Leading From The Heart

by Tracy Rosen, teaching & consulting since 1996, blogging about it here since 2007. All views are my own and you should take them with a grain of salt, I do.

Author: Tracy Rosen

  • End of year – closure, time, plans.

    I forgot to have a good closure. Me, who knows of the importance of closure, forgot (me forgot? Whatever…).

    image from: Organizational Systems 2, acrStudio.com

    A group of kids didn’t come in on the last day and, of those who did, another group left after lunch. And a couple of them played a bit of a mean joke on me. But those who did stay were troupers – helping to move desks into the gym for the exam period, cleaning up the classroom, asking questions, displaying their concerns about next year.

    And I forgot to design closure into my year. I started to think about it, with this final blog post, but when our school’s Internet service decided not to cooperate, I ditched the thought.

    Rather than forgetting, I’m thinking I left out closure accidentally on purpose. I’m not entirely proud of this year. I definitely felt like I was treading water much of the year – reacting rather than planning and acting. With myself, my students, and the attendant who worked in my classroom with me. I don’t think I really wanted to hear what others felt about it.

    So, here is my closure. A plan for the future. I never want to feel like this again. That much I learned this year.

    Time is too precious to tread water for even a moment.

    Tracy, who is feeling the echo of the clock in the rhythm of her veins

    (‘who’ line borrowed from linkin park so I can howl with Jose, go check out his project by clicking on the link…)

  • Diagnosis=accommodations… hmmm… Amen of the Day goes to…Ira Socol

    image from dmote on flickr, inserted via scribefire

    The May 1st post on SpeEd Change begins in this way:

    Start here: If your school, university, business, government requires “proof of disability” – that is, diagnosis – before providing accommodations, it is discriminating, and it is not committed to social justice, not committed to equality of opportunity, not committed to the success of every student.

    It is as simple as that.

    I do not know of many, if any, schools that do not attach accommodations to diagnosis. Of course, I am thinking high schools. In Quebec.

    Do you?

    And what do you think of Ira’s statement?

  • Things to think on

    What am I thinking on tonight?

    thinking monkey

    image from: http://weblogs.asp.net/blogs/dotjosh/ThinkingMonkey.jpg

    Chris Lehmann’s post on students boycotting standardised exams: Reasonable Actions for Unreasonable Times

    and Whitney Hoffman‘s reflective question in response to the post:

    The real question is why we look at education as a content delivery system whose effectiveness can be tested by standardized six-sigma-esque methods, rather than as long term research and development of new citizens, who need to be informed, knowledge gathers and synthesizers.

    and the fact that many teachers I know are right now trying to figure out how to cram a whack of irrelevant data into their students, knowing full well that their students will not recall the info enough to pass the end of year evaluations. And they are stressed as all get out about it. What a way to end a year.

    I’ve got lots more to say about this, but right now I just can’t bring myself to say it. I’ve cited him before, but here I go again, KRS One says it well…

    You must learn…just like I told you…!

    Nothing else to say right now besides… bravo to the students and their Social Studies teacher of IS 318 in the Bronx. You make me happy to be a teacher today.

    I’m going to think on this one for a bit.

  • Invention at Play

    I discovered Adam Hunt via his comment on my latest LeaderTalk post. When I went to peruse his blog, I was met with his review of this great (fun) interactive game resource for the classroom (click the logo to go):

    I’m having fun and I’m going to test it out on my students next week.

    I also like the conversations on play that are available for viewing on the site, including transcripts. Here’s a quote from the site:

    “Children are making up theories of the world, going out and testing those theories, doing experiments to explore those theories, and that testing and experimentation is what we see when we see play. Even the very youngest children are already doing some of the same things that scientists are doing.”
    –Alison Gopnik, Ph.D., University of California at Berkeley, co-author, The Scientist in the Crib

    Here’s a direct link to the section of the site with the videos –> Does Play Matter?

    Do you play in your classroom?

  • Mr. Wasserman re-directs

    Thanks to Jose for pointing me towards Mr. Wasserman who I NEED to applaud for writing this:

    I don’t want this to be a complaining post. Nobody likes reading those, for starters, and May is such a great time of year to try to be happy. So instead, I’ve been thinking about things I can do which will raise my ability to respect myself as a teacher, which should translate into improvements, at least in my immediate sphere.

    I’m digging the way he re-focuses his malaise towards what we can do to create positive change. How many times have I heard complaints about how our students:

    • disrespect each other, their teachers, and everyone else
    • drop n bombs, f bombs (the ones about a certain physical activity AND sexual orientations), S bombs (in our school, these have to do with the students from the Kanhwake first nations’ reserve in the area)…
    • just don’t care

    It is rare that I see someone considering what to do as an alternative to complaining. Mr. Wasserman reflectively concludes:

    But I want to focus on giving my students only meaningful work to do, only things that have a clear value to them. the trick, I suppose, is to figure out what those things are.

    Yes, that is the trick. And I think it is really easy to do –> We need to spend more time talking with our students than at them. Well, at least the first part is easy. The second part is integrating what we find out with the curriculum we are teaching. I think that is what makes teaching an art.

    I’ll be heading back to read Mr. Wasserman again.
    Thanks Jose.