Glutton for Punishment?

I'm still trying to run. I started in 2009, and here I am three years later. Even though every time I finished a 5K I swear it's my last one and I swear I'm never running again, I am still giving it a go.

I'm not very good at it. I don't think my form is bad (at least I don't FEEL like I look like some of those people who jog past you on the trail flailing a variety of body parts), but I am S-L-O-W. As a snail. And I don't seem to get any faster. I don't particularly love the activity, but I don't especially dread it like I once did. It frustrates me to no end. I feel like I'm doing better but don't see improvement in terms of time or distance. When I don't get the positive results I'm expecting my spirits drop and I ask myself, "You are a glutton for punishment. What in the world are you doing? Why do you keep doing this?"

And believe me, I have asked myself these questions a lot. A LOT.

So you might be wondering what answers I keep coming up with to continue to fight what I often feel is a losing battle.

Believe me, I'm wondering the same thing. The only thing I can I come up with is that if I keep plugging away at it I've GOT to get better. If I put in the effort eventually I'm going to feel successful and meet my goal. Right? Not sure I believe it, but I keep trying just because I have that goal and would really, really like to meet it. 

So I guess I kind of am a glutton for punishment, or maybe I'm just stubborn. I could easily walk away and find something more enjoyable, something that's not quite such a challenge. But really - what fun would there be in meeting a goal like that?

Baby Steps

"I know it's hard to see it now, but everything happens for a reason."
"Every ending is a new beginning."
"It's a rough start, but this will end up being a great new opportunity for you."
"What doesn't kill you will make you stronger."

Those are just four of the many, many supportive comments my husband and I have gotten over the past week. These last seven days have been filled with some of the most frustrating, sad, angry and challenging moments that I have ever experienced in my life. It continues to astound me how people are more willing to choose dishonesty and drama over transparency and honesty in their lives. While it is so, so tempting to stoop to their level we will not. The lies that were told were simply a feeble-minded person's attempt to discredit Jerry. What he doesn't realize is that there are too many people who know and support Jerry for his weak comments to make a difference. When Jerry is ready to start his own business there are people all ready to help him be successful.


But we aren't there yet.


Right now, we're just trying to figure out what our new life looks like. Silly as it sounds, we're trying to figure out where we're going to buy the food for our pets, and we're worried about the well being of the animals we left behind at the store. We're very, very sad that we won't get to see Piggly and Wiggly, the guinea pigs, or Bobofish, the Oscar, ever again. We're sad that Jerry didn't get the opportunity to buy the business like he was told he would be able to, and we're sad that the years he and his dad gave to the "family" were thrown away for the right amount of money. We're sad that somebody who barely knew Jerry saw him as such a threat that he fired him and then spread nasty rumors about him. We're sad that another, who needed the job, has also lost his job just because he would not stoop to the new owner's level. And we're sad that people we helped during difficult financial times and thought were our friends really were not.


That's a lot to be sad about. And it all happened right around Father's Day so that made things even more challenging. But the good news is that after all the sad, we are starting to turn a corner. We're making baby steps.


Jerry has started working on his business plan to start his own business, he has a potential partner, and he also has some leads on jobs to help us out until he can get things up and running. As I mentioned earlier, he has a tremendous amount of support from people in the industry. I still have my job, with benefits, and we both have our health. We have an amazing network of family and friends who have been nothing short of incredible these last few weeks, and we have our puppies who keep us exercising and laughing.


Trust me, there are still sad times, but they are getting shorter and shorter. What doesn't kill us will make us stronger, and more resolved than ever to start a business run by people who do things, not because they want make a buck, but because they are honest and care about people and their animals.

Officially Over

It's hard to believe that the school year is officially over. For the first time ever we didn't have to attend extra inservice days after the kids ended the year. When I finished yesterday, I walked out knowing that I didn't need to go back today or tomorrow unless I wanted to. Of course we're going back tomorrow for some final clean up and to start planning for next year, but it's our choice.

I also walked out of school yesterday knowing that the challenge I talked about had just gotten a bit bigger. Now, with about 15 hours between me and the initial shock, I know there's nothing I can do about things. Thanks to my wonderful friends and many repetitions of, "Everything happens for a reason," and, "There's no sense worrying about things you can't change," I think I'm finally starting to believe those things. With all the bull out of the way, we can really focus on moving forward towards my hubby and our friend starting their own business. Scary, for sure, but I know my hubby has the knowledge and skills to do it... the money, not so much, but we'll work that out. Any backers out there interested? Let me know! :)

So last night when I couldn't sleep I decided to take some time to finally catch up on my Google Reader. I can tell all my education friends were in the same boat as I am with busy ends of the school year because I wasn't nearly as far behind in my reading as I expected! I was also really excited to find some great posts, and I saved those tabs for this morning. It was easy to read at 1AM, but I wanted to make sure my comments were somewhat coherent so I saved those for this morning.

Here the posts that really struck me last night:

The 90-9-1 Rule by Laura at Musings About 21st Century Learning. This post really spoke to for a couple of reasons. First, this year during my PLP work in my community and as a coach we discussed the idea of lurking at length: what is the value, when do you move on from lurking, are you shortchanging your community if you are a lurker, and how do we help community members move on? I've also seen a great deal of the 90 in my real life. I'm interested to reread this post and the comments and add my own two cents based on my personal experiences.

Teacher As Travel Agent by Sheryl at 21st Century Collaborative. Sheryl always brings up amazing points about balancing learners' passions with the knowledge they need, but what struck me in this post was the comment:

Why does it always go back to what we learned when we were in Kindergarten?

I have pondered this thought long and hard this year because my kids struggled to "play nicely" and share. Why does it go back to kindergarten? Because those building blocks are a vital key to success.

If You Could Not Fail by Cale at The Learning Nation. After opening up this tab and continuing to read I believe I found the back story to this post that's coming out of Canada, although sadly I didn't keep that tab open and don't have it handy to link right now. In any respect, I thought it was interesting because I just did my own post about this topic, and I can't say I ever thought about the *need* for kids to fail. In my mind I saw it more as if you keep working towards a goal, here's what you can achieve. I'm very interested to continue reading this thread to see where it goes.

Virtual Schools: From Rivalry to Partnership by Tony at Transleadership. I had the pleasure of "meeting" and working with Tony during my PLP coaching work, and I am very interested in learning all I can about his virtual high school. In an age of choice and vouchers, I personally feel like public schools need to branch out and provide more opportunities for all learners. Different doesn't equal wrong, and I'm looking forward to participating in this discussion.

A Wicked Problem by Shelley at Wright's Room. The interesting part of Shelley's post is that everything she mentions as necessities: administrators who are visionaries not managers, deeply engaging experiences for students, and encouragement and support for risk-taking students; are all the roadblocks my partners and I experienced while trying to bring change to our school. I love when Shelley says,

There were other times it felt disasterous, but here’s the thing, we all survived. It’s hard to change; It’s hard to wrap our minds around something so foreign to the traditional school system so many of us are products of, but our students need us to engage in the hard work. 


Despite the road blocks, my teammates and I have pushed on, and I am curious to read the comments and see how others have started the ball rolling to change their schools. I'm sure we're not the only ones to get the backlash that we did, and I'm curious to hear how others weathered the storm.

So there they are, my top 5 midnight finds. Now to go back and add my comments now that it's light out!

New Month, New Challenge

School is flying by! I cannot believe that my first year at the new school will be over in 8 days. I'm proud of myself, proud of my two teammates, and very proud of my kiddos. I think back about all of the challenges that we have faced together, and we truly have a lot to be proud of. It wasn't easy, and it certainly wasn't without drama. But we did it, and we're already looking at how to make next year even better.

I've often heard it said that every ending is a new beginning, and that is absolutely true for me and my husband right now. Last night, after closing his store, he and his coworkers got some shocking news. Thankfully, for now anyway, the four of them still have jobs and allegedly things won't be changing. However, everything that he has been working for over the past year and 2 months is gone. And nobody gave him any hint about what was happening. It just happened. When I asked him what he was thinking last night he said, "It doesn't matter what I'm thinking. As of tomorrow it's done." Once again I'm shocked at how people cannot be open and honest with one and other. Why do we hide things?

So now we go forward to find a new path. It's strange to be focused on one thing for so long and then suddenly have that focus removed. But, every ending is a new beginning. Everything happens for a reason. My hope is that the new beginning presents itself soon, and we can see the bright reason behind this latest challenge.

What Would You Do?

I currently have the great honor of participating in an online community of educators from Alberta, Canada. This community is working on improving education for all students with a focus on inclusive environments. While I am part of the community to model how an active community member participates, I am learning so much. And since inclusion is something very near and dear to my heart, I am trying to learn as possible from these dedicated educators while I am with them for four short weeks.

Today I clicked on a discussion thread titled, "What would you do?" The full question is "What would you do if you knew you would not fail?" and there is a wonderful TED talk to go with it. Even if you can't take the 25 minutes to watch the whole talk, I hope you can take a few minutes just to watch the beginning.

Oh! The possibilities! Sadly, it seems like people in my neck of the woods actually want you to fail. A new idea is a foreign, incomprehensible thought, and most people would rather wait patiently for you to fail and say, "I told you it wouldn't work!" rather that asking, "What can we do to make this happen?"

I, for one, want to think about what I could do if I couldn't fail. Here was my response on the discussion thread:

I will tell you what I would do. I would start my own elementary school. It would have a ratio of 10 students for every teacher, and each student would have their own individualized education plan. They would progress through the state standards not by grade level, but as they were ready to progress through them. And all of our learning would be project and passion based. Parents would volunteer a certain amount of hours per month, as their work permitted, and we would be a school where people would not say no. People would say, "How can we make that work?"

Enough of the, "It can't be done." Enough of the, "I told you it wouldn't work!" What would YOU do for kids if you knew you could not fail? 

A Little Disappointing

I was a little bit disappointed today. It was our culminating event for PLP, and I wasn't there. The thing is - I could have been there to share all the amazing work my Whole Teacher / Whole Child team did making connections. But I wasn't. And that's what has me so disappointed.

Let's go back a few weeks, shall we? In looking ahead to my May calendar I realized that our fourth grade Field Day was scheduled for the same day as our PLP culminating event. Field Day is a unique day for our students to put into practice all of the Phys Ed skills they have been learning throughout the year. Picture a high school track. Scatter 300 fourth graders and many parent volunteers around the track and surrounding fields. Now make some announcements calling students to their various events like the 400, potato sack races, hurdles, the basketball shoot, the 4x100 relay and long jump (this is just a few - I think there are over 20 different events running throughout the day for both boys and girls). Now, imagine those 300 students basically getting themselves to every single event without help from their teachers. It truly is an amazing sight - the kids love it, and I love being there to help out. I also recognize that my students who struggle is less-structured environments need support on Field Day, and having a substitute there was not going to cut it. With a heavy heart I knew that my PLP event was not in the cards - I had to be at Field Day with my kids so they could have the best day possible.

The decision was made, and I really didn't give it two thoughts. Until yesterday around 2 PM.

The weather, while beautiful on Mother's Day, was forecasted to be a downpouring nightmare today. The weather on Wednesday, our raindate, is forecasted to be BEAUTIFUL - 80 degrees F and sunny skies. So without further ado the PE teachers postponed Field Day to Wednesday. "Perfect!" I thought to myself. "I can still go to the PLP culminating event!" I quickly sent off an email to the appropriate people to see if I could re-request my substitute and started preparing sub plans for today.

And I waited. And I waited some more.

I sent another email including more people to see if I could go.

I pondered whether or not I should just request the sub and go anyway.

I waited. And pondered. And waited. And went to bed.

The response I was waiting for came around 8:15 this morning, and it basically said that we had made the decision to go to Field Day rather than the culminating event, and that decision was final. Done.

I was disappointed. My teammate who was supposed to represent our team was called for jury duty could not be there to share and get feedback on our project. We knew well in advance that the day was postponed so subs easily could have been secured, and we could have attended and represented not only our year 2 team but also our school and our district. Instead the decision was made, and it was final.

This is not the first time in the recent weeks that I have seen such inflexibility in education. It comes from all levels, it comes from many different people, and it always involves, "No."

"The decision is final."
"You can't do that."
"That will never work."
"What were you thinking?"
"I'm not doing anything different."
"Why do we have to change? It works just fine."
"Is this really THAT bad for the kids?"
"We just need to give it some more time."

When are we going to see that this type of inflexibility and unwillingness to try different things is what is killing education? We have got to be willing to try new things when the kids' best interests are at hand. We have to be willing to change our minds when teachers have the opportunity to learn. We have to be more willing to say, "Yes!" or, "Sure, let's give it a try and see what happens!" instead of always assuming that new ideas will never work.

The problem with education is not the tests. Or the lack of funding. (Okay, they're big problems, but I'm trying to make a point here!) People in education who are unwilling to look at things from a different perspective and handle every situation in exactly the same way are a huge part of the reason why public education can't keep up. With a, "No," or a, "That can't be done," we are certainly going to leave every child and every teacher far, far behind.

Perfect Timing

I suppose things just have a way of balancing themselves out when given a little time. As you could probably tell from my last post, going to work has not been at the top of my "Fun Things to Do List" for the last month or so. Perhaps at some point I can explain a little bit more about why that has happened, but for now I just need to leave it at that.

One thing will never change, though, no matter how frustrated I get with all the extra stuff: I love ALL my kids and cannot wait to see what they accomplish every day. Today the kids, the NUMBER ONE REASON I teach, reminded me how lucky I am to go to school each day.

Right now we are studying about the regions of the United States. Each student in my class and my partner's class were assigned a state (or Washington, D.C. because we have 51 kids in our afternoon class), and the kids spent two weeks becoming experts on their state. They learned about the climate, landforms, natural resources, animals, plants, tourist attractions... you name it, somebody probably discovered in in their research. The kids did have a graphic organizer to guide them to find our curriculum requirements and to serve as a place to record their thoughts so they were not completely independent for this piece. We worked on higher level reading skills like summarizing, main ideas and details, determining importance, and the basic, vital skills of accuracy, vocabulary and rereading for understanding. The students' learning contract stated that they must complete this portion of the research by April 27, and everybody did that!

After becoming experts on their state the kids joined together with students from both classrooms to synthesize their information. The students' goal was to find exactly how the states in their regions were similar. In most region groups students worked in partners to summarize and synthesize information about:

• climate
• landforms
• industries & products
• natural resources
• wildlife
• history
• location
• entertainment & attractions
• culture

Our friends who learned about the states in the Southwest region, however, had quite the challenge ahead of them! They only had 4 people in their group so they had to work together and stay focused to meet their learning contract.

I never said that students could not help out others so immediately after finishing their assigned tasks, several groups went back to the others and asked how they could help. Some groups were eager to finish their work on their own, and they politely declined the help. Others, like our friends in the Southwest group, gratefully accepted the help and quickly filled their new assistants in on what needed done.

Today was the last day of working for our one group of students (we have two: an am class and a pm class), and the other group will finish tomorrow. But in both groups the same thing happened during our last two work days. I passed out the folders containing the groups' important work, and the kids immediately got to it. They were focused, they were on task, they were working to complete their jobs.

They didn't need me. At all.

Now, I'll be honest. I'm still not comfortable letting go 100%. I invited students to sign up when they felt they needed to meet with me, and if some didn't sign up, I still asked partners to come and meet with me periodically. I needed to make sure that they were on track to meet the deadline in their learning contract and to see if they needed any reteaching about their topic. Some students watched BrainPop videos on Landforms to help them review what we had talked about earlier in the year. Others watched a Brainpop about Westward Expansion to explain how the history of the West and Midwest is connected. We talked about ways to organize data from 12 or 13 states to summarize and synthesize more easily. The kids were eager to ask me questions and show me what they had done, and I was just as eager to say, "That's great! Show me what else you know!"

So they were not completely on their own - but they are 9 and 10. They haven't had much experience with student directed projects prior to this year. I see myself helping them develop good organization and work skills. I still see the need for reteaching and reviewing the content required by my curriculum. But I also saw four amazing classes of students who didn't really need their teachers the last two days. That is pretty amazing!

I can't wait to see what the groups decide to do with their projects, and I cannot wait to share them with you!