Holiday Fun

The day before Christmas Break this year I played Scrabble with all of my students. Last trimester I needed a buffer day between two units and I ended up teaching them how to play Scrabble. What I thought would be a super easy and fun day in my classroom turned into a day where I literally worked up a sweat trying to help all of them play. Having 6 different games happening at once was a little crazier than I planned. 

What I learned was that my students have very little experience playing board games. This shocked me because I grew up loving (and still do) board games. Every holiday I would force my family to play everything from cribbage to mouse trap. 

My hopes and dreams for this activity was for it to get better than the first time we played. We talk a lot about growth mindset and I told them prior to starting to play that we are just trying to be better Scrabble players, not expert Scrabble players. In order to assist my students, I shared a scrabble dictionary on their iPads that they could use to check if a word was a word while they were waiting for their turns. This led to some really awesome conversations about words and what they meant (it made my nerd heart very happy). 

I hope to someday be able to play Scrabble with my students without everyone googling words on their iPads. But I think that will take more practice. 

Active Encouragement

I have previously written about my newly found faith in Jesus Christ and the Christian religion and when I read the prompt for this assignment about something that has served as active encouragement for personal and/or professional growth, I couldn't help but to think about that as my catalyst. I have been impacted personally and professionally because of my faith. Personally, I spend a lot less time worrying and more time thanking God for what I have. I struggle with anxiety and since I have started attending church regularly the negative thoughts and feelings have really subsided. Professionally I have seen a change in myself in how I handle meetings and conflicts. I used to get really upset over little things and now I think I have a better understanding of what is in my control and what is not.

Everything really comes down to balance which is why I suspect we are reading this book. If the spiritual side of your life isn't in check it throws everything else off. When things are aligned EVERY part of your life is better.

Gratitude

To say I am full of gratitude to my 7th grade Language Arts Team is an understatement. These ladies teach me so much every single day. They also keep me grounded and help me process through everything from my feelings to dealing with tough students. Together we make up a powerful team that is 100% FTK. I think one of the reasons I am most grateful for them is that we are always pushing each other to be better.

Teachers work with our heads, heart, hands, and souls.

It’s interesting to think about the notion of working with my hands, head, heart, and soul. I think the most obvious one is working with my heart. It would be impossible to do what we do without using so much of our heart. For this year they are our children, we care for them as we would care for our own children. I think working with our soul relates really closely to working with our heart. We glow with pride when they do awesome things and our heart hurts when they are struggling. We carry them, and their successes and failures around with us.

The easiest way to explain how I work with my head is to explain that when I am teaching I am constantly evaluating how thing are going and making decisions based on the evaluations. I always have a plan, but that plan is constantly changing in my head as the lesson is going on.

Working with my hands is harder to explain. In middle school teachers don’t touch kids. But there are times when a kids needs a hug and you give a kid a hug and you can feel them just releasing all of their pent up tension and frustration.

Change as Collaborative Inquiry

1.     What information from the article did you connect with the most and why?

·       “Most approaches to systemic education reform are rooted in obsolete, top-down, or expert-driven management beliefs and practices that reflect either what we know about how people learn nor what we have to understand about how organizations change”. I read this and was just like wow… yes that is exactly how it is. I think a lot of time the people in education don’t have power to change things in education, rather it is people outside of the organization, with no prior teaching experience that are making the decisions that impact all of us.  

2.     Thinking of your own school community, what are the issues and concerns regarding school improvement? How are these addressed with the administration and staff? What can you and other staff members do to work towards a more collaborative constructivist approach towards improvement?

·       One of the biggest issues that we are working on for school improvement is to adjust our school schedule in a way that allows students to have both band/choir and a study hall. Currently, students who choose to take band and choir are taken out of study hall. We have many students leave band/choir because they want that homework time and it kind of undervalues how important we think music is. This issue was brought up by our SIT team (School Improvement Team). The SIT team is a volunteer committee made up of teachers and administrators that works to improve the school.

3.     How do you see the action research you do in your classroom supporting adaptation and process of change?

·       The action research project is all about adaptation and the process of change. It is looking at a problem, adapting your curriculum, and changing how my students are learning.

My motto - FTK

My motto in teaching is FTK (for the kids). I first heard Erin Thompson use this phrase in a meeting when she was trying to convince our very stubborn 7th grade staff to plan something special for the last day of school instead of going on our usual field trip to como zoo. She said "come on you guys I know the last day olympics would be more work... but it's for the kids". Since then, it is really something that has stuck for many of the young teachers in the building. The reason I use it so frequently is because kids are at the center of why I teach. I didn't become a middle school english teacher because I am super passionate about reading and writing. I am super passionate about kids! And giving them the skills to read and write well in our literate world.

We use this phrase as a way to call each other out when we are getting burned out or thinking about making decisions. Everything we do should be FTK and if it's not... whats the point?

Radical LEAP

When I was thinking about the qualities of LEAP the one that I personally think is the most important is to cultivate love. When I was reflecting on a leader that radiates love the person that kept popping into my head was Rita. Several times a year our school admin team plays us the same video of Rita Pierson talking about how kids need a champion. If you haven't seen it - here's a link! She really embraces this idea that all you have to do is love kids.

Unorthodox Teaching

The name of the best teacher I ever had was Mr. Bellat. He was a grade 9-12 math teacher at Apollo High School in St. Cloud, MN.

The most unorthodox behavior that made Mr. Bellat stand out was how he structured his class to differentiate for different needs. I hate math. It is just something that I have never been good at. Mr. Bellat structured his class like this: the first 15 minutes was a lesson for the entire class. He then gave us the homework and gave students the option to stay for the rest of class if they needed more help or they could leave and go do the homework on their own in the commons or library. Most of the students would choose to leave and there would be about 10 students left in the room. He would then really slow down and reteach the lesson for us and give us time to work on the homework with his help. He also would come into school early or stay late if you needed help. I don't think I ever saw him in his room without at least a couple of students trying to learn math, even on his prep. Mr. Bellat made me feel success in math for the first time in my life. I would do the extra lessons and ask questions and I would ace all of my math tests.

I would guess Mr. Bellat had the strength of a developer. He really did believe that every student could be successful in his classroom and not only did he believe it... he did whatever he needed to do to make sure that the students felt that success. When I see a student struggling to learn something in my classroom I think about how Mr. Bellat would have moved mountains for that student and I try to do the same.

Summer Stretch

I have so many thoughts and feelings around my summer stretch that it is hard to put everything into words. It's also a long story so I apologize about the long post.

I grew up in a Godless family. We never spoke about God or about religion or church it just wasn't something that my family did. I, as a learner, question everything and have always been curious about church and God but my social anxiety has really kept me out of that world. As someone who struggles with social anxiety walking into a place where I don't know anyone or know the norms and expectations causes me a lot of stress so even though I was curious I could never get myself to walk into a church. Fast forward to this year April, the social studies teacher on my team, Paul Johnson, walked into my classroom and invited me to the Easter service at his church. His two children, Dakota and Preston, where doing a cardboard testimonial and he looked me right in the face and said "I'd really like if you could be there". Now I was caught in the middle of being so nervous about entering a church for the first time and not wanting to be rude. He invited me and it would be rude not to show up, especially because I didn't have anything going that day. I drove to the church that day and I was thinking "okay I will just drive there and if I don't want to go in I can just leave". As I pulled in the parking lot there were people everywhere and I went to full on panic mode. I texted Erin as I was having this panic attack about not being able to get out of my car and she calmed me down, as she always does, and I got out of the car and walked into church for the first time. Had it not been for the parking lot attendants (I didn't want to leave, because they would judge me) and had it not been for Erin talking me through my panic attack... I would have never walked in the door. When I arrived to said door, Paul and his family were greeting and I could tell that it meant a lot to him that I was there. I selected a chair, in the back row near the door (incase I needed to run out of there) and sat down. The service started and there was a band and everyone started singing and worshipping with the band. I stood and observed and watched everyone singing. The message was heavy about Sin and forgiveness and how Jesus died for all of us. Then the cardboard testimonials happened where several members of the church got up and had their stories written on pieces of cardboard. There was no talking and many of these stories were heavy and I cried with these people. At the end of the service, the Pastor asked us all to bow our heads and in this prayer it was when I said my own personal yes to accept Jesus Christ as my savior. At the end of the service I went to the Pastor and shyly asked if he could lend me a Bible. He gave me a Bible and reading plan and as I walked out of the church that day I have never felt so free. All of the weight of my guilt, sin, and shame that I had unknowingly been carrying around left my shoulders as I walked out of the door that day.

My summer stretch is going to Church every Sunday, being involved with my small group, volunteering, and reading my Bible. Church is really hard for an introvert like me. There is a lot of touching and hugging and socializing with strangers which are all things I personally don't like. But each week as I continue to go to church and travel farther on my walk with Jesus I can feel my walls coming down... I can feel my anxiety getting smaller and it is the most amazing thing that has ever happened to me.