Most days my job fills my soul; I laugh until I cry and the hours between 8 and 4 disappear faster than a box of Little Debbies left on my kitchen counter.
Some days my job stabs my soul; I want to cry until I can fix all the ugliness in my students’ lives and it breaks me that I can’t.
One of these days happened last week. As I do just about every day, I got a new student who had just started as a patient in the Child and Adolescent Partial Hospitalization Program. Like all of my kids, all I knew about him when he walked in my classroom was his name and age.
He was one of those people that instantly captures a piece of you soul without even trying. His sweet, kind personality immediately swooped in and took hold of my heart.
As with all my new kiddos, I invited him to fill out his choice of getting-to-know-you sheets. This is what he wrote:
No family. No friends. I immediately wanted to go home and make him mashed potatoes and gravy. Instead, we found some math that was a good fit for him and we visited while he worked. When he finished his math, he asked if he could spell words using the magnets on the filing cabinet. Of course you can! He asked for spelling help, and when he was done he stepped to the side so I could read what he wrote:
This sweet boy, who doesn’t even have most of the people or things I take for granted, has a better outlook on life than I do many days.
I grumble about a messy house left in the wake of my boys. I complain that I’m tired and don’t want to do all these dishes or that pile of laundry. But those things are only present because of the family I get to come home to everyday. I’ve seen signs that say, “Bless this mess.” I need one that says, “Blessed by this mess.”
Looking forward, my goal is to reframe the lens through which I see “my messy house” and focus on the family I love so dearly. They may be dirty, sloppy boys, but they are MY dirty, sloppy boys. They make my dreams come true and I am beyond thankful for them everyday.
I’m still brainstorming a legitimate reason to explain how I can bring mashed potatoes and gravy to school tomorrow. Let me know if you have any ideas.
I finally finished my new bulletin board today and I’m so excited to share it with you!
I like my bulletin boards to do more than just look pretty. My goal with this one was to make an interactive board that would be fun for my students to use when they needed a break from their schoolwork but would still involve using some thinking skills. I also wanted something that kids of all ages could enjoy. And, yeah…I wanted it to look good, too.
My classroom is decorated and labeled in dots and I wanted to play off that theme. What has dots? A Twister board! I was going to make a homemade board with a white flat twin size sheet and laminated paper circles but happened to find a Twister game at the thrift store for $1.00! I stapled the mat to the board and used border from Dollar Tree to pretty up the edges.
Next, I wanted to turn each dot on the Twister mat into an activity. I decided to choose one type of activity for each of the dot colors. Red dots became Scattergories boards, blue dots turned into Logic Puzzles, green dots became Sudoku, and yellow dots turned into Boggle boards. After I cut out paper circles in matching colors to be just a tiny bit bigger than the Twister board dots, I printed the games, cut them out, glued them on the paper circles, and laminated them. After cutting off the extra lamination, I used self-stick Velcro dots to attach them to the Twister board. I also added letters to the board so it reads Brain Twister.
I then grabbed folders that matched the dot colors and filled them with directions, response sheets, answer-check sheets, and anything else that would be needed to play. I used scrapbook paper (cut to 8.5” x 11” so it would fit in my laminator) and my letter cut-out tool (I got it for like $4.00 on Zulily and it’s awesome) to make “pockets” that were stapled to the board after laminating to hold the folders.
I am so happy with how it turned out and I’m super excited to introduce it to students tomorrow!
Do you make interactive bulletin boards? I would love to hear your ideas!
When I get a new student in my class, I give them a slip of paper that says, “What I Want My Teacher to Know.” I explain that it’s totally optional, but if they choose they can tell me a preferred name, preferred pronouns, how they learn best, a fun fact about them…anything!
I’ve been trying very hard to remember and respect preferred names and pronouns, and I tell them if I mess up they can absolutely correct me. The relief that some of them express to me because of this is palpable. They feel valued for who they are as individual, unique human beings…as they should feel.
I agree with the school district’s decision to suspend him. But, not everyone agrees with me…especially the teacher who got suspended.
The president of Alliance Defending Freedom, Michael Farris, the organization defending the teacher in court, said, “Educators are just like everybody else—they have ideas and opinions that they should be free to express.”
Sounds nice on the surface, but let’s dive a little deeper.
My statement when kids ask about my political beliefs is, “It’s not my job to teach you WHAT to think; it’s my job to teach you HOW to think.” Let’s say that wasn’t my stance and I shared with students that my opinion about Donald Trump is that he is a racist, misogynistic liar, rapist, and cheat who should spend the rest of his days in a dank, moldy cell. I’m pretty sure the Alliance Defending Freedom would NOT be lining up to say my ideas and opinions should be free to express to students in school.
And they would be right—I shouldn’t say that in school. I would never say that to students. When you are a teacher, It’s. Not. About. You.
So back to our teacher colleague who refuses to address students by their preferred pronouns (and I’m also inferring preferred names even though it isn’t explicitly stated). I have a few problems with his stance.
First problem: the teacher himself uses a preferred name. He does not go by his given name of “Byron;” he goes by “Tanner.” Umm, hello, irony? Hypocrite? Double standard? Grr (insert eye roll here).
Second problem: It’s. Not. About. Him. When you step into a classroom—especially a public school classroom—you are there for any and every kid who walks through your door. It doesn’t matter what country they’re from, what language they speak, what religion they are, what disability they have, who their parents are, what gender they identify with, or if they live in a million dollar mansion or public housing. It is 100% about what is best for that child. Full stop.
Third and fourth problems: It’s not about his religion. Yes, he retains his freedom of religion in his classroom but he does NOT have the right to inflict that belief on others. It also has nothing to do with freedom of speech. A teacher can’t say anything they want in their classroom with no chance of consequences. I can’t teach that the earth is flat or that calculus is derived from Satan (even though it seems like it could be). If my religion says the earth is 6,000 years old, can I as a science teacher inform my students of that instead of what science has agreed upon? I really hope not.
No, the earth is not only 6,000 years old. Source: this dinosaur.
Fifth problem: Why is it okay to teach students that respecting them is optional, but respect for teachers is demanded from students? Because adults are…older? That seems weird. The reason I think I’m able to have such good relationships with my students is that I respect them as individuals and don’t see them as “just a bunch of kids.”
Did the teacher feel his beliefs were not being respected? Probably. I wonder how his students felt. Probably the same—not very respected. We have to remember the most important people in our classrooms are our students, and they deserve our respect. If you aren’t willing to love every kid who walks through your door—the smelly kid, the loud kid, the gifted kid, the refugee kid, the star athlete, the chess prodigy, and the trans kid—please find somewhere other than a classroom to spend your days. Our students do not deserve judgement from us. They deserve the best from us.
One of the best things about being a teacher is getting to have fun at work every single day. I have never understood uptight, grumpy, inflexible adults who continue to be teachers. Why would anyone want to spend their days like that, and why would you subject children to your bad attitude? I really don’t get it. Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk. Anyhoo, no matter if my setting is a school or a hospital, I like to try to make our space as close to a “regular” classroom as I possibly can. And I believe that all classrooms should have fun in them!
So for the days before Thanksgiving break, we had a Thanksgiving Throwdown in our classroom. I had morning classes (teens) versus afternoon classes (the “littles”–kids 5-13). Whichever group had the highest average of students completing their exit tickets and staying on task until clean up time was the winner and got candy the next day. The kids enjoyed it, and so did the hospital staff! Oftentimes I would find nurses looking over the stats or overhear conversations in the hallway about “Our kids need to do their exit tickets today!” It was great.
The day we returned from Thanksgiving break I was taking down the sheets from my door and a hospital staff co-worker came by genuinely sad, asking if we were going to keep doing it. Well, yeah, of course we can! So the next day I introduced our Snowball Fight! The concept is pretty much the same. Whichever group has the highest percentage of students completing exit tickets wins a snowball. The same goes for the highest percentage of students on task until clean up time and the highest average on the behavior scale. Ties mean each group gets a snowball, so each group can get up to three snowballs every day. Our current prize is three snowballs equals candy for your group. I had thought about doing a bigger prize at the end of month before break, but since I won’t have the same kids then, I didn’t think that would be fair, so for now I’m sticking to candy, but if anyone has other ideas, please leave a comment and let me know!
Do you use contests in your classroom? What do you do? I’d love to hear about them!
In my last post about exit tickets, I mentioned that I have my students self-assess their behavior at the end of their one-hour-long class session. To do this, I have developed a four point scale based on Marzano’s model. Again, I needed something that I could use consistently across all my classes which include students in kindergarten through twelfth grade and with a wide variety of educational needs. The current version I’m using is shown in the picture below.
On our scale, four is the highest and one is the lowest. Anytime we use a four point scale, the goal should be for students to earn a three. In my setting, that means the student attended class, worked on their assignments, and was generally respectful to those around them. Students who are having a rough day and unable to really focus on their work can still earn a three. If they let me know what’s up, we work together to make a plan for the class period–which looks different each time. Sometimes it’s drawing; sometimes it’s writing; and sometimes they need to just focus on something different for a while so we’ll grab some puzzles, word searches, or sudoku. I even had one student ask if he could do 83 push-ups! Sure you can! Me? Not so much!
A four is earned when behavior is even better than expected; maybe the student was especially helpful to a peer or persevered through something that was really tough. Just today I had a student earn a four. She had never before used long division to divide polynomials so I showed her how to do it and she worked super hard all hour (I even forgot to dismiss class because we were so into it!). She thought it was really hard, but she stuck to it, kept working through it, and ended up doing a great job.
A two means you had an okay day: not great but not terrible. Maybe the student was on websites that are not allowed and chose not to stay off them after being redirected. Maybe we said a bunch of not-so-nice things to our peers. Maybe we decided to throw fidgets at the ceiling after Melissa told us sixteen times not to…(that would never happen, right?).
A one means things were not good…in a pretty big way. I’ve only given out maybe three or four of these all year so far. This looks like throwing chairs, ripping things off the walls, punching someone…basically, there is a path of destruction somewhere. A one also means I need to review the day and see if I can make any changes that will help tomorrow go better for that student. Behavior is communication–what was that student trying to tell me?
I purposefully designed each of the spots on the scale to use mostly the same wording. This allows students to know what behavior expectations are important and they don’t have to remember different standards when reflecting on their own behavior when earning a two instead of a three, for example. I also added the smiley faces to help guide my students who aren’t readers yet.
I love using four point scales in my classroom! I think they work exceptionally well for measuring behavior in a way that teaches students that perfection is not expected and each day is a new day. If you use any, I’d love for you to post a picture!
