Category:

Being My Best Today, Everyday

2/6/2014

What does it mean to be a good teacher? What defines and separates out the good from the excellent? I keep returning to this question of excellence in my own professional life. I am in my final semester of a very profitable 9 years at my current school. Huge life changes loom ahead as I will be relocating back to my "home" of New Zealand after almost 18 years of absence. Questions of finding a teaching position, of entering what will be for me an new education system and the transferability of my professional skills, dominate my thoughts.

Yet in the midst of all this, I have a wonderful class of very present students. Daily, I need to seek and find myself as a professional in this present moment. Thoughts of the future will not benefit my current students. They need me today, to hear their queries and respond to their excitement about learning. Dylan Williams in a recent conference at our school summed up a very popular sentiment by saying repeatedly to us that: "teaching is an impossible job." There is always more to be done than can be achieved within the constraints of time, curriculum and access to resources. And yet, beyond all of these, I have always believed that the most powerful of all forces for learning is relationship. Today, tomorrow, each period of class, I commit to being present for my students with all my mind and heart. They deserve nothing less. I am inspired by the students before me, their trust in me to make each day count.

2 Comments

The Relevance of Boredom

12/10/2013

1 Comment

Yesterday, a usually keen student stated every teachers' most dreaded words, "This is boring!" For a fraction of a second I froze, not sure how to respond. Nobody likes to hear that their lesson is boring. It is somehow a negative reflection on our skills as a teacher. Critical questions rapidly shot through my mind, "Was her statement justified?'" and even if it was "Did it matter if the lesson was boring?" The real question of importance I felt was "Is the lesson appropriate and effective?" I quickly reviewed my purposes for the lesson, and flipped back to her "That's OK, the occasional boring lesson is allowed. Not all of life is fun and games. Today we are focusing on developing a habit of mind. Habits require repetition to become fixed in o ur minds."

Today, the same child shouted out in excitement, "Wow, this is fun!" Yesterday they learned to differentiate two mathematical concepts, area and perimeter, often confused by students. The repeated practice was to fix in them the correct operations for each, neat algebraic setting out and the use of correct units. The math itself was not complicated. It was a lesson about practice and developing right habits. Today I wanted them to apply these skills in complicated real life problem solving situations, so I set up a game of mathematical jeopardy; always a favorite activity in my class. This had always been my intended goal, and it was gratifying to walk among the students and see their solutions; units clearly displayed, correct operations, sensible number sentences, algebraic reasoning and diagrammatic explanations. There was an excited frenzied buzz in the air. They were successfully solving some very complex problems in all sorts of creative ways, but all built on the basic patterns practised the day before.

I don't think as teachers that we should shy away in fear from the "B" word. We do need to be critically aware of the purpose for our lessons. However, we are teachers not entertainers. Of course we need to find the balance, chronic boredom leads to students switching off, but the flip side of perpetual fun also has its down side. Students need to learn vital habits of mind, persistence and determination.

1 Comment

Student Voice & Humpback Whales

3/24/2012

0 Comments

I think it is all too easy for us to underestimate the power of a student's voice in their own learning program. We have such firm ideas about what children this age should or shouldn't be learning. We have curriculum documents, scope and sequences and programs of inquiry to get through. Then there is even Great Aunt Mabel telling us what we should be teaching. In all of this, do we take enough time to ask the students what they would like to learn? Aside from the documented gains in student motivation that come from heeding student voice, today I discovered another important reason to listen closely.

A new child in our classroom had commented randomly on her first day: "I really, really, want to learn all about humpback whales." This was in the middle of our unit about How We Express Ourselves and the central idea was "Time and Culture affect Stories." In this extremely narrative unit where fiction was the focus, I just could not see a viable entry into the factual world of humpback whales. However, I knew that our Sharing the Planet unit was coming up soon and I hoped that I could offer her an oceans inquiry group.

This was the very first week of the new unit. I was searching in the resource room for non-fiction readers when I came across a set called, "The Life of the Humpback Whale"! No kidding! It was the perfect reading level for her as well. As her guided reading group gathered into a circle for an introduction to non-fiction texts, she snuck a sideways grin up at me. "Miss Renee, did you think about me when you chose this book? Are we reading this because I said I wanted to learn about humpback whales?" It would have taken a lot the shake the grin of that one little girls face. She wasn't just the new girl anymore, she knew she belonged because she matters in her teachers' mind. Isn't relationship the foundation of all learning after all?

0 Comments

Being My Best Today, Everyday

The Relevance of Boredom

Student Voice & Humpback Whales

Renee Stewart

Categories