How I convinced myself to try Whole Brain Teaching...

Ok, ok....I'll come clean.  I'm not the most up-to-date teacher in my school, I mean, district, I mean, state, I mean country.   I wasn't always this way.  There was a time when I was up-to-date on the latest buzz, strategy, style of teaching and education there was.  I participated and enjoyed being part of a district level literacy team and looked forward to the times that I spent working on the "academia" of teaching within these monthly sessions.  Then "IT" happened...I started to feel the burn out that so many of us feel that work in any field of administering to others.  And that's how I became the behind-the-times teacher that I am today.

I spent the last two years working with a group of teachers to reconnect, find time for myself, learn how to balance the professional life with my personal life and I have to say I've come a long way.  I no longer "live for my class" and have been able to separate myself from feeling that my students were my children and started to make time for my own two teenage children--you know, the ones to whom I gave birth.

Where was I?  Oh, yeah...how I convinced myself to start reading about teaching and trying new things in my classroom again.  It started like this:  I am blessed to work with some of the best teachers and a community of teachers who care about each other both professionally and personally and that in itself is a pretty special thing. Some of my teacher friends have been buzzing about Whole Brain Teaching for a couple of years.  They talk about how fun it is for both them and their students, about how much more engaged their students are.  BUT...the talk was never enough for me to do anything other than nod my head and smile...until this summer.

This summer I had purposely scheduled NOTHING for the month of July.  I had done this purposely to give myself plenty of time to recover from an oral surgery that had a one month recovery time.  My husband and children are all working and I find myself in the unusual circumstance of being the only one home and in the third week of my recovery, pain is managed, and I...began...to...get...bored.
Don't get me wrong, boredom is not a bad thing and everyone should have the luxury of getting truly bored.  Now I'm not talking about laissez faire kinda bored.  I mean the kind of bored where I feel better but still need to heal, caught up on my TV shows, tired of the movie choices on demand, there's only so much gardening and cleaning I want to do, I've been sitting around for 3 weeks kind of bored.  That's a good bored.  That's a bored that sparks creative juices.  Some of us were lucky enough as kids to experience this kind of creative bored mid to late summer and I am lucky enough to re-experience it now.

So..what to do?  I started to browse the internet looking for something inspiring and ordered a couple of books from the internet, one of which is WHOLE BRAIN TEACHING for Challenging Kids.  It sat on the table for a few days while I looked over some other books.  I picked it up this morning knowing fully that I ordered the book out of boredom and wasn't really all that interested in reading it but had nothing else to do.  I read the first chapter and realized that HEY this book isn't all that different from what I was already doing!  The biggest difference is that the book has the brain science behind it as well as a couple of different fine tuned strategies.  Also, since it wasn't all that different from what I was already doing it wouldn't be that difficult to implement.  So, that's how it happened that's how I pulled myself out of the dump of burn out and started to update myself but this time I will not lose myself again.  This time I feel more grounded in determining what's best for ME so that I can be a better teacher.  Stay tuned to find out more...

School Supplies? But it's July!!!

Well it's the middle of July and it's back to school time!  What?  Some collective groans?  Yes, I have to admit that there are summers that I, too, am not ready to think about school starting when I could use my time to enjoy what precious few weeks I have off for gardening, swimming, and meeting up with friends and family in a more relaxed environment.  However there is one reason why I am out eagerly scouring the back to school sales in July--the students, and not necessarily every student but just that one, special student that I may never meet.

Let me tell you more, some children see the "Back to School" sales in the stores which creates ANXIETY.  Anxiety of knowing they will not have the means to purchase all the necessary (and unnecessary albeit cool) supplies for school.  Those students see the displays just as you and I do however they may be thinking, "I wish I could have that", "What if I don't fit in?", or "What will the other kids or teachers think?".  For these families sometimes putting food on the table and a roof over the head is such a difficulty that any frivolous school supplies can't be even considered.  When in reality the ticket out of poverty is their child's education and having school supplies for the first day of school is a positive reinforcement that education is both valued and necessary thus creating a priority in a student's life.

What's that?  School's should provide all the necessary supplies for students?  Well, you couldn't find a person more in agreement with that statement than I.   I won't even go into how teachers spend personal monies to buy supplies for their classrooms.  It's all been said before which is true but... consider this--when a teacher purchases supplies for a needy student and pulls the student aside (no matter how privately) the student KNOWS that the the teacher KNOWS they don't have materials at home for homework.  Then the student's anxiety level goes up AGAIN because they feel like they stand out and are labeled by the teacher or the school.  Now what do we do?

Many churches, synagogues, temples, and other volunteer organizations hold a school supply drive during the summer months, usually in July.  They then spend the beginning of August putting together backpacks full of pencils, crayons, erasers, paper, and even calculators to give to needy children who are just as deserving of an education as the next child.

You may be thinking, "How does this change things?"  The child is still getting a donation of supplies.  Does it matter if it comes from the teacher or another organization?  Well I would say that it DOES matter for a couple of reasons.  First, maybe the parent was able to pick up the supplies without the child's knowledge and now it's a beautiful gift.  Or even if the child was present when the supplies were picked up they have a boost of confidence knowing that the teacher doesn't know they received a donation and they feel more like the other kids in their school.  Either way it boosts the child's self esteem and readiness for school which as previously said, education is their ticket out of poverty.

Well, I think I've said enough and even if I haven't it's time for me to get back out there and pick out that perfect backpack full of supplies and lift a child's anxiety and ready them for school.  I hope you do the same thing.  Now isn't this a better definition for "no child left behind"?

Will seeds from a store bought pumpkin grow? An inquiry lesson

Oh, how I wish I had started my blog last October!  I would have been able to capture all the steps in this process with more clarity.  But alas, time is the culprit and now that it is summer I have time to share my tale...

Last October I had purchased a small, ordinary, non-organic pumpkin for my first grade classroom.  I did the usual estimation math lessons--how much did it weigh, how many seeds, etc.  Then in November we were working on our Social Studies unit of Long Ago and Today so we were baking down the pumpkin to make pumpkin muffins for our Thanksgiving Friendship Feast.  I posed my usual question about eating seeds and roasting the pumpkin seeds, something I've done for the past few years.  Well, this year I was blessed with a very inquisitive group of students who begged me to save some seeds to plant in the spring.  Thus, this project was born.

In May I was reminded of the seeds by the students (which I had forgotten about) which is another testament of their inquiring minds.  So...we discussed all the questions I had about the experiment about seeds from a non-organic pumpkin which as a member of the squash family cross germinate in fields possibly with other members of the squash family:

• Will the seeds germinate?
• Will the seedlings grow?
• Will the plant flower?
• Will the flower go to fruit?
• Will the fruit be a pumpkin?

Well...we had a successful germination  21 out of 22 seed cups sprouted!   Great!  First question answered but that left 4 more questions and it was the end of the school year.  So...I asked if anyone would be willing to donate their seedling to my garden in the name of science and 9 brave first grade scientists agreed.  

Here are the seedlings that I took home for the summer and continuation of our science lab.  The high heat combined with my being on bed rest post oral surgery wasn't a good combination and unfortunately only 5 seedlings remained to be planted into the garden.  Now that I am sufficiently recovered I have transplanted the seedlings into a garden bed saved for this purpose and now we wait to see what will happen next...to be continued.