“Come on! We have to go to the library!”
I signed my boys up for activities at our local library. Today was the first meeting of the Junior book club. My 7 1/2-year-old got a new book, and read and played games with some other kids from town. He’s already looking forward to finishing the book and going to the next meeting. As an English teacher… his happiness about books does my heart good.
Storytime for the two younger ones tomorrow morning. I love it.
To make up for the fact that I kinda skipped and/or copped out on the last two days, here are 2 entries for today’s “Best thing I heard.”
1. “Great pep rally, folks. Have a great weekend.” That was my principal. Not the most exciting thing, except that it was the last school-related thing for this week. It was pretty sweet.
2. “Come on, Mom! Let’s play chess!” This came from my 5-year-old. Let me say that differently: MY KINDERGARTNER PLAYS CHESS. He doesn’t win, but he claims a lot of my pieces, and keeps it going for a good long time. I can’t help but be impressed.
I’ve heard some good stuff, but I wasn’t sure what I wanted to put….
“Can you do me a favor and dink some wine before I get home?”
No- this was not said to me. (And technically, I read it– I didn’t hear it.) A friend’s husband said this to her, and she was explaining that she’d had a bit of a rough day. We’ve all been there.
(“The Best Thing I Heard All Day” in case you weren’t sure.)
This one comes from my almost 4-year-old son.
“I love Santa, because he gives you presents. But only if you’re good.”
He’s got a pretty solid handle on that Christmas thing.
January 2, 2012:
“Thirty-eight Dollars.”
The cost of a manicure, pedicure, and eyebrow wax. I don’t do this stuff very often, so I really appreciate and enjoy it when it happens. The eyebrows need more regular attention, to be honest.
Happy New Year, folks! (There are folks out there, right?)
So- on top of the education blogging, I’m participating in WordPress.com’s Blog-A-Day challenge. I chose the theme “The Best Thing I Heard All Day” because quite honestly I hear some great things in a typical day: from co-workers, students, my children, friends, etc. And I just don’t think I appreciate it that much. So this is a chance to stop and reflect.
Is there one for today? I’ll go with something my husband said: “There– I cleaned your kitchen.” You have to understand that cleaning our kitchen is the bane of our shared existence. It gets done, mind you…. usually after much nagging and deal-making. But I was engrossed in my brand-new Kindle Touch, so it was a sweet surprise to see my husband pulling EVERY BLESSED THING off our kitchen counters to be cleaned, re-organized, and re-arranged.
There are a lot of things a husband can do for his wife to make her happy, and not all of them have to do with traditional domestic practices. But this made me pretty dang happy.
…for a whole week!
Christmas was a blast, and now we’re home enjoying all the stuff we got- toys, books, etc. I am about to make the plunge into the world of the Amazon Kindle, and I have to say it is certainly not the end of literature that I thought it was at first. I will be able to get a whole bunch of Shakespeare plays and other books that will be a lot easier to carry and store than actually buying them.
So this is the time of year to get as much stuff in order as possible and reflect on the past year. This time last year I was unemployed and had no prospects. Now I’m teaching (albeit part-time) and back on track to becoming the person I was meant to be.
I already eat better, and I’m exercising pretty regularly. I don’t really have much in the way of bad habits (unless you count procrastinating, but that’s more a personality trait…), so what am I to come up with as a New Year’s Resolution? Actually– to blog more.
I’m going to try that daily blog challenge. Mine will be about the best thing I hear all day. It could be from my students, one of my children, or maybe something on TV. So the entries might be a bit shorter than my regular postings, but that’s ok since it’s not the main focus of my blog. I will still post about current events in education as they come up, but I think this “best thing I hear all day” challenge will be good for getting me in the habit of putting my thoughts down on a more regular basis.
I am teaching in the same district where my children attend school. My part-time gig allowed me to see my children in the Winter concert without having to take a personal day.
I am well aware that there is diversity in the our district (it’s not a huge amount, but it’s there). So I wonder if anyone would be surprised to see that it was clearly a Christmas concert. Sure there was no mention of Jesus, Mary, or Wise Men as there might have been when I was younger, but there was plenty of Santa, reindeer, and Sugar Plum Fairies.
At one point my husband indicated another student we know and asked me if I thought his parents would be upset by all this Christmas stuff. When I looked behind me and saw that student’s father beaming watching the show, I knew he’d be fine.
I think that’s a common misconception about public schools: that they are a slave dungeon of political correctness. What a public school is, however, is a microcosm of the community in which it is located. There are no mosques or synagogues in our town- not because we don’t want one, but because we don’t need one. Adherents to those faiths can find an appropriate house of worship a reasonable distance away. I choose to not attend the house of worship nearest my home, opting for one that better fits my style in a nearby town. I feel my school district has done a fine job of reflecting that in the schools: focusing on what brings us together, instead of what makes us different.
This post has been shuffling around my head for a while now. I wanted to dive head-first into it when I read the article because it drove me crazy.
It is no secret that law is probably my least favorite profession. As Tom Hanks once put it, “It’s like doing homework for a living,” and pretty much every lawyer I know has essentially agreed (I do not, obviously, dislike lawyers; that would be ridiculous). So it was –once again– quite serendipitous that I happened upon a New York Times article (Nov. 20, “What They Don’t Teach Law Students: Lawyering” by David Segal) that spoke about how the one thing NOT being taught in Law Schools was how to be a lawyer. Newly hired law firm associates are taught the “meat-and-potatoes” of lawyering by watching and working with their superiors. Law Schools are more about theory and history of law. Law Schools devote their time and money to Law Review Journals and other Academic endeavors.
At, first, I felt almost vindicated. I dedicated years of my life to my profession, and I feel that I came out of school knowing how to do what I was being hired to do. And to be honest, because of the special deal worked out between the school where I worked and the school where I was being taught, I got my entire Master’s degree for about $300. Quite the bargain. How can Law Schools justify charging six figures for a degree that cannot possibly translate to concrete skills?
But then I thought how wonderful it must be to learn how to think like a professional. I think the #1 thing that prevents decent teachers from becoming great teachers is that they think like their students when they should be thinking like professionals (don’t get me wrong: it is important to think like a student at times– just not all the time). Our metacongnitive skills help us to create sense and meaning for our lessons, and the more we do that, the more relevant our classes can be. That makes us more valuable teachers, and contributes to the overall climate of the school. That is certainly valuable.
So I come out of it feeling neutral– kind of. It still bugs me that a teacher has to work 20 years to even come close to the salary a first-year lawyer can make, even when the teacher is working at least as hard and affecting so many more lives than that lawyer. It also annoys the hell out of me that lawyers seem to be first on line to slam teachers (I say this safely because lawyers often become politicians) for the salaries they earn. I think it’s because the operative word here is “earn.” It would seem that a lot of people think teachers don’t “earn” their salary after a few years. And perhaps some don’t. But for the love of Pete, do not lump me or my colleagues in with those types.
It also isn’t lost on me that the most lucrative law positions are for private law firms, and that a public school teacher would see an equal in a district attorney or a public defender. If I thought for a second that private education was more lucrative, I’d hop that bandwagon in a second. But the truth is, private education by and large is no better and is certainly not more lucrative. So it’s really apples and oranges to compare the law and education professions.
My takeaway on this is that while I clearly feel I got a great education and am striving to do the same for others, what I consider counts as an education is widely varied. That’s what makes this “reform” stuff such a difficult task.
I found myself wanting to be observed by the principal.
In the grand scheme of things, that is probably one of the last things most teachers want. The teacher acts differently, and the students do, too. But maybe that’s my point in wanting to see it happen: to remember what it looks like to put on a show for administration.
If your job, or your tenure status, is on the line, it’s natural to put your best foot forward. If a student would like to not see the inside of the principal’s office, they are likely to adjust their usual behavior. Even a well-behaved student will be slightly ill-at-ease because another adult is in the room.
But what it really makes me think about is, what really matters when it comes to teacher observations? A supervisor is going to look for curriculum; a vice-principal, classroom management. I have been commended or criticized for how I was dressed, how much I used the textbook, and how much I walked around the room. It feels as though my administrators were grasping at straws trying to figure out the magic formula that made an effective teacher.
I’ve been thinking that the most useful thing for schools would be to have a Director of Professional Development. Someone with advanced degrees in Education. A person licensed as a Supervisor. A person who would work directly with the Superintendent to create a district-wide vision of what an effective teacher would be, elementary and secondary alike.
Instead of having 2 or 3 evaluations a year for each teacher, which is all an administrator can handle with all of the other obligations they have, this Director of Professional Development will go around and make impromptu observations daily. They can travel from one school to another, or there can be one per building in cases of large populations or distances between schools.
There is a risk that it can become the educational equivalent of the IAB that is oh so popular in police departments. But I can’t help but think that this would be the best course of action. A course for effective change.
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