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: Teaching

  • Looking Back: Stop talking about classrooms that don’t work

    As part of my Looking Back series, the sentiments I articulated in this post from August 21st, 2010 are still very alive for me. There are classrooms that work, that work very well. Click on the title below to go to the original post with its comments.

    Here is an example of a ‘traditional’ classroom in Japan (scroll down to ‘Inspiration in a Japanese elementary school’). Can you imagine if these students did not have this place? What a shame that would be.

    —-

    Stop talking about classrooms that don’t work

    This morning I read a thoughtful post about what ADD may or may not be. Despite the timeliness and depth of thought present in the article, I was stricken by one paragraph about the perils of classrooms on our children. How our young children today, so rife with creative potential, are doomed to a future of diagnosis and boredom because they will be subjected to school.

    I was not only stricken but insulted.

    Does all of the work that I and many of my colleagues have done over the past years have no bearing on the future of education? Do all of those teachers out there in schools all over the world who care about their children not count?

    I feel we need to get beyond the system is broken kind of thinking and focus on what is working. We see what we look for and if we keep focusing on a broken system we will only succeed in creating more broken system.

    Instead of creating a doomsday effect by telling ominous stories of the proliferation of ‘traditional’ classrooms that stifle creativity and connectivity, I prefer to point towards learning that does the opposite, learning that works and educators who ‘get it’.

    George Couros
    Michael Doyle
    Lori Centerbar
    Kevin Hodgson
    Glenn Moses
    Linda Clinton
    Elona Hartjes
    Darren Kuropatwa
    Kelly Hines
    Karen S.
    Dea Conrad-Curry
    Zac Chase
    Angela Maiers
    Chris Lehmann
    Jose Vilson
    MRW
    Damian Bariexca
    J. M. Holland

    .
    .
    .

    You get the point. There are good educators who foster good learning in good classrooms in good schools. I keep this in mind as I work towards hope for the future within (and without) the walls of my own school.

  • Response to ‘British Educators Explain Why Boys Fail’

    When will the realization be made that it is not necessarily about different ways to teach different people?

    Umpteen years ago people felt that girls were getting a disservice so it was time to change how teachers taught girls.

    Now it is the boys who are getting shafted and it is time to change how teachers teach once again. And Education Week has made it all quite dramatic:

    Why boys fail

    Undoubtedly things will eventually tip the scales toward boy-teaching and girls will soon be failing once again. Or maybe boys schools are suffering from under-enrolment and this is a brilliant marketing campaign.

    Sigh…

    (I feel like a broken record lately)

    It is not this or that, it is both this and that.

    We can focus on an inclusive teaching philosophy that teaches everyone. We really can and it’s not rocket science.

    Let’s start with the same list I came up with when talking about how teaching kids with special needs was not rocket science, shall we?

    • Offer a variety of activities that use different modalities of learning
    • Provide scaffolding and support as needed
    • Provide a safe way for students to seek some down time when it is needed
    • Get to know my students’ likes and dislikes, interests and abilities
    • Talk with my students and their parents about their progress on an ongoing basis

    This just makes too much sense to me. I get irked that we are muddying the waters, looking for magic bullets when all we have to do is care more about our students as people.

  • Looking back: Attitudes toward teaching

    Another in my Looking Back series. With the ongoing and recent debates around teaching in the US, I thought it relevant. Please click the title below for a link to the comments on the original post. This one is from August 10, 2009

    Attitudes toward teaching

    Is there a big difference between public attitude towards teachers in the US and Canada?

    When people find out that I am a teacher I NEVER (and I am not a wanton all caps user) am made to feel like I have settled on teaching for lack of ability to do otherwise. Did I mention NEVER?

    On the contrary, people usually respond with cools and wows and I have great respect for you, it must be hard, how do you do it? They then follow with talk of their memories of school, the teacher who they’ll never forget, the cafeteria food – whatever. The point is that my job conjures up memory, stories – of hard times and good. The stuff that life is made of.

    Ken Dryden talks about our personal Board of Governors and who we would like on it. He reminds us that while few of us could name specific accountants or salespeople for it we could all think of teachers we’d like to sit on it.

    So I have a hard time understanding the article linked to by @AngelaMaiers today, called Schools Need Teachers Like Me. I Just Can’t Stay by Sarah Fine in The Washington Post, Sunday, August 9, 2009.

    Or at least parts of it.

    I can definitely understand teacher burn out. When you love teaching sometimes it’s hard to find the off switch. There’s always one more thing to do, to plan, to correct, to prepare, to present, to remind ourselves of, to talk to a student/colleague/parent/volunteer about. And that’s during the regular school year, figure in report card season and the things to do possibilities multiply exponentially.

    I can definitely understand that feeling of loss when you just can’t get to that one (or more) kid. No matter what you try, s/he will still give you the cold shoulder, still skip class, still (seemingly) not care about learning. Then I remember that this is learned behaviour. That the child must have experienced so much loss of her own that she can’t let anyone else in. And my feeling of loss grows.

    I can definitely understand the frustration of massive failure, when a large chunk of your group fails. Within a long history of failure, a few months with a new teacher will rarely be able to make the monumental difference needed to turn 30s to 70s – no matter how much we want it. Though it is sometimes possible with the proper structure and trust.

    Working towards that structure is what keeps me sane.

    But I don’t understand the lack of social recognition Sarah Fine writes about in fully one half of her article. Or, rather, the dismal recognition she describes it as having. She writes that teaching is considered as being for the unambitious and untalented, that people think it is a second class profession.

    Do I live in a bubble? Are people coddling me with cools and wows and then sneering once I leave the room – can you believe she’s a teacher? How gauche!

    I don’t think so. The reactions I get are honest and from the heart. People don’t share stories through whimsical smiles about things they think are second rate and undervalued.

    She does have it right though. Teaching is hard work, it is life work. I wouldn’t describe it as grueling and the fact that she does makes me think that Sarah Fine was just not meant to teach. My gut reaction? This article was an attempt at justifying that.

    Then I read the comments and there were quite a number that supported her views. As well as a number who felt like me, if you aren’t meant to teach don’t teach.

    But I recognize that I write this from a Canadian perspective. Which begs me to ask – are Canadian teachers more valued than our American colleagues? What is different here?

    3am sleepless update: Apparently Michael Doyle tried to reply to this post but he wasn’t able to post the comment. Lucky for us it made it to his own blog. Go read his take on the matter – as always, it points to truth for me. —> On Why Sarah Fine Left Teaching

  • Questions about tech and children

    I like to use technology in education. But that isn’t any different than how I like to use technology in other aspects of my life. It’s a part of my life – in the classroom and out of it – and it is there to enhance whatever it is I want to achieve. But I make that choice, whether to use it or not.

    The other day I was sitting in the waiting room at my chiropractor’s office, Dr. Paul Poirier at Earthway Family Chiropractic in Cornwall. As always, Jack was with me in his car seat. I was randomly flipping through a magazine and talking to a lovely lady sitting next to me when I noticed that Jack was craning his neck to see something. He was watching a slide show about back and foot problems that was showing on a tv in the waiting room. He’s 5 months old and I couldn’t break his gaze. Finally I got down right in front of him and showed him the magazine, which he did get very interested in, but it took a while to tear his attention away from the screen.

    When I was breastfeeding every 20 minutes or so for the first 3 months of his life I spent a lot of time ensconced on the couch watching movies (had no actual tv plan at the time) and playing around online (google search – is it normal for a 3 month old to want to eat every 20 minutes? Is green poop normal?…) on the iPad I won through Etsy last summer. Once in a while I’d show a slideshow of black and white images that he’d try to touch and I’d giggle as he changed the size or image or whatever as he accidentally interacted with the iPad screen.

    My son will obviously grow up with tech as a solid part of his life – it is a solid part of society and plays a large roll in his mother’s life. Even his father, self-proclaimed Luddite, just purchased a smart phone and is getting all geeky with his talk of megabytes and kilobytes per second and all.

    The thing is, I hated watching him stare at that tv screen in the waiting room. I could understand that the flashing screen with its bright colours was fun to look at but I hated how hard it was to break his gaze. And I hated how that gaze seemed so empty.

    The question is… (yes, finally getting to the point) … how do I (as a mother at home, as a teacher in the classroom) ensure that technology is used purposefully and not just something to stare at, to bemuse? I think the answer lies in modelling purposeful use of technology and sometimes the entertainment factor IS the purpose. But my mind keeps flipping back to his vacant gaze at that tv screen…

  • Looking back: Why do the very best teachers ignore/subvert curriculum?

    As some of you know, I’ve recently had to put my blog content back together from scratch. What a huge, painful job that was! At the same time, it allowed me to become reacquainted with some of my old content that I still find relevant. In looking back on it, I thought it could be interesting to repost some of it and see if it can start some new conversations.

    Here is one from not so long ago. Click on the title link to see the original post with its comments from Feb. 210, 2010 –>

    Title: Why do the very best teachers ignore/subvert curriculum?

    The very best teachers spend every day of their lives ignoring or subverting the curriculum

    Now, why is this? Why would people, including myself, think that the best teachers are the ones who ignore what many consider to be the main ‘stuff’ of teaching? My memories of my BEd program are filled with courses on curriculum. Maybe one on Quebec education law. One on learning disabilities. But the rest were courses on curriculum. How to create lesson plans based on curriculum, how to manage your time to make sure the curriculum gets covered – that sort of thing.

    Curriculum can not be the main stuff of teaching. It can’t. Do you hear me? It. Can’t.

    The main stuff of my job. Wait. I’m getting sick of using the word stuff. Let me be more specific. The main point, the essence, the reason for my teaching is the students I teach. I wouldn’t say I ignore curriculum. I know it’s there. And I use it as a starting point, at the beginning of the year when I don’t really know my students yet. And throughout the year as a background for our work together. But really, I do my best to fit what my students get excited about, what they ask to learn, into the curricular competencies. When it doesn’t work, well, students trump curriculum each time. Luckily I work in Quebec, which has a very student-centered education program with a multitude of competencies in many different areas. It makes it easier to subvert. Really. It also makes it easier to ignore at times. There is just too much to cover that we can focus on what is essential to student learning. As decided by us (our last PED day was around determining the essential features of the courses we teach).

    You know what? I think that by staying 100% true to curriculum we are actually ignoring our students.So subvert, ignore that which is on paper. But never those who are in front of you.