Teacher Confession

Can I make a confession?  Please don't tell anyone I work with though....

I'm not doing what I'm "supposed to do" in class anymore.  I've made an executive decision based on my students' needs that I am no longer going to teach they way I've been told.  I'm, instead, going to go with my gut, coupled with researched based teaching, and I'm going to teach Reading and Writing the way I think will reach my students.

And I have to say that for the first time in a long time, I'm excited about teaching again.

I'm starting by teaching a class novel.  No choice reading (gasp!).  We are ALL going to read the same book so that we can come together and actually have intellectual conversations about the story.  I'm going to teach a writing/grammar lesson each day, sometimes at the start of class, sometimes in the middle, maybe at the end!  Who knows?!   But, then...we are going to take that grammar lesson and USE IT!  We are going to write about what we read that day, and students are going to incorporate whatever grammar lesson we had into that writing.  FURTHERMORE, students are going to start identifying the grammar rules in the actual text we are reading, and students are going to practice whatever reading task is given that day (charting the setting, logging character development etc).

I'm doing it guys.  I'm tired of reading passages and articles and answering questions about them.  What do I want the most of my students???  I didn't go to college so that I can teach students how to answer questions on a test.  I went because I want to inspire students to love to learn.  My kids don't love to learn.  They don't love to read.  This mean I'm not doing what I'm supposed to, so something has to change, and it's not them.

I began today by introducing a "warm up" to students.  It was on FANBOYS and correctly placing commas and conjunctions in compound sentences.  The students walked in; I handed them the warm up and told them to get started.  I took attendance and picked up test corrections from the atrocious test they took last week and then I told everyone to put their pencils down.

I went through a really fun lesson of teaching what a BASIC, SIMPLE is and taught them that each sentence has to have a subject (noun) and a predicate (verb).  I even added in the tricky "to-be" verbs so that they know those are ALSO verbs.  THEN I taught students the rule about joining two complete sentences and needing a comma and a FANBOYS.  We even looked at how putting a different FANBOYS in the sentence can change the entire feel of the sentence.  Students were able to see that words matter.  You can't just pick a random FANBOYS and throw it in there...

Then we finished the warm up by determining if sentences needed the comma before the conjunction or not.  Students had to explain their answers using the rule and by speaking in complete sentences.  For example, "No, there is no comma needed because 'marshmallows on ice cream' is not a complete sentence.  That means you are NOT joining two COMPLETE sentences, so you don't need a comma."  They even learned a little about compound subjects and compound verbs and how they can try to throw in commas in these when they aren't needed.
This may seem basic for a 6th grader, but my students don't have this knowledge yet, regardless of what the state tells me they should already know.  So, I have to fill in the gaps.  I cannot expect my students to create well written sentences, to vary their sentence structures and incorporate compound verbs....I cannot expect my students to know how to identify a run-on or a compound sentence if they can't first tell me what make a sentence complete.

I'm going back to the basics y'all.

I then began an intro to the book I selected for us to read.  Yes, I chose.  Not the students.  Why?  I'm the expert in what makes a story "good", and I trust that if I love the book, I can at LEAST get them interested in maybe reading it.   I showed the students a couple of book trailers that were created by other students, and we analyzed them.  Students made inferences trying to figure out what the story was going to be about.  We learned about some persuasive techniques and critiqued which trailer we thought did a better job at enticing us to read the book.

Then, I made it personal.  I described WWII England.  I told the students about Germany's air raids, innocent people being killed, and parents having to make the difficult but no-so-difficult decision to send their children to live with perfect strangers in an effort to save their lives.  We imagined our parents telling us we had to leave everything we know and go live in a place we know nothing about with a person we know nothing about.  We thought about how we may not get to see our parents again.  And then we wrote.

And wrote.

And some of my students who hate to write were scribbling away.  And then we talked about how the setting of a story matters.  How the story would not be the same if written now or in the future.

And we learned some really neat new vocabulary such as "wardrobe", "mantle", and "inquisitive".  I mentioned to students why I love this book and shared a personal story about my grandmother's own wardrobe that I used to play in when I was little (which she still has).  I also told them about living in Germany before the Berlin wall came down and let them see that this drew me in to this story.  Then we learned about CS Lewis and how he actually housed children during the war, which is what inspired him to write this story (I DIDN'T KNOW THIS UNTIL YESTERDAY!!!)

And then it was time to go.


We didn't even get started reading yet!!!

Y'all, today was the first time in a very long time that I left work with a smile.  I came home eager to plan some more.  Today, my kids enjoyed writing.  They were thinking DEEPLY.  They were making Inferences and were connecting!

My kids were enjoying school.  All I do going forward has to be centered on getting these kids to want to learn.  The rest will fall in to place.


I cannot wait to start reading with them tomorrow and am even more anxious to hear the conversations that I know will ensue.

Mommy, I'm handsome

I never thought hearing those words would matter so much to me. But, in a world full of people who tear each other down, who can't live up to pressing expectations, who look to all the wrong places for identity confirmation, these words brought tears to my eyes.

My oldest son has always struggled with self confidence.  He's always been a little timid to try things from fear of failure.  He has always been very modest and HATES to take off his shirt, even at the pool or beach, unless there is another kid around without a shirt on who isn't bone skinny.  My oldest son is a beautiful soul both inside and out, but I have been able to tell for a long time now that he hasn't quite felt up to par on many things, including his looks.

So, when he walked up to me, grabbed my hand, and said, "Mommy.  I didn't used to think I'm handsome, but now I realize that I am," it took all I had not to cry right there.  I asked him what made him realize this, and he told me he used to think he wasn't handsome because of his chubby cheeks, but now when he looks in the mirror, he can see he is.  My heart smiled, and I reminded him that his chubby, freckled cheeks are one of the things that I THINK make him most handsome. 

The smile on his face was priceless.  The feeling in my heart couldn't be matched.  My son was feeling good about himself for once, and he felt the need to share that with me. 

I pray over him that he hold on to this scripture and know that simply being the child of God is what makes him so handsome (but he has also been blessed with some good looks and a kind heart too!)

Psalm 139:14 "...I am fearfully and wonderfully made"