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.

Category: Classroom

  • Is ‘lecture’ a 4-letter word?

    I’m amazed at how my assumptions continue to be challenged by my daily practice.

    I clearly assume project-based work to be a richer form of learning than lecture for all kinds of reason – students need to collaborate and therefore work on social skills, students are asked to be creative, there is more depth than breadth in the learning, all students are actively learning rather than passively listening and taking notes…I could go on but you can fill in the rest yourself, I’m sure.

    Today I gave a lecture in Economics where I presented how we measure economic activity in Canada and different types of economies. I dread giving lectures. I assume that students will hate them, that they will zone out, that their time would better be used doing their own research. Today I encountered just the opposite. My students were actively engaged in their learning throughout my lecture. Really! They were calling me on everything, making sure I explained each concept until they got it, offering each other alternative explanations and examples to help in understanding. Granted, this was solely for the purpose of gathering knowledge, no analysis or synthesis or other creative activity was needed but I really believe that they are more prepared for such activities as a result of the class we had today.

    Lecture is not the 4-letter word I have come to equate it with.

    I like being thrown on my backside like that.

    props to my kids…

  • Student Poetry 2: ‘Center’ by Kait

    Impulse by Ellen Hopkins. My students and I are liking this one. Click to view source.
    Impulse by Ellen Hopkins. My students and I are liking this one. Click to view source.

    We’re reading Impulse by Ellen Hopkins, a novel written in free verse about 3 teenagers at a psychiatric hospital for trying to commit suicide.

    I asked my students to write some of their own poetry, as if they were there with them. Here is one that Kait recently sent me. She has agreed to let me post it here.

    center
    centered in feeling so unbelievable
    unbelievably small.
    so here i am
    here we all are
    wanting, hurting
    feeling..
    absolutely nothing
    here i am wanting to feel pain
    any, any, any sort of pain
    to make me feel here, alive
    here
    in the center
    getting centered in
    confined
    closing
    screaming
    just desperately wanting so much more.
    so much more then this, then ever
    confined in the center
    of a world that is filled with colors, emotions, feelings
    pain and hurts
    i see grey, i feel nothing, i am nothing
    and here you are
    here i am
    screaming loud and clear in this sound proof room
    here we are in the center
    centered in
    feeling all sorts of different kinds
    of nothing.

  • She’s Just Like You

    Insight from Alyssa, one of my grade 1o students, who has graciously granted me permission to include this here.

    She’s Just Like You

    We’re always going to have that one person, that we’re jealous of.
    Because, they’re prettier than us.
    They have more friends then us. Their parents let them drink.
    They’re dating the captain of the hockey team.
    She gets with every guy.

    But what you don’t know is,
    They’re pretty, cause they wear so much makeup. cause they’re scared without the makeup, they’re nothing but a face.
    They have more friends then us, but most of their friends talk behind their back,
    Their parents let them drink, cause they don’t care.
    They’re dating the captain of the hockey team, cause they need the security of being popular.
    She gets with every guy cause she needs to feel cared about.

    This girl that you’re so jealous of…
    is just like you.
    She’s scared of what people think of her,
    so she wears make-up to cover up the truth.
    She wants to be accepted,
    so she dates the captain of the hockey team,

    She has so much going on, on the inside,
    that she needs to make herself feel better by being perfect on the outside.
    but the inside, needs more repairs.

  • Antarctica goes North

    Feeling a bit like this today. There are times when I feel confident, that I understand a situation, and then there are times when something happens that makes me realize what I understood was not really true at all. Antarctica goes North.

    The rest of this post has been edited, on the advice of two educators I respect greatly. Thinking about it this morning, the morning after, I am deciding to take away some details, but leave the meat of what I am experiencing so that the record stands (about how I feel). I am not one to be silent about what matters to me, and nothing I write from here on need be censored after the fact. I will however, think carefully about how I write things. So, some self-censorship will be happening. This doesn’t sit very well with me. Not at all. But Michael and Ken are right, including these details could very well blur the issue and cause greater problems. They were written with anger and a little bit of spite. That doesn’t sit well with me either, so I need to make this right.

    So, how do I proceed. It is not like me to be much less than completely honest in my posts, baring all. How do I talk about my feelings of confusion and questioning regarding a recent experience without describing the experience? Another example of Antarctica moving North. Details are important for me, they make the bigger picture make sense. But let’s see if I can focus on the big picture here.

    I know that people are hurt. It is not a two-sided issue on that point, we are all feeling touched by a … disagreement that we are having. I feel shifted, where I once felt in congruence with my colleagues I now question that and I think that others are questioning it in themselves as well. It’s good to question things, but sometimes it takes longer to rebound when the questioning is so profound.

    It’s good that today is a PED day for us, that I can focus on marking – report cards are due tomorrow morning – and that I can think about my students because they, after all is said and done, are why I teach.

    Wait. After having just written that I realize I am wrong. I think that focusing too much on student-need and negating adult-need may be part of a bigger issue here. Teachers support students, many teachers will do almost anything to do so. But, in order to do so we need to work as a team, and we need to support the team and the individuals within it to keep things strong, so that we can support students in the best way possible.

    A keynote speaker at a conference I attended years ago talked about teacher care. How we need to take care of ourselves, we need to take care of each other. And only then can we take care of our students with integrity.

    I do know that this whole thing has given me a headache, is forcing me to redraw my map.

  • Cherishing the quiet moments

    A day with similar temperatures, about 2 years ago. It was frigid, as it is today. So cold smoke froze in the air. Click image for source.
    A day with similar temperatures, about 2 years ago. It was frigid, as it is today. So cold smoke froze in the air. Click image for source.

    When I went to bed last night it was -1 degree Celsius outside. This morning Montreal woke to a temperature of -23 with a wind chill factor of -36 and the news that it will stay that way, maybe even getting colder, until Monday. Cold as all get out.

    It wasn’t easy getting started this morning, but now I’m in my classroom alone at my desk with a warm cup of green tea steaming in front of me. My students are about to start a Science exam in another room – it’s needed to graduate and all of the kids have failed it at least once already, some up to 4 times. But I didn’t teach them Science this year, so their Science teacher is with them while I have a few precious hours to myself in my classroom. Wow. That hasn’t happened since … hmmm … last term maybe?

    So I am cherishing this time I have to clean my desk, organize my papers, and even update this blog during the day. Wow!

    I teach Grade 10 English and Grade 11 English, so I have two sets of different written productions to go through and assess. I also teach Grade 11 Student in Society and I have their end of term written reflections to read and assess.

    And of course, I need to prepare for the final History tutorial that will take place at 2:30 today because tomorrow morning Collin will have his precious classroom time while I invigilate a History exam that the students are all writing for at least the 2nd time, some for the 3rd, 4th, or more time. Not to mention begin preparing the Economics course that replaces the History course once the exam is written.

    Is it end of term for you as well? How is it going for you?