Out of the classroom & into the universe
If you’ve ever visited Boston, you know that this view of Boylston Street (taken near the BPL) is fairly unusual. This weekend, Boston was teaming with tourists, Red Sox fans, and New Englanders just wanting to get outdoors and enjoy a warm Saturday afternoon.
We were no exception. On Monday, the locals will watch as hundreds of runners push themselves beyond what seems humanly possible to run 26.2 miles from Hopkinton, MA into Boston. As a testament to persistence, the Marathon inspires me.
About 3 years ago now I spent a winter-spring weeding and reorganizing the library in my classroom. Lots of people have lots of ways to do this — and lots of reasons for what they do.
The first thing I did was to throw/recycle or donate books – relentlessly and without much sentiment. I teach in a school where many children do not have access to their own books so, whenever I could, I gave away books. What I was left with was a collection of material that I would enjoy choosing from, and that is key. If you personally wouldn’t touch the book, your students probably won’t want to touch them either.
Responding to what I felt was a need to level books so that children read within a range of levels and a need to expose students to varieties of genres, I did lots of research and found the system Beth Newingham employed in her own third grade classroom was the best fit for what I intended. I color code baskets so that, even on the most basic levels, students can select and return books without any intervention from me (well, most of the time). I have red bins designated for any fiction genres and green bins for any non-fiction genres. I keep a larger browsing crate of poetry. Within each of the two major categories, fiction and non-fiction, there are sub-genres: for example realistic fiction, historical fiction, informational text. Sometimes I’ve subdivided those categories further: Science and Nature, Lands and People for example.
Again, the reason for this is to be sure children are exposed to many different genres. Also, it helps me ensure that I have a balance of book genres; my natural tendency is to load up on realistic fiction. It’s been enlightening to see what gaps there are in our library.
The labels for each book are afixed to the book front as is the colored dot designating the book level range. I tape the label onto the cover with clear mailing tape and have not have any problem with a student picking off the label.
Because the levels in each color range are somewhat broad, I haven’t found any problem with students trying to read books at their frustration level, known by my colleagues as “fake reading”. We “color conference” frequently using Modified Miscues or Fountas Pinnell Benchmarks and students are coached in conferences. I have found that when the children know there’s an opportunity and an expectation for movement from one color to the next, competition is less of a problem. When I had baskets of books in just one level, that was not always the case.
Children are fairly accurate in replacing the books in the bin. This is a task and responsibility that I expect from each child. Not every book in the room is leveled or labeled; there are opportunities for children to self-select and decide for themselves whether or not a book is a good fit.
Additionally I created a spreadsheet/database for tracking which books are in the library. I keep an alphabetized list (by title) in an index notebook that the children can access in case they are looking for books with more than one copy for a buddy reading or in case they are looking for a particular book title. My children consult this book often when they are swapping books in and out of book boxes. The list also is useful as every so often we get asked to provide an inventory of the books in classrooms. I can sort the list in several ways: color code, Guided Reading Level, author, genre. This is helpful when replacing or adding to a library.
For more on how my personal journey in organizing a classroom library progressed, check this link. As Beth Newingham states “Every teacher organizes a library in her own way”. This is one that works for me.
A while ago, our Literacy Coach began talking to us about revisiting notebooks as a means to developing writers and authors. I’m possibly the last person in education to discover Aimee Buckner and Notebook Know-How, but I am so glad I have made that connection.
Not being a writer myself or at least not a disciplined one, I found notebooks and their use just one more thing to do with kids. Our school-wide writing calendars, focused on responses and one new genre of writing every two months was quite time-consuming. I couldn’t imagine when we would fit in using notebooks.
And then I read this
— we shouldn’t write for significance, but rather that we should write as a habit. Sometimes we’ll write something significant and sometimes we won’t. It’s the act of writing — the practice of generating text and building fluency–that leads writers to significance.
Wow! Did those words speak to me! What I had been doing “wrong” all this time, both as a non-writer and a teacher of writing, was expecting each morsel to be significant. The notebook is a place to practice, to try out, to experiment. Not only in writing, but in any endeavor, a learner needs a safe place to practice without worry as to the significance of the outcome.
This is a discovery that I can relate to. As an amateur photographer, I’ve been reticent to take my camera with me because I would not have anything worthwhile to show for it.
My students are starting to use notebooks now. And while they are not yet a habit, we are learning together to find a safe place to experiment with some of the strategies that professional writers and authors use.
We are learning to be learners through our experimentation.
Often I excuse my compulsive need to read and research all things educational with “I don’t have a life.” It is true that my child has long grown past needing me as a parent – I no longer do homework or nag to complete projects or carpool to sports. So I don’t have obligations or promises to keep in that regard.
So why don’t I live a “normal” life – one where you leave things at work, not to worry over them until the next day?
Teaching, believe it or not, is an insane profession. Piecing together the puzzle of why one child masters a topic while the other struggles – and what to do about that – is a riddle I not sure I’ll ever master. Twenty-five years later, I continue to struggle with delivering lessons effectively, lessons that children enjoy and connect to other learning. That takes research. Thank goodness for the World-wide Web or I would need a cot set up in the local library.
Lately, I’ve begun to wonder about what life will be like for me outside of teaching. I have two – or three if our investments tank – years left in the classroom before I feel financially secure enough to back away from a “regular job.”
I know I’d like to travel. I know I’d like to explore a book writing idea that Adrien and I have had on the back burner for several years. Throughout my life I have done something in the arts, I enjoy cooking and gardening and reading and knitting. But mostly what I’ve been for nearly half of my life is a teacher.
I regret the lack of balance in my life. That my profession overwhelms and consumes me most days. But I am hopeful that I can find my place in the world – my life on the “outside”.
At our faculty meeting this afternoon, we spent some time trying to break down what are the essential characteristics for teachers in this small urban, multi-cultural environment. For most of those around me, with whom I could turn and talk, skill at curriculum was not an over-arching factor. Most of the teachers around me mentioned qualities such as “diligence”, “empathy”, “creativity”…. in fact, the list started to sound like the seven virtues.
What is important for a teacher to be effective? Can that quality be distilled and replicated? I wonder about that. People who have heard me get on my soapbox know it aggravates the heck out of me that in current educational discourse, there is an assumption that our students are widgets – all the same raw material to be turned into a finished product without fail.
Sorry. I teach living breathing humans whose day-to-day experiences are as varied as the number of children crossing the classroom threshold daily. And while I want to make our classroom an environment bursting with thought and learning, sometimes all I can provide for a child is safety – a place away from the buffeting of daily traumas.
Is anyone measuring how successful that was?
Diagnosing what children need, for me that is an essential quality. While my vocation is not usually life or death (or is it?), I think is essential for a teacher to be able to diagnose what a student needs, academically and emotionally, and provide for those needs. That’s what I aspire to do and to varying degrees, there is some success to be celebrated here.
Recent surveys decry the drop in teacher satisfaction with their careers; headlines lament that many teachers leave this career within five years. People burn out from the constant bashing that we teachers don’t do enough, that our “products” are defective.
Can educational effectiveness be condensed so that it can be replicated over and over? Is there one best system? I believe I know how I would answer; how about you?
There are no brackets. There are only anxious and tense teachers and students. Stressed to the maximum. And the cracks are starting to show.
We are in the middle of our test marathons. Last week it was MEPA – Massachusetts English Proficiency Assessent, given to 15 out of my 22 children to assess their growth in English. This week – today actually – we start the Reading MCAS. Fifteen out of my 22 students will have endured two high-stakes and grueling tests within the space of 2 weeks.
Walls are covered or stripped of anything that could remotely be thought of as a study aide. Last year I had to rip desk tags from tops of desks because the tags had the audacity to show the cursive alphabet. I’ve covered birthday charts, removed math words, and even turned the labeled genre baskets in our classroom library around. No cheating.
This year we have a new feature to testing that will not prove anything except that 9 year olds are not adept at checking their test booklets. We teachers have always been sworn to not look at the questions/test materials on the MCAS – please explain how I proctor students to ensure they do not go on to another section of the test that is off-limits when I can’t look at the test <sigh>.
Students – those very same 9 year olds – must check their own test booklets to ensure they haven’t forgotten to fill in a bubble answer. This is new and worrisome. If you’ve ever met a 9 year old, you know they are not usually meticulous about details. If they turn 2 pages of a test booklet at a time and skip 6 answers, for them, that is an “oops” moment. And it is frequent. It is making me very tense because my students need every answer they can muster and to punish them for normal kid-stuff seems mean. And maybe meant to up the ante in proving teachers don’t know what they are doing.
I feel like there is so much more my kids could know of third grade curriculum before being tested. And there is, of course. It is mid-March; school does not end for 90 days – one-quarter of a school year later. What could possibly be the motive for testing children on end-of-year skills 3/4 of the way through their learning cycle? Seriously?
The cracks are showing. Kids are acting out. Teachers are not smiling. No one is happy.
Welcome to March Madness – public school style.
I was sucked in almost the very minute we – Adrien and I – went to a talk at the New England Genealogy and History Society’s Library on Newbury Street in Boston. For a while, I would go in to Boston almost weekly and, while Adrien poured over the Drouin Index for his French Canadian ancestors, I would rummage through fragile directories and volumes for my Puglisi, Duym, and Flournoy relatives.
One puzzle piece that had remained missing was that of my maternal grandfather’s father, Richard Wilson Flournoy. Not much was known about him; there are some family artifacts: his train conductors’ scarf, a wallet with a small scratch pad, a time table, a formal portrait. It was known that he died in a train accident when my grandfather was about a year old.
Periodically, Googling an ancestor’s name yields a result. This week I tried that with Richard’s father, Peter Creed Flournoy. About two entries down, was Richard’s name attached to a cemetery database in Albany, New York.
Richard Wilson Flournoy, was born on March 4, 1859 in Linneus, MO. His father was a Civil War colonel on that “other” side, so when the War ended, the family moved to Arkansas. Eventually, they were able to move back to Missouri and, in 1882 he married my great-grandmother, Minnie Palmer. After living in Bennington, Kansas, Richard went ahead to Albany where he worked on the Hudson River Railroad. We have a letter Richard wrote to Minnie, who was still in the midwest, telling her he would be sending for her and their daughter Carrie soon. In 1889, my grandfather, Palmer, was born in Albany.
And that’s where things had come to a stop. This week, through the cemetery listing, we learned that Richard’s death came on March 19, 1891 caused by gangrene of the arm. The family story that Richard was in a terrible train accident has been finally confirmed. We also now know that Richard was buried, not in Missouri with his Flournoy relatives, but in Menand Cemetery in Albany.
As usual, new genealogical information brings more questions. Is there an account of the accident that eventually took my relative’s life? My great-grandmother Minnie retained a lawyer to get some compensation for the loss of her husband – a bold move by a woman in 1891. Why?
Questions and more questions. And the hunt continues.
In the past week I’ve received two unsolicited email messages “signed” by Michelle Rhee on behalf of some group called “Students First”. You know Michelle Rhee of “Waiting for superman…”, former chancellor of the DC schools. Queen of soundbites.
I’ll leave the blow-by-blow rebuttal of her craptastic plans for “improving” education (just send me $10 – are you kidding me?) for another post. Just suffice it to say I disagree vehemently with her hypothesis that everything wrong with public education today stems from professional educators, and more specifically professional educators who have been teaching for quite a while.
The first mail message was sent to my school/work address and thanked me for participation in the 6-word essay contest. Sorry, not me. So the question is, since I have absolutely no interest in “joining with” Michelle Rhee to save our best teachers from those old experienced ones – like me? – how in the heck did she get my address. Please tell me that the Commonwealth did not sell teacher email addresses to this organization.
The second email with the subject heading “Working For Reform In Westford” was a real jolt. Now if I haven’t opted in to this organization’s email messages, I surely have not given out my HOME town. And frankly, working for reform in Westford — my hometown is an affluent suburb and routinely performs well on the state testing criteria – is a kind of puzzlement. Ms. Rhee, what exactly are you planning to “reform”, or should I say more accurately what consulting services do you hope to sell?
What bothered me about this? Well, it is pretty creepy to get targeted email that you did not solicit. This is not exactly in the same league as browsing on a website for fashion and getting a bunch of pop ups on the side of a search page. How absolutely bush league this effort is – not exactly the accepted practice of most service marketing!
Michelle Rhee is a opportunist and she is selling something. She is not the answer to education’s ills. I’ll be keeping my ten dollars. Right in my wallet.
It’s tax time and time for the annual review, in our house at least, of where we spent our monies last year. I usually provide our accountant with a spreadsheet of anything that we can clearly deduct which includes the amount of money I spend on school. Some years that is a painful profess.
I have to admit that I probably only capture about 75 percent of what I spend on my classroom and kids. There are many times when I shop at Staples or Michael’s and buy something for our household and slip in a few bucks worth of something I can’t live without — just try to live without sticky notes, no-can-do.
Totaling up that number for a year – books for the classroom, folders, pencils, pens – can be quite an eye-opener!
Which got me to thinking. School budgets get slashed every year. Every year we are asked to do less with more. And every year there is some new program or initiative that is under-funded (or unfunded). Our new science program is an example: this past week as my grade level team has been planning for the next part of one unit, we discovered a list of supplies needed – which includes a couple of different plants for each pair of children – and the majority of items on the list were starred as “provided by the teacher.” Now there’s a nice little assumption: teacher will buy those supplies for a class of 25! I give the science program points for both honesty and chutzpah.
What if, instead of listening to those uninformed loudmouths who blather on about how much “those teachers are costing us” or who comb through the budget slashing this, that and the other line item, teachers actually started reporting what they personally spent to run a classroom? And what if, we consolidated those amounts by school district at budget time so that the public got a clue about how much those “greedy” teachers GIVE to their municipality ?
I’m not talking about extra coursework, professional development, or dues to professional organizations. I’m talking supplies that the Districts don’t have to purchase because teachers take the money out of their own wallets.
If the IRS allows a $250 deduction and there were 1000 teachers in a district dipping in to their own money, that would be $250,000. I’m looking at real numbers that top the $250, sometimes I’ve spent close to $2,000 on classroom materials. That number then starts to look pretty impressive.
Wouldn’t that be an interesting number to know on a district-by-district basis? Most likely there wouldn’t be any shift in thinking for bigmouths who complain about how expensive education is, but it would be satisfying to know that it might enlighten some who think of education as a drain on the municipal budget.
Sometimes, though not that often lately, we have fun.
Lots of schools mark Dr. Seuss’ birthday with Read Across America celebrations. Even though it was low key, we did too!
Our special visitor and guest reader was my husband, Adrien. We dug up a book that loosely connects to his career as a photographer, Snowflake Bentley. Bentley was an avid photographer of snowflakes and his collection of glass negatives and resulting prints is still fascinating. Adrien always brings his camera when he visits, and the kids enjoy hamming it up for the professional photographer. Before he left, he was asked several times if he would
go with us on our spring field trip to the Boott Mills.
Sometimes our influence on children is so subtle that it nearly goes unnoticed.
But today, in the midst of all the fun, I knew Adrien had knocked it out of the park when I looked around my room. There were all of my kiddos who normally need to be cajoled into wearing their glasses – wearing their spectacles mid-nose. Just like their “Mr. Bisson”.
So thank you Dr. Seuss. Thank you for giving us a fabulous excuse to have a bit of fun today. And to Adrien…. thank you for voluntarily being a role model for my kids. Now how about that field trip date?
After An Educator's Journey 