Category: teaching

Working together

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Snacks, water bottles, white boards, and time to chat–all this made a difference in the success of our week-long writing camp, which ended today. What a gift to work in such a small group, sharing ideas, reading our writing, and talking about ways to improve. The boys, good sports both, worked hard on two different pieces of writing. And I wasn’t surprised to find that the conversations we had helped the most. This is, of course, the way to work with writers. You can’t be at the front of the room. You must sit with the student, talking about the strengths, asking questions…..nodding and encouraging.

One of the boys had brought a MacAir, so before I could say “sure,” he had set up his iphone as a hotspot, pulled out and set up his iPad for another boy, and opened Google Docs to start typing. So much the notebooks I’d purchased:)

He also texted me this, which I hadn’t seen but seemed so appropriate for the week:

I sure love middle-schoolers.

 

Finding My Way

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I am substitute teaching this week. Sixth-graders. I haven’t taught sixth-grade in quite a while.

But after two days, I remember now. The curiosity, the energy, the silliness. That I would arrive home every evening and say, “I love sixth-graders.”

And my dad would say, “You’re lucky. Not many people get up every day to go to work and say they love their job.”

He was right.

 

Can You Change Your Attitude?

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I am totally depressed by rain. Gray days make me gloomy and lethargic.

So when we headed out the door to go see James (and Ben) Taylor in Richmond last night, I wasn’t excited. Now I love JT, so this was kind of unusual. I found myself grumbling about how cold it was, how I would get wet walking from the car, how much traffic there was on 95–actually, I grumbled about everything.

About 45 minutes into the drive, I remembered a post I had read recently about our attitudes. How often a simple reframing of a situation can make us see the world in a different way. Usually, if I’m in a bad mood, nothing helps but time. However, I decided to give it a shot. Three or four minutes later, and I was on my way back up, getting excited about the concert, trying not to worry about the weather, and feeling a little sheepish that I’d let it all get to me.

How did I reframe this?

I reminded myself that the weather would break soon. It wouldn’t be gray and cold for months!! ( I tend to exaggerate.)

I focused on how lucky I was to be able to go see one of my favorite singers in person.

I reminded myself that I have this great job that allows me flexibility to do things like this–AND sleep in a little in the morning if I want to.

In other words, I stopped being negative. And I had a terrific time.

In our school culture, we often face negative people.

“I don’t have enough time.”

“There’s too much on my plate.”

So often, these attitudes could be changed by a reframing. That doesn’t always work, as our genes, our DNA, have much to do with whether we are able to move beyond the “glass half empty” mentality.

But imagine if we could help our students understand that their ability to recognize and “control” thoughts will change their attitudes.

(Aaron T. Beck, M.D., is the President Emeritus of the non-profit Beck Institute for Cognitive Therapy and Research, and University Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania.)

“…helping patients identify and evaluate these thoughts and found that by doing so, patients were able to think more realistically, which led them to feel better emotionally and behave more functionally.”

 

That’s powerful information.

 

image credit: by Karin Beil

 


More Rules? I don’t think so

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As more schools grapple with Acceptable Use Policies to fit more devices and situations, I like this approach from Traci Gardner, who remixed Michael Hyatt’s reasons businesses don’t need a social media policy:

Consider these Five Reasons Why Your Company Doesn’t Need a Social Media Policy, from an article by Michael Hyatt, listed with a little rephrasing to fit the classroom:

  • Students can be trusted. As Hyatt explains, “If you expect them to be honest and trustworthy, they will be honest and trustworthy.”
  • Online discussions are just one more way to communicate. I don’t write up lists of manners for every interaction students will have. Imagine how silly I’d look if I passed out the rules of etiquette for office hours, for instance.
  • More rules just make the classroom more patriarchal. How can I encourage student ownership for the work of the class if I sit around passing out rules?
  • Formal rules only discourage students from participating.Rules “make people hesitate.” If students hesitate or decide not to respond, online discussion suffers.
  • I already have policies that govern inappropriate behavior.Not only do I already have the acceptable use policies to fall back on, there are policies already in place for every situation from an honor code violation to disruptive or threatening behavior.

Actually, I would take things further by eliminating the AUP all together. Students behavior is best determined by agreed upon guidelines and dealt with regardless of whether technology is involved or not. Ongoing discussions about online behavior, appropriate commenting, and much more will allow students to learn and grow. Our social media world changes too quickly to come up with an arbitrary list of rules to follow.

Our online world is our world. Why do we differentiate?