On Changing Courses

Last week, we started the drama version of A Christmas Carol in seventh grade.  My first hour loved it.  My second hour??  Well...  I changed course. 

We moved from the version of the book and when to a Reader's Theater version that only took one class time to read.  From there, I found other Christmas plays with a Reader's Theater theme.  They loved reading out loud and trying new voices.  They really did.  I just had to accommodate for their attention spans. 

To tell you the truth, I'm not sure they even noticed. They were just reading a Christmas theme, and that made them happy. 

In the meantime, first hour marches on reading A Christmas Carol.  They even seem to enjoy the complexities of the language and the historical context of Scrooge's world. 

It always surprises me how I need to be flexible....  It surprises me so much at what interests kids and what doesn't.  And if it doesn't? I have to ask myself if they are just being lazy and need to be pushed, or if this is something critically important that can be wrapped up and re-gifted?

Finding texts is the most important part of being a teacher.  If I can't find the correct text, my day was useless.  Students spent forty-five minutes being bored.  What good is that?

Apocalypse - a Story of a Water Beetle

 One day, at the end of the school year, I decided to take a little walk to Cenex during a break.  When I left the school, the streets were unusually quiet.  The air felt strange to me.  I felt as though some life lesson or major life event was about to take place.
 
I skipped a bit and looked down.  That's when I saw a bug.  This bug was the biggest bug I had ever seen in my entire life.  So, I took a picture of it with my cell phone.

 

 

The picture was very, very disappointing.  There's no way anyone could have imagined how  big this bug was to me.

That's when I saw two seniors walking into the school.  I was actually relieved because I started wondering if, in fact, I had been left behind and was living in an apocalyptic world inhabited just by me and these scary looking bugs.

 They pondered the bug with me for a while, and we went on our separate ways.  I, to Cenex - They, to class.

I thought about this bug.  I wondered about it and suddenly found myself in front of the store with a big bang.  My shoe had caught on to the first step.  I fell with a thud with my cheek basically smearing down the glass door.  It was not unlike a bird who flies into a fresh window.

A man rushed out of the store and helped me up.  I brushed myself off and found myself inside Cenex which had a bustle of people giggling at my mishap.

I reached for the Reeses Peanut Butter Cups and reached inside my purse to find the money to pay.  And, inside I found I had some yogurt which had sprayed it's contents entirely over my delightful purse.  Key lime pie flavored coins and make up were part of my world.

I went back to school and cleaned up in the teacher's lounge sharing my story with my colleagues. The Biology teacher knew which bug I was talking about right away.

I hadn't imagined size of this bug.  And I wasn't LEFT BEHIND to fight an apocalyptic battle against zombies, either.

7th Grade Art

I was just thinking about when I had to take Art class in seventh and eighth grade.  I was so nervous.  I remember thinking - "Oooo... I'm so bad at Art."

But -You wouldn't hear any of that.  Attitude was everything.  If I whined about my art abilities, Mrs. Piersol put a stop to it immediately.

I remember slowly drawing a self portrait and being surprised at the end result.  I remember asking Mrs. Piersol if she'd dock off points for me not adding the scar on my right cheek.  She said that I didn't need to add it if I didn't want to.  I loved that self-portrait.

I also remember making an elephant out of clay.  I remember working intently and focusing on the beauty of the elephant.  I remember her coming by and checking on me once in a while to see how it was coming along.  When I was done, we put it in the kiln. 

After those years, I found I loved art.  I found I wasn't as bad as I thought I was.

Professional Learning Community Ideas

One big push over the past few years in education is Professional Learning Communities, where teachers get together and discuss important learning trends.

  Back when I was student teaching at Franklin Middle School, I was impressed with the PLCs.  The teachers were reading How Full is your Bucket by Tom Rath and Donald Clifton.  They met once a month discussed housekeeping issues and discussed how the book could impact their profession and the children they serve every day.  Some of the teachers' groups really got into the discussions and really took the book to heart.  This was a pleasure to witness.

Some PLCs can be very literal and only discuss housekeeping issues. I never left those PLCs feeling refreshed or glad I was a teacher. These discussions embraced issues like "Dress Code - Bra Straps are Out!"  or  "Pieces of Garbage I've found in the Hallway."

I know there are some of my readers who really embrace the idea of deeper discussions with their PLCs.  Over the summer, I do a lot of reading on education and how to become a better teacher.  I take the idea of professional development very seriously.  I love the idea of getting together with other colleagues and discussing how we can improve ourselves.

I thought it would be fun to compile a list of articles and videos I think would be stimulating PLC topics.  The first would be "The Case of Summer Vacation" from Time.  I shared this with my Reading Concepts course at the ALC - I also notice that this is one article that Teacherscribe recommends too in one of today's post.

A good back to school topic would be this article Simple Two-question Can Help Identify Hungry Children  from Science Daily. 


Anything from Ted Talks is worth sharing...  I especially enjoy Sir Ken Robinson - which I have to admit Teacherscribe introduced to me last summer.  These two videos are especially worth viewing and discussing within a PLC...



and


Also, I believe there are a lot of good youtube videos that will spike educator's imagination - like these two boys from Fosston who organized their own school event surrounding Chuck Norris' 70th birthday.


Of course, there's the Gary Paulsen Video I've shared before to inspire teachers to remember how a book can save a child's life.

I bet there would be some lively discussion of Michelle Rhee in a PLC... And anything to do with Standardized testing...

I love the idea of an entire school reading Queen Bees and Wannabees by Rosiland Wiseman and watching her video about bullying.  Another good book on this topic is of course Barbara Coloroso's The Bully, The Bullied, and The Bystander.

Anyways... those are just some ideas. Of course, share more ideas with me - they are always worth reading and sharing again.