Blog . . . actually Vlog: Reflections on Storytelling

On This Day

It was a very busy, long morning. I had back-to-back-to-back conferences with kids and parents and my principal that filled every break. Still, classes went mostly well, and I felt like I sort of knew how to teach. Then I went to cnn.com just as lunch was starting--just 5 minutes to spare before I had to meet parents. Wow. Just wow. I struggled to keep myself together. I didn't want to be crying when I met with the parents. But children--little children--shot and killed . . . . The parents were lovely, by the way, asking great questions about their son and telling me how much he likes my class, which really surprised them, because he's a math/science guy. Turns out he thinks I'm funny. I went straight to the church after work to continue working on our Christmas program. It's a huge undertaking, and I don't know how anyone could do it alone. I left feeling grateful for many hands and heads that make light work. And then I went to the Hungry Onion...

Dare to Trust

In the last several years of my teaching career, I have made a conscious decision to trust my students. As a part of my opening day speech, I tell my students that even though they have done nothing yet to earn my trust, I choose to trust them. I tell them that I am on their side and that I will believe what they say to me. If a student tells me his computer crashed just when he was about to send me his essay (the 21st century version of "the dog ate my homework"), I believe him. If a student says she is not ready for her quiz because she was at the hospital all night with her sick grandmother, I believe her. Or at least I act like I believe her, and frankly, most of the time I do. And if I find out one of my students has lied to me, I don't feel stupid. As one of my teacher mentors, Jeff Wilhelm, would say, "it's not my bad." It's not my job to suspect every student of lying and cheating. It is my job to teach, and I know that to teach well, I n...

I'm Counting

I can picture myself as a preschooler (back when preschool literally meant "before school"), discovering that I could count all the way to 100. What a joyful revelation! Forty-some years later, counting is still an important part of my life. I find comfort and joy in numbers. I love watching the balance on my mortgage go down--even though it moves very, very slowly. And budgeting night is something I look forward to every month. In fact, I've been known to use it as a reward for myself: grade 20 essays and I get to budget! When I have a pile of essays to grade I make stacks of five or ten (depending on how long the essays are), and I give myself a reward for every stack (10 minutes to eat or watch television, for example). To manage those really big jobs (like the senior research papers, which take about an hour each) I use a quota system. Once upon a time I thought grading 15 research papers in a week was a reasonable quota, but then my AP numbers grew...

SingTeachRun

Search This Blog