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: Pedagogy

  • How do you still love teaching?

    because there is always light over the horizon, even when the river seems frozen. Image by me, available on flickr. Click to view source.
    because there is always light over the horizon, even when the river seems frozen. Image by me, available on flickr. Click to view source.

    Yesterday a friend and I had an email conversation on facebook. She has given me permission to reproduce it here.

    friend: how do you still love teaching?
    I’m in another tough school, and am starting to wonder if kids are just “like this” everywhere. i know they have issues, but they are incredibly rude, apathetic, and just MEAN to each other. the admin chatted with me today and basically told me to forget the curriculum, and as long as they’re not beating down the walls, it’s ok. wtf?

    Ii don’t know how to ‘grab’ them. I’m teaching 7 language arts, and 7,8,9 PDR (personal development and relationships), which they don’t have to pass, and they know that, so they don’t care.
    any ideas? or just hope in general ;)

    me: give them a reason to not be mean.
    give them some hope.

    Maybe you do need to forget the curriculum for a bit, to get them caring again. But not for too long. They reach for the bar we have for them. If it is low, their reach is low as well.

    Practical ideas? Hmmm…start by identifying the ONE major disrupt – the one kid who, if he/she isn’t there the class is a bit smoother. And spend time with him. Find out what he/she needs to keep occupied in class.

    The one big idea I learned from Cliff [former principal of a school we worked at together about 4 years ago] – occupy them or they will occupy you.

    What helps me sometimes is writing about it – a blog is great because you can get some feedback with the comments.

    Let me know how things go :)
    I still love teaching because of the challenge :) Beause there is no better place to learn about human relationship…

    friend: UUUUUUURRRRRRRRGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
    These are all the things that I know, but I don’t know how to do it.
    I hate spending all my time planning and trying to come up with ideas that don’t work. I want to make things relevant, I want them to care, I want it to be safe, I want it to be FUN. I don’t know how to put all of that together into something that doesn’t look like chaos.

    I guess I have to remember too, that this is my first time in a junior high classroom in a public school. I shouldn’t be so hard on myself. But I’m exhausted and so, so, so frustrated already. So many people are trying to help me with the ‘what to do’ – the things that i already know – but not the ‘how to do’ – which is what i need. Actually, I shouldn’t say that. There are good ideas floating around, I just need some more time to figure out how to implement them. maybe i just need to accept that this is going to be a rough year, and the next one will be a little bit easier.
    Maybe a blog is a good idea….
    Thanks :)

    me: wordpress.com – don’t go with edublogs.org…very inconsistent!

     

    Are you able to go visit other classrooms? Sometimes an hour in someone else’s classroom makes all the difference.

    Setting Limits in the Classroom – a GREAT book for management.

    All kids, but more so for middle school kids, need loads of structure to feel safe and to be able to be productive. Make sure they know what is ahead for them. When they walk into the room, be at the door, handing out a mini-assignment to do right away. Then have the agenda on the board for them to see.

    Blog blog blog about what works, what doesn’t. Visit my blogroll to see other bloggers/teachers who are doing great things.

    In particular I want to teach forever, so you want to teach, teachers at risk, The Jose Vilson, dy/dan, Science Teacher, TeachingTips.com ..oh, they’re all good…

    friend: I will look at that again… the mini assignment at the door is a good idea. I’ve been doing the agenda on the board – most of them notice it ;)
    I’m spending all my preps this week in other classes – I know most teachers are having the same problems as I am -if nothing else, maybe the visits will help me not to be so hard on myself.
    it’s fine if you blog about our chat – and jacq is over 40 as well ;) [in reference to my comment to her friend Jacq’s comment on her wall about 42 being THAT old ;)]

    So everyone, I promised that my blogroll rocked. Prove it …

    a) Can you give and/or point my friend and any others toward advice when it comes to the reality of teaching in a class like this? In particular practical, tangible advice that she can use in her classroom?
    b) How do you still love teaching when it can be SO hard and disheartening at times?

    Because there is always light over the horizon…even when the ground seems frozen.

  • Learning from my students as I rise

    Listen to a podcast about this post here [audio: learningfrommystudents.mp3]

     

    image from maniobras de escapismo by Ma Vera on Flickr
    image from maniobras de escapismo by Ma Vera on Flickr

     

    My students inspire me

    “I have learned more math this week than I have so far in all my years of high school.”

    “Today I don’t feel complete. I did not get to the gym yesterday because I was working on homework and I didn’t finish the homework because I didn’t get some of it. So I’m not feeling complete.”

    “I’m weird. I get the math when it is in a word problem, but not when it is written as straight math.”

    “Today I am tired. I had another fight with my mother last night and didn’t get to bed until late. Tonight I am going to party.”

    Why?

    Because I learned that even though the math scares me a bit, I can teach it. And I think that is because I teach my children first and then the math. I also learned that we do such a disservice to students when we stay focused on basic skills rather than going on to learning that requires higher-order thinking skills. If she had not told me that she was ‘weird’ I may have made her do more of that ‘straight math’ instead of letting her think. I wonder how many other ‘weird’ students are out there. I learned where my students are coming from when they put their heads down during study hall, the last 45 minutes of the day, instead of reading a short story or trying to figure out the equivalent resistance of whatever.

    and I learned this:

    To you, 17-year old Cody

    Each morning we check in
    in a circle we sit
    we shoot the shit
    we state where we are at
    so we can clear the path to where we are going
    so we can clear the path to the part of our journey that will take place today.

    “I feel tired”
    “I feel happy”
    “I did not finish my homework”

    On Thursday morning you, 17-year old Cody, said
    Today I do not feel complete.

    and you went on to say why.

    all eloquent and concise.

    And I learn that it is not my job to make
    you feel complete.

    I think to myself of what stops me from feeling complete – of my boundaries, my hard lines, my fears.

    No, it is not my job to make you feel complete. It is my job to learn from you how to rearrange my own boundaries, reorganize my own hard lines into rungs as I rise to my own completeness.

    And that is why I say to you, 17-year old Cody, thank you.
    Tracy, Sept. 13/08

     

    Everyday Real (moment of truth 2008) [audio: http://www.tracyrosen.com/leadingfromtheheart.org/wp-content/uploads/podcasts/everydayrealmomentoftruth2008.mp3]
    From The Pull Forward EP Vol.2 by Scholarman, available for free download here

  • Pick it up

    I’m sitting outside, barely able to see this laptop screen because of the bright and the sun, eating watermelon and sourdough bread, leftover from last night’s evening with friends, and listening to music. Words and phrases jump out at me when they can, behind the keening of the cicada on the tree, and confirm why I do what I do and how I feel at this time of year.

    Time to move on build the skills Time to elevate and never stand still Time to excel with no time to kill Time for progress it’s time to build – (The Herbaliser, Time 2 Build)

    Get up! What we slowin down for? Pick it up, pick it up, pick it up, pick it up, pick it up! We got a whole nation to restore Pick it up, pick it up, pick it up, pick it up, pick it up! We gotta really love each other more (KRS-One Pick It Up)

    So this is it. The last Sunday before 4 PED days, the 2nd to last Sunday before kids. Back in June I reflected (or (p)reflected as I like to call it ;) ) a bit about the year to come. I’m excited that I was offered the position I wanted, as a teacher in the alternative program at HSB called Directions (I spoke a bit about that here.) I am a grade 11 core teacher. I found out on Wednesday what that means: I will be teaching English, Math (not sure yet if that is grade 11 math OR Grade 10 math or both), Grade 10 repeater science, Economics, Ethics and Religious culture, and possibly civics. All of that layered within social skills and personal development curricula. Luckily I’ll be working with a tight teaching team – 3 teachers and a special ed technician – in a wing of the school that is quite separate from everything else. As are the students – they wear a uniform (their decision, no one else at the school does – outside of the jeans that don’t cover their butts and the caps that inspire teachers to mutter, mid-sentence, caps please, as they walk down the halls) and they are not allowed in the regular school environment. These are students with troubles, and the idea is to keep them away from the environment where much of that trouble has played out in the past. I am psyched about working in this community. I’m also a bit wary of the challenges that I know are to come when working with needy students and teaching subjects I have never taught before. I can’t say I am not, but like everything else – if it needs to get done it needs to get done and it does.

    “…the only way to get a thing done is to start to do it, then keep on doing it, and finally you’ll finish it,….” Langston Hughes

    I always find this time of year…ambiguous and full of possibility. Logically, I know the courses I will be teaching, but in my heart, until I know my students, I don’t. So 10 more days of ambiguity…and then it’ll be time to pick it up for real.

    …home page image for this post was found here…

  • Why I don’t do zeros.

    Listen to these ideas. (Go here to see a mindmap of this podcast and links to resources I refer to in it or just keep reading normally. Whatever turns your crank.)
    [haiku url=”http://www.tracyrosen.com/leadingfromtheheart.org/wp-content/uploads/podcasts/assessmentAug9.mp3″ title=”Why I don’t do zeros”]

     

    report card

    Image: from Not So Good by zephyrbunny, found on flickr and made available through a creative commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike license

    It’s Saturday morning, a little over 2 weeks until the school year starts again for teachers at the New Frontiers School Board, where I work. My mind lately, as it usually does around this time of the summer, has been shifting from summer to practice, and this morning it opened up to assessment. Here’s the flow chart of how it hit this groove:

    Saturday Morning FlowChartMind Map made with Bubbl.us

    And here is that comment I made over on Hugh O’Donnell’s post (which you better go over and read if you want any context):

    That’s right, not radical at all. We do NOT need to give zeros and, I’m sorry, but the excuse that we’ve got so many initiatives thrown at us warrants the practice? (the practice = completely demoralizing children and doing nothing to help improve their learning) Come on. A zero as feedback gives me no hope.

    I really began to learn the art of assessment about 5 years ago, when I met Ken O’Connor at a conference in Ottawa. And then I started to read everything I could about it, which I’m still in the middle of doing ;)

    So I guess I’m one of those teachers who read. And you know what I do when I am reading? I do it publicly – I carry the book around with me, I talk to others about what I am reading and about how, if at all, it is helping to change my practice.

    So it DOESN’T need to be top down. If we sit around waiting for someone else to do something, well…wouldn’t it be lovely for there to be the perfect piece of grading policy to fall from above that all teachers would embrace and follow. (where’s the smiley guy for sarcasm?) Un-unh. I’m not waiting for policy to inform my practice. I prefer to focus on my practice and allow it to inform policy.

    I googled Ken O’Connor and found this. An administrator’s notes from one of his sessions from last year. I particularly like the list at the end – repair kit for grading.
    http://carnets.opossum.ca/roberto/2007/10/ken_oconnor_excellentevidemmen.html

    he he – first comment of the weekend. Guess the coffee is kicking in ;)

    (and that’s the edited version…)

    Assessment informs learning. I assess before, during, and after units of study so that my students and I know where they stand with the learning that is going on. If a student is NOT meeting the expectations for ANY reason – be it ability, interest, learning style, or socio/emotional issue – it us up to me to address it and assessment is data that shows me if how I am addressing it works. Evaluation is when I look critically at all of the data that I’ve culled from assessment, and reporting is how I share that with parents.

    So…I don’t do zeros because of my professional ethics, which are closely tied to my core values:

    • always hold on to hope for the future –> a zero in no way informs a learner of anything to do with potential for learning and change and can completely destroy any possible hope that was there.
    • always teach with integrity –> giving a zero undermines my integrity as a teacher.
    • always maintain the utmost respect for my students and their families –> a zero indicates to me that no communication has been made between me and my students/families about progress and how to fix things.

    Very often a zero is tied to behaviour. It is a punishment for skipping class, not studying, acting jerky or disrespectful, whatever. When these things happen to me (and they do) I focus on why this is happening instead of trying to punish it. It makes more sense for me.

     

    ———————–
    Podcast Map, made with Labyrinth.

    Podcast Links

    Scroll back up to keep reading or stay here to look at the map and play with the links to anchor you while you listen.
    —————————-

  • Perpetuating the Story of Difference? or Literacy, revisited.

    Literacy is a topic close to my heart.

    I became a teacher 12 years ago because I felt a call to do whatever possible to make sure that all children knew how to read. Since then, the theme has deepened for me, coming to mean much more than just knowing how to read.

    Dennis and I recently hashed out our working understanding of literacy in Boy in the Bubble revisited and in Literacies – digital and otherwise…or not. Christopher has explored the historical roots of education and literacy and we discussed what this might mean in a contemporary context in Digitality or Why ‘Literacy’ is Dead and again in Literacies – digital and otherwise…or not, referenced above.

    I am coming to know literacy as being able to use cultural tools to make sense of the world we live in.

    When I couple that with my understanding of experience and story – see Who are teachers? and my comment to SASSY reviews CNN’s Black in America: Black Men – I need to respect that there are many ways to do this, to make sense of the world we live in – to make sense of me in the world I live in relation to you and you in the world you and you live.

    And so I am unsettled this morning as I reflect on how we – those of us who champion educational technology – think about, blog about, talk about, present about, attempt to persuade about, make assumptions about sense-making in our world.

    This unsettled feeling has been creeping up on me, hanging out in my shadows. It stepped out of them for a moment this morning as I read Doug Belshaw’s EdD Thesis Proposal, in particular his equation of literacy in the 21st century with digital literacy. I commented (or at least I tried to, until edublogs’ server dropped the connection to the site … once again…):

    Yup, still unsettled by the equation
    literate in the 21st century = digitally literate

    I think it is part of the equation, one of the ways to get there, but the sole definition of contemporary literacy?

    Certainly excludes people without much access to digital media. Is there a danger of creating an even larger illiterate world by virtue of this definition?

    I’m curious as to how you will explore this.

    And I still ask the question – are we creating an even larger divide between peoples and cultures with different access to media when we make statements like:

    “Literacy today depends on understanding the multiple media that make up our high-tech reality and developing the skills to use them effectively” (from Connecting the Digital Dots: Literacy of the 21st Century (2006) by Barbara R. Jones-Kavalier and Suzanne L. Flannigan)?

    Can we really say that literacy depends on that? To rephrase using somewhat out-of-date terminology, by doing so are we creating an even larger divide between the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd worlds? And what about between the different socio-economic situations within our own countries?

    Are we honouring different stories and experiences by limiting our definition of literacy to digital, or at the very least by claiming it to be the most relevant?

    Are we making the differences even more apparant?
    Are we making the differences even more apparent? (UNHD 07/08 World Literacy Map)

    I have a lot of questions.

    I feel unsettled.