Take time to...

Today was an open house at my school, which is a private school which has suffered, in part, because of the troubles in the economy. I've been crazy-busy of late, but, like all the staff, I was asked to take a turn giving tours.

I ended up giving one tour to two very lively visitors and a former student of mine, presently a senior and a student tour guide at our school. We spent much of our time in the Upper Elementary part of our school, which follows a Montessori curriculum. I might mention at this point that I am Montessori trained myself, and taught in the same room we visited today for seven years before moving on to Middle School.

It was a marvelous thing to see - lots of students working independently, the visitors very impressed, and teachers giving individual lessons. It reminded me why I went into teaching in the first place. And, although we don't have all the cool-looking materials, much of the Middle and Upper School, although not Montessori, hews to the same idea of 'follow the child.'

I haven't gotten out of my own crazy-busy routine since school began, but it was an encouraging thing to see other areas of the school. It didn't hurt that we had the most families visit us during this open house that we've had in some time.

So, if you're working in a place where you like to work, my suggestion is to get out to areas of your school you haven't seen for a while. It just might remind you why you came to your school or to teaching in the first place.

It's not about you (or me either)

It's the start of a new year, and I find myself this year collaborating with a lot more teachers in presenting courses than I did last year. A lot of our collaboration has taken place over such shared files as Google.docs, as well as emails.

One collaboration that I especially value is with a younger teacher who has not taught Humanities before, but who has a lot of energy and good ideas. It would be easy to fall into some sort of 'competition' as to who had the most kid-friendly, or tech-savvy class. It would be easy to take the casual email a bit personally, but it would be a serious mistake. What she's reminds me is that there is much I don't know, and I need to be open to it, whether it comes from her or from elsewhere.

One of my former administrators once said 'you can't take what goes on in school personally'. The more I teach, the more I find that I'm a better teacher if I don't let my ego get in the way.

Photo "No Ego, but 'Go' by Janice Frasier, clevergirl used under Creative Commons copyright.

Older but still good

For a variety of reasons, I've been spending much of my 'summer vacation' home doing a variety of school related tasks. One of my aims was to read or re-read books that touch on middle school learning. and one I just finished was Rick Wormeli's Meet Me in the Middle.

Wormeli's enthusiasm for middle school students come across on every page. I especially appreciate his section in Chapter 3 on "Teaching Young Adolescents to Reason" and his chapter on "Games in the Classroom." This is one guy I would have loved to have as a teacher when I was in middle school, and I'd love to have him as a colleague, if only for the inspiration he gives to encourage those around him to do better.

[For those of you who have trouble getting into books, think of it as a long hard-copy blog that you can read during a power failure, such as we had in our county recently :-) I sometimes find it easier to read for 10 minutes a day...this gives me a chance to think about some of the information involved. ]

(Picture: "Reading table" by Bob Esty)

Flat Classroom Workshop virtually

I attended a great workshop in St. Louis on Tuesday and Wednesday without leaving Maryland. The workshop was the Flat Classroom Workshop given by Julie Lindsay. For us relative newbies to technology, it was an excellent introduction to the Flat Classroom universe and several commonly-used Web 2.0 tools, and it gave me a chance to work with other workshop participants, both virtual and real, in designing a Flat Classroom-style project to work with other classrooms across the web.

In the course of the workshop, I worked with two collaboration tools which I highly recommend. One was Dabbleboard, which was a whiteboard that many people could edit simultaneously, with a chat room box attached, and a similar program called Sync In. And I managed to create a spreadsheet in Google Docs and share it ...small potatoes for you skilled Web 2.0 folks, but a step forward for me.

Was being a virtual attendee the same as being there? No. it was a small workshop, and those who were there were able to interact much more easily and fully than I as a virtual participant. The audio at times was hard to follow, and the web cam struggled to resolve the display screen with any clarity. But, was being a virtual attendee worth it? Definitely yes! Julie and the other workshop organizers clearly put a lot of time and effort to make it possible to attend virtually, and I got a lot out of it. I think the point of virtual participation is to make it possible to take part, not to replace the experience of being there. And the choice for me was virtual participation, or no participation at all. I would definitely encourage others to attend conferences virtually when it is not possible to be there in person.

Taking was a big step forward for me, and, undoubtedly my personal development highlight of the summer! Thanks to all who organized the conference and allowed us to participate virtually!

Photo "virtual seat" by Bob Esty

Summing up the Year, Part 2

Last year, when I asked students to evaluate my class at the end of the year, I received a lot of good and some bad comments, but the one that stuck with me was "You talk too much." I found it interesting because, that year, I had made a real effort to talk less. However, it got me thinking, and I ran across an intriguing book called "Never Work Harder than Your Students" by Robyn Jackson. I also had started working with a class wiki.

So, I tried a system where I would give out questions, and the students would research the answers on their own for the factual portion of our history units. It worked out very well. Now, instead of bored faces listening when I lectured, my students did their own research, and posted the results on the class wiki. Each student answered a question, and added his or her own name and the page numbers in the relevant textbook. The wiki page became the study guide for the test. And I talked a lot less, and students got more practice in using the index and looking up information for themselves. That's probably the thing I'm most proud of this year.

And what about this year's evaluations? Largely positive, but the thing that stuck in my mind was "Can we act out more scenes from history." Now I have some ideas for next year....

Image: Pearson's Falls, near Tryon NC, Photo by Maureen Esty, my daughter

Summing up the Year, Part 1

This year, I invested some time and energy to work with ePals and found two classrooms, one in France and one in Spain, which agreed to exchange emails with my class. We spent a lot of time in the beginning just trying to get the logistics down, however, and didn't start exchanging emails until January.

My students were excited about the exchange at first, but, as time went on, and we didn't hear very often from our email correspondents, the enthusiasm waned. Between conflicting vacation times, and lack of time at each end, I'd say we had a total of four 'exchanges' with our French class, and but two or three with our Spanish class, which started later in the year.

I take some lessons from this. One is to start earlier. The teachers I worked with have tentatively agreed to work with me in the coming year, so that shouldn't be difficult. Another is to organize the emails around a theme or joint project. We did this a bit with the French class, where we would ask the students to talk about their families in one series of emails, to talk about their towns in another, and so on. More could be done with this.

I also wonder if we couldn't get more of a joint project with classes who have a better command of English. I know how difficult it is to express concepts in a language you're just learning, and my students this year, with the occasional exception, just knew English. I'm thinking of trying to come up with a joint story on some theme. Something for me to look into this summer.

Photo: View of Périgueux, France - Photo by Christine Lécroart

The Importance of Energy

Energy. You don't realize how important it is until you don't have it. I've come to realize that energy and enthusiasm are key to teaching. How can you expect your students to be excited about something if you aren't?

I'm still recovering from my angioplasty and stent implant, and, which the operation itself is a marvel of medical science, the recovery is taking its time. I shouldn't be surprised...it is heart surgery after all, but the nature of the beast is that there is no immediate penalty for overextending yourself, but the next day you pay for it in lack of energy.

I had a bit of a scare today, after overextending myself the last weekend. I started having chest pains, so I called the doctor and went over, and, after doing this and that, he concluded that "You're fine. I don't know what is causing the pain, but it isn't your heart." I don't think I ever been so cheered by a negative result.

So, I rest, and trust that my energy will return.

Picture: 'Sun Bible' by Denis Collette www.flickr.com/photos/deniscollette/1550512599/ used under a Creative Commons license.