wide, for crying out loud. EVERY STUDENT, in the WHOLE WORLD, lost instructional time.  Why are we expecting any of our kids to be where they were, according to some random list of standards that were established pre-pandemic? 

     It's not fair to our students and it's not fair to put those kinds of expectations on our teachers. No wonder so many schools can't fill positions or have teachers leaving the profession in droves!  Historically, teachers have always done more than what is expected, paying for supplies out of their own pockets, meeting with students outside of the instructional day, attending their students' extra-curricular activities, lesson planning outside of their allotted "planning time," in the evenings and on weekends, all for pennies on the dollar.  Other professions are able to leave work at work. They walk out the door at 5:00 and they're done for the day. Not teachers. We think about our kids and new ideas to inspire them 24/7. When will enough actually be enough?

     Now teachers are being required to "catch students up."  Seriously?? Catch them up to what?  Maybe, just maybe, we should be honoring our teachers for putting their lives on the line each and every day, for their students.  Maybe the standards should be changed to meet the world in which we're living, a world dealing with the pandemic.  The Delta Variant seems to be attacking the younger children. Just last week a middle schooler in our state died from Covid.  We have students who don't, or won't wear their masks.  Every day, teachers and their students run the risk of catching this horrible disease, and yet, the teachers keep on teaching.  Why? For the love of the children. For those light bulb moments? Because it is truly an honor to impact the next generation. 

   So, please stop! Stop blaming learning loss on the pandemic. Stop saying the we need to catch our students up to where they should have been before the world was plunged into a pandemic. Stop piling more and more on the plates of our teachers. Many of us are at our breaking point.  Just stop! I don't like it.

It Never Gets Easier

      Fifty-three years ago, on September 17th, life changed dramatically for me. I was only seven years old when my father's plane went down just three miles short of the runway in Ubon, Thailand. He was flying missions for the United States Air Force in Vietnam.  I will never forget that knock on the door and the two Air Force officers in their dress blues at our front door. Sometimes I still dream about it. For the longest time, I wondered why I was always in a kind of funk around this time of year.  As I did more research into my father's death, the reason became clearer in lots of ways and muddier in others.

     Clearer because I now knew why I am always in a funk this time of year. It is the anniversary of the death of my father.  While that was such a long time ago, I can still remember how it affected me. I remember hiding under the kitchen table, refusing to go to school, because, in my seven year-old brain, my dad died when I was in school and if I go to school, my mom could die, too.  I remember going to his graveside services on Long Island, New York.  I would still like to visit there some time.  The family name died with him overseas, as my step-dad adopted us a few years later.

     Muddier because, when his plane went down, he was flying a fighter jet, which was weird because his training was in flying B-52 Bombers.  Why was he flying a fighter jet?  No one knows. All they know is that he was coming in too low and his co-pilot told him to pull up. He did not and was pinned beneath the wreckage. They say that he died instantly. Did his plane flip? How was it that he ended up under the wreckage? His co-pilot survived the crash, by some miracle.  I did receive a detailed email about that night from him, years later, as I was doing my research.  God bless him. He'd only been in Vietnam three months and had never flown with my father.

     Don't get me wrong! I had the most amazing life, growing up on the farm in Nebraska!  I am forever grateful for the life and the family and friends that I have.  Still, sometimes I find myself wondering how different my life might have been, had my father lived.

                                                

     

Math

 Math. One of the scariest words to me.  It's really a shame that one bad experience can impact my life decades later.  It's a shame what some teachers can do to students and the lasting impact it can leave.

This is my story: Sophomore year of high school. Geometry. I got a 46% on my first test. ( I was a A/B student). When my teacher handed the test back to me, he said, "I didn't expect you to do well. You're a girl and girls can't do math. " in front of the whole class. Real motivating, right?? I wanted out of his class. My parents decided that he should come out to our house a couple of nights a week (after football practice, of course) and tutor me, with my mom present, so she could help me on the nights he wasn't tutoring me. (My dad was doing field work. My mom was also a teacher.) I don't remember how far into this new regiment we were, but it wasn't very far, when he said to my mom. "I thought you were smarter than this." Seriously?!?!  I got to switch our of geometry. I took Home Ec. instead. One day, I was standing be the door of the Home Ec. room, across from the Geometry room and the teacher saw me standing there. Do you know what he had the audacity to say to me??  "So, you'd rather be barefoot and pregnant for the rest of your life?" If I had known then, what I know now, I would have made sure he lost his job!

Years later, I'm in a professional development workshop on Cognitively Guided Instruction in Math at a former district. The instructor, who is now a dear friend of mine, gave a problem. All of the stress and anxiety came rushing back. I got tears in my eyes as I remembered what that high school teacher had said to me. The instructor came over and explained it, step by step.

This summer, when I was looking for a new job, one of the online applications had a cognitive assessment piece. I'd never seen one of those before in a job app. When I got to that section of the application, it was all math problems and TIMED! Ugh!! I froze again! I just clicked on random answers. I couldn't even think through how to solve the problems.

All this to say that, as educators, we have the ability to encourage our students or to give them a lifetime of stress and anxiety. When you are teaching, please be aware of the words that you use and how those can either make, or break, a students for years to come. Are you going to be a encourager or a discourager?

Patiently Listening....

      Oh, my goodness! What a summer it has been!  After returning from Luke and Alex's dream wedding, we listed our house. Then the donating, selling, downsizing, and packing started in full force.  In the middle of all that, we decided that we should be looking for our next house wherever I got a job.  Umm.... stressful, nerve-wracking, frustrating, and time-consuming doesn't begin to cover it!  And it all started AFTER July 18th!

     My first interview was with Warrensburg, MO. It's a small college town about an hour and a half southeast of Kansas City.  Over the summer, they had added a brand new Early Childhood wing.  The principal called me when I was driving back to Hutchinson and asked if I was interested in the position. I told her that I was interested.  Here's the thing, though. Missouri does not have a reciprocating agreement, in terms of teaching licenses, with Kansas. They border each other! They share a city!! Ok.... So I begin the application for my teaching license in MO.  Guess what??  They make the applicant send out letters to verify past employment. Every other district I've ever worked in has done that based on the information on the resume.  Secondly, I had to be re-fingerprinted. No big deal, right?  WRONG!! I had to be fingerprinted at one of their licensed facilities. I was told to go online and see if there were any of those facilities closer to me.  There were two in Wichita....but they didn't do fingerprinting for teacher licenses. GRRR!!  Then the phone calls started.  "When will you be in?"  "You need to schedule a meeting with the superintendent."  Hells bells!!  They hadn't even gotten all of my 37 years of employment history, yet.  I hadn't been offered the job.  There was a voice in my head telling me that they were trying to push my application through before receiving all of my employment verification so they could place me at a less expensive step on the salary schedule.  I couldn't sign a contract that didn't honor and value my years of educational service.

     The next interview I had was for a position in Warsaw, MO. On the way down, we stopped at a LICENSED fingerprinting location.  True to form, the stupid machine wouldn't register my prints correctly, so I had to try each set multiple times. (that should have been a sign) It's a small town located near Table Rock Lake. Heavenly! Right??  We even looked at some houses while we were down there.  I wasn't offered the job...

     Next, I had two interviews, on the same day, in Lawrence, KS. (I decided I was done messing with MO and all of the hoops I had to jump through to get one of their darned licenses!)  The next day, I had a Zoom interview with one of the building's Early Childhood staff.  That night, around 9 pm, I received an email telling me that I would not be considered for that position.  That kind of blew me away because the principal had given me her cell phone number and said "This would be your room."  The other building principal, that I thought I'd had a great interview with, didn't ever reach back out to me, one way or the other. I even emailed her, asking if she had made a decision. Crickets.

     And then there was a district in Arkansas.  I did a Zoom interview with the entire kindergarten staff. I think there were five or six. This was on a Friday afternoon, after they'd been in back-to-school meetings all day. Not ideal, but workable. That night, I get an email saying that they had "chosen to move in a different direction."  By this time, I was just done! I had been praying every night for God to direct me to where I was needed and for help to be patient with the process.  Honestly, I was thinking about reaching out to textbook companies and child development companies to see if they were looking for sales reps.

     And then Topeka called...  Friends!!  They wanted me! The director of our site is from Nebraska so she gets my Husker obsession!  In my Zoom meeting with the director and the principal, the principal said, "Here's why you need to come and work at Pine Ridge Prep."  So, last week I began year 38 at Pine Ridge Prep. I *thought* I was going to be an extra set of hands and follow the Guest Teacher, who was already in place.  Nope! I was literally  thrown into the fire. Luckily, I can deal with that. Abbey and Alex are gracious enough to allow me to stay with them for time being. So, I drove to Topeka on Tuesday night and started on Wednesday. After I got there, I learned that Open House was that night. Sure! No problem! Kids started Thursday. I felt woefully unprepared, but I punted and no one was the wiser.  Friday, I taught all day, hopped in my car at the end of the day and headed home to Hutchinson.   Oh! And guess what??  I received an email telling me that my Missouri teaching certificate had been processed and I could go to the Missouri Department of Education's website and print it off...  

     I went though my YEARS of teaching ideas that are in plastic totes in our basement. I had purged and organized them at the beginning of the summer, so that was an added bonus! Now my car is loaded and waiting for the return trip to Topeka. I have lesson plans and I feel much more organized!  Ready and waiting to see my sixteen cuties tomorrow!  

Two Words

 Friends! This post has been tumbling around in my brain for quite some time. The title is "Two Words" for a reason. There are two words I never dreamed of hearing in the same conversation. Those words are "PreK" and "Rigor."

My "why," my core values and beliefs are that Preschool should be about exposure to new and different ideas. When I first started teaching preschool was about exposing children to social settings and helping them focus on  a story, get along well with others, shapes, colors, and the alphabet.  While this is still true about Preschool, some of that reasoning has changed. In my mindset, preschool is still about those things AND a lot more of the social and emotional learning.  Some of our youngest students come to us from homes where the net family income is below the poverty line. Others come to us from households where they are a part of, or are witnesses to abuse, whether that be physical, sexual, or emotional. 

In Education right now there is a phrase that is pretty popular. It is "Maslow before Bloom." Abraham Maslow studied human behavior and other psychologist after him put his works into a pyramid of social-emotional needs, beginning with the most basic needs of all humans. Those are physiological needs of every person.  Are they safe? Are they hungry? Are they clean? Do they have shelter? Are they getting enough sleep? These are just a few of the basic human needs.  These needs needs to be met for every one of our students before they will ever be able to learn.

Bloom's taxonomy, on the other hand, refers to educational objectives and the way we learn them.  The six levels of objectives are:  Knowledge, Comprehension, Application, Analysis, Synthesis, and Evaluation. So, basically, what "Maslow before Bloom" means is that a student's physiological needs need to be met before any learning can take place.  

Another favorite phrase of mine that I've seen quite a bit on social media is "If a student can't learn, love them.  Your love will teach them!" This is why I spend the first month or so of school building a classroom family, learning routines, and teaching expectations. One day, my principal covered my classroom. When I came back, she told me that my kids could have run that classroom by themselves. She said they knew exactly what they were supposed to do and when they were supposed to do it. That's high praise coming from an administrator!

Back to the two words. In my heart of hearts I believe that children need to have their basic needs met before any learning can take place.  Did my kids learn last year? Absolutely!!  Eighty percent of my class scored eighty percent, or better, on the end of the year assessments.  Our assessments were based on the Kansas Early Learning Standards, put together by shareholders across our state. Our progress reports were developed right off of the state standards.

Three years ago I was honored to be invited to a conference.  One of the sessions of that conference was a Q & A with our State Commissioner of Education.  The conversation got around to full-day PreK.  At my table, I was grumbling.  You see, I was part of kindergarten moving from a half-day program to a full-day one.  What became of this was that kindergarten teachers were being asked to cram developmentally inappropriate lessons down their students' throats. The kids weren't getting it.  Why? Because their little brains were not developed enough to understand the content.  There were high numbers of referrals for interventions.  I couldn't do it. I had to get out.  So, I moved to PreK.  My tablemates at the conference asked me to ask our commissioner about his vision for full-day PreK, so I did.  Here's what the commissioner said, "I believe that every child under the age of eight should have a play-based education.  He received a standing ovation!  So, when I hear someone say to me that there needs to be more rigor in PreK, I get angry, frustrated, sad, and confused. I wonder if that play-based message is being delivered to building and district administration.

In my classroom, our students learned so much through play. During centers, my rock-star classroom aides and I would teach children in all aspects of their education. The students thought they were playing, but in truth, they were learning. Some of them received remediation, some of them enrichment. This was based off the individual needs of each child in the classroom. We had a plan of what each student needed and we worked with them to achieve what they needed to learn. Did the kids know what we were doing? Nope. They just thought we were playing with them. Also, to the naked eye coming into my classroom, it looked like we were playing. However, we weren't. We were teaching.  If you come to my classroom and don't see rigor, that doesn't mean it's not there. The data speaks for itself.