After An Educator's Journey

Out of the classroom & into the universe

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Once upon a time, I taught 2nd, 3rd, and 4th graders. Now I’m retired and working on new ventures.
I taught second, third and fourth graders. Teaching was my passion and joy for 30 years. And it didn’t hurt that they called me “mom” sometimes.

  • It May Just Be a Good Time to Cry “Uncle”

    I’ve heard all manner of reasons for why this year is exceptionally difficult.  I’m a believer in the Daily Five. It makes sense, it’s based on research – brain research AND literacy research. I saw my students grow.

    But I feel that it is time to give it up.

    The message I’ve been getting is that in order to follow the curriculum guides, particular lessons need to be implemented.  I tried to creatively roll these mandatory lessons into the CAFE, but sadly, there just isn’t time to do the CAFE justice.  Trying to do both the Daily Five/CAFE and the required curriculum is driving me insane.

    So even though I believe the Daily Five/CAFE is a powerful tool toward helping my students become independent and become better readers than I ever thought possible, I am giving it up. Reading groups, here we go.

    Sometimes it is better to admit defeat. But better for whom? Of that I’m not sure.

     

  • Some Safety Suggestions from the Peanut Gallery

    Lots of schools districts – including the one in which I work – have been revisiting safety procedures since Newtown’s tragedy.  That’s a good thing. But as with many suggestions for educators, there are some incredibly myopic ideas out there.

    Recently I heard the suggestions that educators plan room arrangements so that bookcases can be installed close to the classroom door. The thinking behind this is that, in cases of emergency, a teacher could push the bookcase in front of the door thereby providing a barrier to an armed intruder.

    Well, I consider myself fairly strong after over year of strength and conditioning, but I can tell you it would take a lot more than my muscles to move a bookcase in front of an entry way in an emergency situation.  Not to mention classroom entry door open out into the hallway thereby allowing an intruder to simply open the door to gain entry.

    If you truly want to know what may or may not work in safety situation, invite the people who might actually be in the situation in to the discussion. Any teacher or building administrator could have reminded a consultant of these two factors.

    What might work? Well, that would probably cost more money than a school district is prepared to spend to retro-fit classrooms.  Currently, in order to lock the classroom door, I need to open the door and lock from the outside of the door.  Keeping the door locked and shut during the day means every time one of my students needs to use the bathroom during the day, a student would need to knock to regain entry to the classroom, thereby interrupting teaching and learning.

    Two thoughts. One, change the door material from wood to steel. Two, install a dead bolt throw high up on the door (so that small inquisitive fingers don’t accidentally throw the bolt) that could lock the door within seconds while students are moving to safe spots in the classroom.

    It’s a different environment we’re teaching in. Answers to school safety concerns will not be easy. What are your ideas?

  • With Gratitude

    Teachers have taken it on the chin for quite a number of years. If the media are to be believed, we are a collective bunch of incompetents who need to be whipped into shape. And then Newtowne happened. A curtain lifted on the noblest of colleagues, who placed their own safety and protection secondary to their students.

    What really made me start thinking about all the teachers who have helped me was this Story Corp segment. Wow, would that every teacher could hear from just one student who remembered what their teachers did that inspired them even into adulthood!

    So here’s my thank you: Miss Buell, Mrs. Keefe, Ms. Brown, Mrs. Nichol, Mrs. Harrell, Mrs. Garten, Mrs. Hoffman….. thank you for inspiring me to love learning so that today I can try to teach my own students to love learning too!

  • Deciphering technology

    Just before the holiday break, our new technology – Mobi 360 – arrived. Hopefully the wireless projector that is part of this system will have been installed before Wednesday when we return to school.  Hopefully I will be able to make it all work the way it was intended.

    We tried out the system the Thursday before going home.  The Pulse units operate like clickers and each student is assigned one to use for class.  I put our weekly vocabulary test into a Powerpoint slideshow and the kids took the test using their new technology.  Outside of two children who had pressed some combination of buttons and disassociated from the Mobi receiver, it was fun and quick AND yielded immediate data without hand correcting.

    I love it when technology provides an improvement in delivering instruction or in  gathering assessment data. I love when technology provides some motivation for students.

    Never a fan of single-minded programs, I’ve always thought of technology applications in education as part of a tool-kit.  After all, I use technology with a purpose, not just because it’s there.

    Mobi is, of course, going to take some adjustment and preparation on my part. But so far, it looks like a powerful addition to this teacher’s toolkit.

  • Joyeux Noel!

    _DSC0115
    Waiting to enter Notre Dame de Paris

    I am not certain exactly when the idea occurred to us, but this past week, Adrien and I celebrated our anniversary with a quick trip to Paris. Nevermind that I now have a deeper understanding of my immigrant grandfather’s voyage to the new world after spending 12 hours on planes without being able to wiggle! Airline to remain anonymous.

    We planned this trip to coincide with Christmas and so, we did as many tourists and some Parisians do – we went to Mass at Notre Dame cathedral. 2012 marks the 850th anniversary of the cathedral; I couldn’t help but wonder at that thought – that 850 years earlier people stood in this same spot to celebrate Christmas.

    The giant pipe organ, bellowed the strains of Adeste Fideles while we waited

    Ready to the procession
    Ready to the procession

    for the procession. Soon the start of Mass was signaled by the sweet smell of incense, a smell of unmistakable intensity. A young boy carefully carried the Christ child in procession, and with a cue from the priest, gently laid Him in the empty creche, a tradition that is repeated in many Christian churches across the world. And so, the first Mass at Christmas began.

    Inside the Cathedral
    Inside the Cathedral

    And after Mass, we made our way through the mixed crowd leaving Notre Dame and those awaiting the beginning of the next Mass to the far edges, roped off in some hope of making order of the chaos.

    Joyeux Noel!

    25 December 2012
    25 December 2012

  • Snowflakes

    Every child can relate to the anxiety one feels when you enter a school building for the first time. So can any teacher.

    We feel helpless to comfort our colleagues and their students. Their grief and sense of loss is unimaginable. And they will naturally feel anxious when they return to a different school building in January.

    So when this project, Snowflakes for Sandy Hook, started circulating through email and twitter, it seemed like a way we could offer support.

    The simple act of creating a paper snowflake, a most child-like gift, resonated with my students. They had all heard of the shooting, they had noticed that a patrol car now monitors our arrivals and departures, they had questions about their own safety. And they wanted to make the students from Sandy Hook feel more comfortable in their new school building.

    If you are a teacher, maybe you and your students would like to add your snowflakes too.

     

  • In the dark of winter…

    There is a pall hanging over us. We want answers to the unanswerable. We need to put our anger and sadness  somewhere, but there is no place.

    Tomorrow is a Monday that will be unlike any other. Tomorrow I need to try to reassure my 8-year-olds. Many of them will have watched too many reports on television, or overheard snippets of adult conversation.  While some of my students live with traumas, nothing like this has ever happened before. I pray that nothing close to it ever happens again.

    I have no idea what I can say, except to reassure them that, while sometimes the adults in their lives have been unreliable, I am here to keep them safe.  As a teacher, I imagine that is exactly what passed through the minds of the teachers and administrators of Sandy Hook as they made split second decisions to shelter their own students. Six times that instinct to protect children from harm resulted in the ultimate sacrifice.

    We will need to be together.

  • Chipping Away

    This is the longer version of Adrien’s short documentary about an extraordinary group of young people and the United Teen Equality Center (UTEC) here in Lowell. Take a moment to see what overcoming adversity to hope and to dream about a future really look like. And then,if you are so inspired, support UTEC’s programs and efforts by going to their website.

  • The Joyless Pursuit of Excellence

    Last Friday as I watched one of my favorite weekly shows (Greater Boston‘s Beat the Press segment), I heard panelist Margery Eagan describe the atmosphere at the Boston Globe as the “joyless pursuit of excellence”. In our local newspaper world, there is no doubt that the Globe is a superb paper and even when I don’t agree with their editorial positions, the articles are well-written and in-depth.

    What I didn’t know until Eagan’s comment, was this phrase is commonly associated as the motto of (former) editor Marty Baron.

    The more I considered this phrase, the more powerfully I was struck by its connection to the educational environment today. So often educators – and administrators – talk about the stress of preparing students for assessments, or adhering to standards of achievement. I  don’t know anyone really who isn’t committed to their students and to helping those children learn, yet we are all always feeling as if what we do does not measure up.

    Even the joy of seeing a student who is (finally) “getting it” becomes overshadowed by the fear that it wasn’t on the time schedule thought up by some faceless bureaucrat in a faraway place well-insulated from actual children.

    Certainly we all want to be excellent educators, and more to the point, we want our students to be excellent too. But as to joy? Those moments seem elusive.

    I don’t have a solution except to become more cognizant that, along with the stress, we all need a lot more joy. I need to make my journey a more joy-filled pursuit of excellence.

  • Where dreams intersect

    Several years ago, my husband Adrien was working in the corporate world as a software engineer.  For a long time, he had worked for large and small software companies and enjoyed both the work and the camaraderie…. and the pay wasn’t bad either.

    But some time about five years ago, he had a moment when staying with his engineering job was overshadowed by the desire to do something more creative, to return to his early interest in photography. And so he did. It has been an exciting journey of hard work and worry and determination.

    This past summer, he connected with the staff at UTEC with a proposal and a hope that he could explore creating portraits and a film documenting the UTEC program’s young people.

    Capturing the hope and resilient spirit of youth who have had some tough breaks, but who are determined to break out of cycles of trauma generated from varied socio-economic factors, has been a journey of enlightenment. While we both were aware of UTEC’s existence, I don’t believe either of us knew the depth of this program’s impact.

    These young people also have dreams and goals. How eloquent they are in the expression of where they have been and where they are going! I want my own elementary-age students – the ones who could easily take a misstep – to listen, to learn from you.

    Serendipity has put these young people, so determined to overcome challenges, and Adrien, determined to tap into something more,  in each other’s pathways.

    It is the place where dreams intersect.

    To see the images and the film, click on the following links:

    UTEC Portraits

    Video “Chipping Away”