In the last blog post, I simultaneously welcomed you to summer and nudged you toward planning for the 2011-2012 school year. I can be cruel that way.
Today, I’d like to focus you on something a little different. Yet, in keeping with my previous emphasis on the multiple aspects of our personalities, I will have you looking both backward and forward at the same time.
Back in the day when I was an active teacher, I often found myself deep in a reverie while mowing my lawn sometime early in July, reliving major and minor events of the just-completed teaching year. Some things would make me recoil in horror—had I actually allowed a student to trick me into a snowball fight?—while other things made me smile and think, “Throwing markers across the room to differentiate this, these, that, and those was great. I need to remember to do that again with next year’s class. But better.”
So here’s your homework assignment: Take a moment or two or ten and relive the highs and lows of the school year you just completed. Pick out a high. Pick out a low. Designate an in-between. Report back with your findings by leaving a comment.
You’ll find neither shame nor embarrassment here, just the knowing nods of your fellow teachers. We’ll learn from each other’s highs, commiserate over each other’s lows, and probably share a laugh or two. Please begin.
I teach ELA to students in grades 4-7. This past year I was also “tasked” with tackling Social Studies for grades 4-6. A major high for me came during the study of the Boston Tea Party for my 5th grade students. At the time, I had a combination class that included 4th graders. In Hawai’i, 4th graders study early Hawaiian history for their SS, so the Boston Tea Party was in no way relevant to their standards. But I wanted them to appreciate this momentous occasion in American history. My students in this combination class reenacted the Boston Massacre (which preceded the Tea Party) and then actual Tea Party. They spent about a week and a half writing their scripts, rehearsing, making costumes and preparing sets. We had groups of soldiers, Indians, and American colonists. The most memorable thing for me was weeks later, my students were STILL talking about the Boston Tea Party. And from that day on, all of the 5th graders took any chance they got to tell me (and any other adult on campus) about the Boston Tea Party and why it was important. It was a solid teaching moment for me.
A low for me was having a parent scream at me because her child wasn’t allowed to go on a field trip. This student had been bullying his classmates for weeks and had been warned repeatedly that if his behavior continued he wouldn’t be allowed to go on the field trip. On the day of the field trip, this student arrived on campus with his home lunch, ready to go with. When I informed him he wasn’t allowed to go (because of his poor behavior) he proceeded to leave campus (without permission) and walk home. Needless to say, this student cried to his mother, who then went into attack mode and spent 30 minutes yelling at me on the phone. My spirit took a huge blow that day.