For my friends in Early Education: Too good not to share!
http://www.kidscreativetoystore.com/colouring-painting-improving-pre-writing-skills/
Wednesday, March 25, 2015
Wednesday, March 18, 2015
Tuesday, March 17, 2015
I am a kindergarten teacher. I have worked in the education field for 29 years, on top of raising three incredibly amazing children. There are several people who have influenced me on my professiona; journey that I would like to thank:
1. My mother. My mother is a retired speech/language pathologist. She was always behind my brother and me 100%. Interestingly, I had a high school geometry teacher who said, after I failed the first test, "I didn't expect you to do well. You're a girl." Mom didn't take that very well. She asked him to come out to the farm I grew up on and tutor me, while she was home, so that she could learn the content and help me on the other days. Day #2 of tutoring, he said to my mom, "I thought you were smarter than this." Obviously, he was hired for his coaching and not his teaching abilities.
When I was in college, the Service Unit (school districts contracted people from here because they could not afford/didn't need full-time support) my mom worked for was not hiring anyone who didn't have a master's degree. Mom decided that she should go back to school and get her master's. That was all well and good until my dad said, "...and live with you." Wait! What? We agreed that summer school would be our trial run. We ended up living together that summer, the whole following school year, and the following summer. She was an inspiration, taping her lectures and coming home to listen to them again to see what she missed. Who does that?!? My mom!!
2. My second grade teacher, Mrs. Maxine Moore, and the school's guidance counselor, Mrs. Beverly Schuman. These two amazing ladies were there for me when my father was killed in Vietnam. I was afraid to go to school. Eight year-old logic. If my father died while I was in school, my mother might, too. One of these two women would meet me at the door and let me help them get ready for the day. Even when I was going to college, Mrs. Moore would invite me over for dinner and call to check up on me. She was a sounding board for any questions I might have about what I was learning. Through there two wonderful women, I learned that teachers should be compassionate.
3. Mr. Larry Fletcher. Mr. Fletcher taught high school English. I was raised in a small, rural community. English was opposite Band, so only Band members were in this section of English. Mr. Fletcher taught us that it was possible to have fun learning. We would play "Password" with our spelling words. Naturally, it was boys against girls. What Mr. Fletcher, and the boys, did not know was that I had taught all of my girlfriends how to use sign language. We would just spell the words out, under our desks, and win...every time! I don't think the boys ever figured it out!
Because Mr. Fletcher and his wife (who taught 5th grade) were friends of the family, he would make sure I was one point from an A every quarter. Then he'd say, "I think some home-made cookies would get you an A." So, I'd bake them some cookies. My senior year, last quarter, it was the same thing. Being full of myself and thinking I was hot stuff, I refused. To this day, on my high school transcript, there is an A with four minus signs next to it. Mr. Fletcher taught me that learning can be fun! (Gasp!!)
4. Mrs. Fran Conneally. Mrs. Connealy taught high school government. If it weren't for her expecting more from us that we even believed possible, I would have never survived college. Mrs. Conneally was the only high school teacher that expected a full-blown term paper, complete with annotations and a bibliography. From Mrs. Conneally, I learned to set high expectations for my students.
5. An instructor during my masters program who shall remain nameless for now. I was part of a cohort of fifteen teachers from my previous school district that made the journey together. In most all of our classes, there was discussion, teamwork, and presentations....except for this one. The instructor lectured THE. WHOLE. TIME! No discussion, no collaboration. Just listening to him lecture for two and a half hours, for six weeks! Ugh!! However, there is a bright spot! He said that as teachers, we should involve parents early and in a positive manner. That made sense to me! That next school year, I began calling parents as soon as I got my class list, introducing myself as their child's teacher, and inviting them to Back-to-School Night. Additionally, I made an intentional effort to touch base with every single family at least every other week. I feel that this practice has made a HUGE impact in parental involvement and support. From this instructor I learned the importance of making families feel welcome.
These are just a handful of people who have impacted me and helped to shape the person I am today. I owe them, and so many others, a huge debt of gratitude.
1. My mother. My mother is a retired speech/language pathologist. She was always behind my brother and me 100%. Interestingly, I had a high school geometry teacher who said, after I failed the first test, "I didn't expect you to do well. You're a girl." Mom didn't take that very well. She asked him to come out to the farm I grew up on and tutor me, while she was home, so that she could learn the content and help me on the other days. Day #2 of tutoring, he said to my mom, "I thought you were smarter than this." Obviously, he was hired for his coaching and not his teaching abilities.
When I was in college, the Service Unit (school districts contracted people from here because they could not afford/didn't need full-time support) my mom worked for was not hiring anyone who didn't have a master's degree. Mom decided that she should go back to school and get her master's. That was all well and good until my dad said, "...and live with you." Wait! What? We agreed that summer school would be our trial run. We ended up living together that summer, the whole following school year, and the following summer. She was an inspiration, taping her lectures and coming home to listen to them again to see what she missed. Who does that?!? My mom!!
2. My second grade teacher, Mrs. Maxine Moore, and the school's guidance counselor, Mrs. Beverly Schuman. These two amazing ladies were there for me when my father was killed in Vietnam. I was afraid to go to school. Eight year-old logic. If my father died while I was in school, my mother might, too. One of these two women would meet me at the door and let me help them get ready for the day. Even when I was going to college, Mrs. Moore would invite me over for dinner and call to check up on me. She was a sounding board for any questions I might have about what I was learning. Through there two wonderful women, I learned that teachers should be compassionate.
3. Mr. Larry Fletcher. Mr. Fletcher taught high school English. I was raised in a small, rural community. English was opposite Band, so only Band members were in this section of English. Mr. Fletcher taught us that it was possible to have fun learning. We would play "Password" with our spelling words. Naturally, it was boys against girls. What Mr. Fletcher, and the boys, did not know was that I had taught all of my girlfriends how to use sign language. We would just spell the words out, under our desks, and win...every time! I don't think the boys ever figured it out!
Because Mr. Fletcher and his wife (who taught 5th grade) were friends of the family, he would make sure I was one point from an A every quarter. Then he'd say, "I think some home-made cookies would get you an A." So, I'd bake them some cookies. My senior year, last quarter, it was the same thing. Being full of myself and thinking I was hot stuff, I refused. To this day, on my high school transcript, there is an A with four minus signs next to it. Mr. Fletcher taught me that learning can be fun! (Gasp!!)
4. Mrs. Fran Conneally. Mrs. Connealy taught high school government. If it weren't for her expecting more from us that we even believed possible, I would have never survived college. Mrs. Conneally was the only high school teacher that expected a full-blown term paper, complete with annotations and a bibliography. From Mrs. Conneally, I learned to set high expectations for my students.
5. An instructor during my masters program who shall remain nameless for now. I was part of a cohort of fifteen teachers from my previous school district that made the journey together. In most all of our classes, there was discussion, teamwork, and presentations....except for this one. The instructor lectured THE. WHOLE. TIME! No discussion, no collaboration. Just listening to him lecture for two and a half hours, for six weeks! Ugh!! However, there is a bright spot! He said that as teachers, we should involve parents early and in a positive manner. That made sense to me! That next school year, I began calling parents as soon as I got my class list, introducing myself as their child's teacher, and inviting them to Back-to-School Night. Additionally, I made an intentional effort to touch base with every single family at least every other week. I feel that this practice has made a HUGE impact in parental involvement and support. From this instructor I learned the importance of making families feel welcome.
These are just a handful of people who have impacted me and helped to shape the person I am today. I owe them, and so many others, a huge debt of gratitude.
Monday, March 16, 2015
By Barry Saide
Worth sharing...
You know the slogan and the company: “Ford: built to last.”
You also know the acronym: Found On Road Dead.
Which is right?
According to Forbes magazine, Ford has dramatically improved and redesigned their cars and trucks, making them built to last 250,000 miles or more. If this is true, then the days of foreign car dealerships talking about American made cars built for the balance of their lease, versus the lasting of an owner’s lifetime, is no longer valid. And if that’s true, then Ford has learned something we in education haven’t yet: accountability as an overall approach to education doesn’t work. Sustainability does.
Wait, a minute, you say. Don’t Boards of Education need to be accountable to their stakeholders? Don’t central office administrators need to be accountable to their Board of Education? Aren’t teachers accountable to their students?
Yes. Yes. And, yes.
But, accountability models, in their current state, do not allow for long-term growth. Let’s look at it on a grassroots level: the classroom.
When teachers create classroom rules with their students, and set group norms for the way students will interact with each other, they don’t expect instantaneous mastery. Learning doesn’t work that way. Learning takes time, allows for mistakes, and expects refinement over time. Many teachers know that students will learn at their developmental pace, and that the best thing a teacher can do is to create the best conditions for learning. If that is done, then there is a better chance for good learning to occur more often during the course of the year.
But, nothing’s perfect, and educators know that, too. So, teachers get the fact that many of the concepts and approaches to learning they try to cultivate in their learners may not take shape in them for many years after student educational experiences are over. The problem with that, is how do you account for that?
How do you use grades, standardized test scores, and other measurables of this ilk as evidence of learning outcomes when they are something that really shouldn’t be measured in the short-term? How about flipping the narrative, so the education system districts put into place are built to last, like the Ford motto states?
What I’m asking people to do is to think long-term, and that’s hard to do. I get it. Board of Education positions are one, two, or three year terms. There’s a reason people who run for positions don’t use slogans like “If I do my job right, we should see growth during my second three-year term.”
Superintendent and assistant superintendent contracts run three years, but they will know after two years whether they’re getting extended or not. The impetus is clear to them, too: results now. How can central office administrators, many with families of their own, be expected to put their job on the line and preach patience, when stakeholders clamor for immediate change and evidence of growth. There are no bootleg videos on YouTube of stakeholders and constituencies giving the slow clap to a superintendent who says, “We’ll get there. Give me ten years. Let me build something that’s foundationally solid, research-based, and good for kids. We’ll see a dip for a few years while we’re retraining our staff and reframing how we connect with our students, but in the end, everyone will be better. Trust me.”
Thing is, if we’re ever going to win in education everywhere, we need to change in order to grow. Our accountability models can’t look for quick wins. Institutional change, with adults within, and involved with the system, takes time. We need to account for all when flipping our narrative. And, when things get hard, because they will, we need to stick with our script. Backbones aren’t built overnight. But, they can be easily stripped away if we allow others to operate on us.
How do we change from a short-term accountability driven model to a long-term sustainable environment so our new and recent initiatives aren’t Found on Road Dead with our other recent and new initiatives:
1. The Eitner Rule: I can’t take credit for this, so I’m not going to. Jay Eitner, who puts the super in superintendent, once stated: “Growth and change takes time. It’s like cooking food in the crockpot. You need to go low and slow.” For change to work, we need to follow the analogy Super Jay aptly said. Take time, evaluate often, revise as needed, and get it right.
2. Focus on the Whole Child: in a recent webinar I did for Education Week on social-emotional-learning, I stated “We don’t test drive cars and only make right turns. If we buy a car with all the options, we use them, otherwise we’re not getting the most out of what we purchased.” With students it’s the same thing. If our primary focus is only on delivering the academic content to students, we’ve lost the entire battle. Students are entire people, with an entire set of needs. We need to understand each one on our class roster and let them know we care about them as people first, and learners second. When students believe that message, they will achieve for you.
3. Focus on the Whole Teacher: successful business models cited in The Chronicle of Higher Education focus their hiring practice on always looking to add value to their organization. What can a potential new employee bring to us that we don’t already have? How can they make us as an organization better? When we look to not only add people who can move our entire organization forward, but leverage the strengths of the people we already have to do the same, we are building for long-term success. There’s a reason (besides videotaping sidelines and deflating footballs) the New England Patriots win so much. They look to add value to all areas of their organization, and leverage those strengths week after week, year after year.
4. Remember Rule #1: in the movie Fight Club, the first two rules are the same: “You Do Not Talk About Fight Club.” The rules repeats to emphasize the importance of the first two rules. I don’t want you to hit anybody. I do want you to remember: change is a process, personally investing in people will be challenging but worthwhile, and remembering we’re in it for kids will prove helpful when something doesn’t go right and you feel you’ve been punched in the gut.
We aim as educators to create students who will be successful in a society that doesn’t exist yet. We do this through teaching students and communicating to families the importance of communication, collaboration, working as a member of a group, being a problem solver, being willing to fail and learn from it, and more. As educators, we need to model and live what we tell others. And, we need to do it when it’s uncomfortable to do. Many can talk this talk and walk this walk when it’s easy. There are fewer that will stick to this mindset when the work gets hard. That’s what makes you special. And, built to last.
Worth sharing...
You know the slogan and the company: “Ford: built to last.”
You also know the acronym: Found On Road Dead.
Which is right?
According to Forbes magazine, Ford has dramatically improved and redesigned their cars and trucks, making them built to last 250,000 miles or more. If this is true, then the days of foreign car dealerships talking about American made cars built for the balance of their lease, versus the lasting of an owner’s lifetime, is no longer valid. And if that’s true, then Ford has learned something we in education haven’t yet: accountability as an overall approach to education doesn’t work. Sustainability does.
Wait, a minute, you say. Don’t Boards of Education need to be accountable to their stakeholders? Don’t central office administrators need to be accountable to their Board of Education? Aren’t teachers accountable to their students?
Yes. Yes. And, yes.
But, accountability models, in their current state, do not allow for long-term growth. Let’s look at it on a grassroots level: the classroom.
When teachers create classroom rules with their students, and set group norms for the way students will interact with each other, they don’t expect instantaneous mastery. Learning doesn’t work that way. Learning takes time, allows for mistakes, and expects refinement over time. Many teachers know that students will learn at their developmental pace, and that the best thing a teacher can do is to create the best conditions for learning. If that is done, then there is a better chance for good learning to occur more often during the course of the year.
But, nothing’s perfect, and educators know that, too. So, teachers get the fact that many of the concepts and approaches to learning they try to cultivate in their learners may not take shape in them for many years after student educational experiences are over. The problem with that, is how do you account for that?
How do you use grades, standardized test scores, and other measurables of this ilk as evidence of learning outcomes when they are something that really shouldn’t be measured in the short-term? How about flipping the narrative, so the education system districts put into place are built to last, like the Ford motto states?
What I’m asking people to do is to think long-term, and that’s hard to do. I get it. Board of Education positions are one, two, or three year terms. There’s a reason people who run for positions don’t use slogans like “If I do my job right, we should see growth during my second three-year term.”
Superintendent and assistant superintendent contracts run three years, but they will know after two years whether they’re getting extended or not. The impetus is clear to them, too: results now. How can central office administrators, many with families of their own, be expected to put their job on the line and preach patience, when stakeholders clamor for immediate change and evidence of growth. There are no bootleg videos on YouTube of stakeholders and constituencies giving the slow clap to a superintendent who says, “We’ll get there. Give me ten years. Let me build something that’s foundationally solid, research-based, and good for kids. We’ll see a dip for a few years while we’re retraining our staff and reframing how we connect with our students, but in the end, everyone will be better. Trust me.”
Thing is, if we’re ever going to win in education everywhere, we need to change in order to grow. Our accountability models can’t look for quick wins. Institutional change, with adults within, and involved with the system, takes time. We need to account for all when flipping our narrative. And, when things get hard, because they will, we need to stick with our script. Backbones aren’t built overnight. But, they can be easily stripped away if we allow others to operate on us.
How do we change from a short-term accountability driven model to a long-term sustainable environment so our new and recent initiatives aren’t Found on Road Dead with our other recent and new initiatives:
1. The Eitner Rule: I can’t take credit for this, so I’m not going to. Jay Eitner, who puts the super in superintendent, once stated: “Growth and change takes time. It’s like cooking food in the crockpot. You need to go low and slow.” For change to work, we need to follow the analogy Super Jay aptly said. Take time, evaluate often, revise as needed, and get it right.
2. Focus on the Whole Child: in a recent webinar I did for Education Week on social-emotional-learning, I stated “We don’t test drive cars and only make right turns. If we buy a car with all the options, we use them, otherwise we’re not getting the most out of what we purchased.” With students it’s the same thing. If our primary focus is only on delivering the academic content to students, we’ve lost the entire battle. Students are entire people, with an entire set of needs. We need to understand each one on our class roster and let them know we care about them as people first, and learners second. When students believe that message, they will achieve for you.
3. Focus on the Whole Teacher: successful business models cited in The Chronicle of Higher Education focus their hiring practice on always looking to add value to their organization. What can a potential new employee bring to us that we don’t already have? How can they make us as an organization better? When we look to not only add people who can move our entire organization forward, but leverage the strengths of the people we already have to do the same, we are building for long-term success. There’s a reason (besides videotaping sidelines and deflating footballs) the New England Patriots win so much. They look to add value to all areas of their organization, and leverage those strengths week after week, year after year.
4. Remember Rule #1: in the movie Fight Club, the first two rules are the same: “You Do Not Talk About Fight Club.” The rules repeats to emphasize the importance of the first two rules. I don’t want you to hit anybody. I do want you to remember: change is a process, personally investing in people will be challenging but worthwhile, and remembering we’re in it for kids will prove helpful when something doesn’t go right and you feel you’ve been punched in the gut.
We aim as educators to create students who will be successful in a society that doesn’t exist yet. We do this through teaching students and communicating to families the importance of communication, collaboration, working as a member of a group, being a problem solver, being willing to fail and learn from it, and more. As educators, we need to model and live what we tell others. And, we need to do it when it’s uncomfortable to do. Many can talk this talk and walk this walk when it’s easy. There are fewer that will stick to this mindset when the work gets hard. That’s what makes you special. And, built to last.
Sunday, March 15, 2015
Here Goes!
Upon the urging of my husband, I am taking the plunge into the bloggin world. Any tips/suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Bear with me on my new learning curve.
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