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.

  • Planbook Technology

    We are a geek family. There I said it.  My husband is a former software engineer now a working photographer.  My son is a software engineer. I was an Instructional Technology Specialist (computer teacher) for 5 years.

    So embracing new technology is kind of fun for me. I like to see if I can break software by asking it to do something on the edge of functionality. And yes, I know how geeky that sounds.

    This year, after using Word and Excel to create planbooks for myself, I am embracing the cloud. Evernote, dropbox, google docs…. whatever can make something created in one place visible and functional in another.

    I stumbled across two planbook packages that looked promising, but have decided to work with planbookedu.  Here’s what I like:  I can pull out both Common Core and Massachusetts state (2004) standards and attach them to records, I can create a template, I can work on any of the platforms that I have access to (iPad, Mac, PC). I can easily share my planbook, something that I have had to do in the past when I worked as a Special Ed. inclusion partner classroom.

    What is still unknown – because our school is being rewired – is whether or not the planbookedu website will be blocked by our school filter.  Dont’ laugh,  I assume nothing in all things involving the web and education.

    What I hope to accomplish through using planbookedu is a greener approach to lesson planning.  Last year, each week’s plans required 10 pages of paper (and laserjet toner). This year I should need zero paper.  Even if the web address gets blocked by the school system’s filter, I can download my plans to reside locally on my iPad.  And when a substitute is needed, I can attach those same plans to the request made through the program our district uses for teacher attendance.

    This all seems like a workable solution to the huge notebook full of paper that I’ve had to keep in my classroom to prove I actually do make plans. Free versions of the software are available (no sharing functionality) and a full-function 14-day trial also available.

     

  • And so it goes…..

    In the first few paragraphs of her commentary, Joanna Weiss made me laugh right out loud.  In the “old days”, 32 years ago for example, we used to take snapshots of our kids and then make multiple prints to send out to all of our interested or not so interested family and friends.  I know we personally spent THOUSANDS of dollars on prints of a particular only child who will be unnamed in this post.

    With our news-in-an-instant technologies (that’s you Facebook), sharing any kind of news is done at the click of the mouse. That makes technologies like unbaby.me, well….. funny. I’d like to propose it might be time for a whole product line development: uncat.me, undog.me, unfood.me, unpolitics.me. What ever triggers one curmudgeonly persona to appear could be re-mediated and life as we know it would continue stress free.

    Seriously though, reading beyond the unbaby.me reference, Joanna Weiss makes the logical connection to what is at the root of the attacks on social services, especially attacks that come from those who “have”. Having sat at umpteen Town Meetings packed to the rafters whenever new school spending is on the budget, I know there is much truth to the sentiment “what’s in it for me”?

    For me, those “haves” making every effort to prevent “have-nots” from the same benefits (SSI benefits, Paul Ryan?) just speaks to what is a lost empathy.

  • The New Math

    It’s been a long, strange journey from where I started as a teacher to the present. I say this because I’ve just finished a month of work with some wonderfully talented third grade teachers on our District’s Common Core Math curriculum maps. When I think back on the way I used to teach, I’m reminded that the “old days” were not always the “good old days”.

    When I started teaching elementary school in 1987, math was a matter of following the workbook pages from page 1 to page n.  One day, kids are doing the addition facts for 12, the next day (having mastered addition and subtraction skills, of course), on to subtraction with renaming in 3 places.  No particular mathematical understanding on the part of the teacher – or the students – was necessary. Just do it.

    If there is one thing I’d like to ask a former student, it is “how did you survive?”  There is possibly a support group for my former students who either learned to be mathematicians in spite of me or despite my pedagogical “skill”.

    One thing I’ve learned about mathematics over time is that there’s a huge difference between the ability to remember and perform the process and the comprehension of the skill. As frustratingly painful as it can be to build understanding over process, as many times as that fragile understanding is undermined by well-intentioned helpers, it is through understanding that students become mathematics thinkers.

    Measuring up to the challenge of teaching mathematics, even in elementary school has gone way beyond the ability to eek a 40-minute lesson out of a teachers’ manual.  Teachers need to understand the math themselves and become empathetic to those who cannot do so. It is a heady challenge for one who was considered a math underachiever.

    As we educators unpack new Common Core Mathematics standards and uncover what it is that students really need to know in order to understand the mathematics standards, we are challenged to go beyond our old ways of teaching. It it far more important to reach levels of understanding than it is to use up all the pages in a math text.

    And that’s a good thing.

  • August

    Some people watch for the Back-to-School advertisements to gauge how near we are to the end of summer break. I use crickets.

    When I can hear the crickets, I know it’s time to give some extra attention to planning for the Fall.  It’s a bittersweet sound for me; the mornings where I can linger over morning coffee are coming to a close.

    If you are like me, it is a time when that to-do list becomes ever so much more desperate. The things I put off because I was “on vacation” have piled up. If not careful, I will get sucked into the swirling vortex of wasting every minute of my last unscheduled weeks on errands and chores.

    For those of us who begin school before Labor Day, it feels like summer has ended – August is not really time off, it’s the time before.

  • Of Power Companies and Education

    We recently returned from a quick trip to DC. The DC-Maryland-Virginia area has been hit hard by a weather system which resulted in many downed tress and, even during our visit, many in the DC area were without power days after the storm itself had passed.  Pepco, Old Dominion, BGE – the area utility companies had many reasons for the delays in getting power restored to customers, many of whom were sweltering in temperatures topping out at 106.

    With many downed trees and utility poles, the work to restore power was slow and painstaking. For those of us who live in he Northeast, the memory of the snowstorm last October was similar. Electricity is a basic necessity in modern times and going without causes lots of hardships.

    Now how does this vignette connect to education?

    In Juliette Kayem’s op-ed piece in the Boston Globe, Pulling Plug on Nation’s Security,she states that the ultimate fix to vulnerable power lines is to bury them. There is resistance to this idea as it is “expensive”; I believe the number quoted in Ms. Kayem’s piece was $6 billion in the DC area for fully burying all lines. It is the ultimate fix, but it is an investment that requires quite a large outlay of capital.

    Isn’t that a lot like what public education is today? Lots of piecemeal programs enacted to make the big “problem” disappear… for a while. Investing in education is expensive. Educating a generation so that they become productive members of society 15-20 years later is expensive.

    The ultimate “fix” for education is not going to be found in band-aid programs that provide a small amount of help for a small amount of time. Like burying utility lines, it will need a sustained investment which, to date, our government does not seem to want to make.

     

     

  • Thank You SCOTUS

    Thank goodness I reside in a state where it has been illegal to deny health care coverage for pre-existing conditions for some time (should I say “thanks” to Governor Romney?).  As of a few hours ago, the Supreme Court ruled that insurers cannot discriminate for pre-exisitng conditions nation-wide. For someone like me, that is truly good news.

    It means that I don’t need to limit my retirement living options to Massachusetts – as much as I love the place.  As a cancer survivor, I have had coverage denied by a traditional insurer, who will remain nameless for this post. I had to carry my own coverage through COBRA and pay for coverage for anything else that might crop up “new” on the new insurance my husband’s company had switched to.  Trust me when I tell you that it was a financial hardship as well as a stressful situation.

    As I understood the rule at that time – pre-Massachusetts healthcare reform – if I was treated in any way, shape or form for my pre-existing cancer diagnosis, I would have the start the clock all over again.  I don’t remember the time requirement any more, but whatever it was, the denial of coverage was wrong.

    So I am celebrating today because no one should ever have to live in fear of wondering how to pay for treatment of an ongoing illness or condition. Treatment and medical factors should provide all the stress anyone ever needs in that regard.

    Thank you Supreme Court. By not declaring these Health Care Reform unconstitutional, you’ve taken a step toward justice in health care.

     

  • Is This The New “Common”wealth?

    The talking head on our local news broadcast announced it as if it were just an everyday thing – no big deal. I however, nearly fell out of my chair.

    Apparently the City of Boston is considering – seriously – opening a portion of the Copley Branch for retail.  Don’t believe it? Neither could I, so here’s a link to the Herald report and the Boston Business Journal report. The overall reaction seems positive “as long as it’s tastefully done.”

    Is there no end to the commercialization of our public and shared resources?

  • Reading About Reading

    Although widely thought of as a math geek, at least as far as elementary math pedagogy is concerned, I am spending some time this summer researching literacy.

    The first book on my “must read” list happens to be Richard Allington’s What Really Matters for Struggling Readers. It will come as no surprise that many of my readers struggle, and so far I’ve found Allington’s work very informative and affirming.  Maybe that has a lot to do with the Daily Five and its structures; many of these are based on Allington’s work.

    When I think about fluency, I know rereading an appropriate level text is important.  Allington advocates for a couple of strategies that have enormous potential with my readers: Tape, Check, Chart and Tape, Time, Chart (Allington, R. What Really Matters for Struggling Readers. (2012). Boston: Pearson Education. p 110-111).

    When I take a running record of a child’s reading, I always share what the checkmarks and codes mean. In Tape, Check, Chart, students read a short text into a tape recorder, mark it up using child-friendly markings, and over the course of multiple readings (Allington suggests 4 with a different color pen for each mark-up) increase fluency and accuracy.  Tape, Time, Chart provides similar practice with fluency.

    As I think about Daily Five activities for the coming school year, I know that the addition of these two choices will be powerful, not only for the students but for me.

  • How Do You Model Expectations?

    Responsive Classroom provided some review PD for our school this past week. Don’t get me wrong, there is a lot to like about the RC approach, and surely I picked up some great clarifications and refreshers. In fact much of the presentation affirmed what I know in my heart to be true about education and students and learning.

    However, there are some practices in Responsive Classroom that my experienced-teacher-self question.  One thing is the process taken in modeling a routine for students.  I understand the gradual release models which I first learned from Regie Routman. Teacher models, teacher models with students, gradually releasing the process totally to students.

    This year, as a result of my reading and training with the Daily Five’s 10 Steps to Independence, I’ve made sure to add on an “unmodel”, a chance for students to show what a routine,exercising students’ brain muscle memory as borne out by Michael Grinder’s work. An “unmodel” with an immediate opportunity to provide a correct example, is an essential step and even my more shy and reticent students love to provide the ultimate unmodeled behavior examples. I’ve discovered that this is a very powerful way to get kids to internalize  expectations for any procedure I’ve taught, Allowing my more behaviorally challenged kids an opportunity to be the “unmodel” and then reinforcing appropriate behaviors with the same student become a “model” has given us comic relief along with a dose of visual modeling.

    I  also don’t buy in to the RC suggestion that the teacher wear a hat or some other article when he/she is unavailable to students. Doing so seems artificial to me. With the amount of conferencing and small strategy group instruction taking place during our Literacy time, I want to have taught the expectations and routines so well that students don’t feel the need to break their stamina, or mine, because they know what to do. I trust them to make good choices. That was a HUGE leap for me last Fall; but with very few exceptions, my students were self-managing their learning from about 6 weeks in until the end of the year.  No special costume needed.

    As with any program or package, there are always parts that are agreeable and parts that are just not good fits. We all want the best for our students; and as long as we, the professionals, can be trusted to use our good judgement with the children in front of us, there is much that can be accomplished.

  • The Beginnings, Again

    This past Thursday – our last day of school with students – was bump up day.  And once again, for about the 28th time in my life, I started building a community with a group of 8-year olds.

    They look like an interesting group. Definitely some wigglers, some barometer kids, as the Sisters call them.  I’ve seen some of their second grade assessment data already and heard from a couple of their now-former teachers about social and learning issues to be aware of.

    Yet for the half-hour that we were together, I can see the possibilities of the community of learners that will become 3-207 starting August 28th.

    One of the best aspects of teaching is this cycle, this changeover and chance to do things again – with luck, even better this time around. I know I never get tired of the excitement of a fresh beginning, of the serendipitous opportunities that will lie ahead.

    This week we started a new building cycle again. Our future together is a gigantic unknown – exciting to think about and a bit scary at the same time.

    We begin. Again.