Aug
31
Getting Better All the Time
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Coleen Armstrong
At the beginning of each new school year, every parent wants to know what he or she can do to encourage a child to work harder, do better, accomplish more. Most professional advice sounds something like this: “Provide a nutritious breakfast. Reinforce good study habits. Monitor nightly homework assignments. Insist on an early bedtime.” All great suggestions. But all externally imposed.
How much greater would be the chances for success, I wonder, if the motivation came from inside the child himself?
As a junior in high school, I knew a girl named Johnna, who had the most unpleasant disposition imaginable. She was gossipy, sarcastic, and confrontational. In those days it never occurred to anyone to give back in kind what she was dishing to others, so we simply avoided her. Whenever Johnna approached a chattering group, everyone suddenly began glancing at their watches and edging toward the exit.
Summer arrived, and then fall. When we all returned for our senior year, I was stunned to see Johnna approaching me with a warm smile. She asked about my vacation, then remarked about how glad she was to be back. Then, with a wave, she darted off.
Over the next few weeks I couldn’t help noticing that Johnna was no longer saying mean things or telling cruel jokes. It seemed almost as if she’d had a personality transplant. Even stranger, nobody commented on it; it was as if this “new” nice girl had already made everyone forget the old one. Indeed, by the end of the semester, Johnna was liked and accepted by the entire crowd.
Today, with the benefit of four decades of hindsight, I believe that Johnna suddenly saw clearly the damage she was doing––not only to others, but also to herself. She came to a profound conclusion. She needed to change. Hard to envision, long before the days of Dr. Phil, Oprah, or any self-help books. Even harder to believe was that she actually accomplished it, very likely on her own.
If Johnna could transform her negative nature so abruptly and dramatically, then what might be possible for any child today who recognizes how his or her life might change for the better? Try this: Ask your child or teenager to name one thing that he would like to reconfigure about himself. Caution: Do not supply the answer. This is not an opportunity for you, the adult, to vent about what you’d like to see.
A fourth grader might opt for reading one book each month for pleasure; a twelfth grader might suggest developing a better physique or insisting on a cleaner car’s interior. Again, do not intervene. If you do, he or she will no longer “own” it. It isn’t your job to censor or jumpstart––because the choice isn’t nearly as important as the resolution. He or she only needs to change one small thing, and then watch the staggering results. A cleaner car, for example, becomes a cleaner desk, and then a cleaner room. A cleaner room becomes faster, more efficient morning routine, which in turn means being on time every day for school and/or work. And so on. The ultimate lesson is that change is never easy––but it’s possible, especially if taken in short steps, and the results are worth it.
Johnna did it at age 16, so quickly and so thoroughly that she made it appear effortless. I’m sure it wasn’t; it took more courage and pluck than the rest of us could possibly know. But I’m also sure that she is still enjoying the rewards of that immense transformation over 40 years later.
-Author of The Truth About Teaching:What I Wish the Veterans Had Told Me
Aug
22
Start of School Dreams
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What is up with start of school dreams? Every year near the end of summer I begin to have a series of nightmares about the start of school. Sometimes it is the first day and everyone is ready except for me. The principal calls and asks, “Where are you? The kids are waiting.” Sometimes I’m taking a new teaching job and somehow missed out on all the meetings so everyone else knows what is happening except for me. Every time I am unprepared in one way or another for the start of school. I often wake up from these nightmares jumping out of bed frantically running for the shower to get to school on time - only to find that it is still summer. Does this happen to anyone else or is it just a sign of my “control-freak” nature? Even though I’ve been out of the public school classroom for a while, I still keep having these dreams and my husband tells me that I teach in my sleep. What’s that all about? What do you dream about when you dream about school? I’d love to hear it!
Jun
4
Truth About Teaching WON a Book of the Year Award!
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I am so proud and excited to announce that our newest title published in December of 2006, The Truth About Teaching: What I Wish the Veterans Had Told Me, has won the Benjamin Franklin Award for the Education category. Over 1,800 books were entered and judged by more than 150 industry experts from the worlds of booksellers, reviewers, librarians, and book designers. It is such an incredible honor to have won the Gold in our category for 2007!
Coleen and I both flew in to New York City to attend the awards ceremony and had a wonderful time talking about teaching and her new manuscript (keep an eye out in the next year or so) as well as wondering about the outcome of the Benjamin Franklin awards. The award banquet/ceremony was excellent and we sat at a table with several other finalists hoping to also win in their own category. I felt lucky that we didn’t sit next to anyone in our own category as that would have been quite awkward. As it was, we were the only ones at our table who won an award and while that was a bit difficult, it didn’t detract from our excitement at winning.
The ceremony was full of “pomp and circumstance” with two hosts and large screens showing the book covers for each finalist in each category. Once the finalists for that category were announced, we were treated to the hosts announcing, “And the winner is…” with a very significant pause before stating the winner. Then the winning book cover was shown on the screen while the publisher and author went to the stage to accept the award and say a few words.
Some of the publishers were quite verbose and droned on and on. I, myself, was so excited and jumpy that I don’t know how some of them looked so calm and collected. I didn’t take long, but wanted to share the story of how Coleen’s book came across my desk. She sent me the manuscript last June and I printed it out in order to take home to review it. I thought to myself, “I’ll just glance through this quickly before taking it home,” and opened the first page. By the end of the page I was hooked and I found myself sitting there reading the manuscript to the very end. I knew right then that this was a book I had to publish. As a teacher her words resonated within me and I found myself saying out loud, “That is so true!” over and over. It was as though she had taken my very experiences in the classroom and translated them onto the page. After years of hearing, “Oh, it can’t be that hard,” it was a delight to read similar experiences coming from another teacher. As a publisher her writing style had me enraptured and I knew that I would have very little editing to endure for this project. I called Coleen the very next day and said, “I have to publish this!” And as Humphrey Bogart said in Casablanca, “I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”
May
16
Get Students Moving
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By Emma McDonald
What can you do for students who can’t seem to sit still? Get them moving! Look over your lesson plans and ask yourself, how can I get my students moving during this lesson?
Ideas:
- Relay race between teams to spell words, solve math problems, answer trivia/quiz questions
- Basketball or toss the ball games — when students get an answer correct, they get to toss the ball in a trash can. If you can go outside to do this activity, let them try to make a basket on the basketball court. Another option would be to kick the soccer ball into the goal.
- Rotating Centers with short activities to keep the students moving.
- Use sentence strips to let students create a gigantic timeline or T-chart on the floor or on the board. Students must place their information (on the sentence strip) in the correct place within the chart, etc. Small sticker magnets can be used to place the strips on your blackboard/whiteboard.
- Utilize drawing and coloring for illustrations of information/ skills learned. Yes, even the big kids like to draw and color! Don’t discount drawing and coloring if you teach Jr. High and High School students.
- Act out scenes from the history or science textbook. Student groups can create a skit showing their knowledge of the information and present it to the class. Have student groups take a section of the chapter and rewrite it as a script or as a simple story.
- Do exercises in between each lesson or activity. This can be as simple as: reach high into the sky, show me your spirit fingers, touch the floor, march in place like soldiers, etc.
- As you read the textbook, have students get up and move to the seat behind them after each paragraph or end of subsection. Any kind of rotation where students read, speak, write, and move will keep them on their toes.
- Do your lesson with students standing in a large circle. Fire questions at them randomly (are you in my line of fire?).
- Allow extremely active boys (and girls) the flexibility of standing and “wiggling” at their desk while they work. Shaking a leg, tapping a foot, or bouncing up & down can help dispell the “wiggles” and keep a student focused on their work. You may want these students to stay near the back of the room where they will not distract others.
- Another option is to give active students a small soft ball that they can squeeze in their hand while they are working.
What do you do to keep students moving in your classroom?