Running on Empty

I hadn't written for about two months when I wrote my first post a week ago. Sometimes life gets in the way. We get a lot of things going in life and things we want to do get pushed out of the way. It happens to everyone. We get a new project that takes longer or more involved than we planned. In the game of life we have these emotional times in our lives when we just get overloaded. Sometimes it's a family problem or just a feeling there is too much on our plates. We just need to buckle up and proceed with caution. A few things I have learned over the years in these situations have helped me keep me moving and in control.

1. Family needs to come before everything. No matter what happens and how involved we get into our work or whatever situation we are in, we need to remember that our family keeps us grounded. Spending more time talking and doing things with the family will help keep them close. The first response is to push others away, especially those we are with all the time. Bringing them closer helps not only us, but them. When we have a problem and we stay close to them they feel that family can help them when something crazy is going on in their lives.

2. Rely on those we work with. Having a great team around us will help in times when we need to pull back a little. They will feel it and will put in the extra time because we all have those times when we need to concentrate somewhere else. Having a great team also means that we have worked our plans in the beginning so it is easy to plan each week within the overall plan we put together. 

3. Remember to take a little time with ourselves. Take a few minutes here and there to rethink what is happening and clear up any thoughts. I usually take a few minutes in my classroom after school or a few minutes at night when the kids are in bed.  A few minutes with my guitar or some soothing music will do it also.

4. Be nice to those around us. This is the hardest thing to do when we are overloaded. The problem is that no one else thinks about us being overloaded. They have those same feeling and we can't expect them to pity us as we work things out. Life goes on. Kids still need to learn, we still need to teach, and we need to be nice.

5. Last but not least is talking to someone about what is happening. Letting our spouse or team or close confidant will help us keep in perspective. We don't always need a problem solver, we just need to talk. Writing a journal of feelings and thoughts helps also. 

I read about all the things we need to do to keep us going. There are so many things pressing on us these days that we feel overloaded once in a while. The key is to not let it run our lives. Let it pass through our lives And go on to something else. This too shall pass. It really will. 

Building Teamwork with the Home

It is two weeks into school. The questions are burning in parents minds about why we do the things we do and I am sure there at a few that are ready to sit down and find out exactly what we expect. It is Student Education Plan time. One thing my team has bought into is transparency. We want the parents and students to know and see everything what we are doing. No hiding, no surprises, no tricks, just transparency.

Getting to meet parents and see what we can do as a team helps the students do the best they can. We try to give the parents some background on our philosophies to help them understand why we do the things we do. We also invite them into our classrooms to help or to just watch.

Parents are a big part of our year. We want them to be more than someone we send not to every once in a while. Invite them to everything we do. We try to set up days for them to see projects their child has worked on. We have grade level activities each Friday that parents are invited to watch.

By doing these things we hope to instill in our students and parents that everyone is a part of education. Students need to own their education and the information they a receiving. This will help them as they prepare for their journey into the workforce. As they own their education they can find that they can research what they want to do or build something to sell to others. They can take their lives into their hands and make it what they want. They will own their lives and not expect others to hand them homework to do, they will create their own homework by wanting to learn. By inviting parents into our classrooms and meeting with them every few months, we hope to invite them to be part of our plan. By having home and school work together, our students will take the world and make it their own.

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Maybe Next Year We'll Do It

Here is a list of things we thought about this year, but didn't quite get to. Included is also a list new ideas we came up with.

1. Identity Day-have each student teach something about themselves. A report about one thing that makes them, them.
2. Spelling Tests on Google Docs - in fact we can do most of our tests on google docs and that will save a lot of paper. We have been told to cut back on paper this year, so we are looking at out laptop mini's to step up to do most of our work.
3. Tech minutes for younger grades - each month our fifth grade students will teach the younger grade students something they can use on the computer, this gives them time to teach and the younger students time to learn something new. This helps the student, the teacher and next years teacher. Students become more literate on computers and teachers that are uncomfortable with using computers, can get better.
4. More back channel discussions - these are great for topics and questions. I have loved using them during reading time. I love using them during a lesson when they are supposed to be listening and not talking. The more the student can input questions and answers, the better and more comfortable they become with communication.
5. Innovation Day. Having students pick a subject, learn a out it, produce something, and present it the next day. Having them do this all on one day. They can work in pairs. But they should have a product to show or discuss the next day. How many full days could we do this? Every two units in Language? Making it a part of the lesson and gear it to the units?
6. More articles to read during PLC days. This is the best way to get information from around the country. Reading articles from our own personal learning network.
7. Research. What else is out there that we can use in our classroom?
8. Pecha Kucha presentations. Integrating this format of presenting in our classrooms. Interesting format. 20 slides, 20 seconds each slide, 6 minutes to present an idea. Love it.

There is always so much to do in our classroom. New things we can try.

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Does a PLC reach across school boundaries?

We had a principal from another school visit us on a Learning Walk. There is a purpose for the Learning Walk and I think it is for the people coming to our school to learn about some of the things we are doing. I think this mint have been lost on this walk. When it was finished, we heard back about all the wrong things we were doing in our school. How we were not following the strict guidelines on the district on the curriculum map and how we we not using the right materials to teach.

First off, the guidelines are guidelines right? See How To Stay Up With The Curriculum on the editions website. We do the best we can, but we still teach kids. We are taught not to teach to the test, and yet, we are to teach the curriculum at the exact time everyone else is. It is great to have a map and a guideline of what and when to teach it, but some kids need a little more time here and a little less time there. That is the teachers guide to how fast to teach. Am I wrong here?

But the main point of this, for me, is the PLC aspect of it. If we are going to have a Professional Learning Community, we should find the best in the schools and spread it around. Each school should work at getting better by building a collaborative atmosphere and the district should follow suit by building a collaborative atmosphere among the schools. How can we collaborate with people that tear us down? Is competition good among schools academically or should we be working to raise everyone's skill level.

So how do we do this? How do we stop finding the bad in other schools and find the things that a good and try to incorporate them into our school?

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It's all about the Teamwork

We just saw the end of year scores from last year. They look great. We are now in reflection mode. What did we do that was with and how did it affect our scores so we can do it again. We will also look at what we think did not work last year and change those so we can make it better. We have some work to do.

Changing our language program will be an interesting part of this reflection. Our greatest jump on the testing was in language, so what we were doing worked well for us and the students. The program is similar toss what we did last year, so we should do as well or better an we did.

The Kagen strategies we used this last year were a big part of our success. When we moved students around in our flexible groupings, we used the Kagen strategy of pairing students with another student with a different level to help both of them improve in their lessons. Having three classes, we split the students into six groups and put two groups in each classroom. With group six being the highest, we paired group six with group three, five with two, and four with one. This gave each class a group of students that first off did not know why they were in that class(highest, lowest) and that made for less chance of teasing or segregation of students. This also helped with the lower students having a partner to help them, if needed. The higher student gets the opportunity to help, learn from the other student, and gets to teach a little. This helps the higher student cement what they have learned by explaining the concept to another student. Both students get to work with another student that is not two levels higher than themselves, but close to the same level as they are. This helps the confidence of both students when they feel successful and one student is not always doing all the work.

Another piece that we felt helped our classes was the partnering up of the students to help each other. In math, we have the students paired up by mixed ability. While doing our opening review problems, the students have "one book, one pencil". One of the students works on the problem while talking through the process they are using. The partner listens and uses the "tip, tip, tell" method of helping. If partner A does not know how to work the problem, partner B gives a tip to help. They can give two tips before they tell partner A how to do the problem. They cannot do it fro partner A but they tell them the process to get it done. Then they switch and partner B becomes partner A and so on until all the problems are completed. This process has been a wonderful way for students to explain what they are doing and help them help each other understand the algorithms and processes of math.

When looking back at what we did the best throughout the whole year to get the best scores from our students, I would have to say that it s all about the teamwork. Our fifth-grade team worked together on every problem, we worked with each child, and we let them know we were united in our teacher, lessons, disciple, expectations, and a friends. While showing the students this, we let them know we expected the same form them. All for one, and one for all.

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Growing Pains

There is some serious growing pains when learning a new program. We had our first week of using the program. It has a "Smart Start" to prep the kids for the rest of the year. It includes much of the information we go over throughout the year, but the students get some notes on paper so they can refer back to them. We have them put an index in their language books so they can find the notes easier.

The hardest part of the program so far is that I am ready to get to the schedule, and I think the kids are also. I figure next year we will schedule ourselves a little better to get the schedule into play the first week. We can do the "Start Smart", but the schedule will start earlier.

Planning the first week of the daily schedule has been fun. Figuring out what exactly we are supposed to do has been very time consuming. The best thing about the hard work we have had to put in planning is that w are doing it together. One of us would figure out one part and the ideas would come on what were to do. We planned put each day, the time we will spend on each piece and we will see how it will be used. A team is the best way to plan. We each trust each other, we rely on each other, and we know that one of us will have the idea that will work the best. The group works because we believe that we will each bring our best to the table. We look out for each other. We also have fun. We all love our job and we have become "workafrolics" (a word coined by Robert St. John).

We are working through a program that has similarities with the programs we have used In the past, but putting it into play each day, everyday is not always the easiest for a new program. Marking the pages and the activities we will be doing would be miserable if I was to do it on my own. Working as a team has made my teaching better.