Writing Excitement!

It has been a busy time in the Bair's Den since parent teacher conferences. To up the ante and hopefully get the kids as excited about writing as they are about reading, I introduced our class blog.

http://kidblog.org/TheBairsDen

My kids, well, if you go and read some of their posts you'll see that they were excited and nervous about posting for the word to read and comment. But as you'll also see, they took to this challenge with gusto and have not looked back. It's so exciting to see sad, pouty faces when I have to tell them that it's time to put the computers away to head to lunch or special.

The best thing about the blog came from Mr. B, my resident jock / cool guy. After our first session on the blog we were headed back to the classroom. Mr. B looked at me and said, "I never thought I would like writing this much!" And you should have seen their faces when they got their first posts from a very special class in Nevada. (Thanks, Mr. Crosby!)

They have fallen into my trap -- they are loving reading and writing!!!

Parent Teacher Conferences

Parent teacher conferences require a lot of preparation and energy. For many teachers they are also extremely scary and nerve-wracking. I think I'm in the minority of a lot of teachers when I say that, while they do require a lot of prep time, conferences do not bother me. I look forward to the opportunity to sit down with parents and see if what I'm seeing from their child in school matches the kid they know at home.

This year I have 22 students, and one of my teaching friends asked me, "So, which conferences are you dreading?" I honestly said none because there truly were no children whose parents I was not looking forward to meeting. All of my kids who are below level have made some growth, and I have some pretty amazing kids who are surviving and doing pretty impressive school work despite some pretty awful situations. In the end I had 21 excellent conferences (one will happen Monday because of a vacation), and here are some of the highlights:

- 8 parents asking me what I did to their child because he / she NEVER wanted to read and now he / she is reading ALL the time! (This was the best, best, best comment of them all, and every time I heard it I practically squealed!)

- several parents saying, "Oh my yes, that is my kid!" when I described my picture of their child and how he or she learns and works best

- One set of parents asking me who I was talking about because they have never had a positive conference about their child before. Seriously?? I had heard the rumors, but their child earned every word of praise I shared with them.

- 7 moms crying (all good tears)

- 4 sets of parents telling me that their kids come home every day to show them our websites so they can see what we've been doing

- several parents telling me that their child can't wait to come to school and says it is fun

- being able to show so many parents a ton of growth, even if their children haven't quite met the benchmarks yet

- all parents being really excited to hear that the kids will start blogging this week

Since we don't have formal conferences again during the school year, I can add my 13th round of conferences to the old teaching belt. They never get easier, but this year's seemed to be a lot more rewarding. Hopefully that trend will continue.

Taking the Good with the Bad

Even though it worked last week, I was really scared again this week. No need; once again I found that even though I am not focusing on the core reading story, the work that I'm doing with the skills and strategies is carrying over to the assessment. This week I had only 3 students who did not meet the proficient level which is 2 better than last week. Hopefully we will continue to see this amazing growth. It's especially exciting to see my kids who have always struggled and not reached that proficient level in the past recognize that they are being successful applying their skills. I'm so proud of them and happy for them!

So that's the good news. What's the bad?

The bad news is that, "We need to move on." Even though I'm not finished teaching all of the skills in this particular unit, even though I took the time to make sure my kids really GOT IT this year, even though we haven't quite mastered all the skills in this unit, if we don't move on right now we will never finish all of the skills we need to finish before the state tests in the middle of March. Who in the WORLD gives end of year benchmark tests in March???

This is one of those frustrating times when I feel so powerless. My kids are doing really well, and if they had just a little bit more time they would be ready. But they aren't right now, and there is nothing I can do about it. Give the assessment... get the grades... move on to the next chapter... gotta get ready for the tests. I want my Leos (as in Leo the Late Bloomers for those of you who aren't up on your picture books) to have the chance to bloom when they are ready, and it hurts when I can't give them that opportunity.

I've got to figure out a way to make this work for my kiddos within the constraints of our schedule. The question is how?

It Worked!!

I had no reason to be scared or worried! My kids did so well on their selection tests. There are three factors that played into this, I think:

1. My kids are reading a lot more than ever before

2. The teaching strategies that I used were very different

3. We listened to the story right before taking the selection test.

I polled the kids today, and they all said that they felt that there were things about all three that helped them improve this week. I'm going to continue working on these three things to see if my kids' scores continue to improve.

So exciting!! :)

Scary, in A Good Way

Yesterday as I passed out our required reading test we take after finishing instruction on each skill and strategy I got very nervous. For the first time ever I was really scared about how my kids would do.

I'm teaching very differently than I have in the past. In previous years we focused specifically on that one story and the skills specifically related to that story. We did the worksheets provided by the book, and sadly - I was totally teaching to the test. I wasn't teaching my kids to be better readers. I was teaching my kids to be successful test takers, and that needs to change.

Our strategy this week was evaluating, and our skill was understanding fact and opinion. Okay, first of all they picked a really stupid story for evaluating: it's boring, the kids (especially the boys) can't connect to it, and it doesn't inspire any thinking. That's not just my opinion - those are things the kids have expressed during the last two years. So we talked about evaluating a story (which in and of itself is such a contrived skill) and when we might use it. But then I put evaluating into a context every kid can understand: picking something for your Christmas list (yes, all my kids celebrate Christmas). We talked about how you can use both data and your own ideas (facts and opinions) to evaluate something and discussed the questions that you might ask yourself when you're evaluating. It was an awesome discussion, and the kids were able to share other places and times where they or their parents might evaluate things in their real life. Somebody even chimed in with, "OH!!! Then you can use this stuff to persuade your parents to get it for you!" GOOSEBUMPS!

The fun part came in an extra part that I added to the assessment. Once they finished the selection test, each student had to visit our class wiki and check out the evaluation page. There were two links to click on, and the scenario that I set was that I had money to buy something for our classroom but I could only buy one thing. The links went to a Wii and an iPad. After looking at the links the students needs to create a new post in the discussion about which I should buy for our class. I reminded them of the list of questions we generated and added the stipulation that they needed to include at least one fact and two opinions in their evaluation. The kids were so excited to do this, and I've been really impressed with the responses I've read so far.

Even with all the positives that I've observed and read I'm still scared. I feel very strongly that what I'm doing is going to prepare my kids for the their futures. But will that transfer to "the test"? There's a pile of papers in my backpack that will answer that question. Right now, I'm just too afraid to look.

Frustrated

We had an inservice day today. I don't dread them as much as I used to mainly because I have some say in what happens on those days. This morning was fantastic. There were new people working on my committee, and these individuals were more open to looking at alternate types of assessments rather than just making kids do paper / pencil tests. I left feeling really excited and pumped up about what we had accomplished throughout the morning.

My district is opening a new building next year. No small feat by any means, but this one is especially challenging because we are creating a new faculty out of people from 6 different buildings. Since August we have been working together to build a healthy culture for the building, and I have always felt very positive leaving those days. That all changed today. At the risk of venting, here are the things that are weighing on my mind and made today, in my opinion, seem more negative:

1. Teachers who complain that they don't have a voice but then complain that they just want somebody to tell them what to do.

2. Teachers who say that it's all about the kids but then talk about teaching configurations that will make less work for the adults.

3. Teachers who are just plain rude. If our students acted the way we acted today the same teachers who were talking would probably be the loudest ones flipping out.

4. Teachers who don't understand that building a good culture has to happen before we can decide upon schedules and teaching assignments.

Those were just my observations from the whole group, which were hard enough for me to work through on their own, but then I heard a side comment about me that really hurt. I've been really excited about what I'm doing this year. I thought I was just being a good colleague and sharing the things that are working well for me and the different activities I've found. Unfortunately the feeling among some is that I am a know-it-all who gets picked to do everything for one reason or another. That hurts. Really, really, really hurts.

I'm a teacher, a people pleaser. So any time somebody says something negative about me it bothers me. But this bothers me even more because I have specifically been trying NOT to be overenthusiastic to the point where I was pushy or being a know-it-all. I need to look back over my actions now and think: is this really something I've been doing, or is there another reason my coworkers feel this way.

While the day started out great, it did not at all end the way I thought it would. Time to reflect upon what I can do to positively impact the group without coming off in a pushy or all-knowing manner.

Interesting Confirmation and An Audience

We spent the day at my parents' house today, and I had a really serious, heated, LONG conversation about education with my parents. One of the things I've struggled with as I've jumped into my PLP work and started developing my virtual PLN is that I'm part of the choir, and I'm following the choir. How do we spread the word to others who aren't in education. Who better to start with than my parents, right?

My dad, who is a school bus driver now that he retired from his other job, confirmed something that I have been saying for a while now. People in this area don't want schools to change because kids will never be able to survive if they don't know how to do the things that we know how to do. My dad wants me to teach the basics first, and then once the kids get the basics I should move on to the harder stuff. He said something along the lines of, "Make them understand what they are doing, and then you can use all the technology you want. I don't want a bunch of stupid kids running around who can't do their jobs because their calculators and computers don't work!" News flash, Dad. They probably won't be able to do their jobs no matter how much they know because all of their jobs will be technology based.

We talked about many different aspects of education. My dad often focuses on kids being "bad" or acting like "jerks" so I think it was different for him to hear that there are reasons why these kids do bad or jerky things. I also tried to help him understand that the positives he is providing will not instantly undo the mess parents have created the last 10 years, but he's doing something. I could tell that there were several points with which we did not find common ground, but he and my mom were listening. That is what's important - somebody not in education was listening to me, seeing things from my point of view, and starting to consider education differently than they had before we talked.

This is what "the choir" needs to do. Whether we are teachers, administrators or parents, those of us in education who believe in change need to start talking. We need to find audiences, sit down and talk about what our kids need to succeed. This is the only way we are going to combat those who are "Waiting for Superman" and those who have nothing nice to say about teachers and public education.