Teaching beliefs

Hey there folks, I wrote up a revised statement of teaching beliefs... please feel free to question, suggest or comment upon it.

My theory of teaching

I believe that for one to be a teacher, one must rely upon both self-directed and student-orientated goals. The two are synergistic in that they harbour growth as a learner and as a teacher. There is no teaching without learning; there is no learning without teaching.

I believe that a truly good teacher is someone who strives for perfection but that will never achieve it. The ones who do achieve perfection are, in reality, the most imperfect; one always has more to learn. Students never fail to surprise. The truly indescribable mind of a child will always confound the most rigorous analysis, the most upheld theory, the most well laid plans. At this most exquisite and surprisingly frequent point, a teacher’s sense of adaptability, creativity and spontaneity are invaluable. I aim to never have a lesson plan that is followed to the letter. The learning experiences that are generated from spontaneous events are too valuable not to be exploited.
I believe that a good person is a good teacher. Respect is an idea that I have been raised to value; this I demand of myself and of my students. I believe that every person has potential to learn. I believe that every person is unique. I believe that every person has the right to be free of prejudice. I know that these three values will serve me well as a person, as a learner and as a teacher. Life in many respects is not fair for many students; I will aim to be as fair as possible for those of whom are without.
I believe that a good teacher is a good learner. I believe that everyday I should strive to be better than I was yesterday. This process will require me to reflect. This reflection will be the tool that I wield as new and, hopefully, better person is created each and everyday.

As a teacher I recognize that setting goals for my students is at the core of what I teach. I aim to provide the greatest spectrum clear, varied and authentic teaching strategies. I aim to continually challenge my students. I aim to foster a lifetime of questioning and critical thinking. I believe that the best way to achieve all these aims is to exploit student lead learning.
As a teacher I recognize that I play a significant role in the life of a child. I know that teaching extends out of the classroom. The actions that a teacher takes can have a dramatic impact upon a child; thus continuity and reliability are not just aims, they are necessities.
Lastly, I recognize that the time spent with children is a gift. This gift should be cherished, savored, enjoyed, crumpled in a big mess on some days and be given dedication page other days. This gift will not be wasted with me. This gift I am honored to receive.

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Sparkles, sparkles everywhere

Hey folks... posting this one real late at night... so gonna keep it short.

If you are planning an activity with the really little folk... and it involves glue, sparkles, small pieces of colored paper, did I mention glue? Oh how about sparkles? I think you get my drift.
Plan for lots of clean up time. But don't get me wrong, it really was a lot of fun and the project turned out really nice too.

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Literate Testing

Something that never would have even thought of, before doing Grade 1, is that of differing time requirements in testing. I know that in lessons we need to plan for unequal lesson completion times and that is why we have extra activities. However, I’ve found with this group of grade 1s, is that they have such trouble reading words on the tests that I have to talk them through it. This leads to some students doing the question quickly and then getting bored, changing their mind (often to an incorrect response), or helping their neighbour (which is nice but totally defeats the point of the test). However, if I cater to the majority of the class, the students who need a bit more time, or don’t quite understand feel rushed and often fall behind. If I know that I have an aid, or if I am the aid, I know to help these students; however, if there is no aid then what? I suppose giving them some kind of activity at the end of the test to do would keep them occupied… but that is assuming that they can progress through the test on their own. A simple coloring activity is defeated if the students cannot read the test that I am administering.
Any thoughts folks?

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This URL is Blocked!

Well today I tried execute a bit of IT integration. It kinda worked and kinda didn’t work. The students really enjoyed the MP3s of farm sounds. The technology made choosing the sounds and timing much easier. However, I didn’t know that YouTube was blocked on the school’s server. This is really too bad. My lesson was on hearing sounds, and part of that was how everyday objects can be musical. A quick video of the Blue Man Group with their improvised percussion instruments would have articulated this point poignantly. I understand that the school district does not want its members to be surfing the web when they should be doing their job, or having students run across in-appropriate videos. But I feel that the student’s learning is now also impaired by over-regulation. I feel that if a teacher is comfortable with using sources such as YouTube, then the teacher should be vigilant for possible sources of ‘non-educational’ content.

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Socialization observations on birthday events

A very interesting observation from last Thursday, that day happened to be the birthday of two girls in my class… lets call them 2007F3 and 2007F4. So some background, 2007F3 is a bit of a slow girl, not much personality and does not seem to have many friends in my class. I get a lot of blank looks from 2007F3. She does have her good spots though… during show and share she is really animated. 2007F4 is quite a lively girl, lots of friends, very socially active… sometimes too socially active. 2007F4 has been talking about her birthday for a week prior to the event… inviting friends, going on about what she was going to do. 2007F3, she didn’t even mention her birthday until two days before the event. She made a half hearted attempt at inviting some kids to her birthday. We sat at a carpeted space in our classroom and sang happy birthday to the both of them. 2007F4 was grinning from ear to ear, squirming with delight and just soaking up all the attention. 2007F3 just looked at her hand for a bit, then at her knee, then at something else in the room. She didn’t seem to know that we were singing to her… even when we actually said her name in the song! Strange… maybe it is just because I am such an extravert, but 2007F3’s reaction just does not strike me as normal.

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(good class) x (substitute factor) = (craziness)

Okay so my first experience with a substitute today. You know my little grade 1ers are a lot of fun and they usually are really good. But having a sub today just totally set them off on this wild rampage. Not to say anything bad about this sub, she’s really good and could control the students very effectively, but when it came to my turn… well not having a ‘teacher’ in the room really showed. It wasn’t the ones I usually have problems with… it was the middle group, my usually on task group that was just pushing the limits. Even the one little girl that was usually quite stoic was just on a rampage today. Tried to teach them about science, naw didn’t happen, just spent half an hour telling them to obey simple rules. Wow… huhhhhhhh…
Oh did I mention that I was being evaluated for my ‘teaching’ skills by my prof. today too?

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Monkey see Monkey do

The other day my TA was just about to start an activity with the students when she was called away to the phone. The students started getting restless… so I thought that I’d run a little experiment. I didn’t say a word, I just clapped twice. They looked. I looked back. Then I clapped twice more. They clapped twice. I clapped three times, they repeated. This went on till we had a pretty complicated clapping thing going on. Seriously… I wonder at what age this little trick will stop working? Humm well I guess I’ll find out soon enough.

Oh yeah... if my TA reads this blog... sorry all the clapping totally made hearing what was on the phone pretty impossible.

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Day off

Tired today... will write later on. Paint today - nothing else.

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Blank stares and Excited glimmers

So I definitely gave my first formal lesson in science today! Awesome… so awesome… it was not without faults for sure and things did not go entirely as I anticipated. But then again they are purely biological beings – just too many variables. I was reading this poem and it was a bit over the head for these little guys and girls and I got a lot of blank stares. Okay, I don’t care what you my readers know about blank stares, but until you see one from a 6 year old you haven’t seen nothing. They hold nothing back. If they are bored or confused they will let you know, humm... truth to the old adage “from the mouth of babes”. But when they are excited and things are fun and they are excited then YES! Very cool, Very good.
Furthermore, this idea of the balance between structured directions and on-the-fly directions need to balanced finely. Too much structure and it becomes boring or tedious, too much on-the-fly and it becomes too confusing and disorganized. Finding the balance will not be an easy thing and it will shift from group to group, from unit to unit, and from minute to minute. Oh well… let us see if tomorrow’s really hard concepts will be too much for this group of grade 1s…. Good night all,

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Psychology at Work

Yesterday I saw a lesson in psychology at work. My class of 15 grade 1 students stood outside for about an hour not moving too much for a Remembrance Day ceremony. In psychology class it was noted that the average child at this age has about at 6min attention span – max. It was interesting to see how they shifted their attention from their friends, to the ceremony, to something interesting they saw, etc., as the ceremony went on. One other thing that was really interesting was the localization of sound and sight pairing that the students demonstrated.
Oh yeah… that and authentic and genuine praise of good work is of course rewarding to children. However, I want to see first hand if they will internalize this positive reinforcement into a source of motivation.

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There’s just so many of them

I consider myself lucky on this first day of practicum… I’m really tired, for reasons I won’t go into right now, so I’m gonna keep this one short. I’ve only got 15 kids but they are just so energetic… it is frankly just amazing how energetic they are… just watching them be energetic makes me tired. My, oh my, how is a person that small capable of putting out so much energy? Wheew… I have definitely more respect for the teachers that have to keep up with these kids day after day.Couple interesting scenarios cropped up: 1) a classroom management example where the teacher was firm and clearly communicative. The student’s feelings was not hurt but clearly understood the message. 2) A quiet moment with a student that had endured an embarrassing moment. The way she carried herself and those big eyes… I really should have a better idea of what is more comforting to say in those situations.
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Highly developed senses

Wheeew… just finished developing four lesson plans for a grade 1 ‘Senses’ unit. They seem pretty good. The first lesson has to do with popcorn. The second lesson is a gym lesson that consolidates lessons learning in the popcorn lesson. The third lesson explores sensory related words in a bathtub. The fourth lesson explores the use of a ball in developing a sensory map of the world. If you, my readers want any of these lessons just email me.

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Dumbly and happily bumbling about for a bit

A well enforced and highly praised theme in this education program is reflecting. Though I see the benefits of reflecting on a person with a somewhat well developed sense of self, and a decent amount of self confidence, I wonder about the validity of using reflections for students. I think that heavily enforced and chronic reflections on students with not yet fully developed senses of self would lead us to form a generation of highly introverted citizens.
Now let us look at this assumption in a statistical sense. The high tail end would have some students with good self-confidence, and reflections would aid them in learning from their own mistakes. On the low tail end there would be a population that is so introverted and unsure of themselves that they become total social recluses. The majority, of course, would lay somewhere between these two extremes. But none-the-less, they would be somewhat more likely to be introverts, and on top of that critical introverts. What ever happened to just creating something and then enjoying the moment… not necessarily analyzing the thing to death, but just dumbly and happily bumbling about for a bit? Humm… maybe that’s the appeal of such movies as Jackass… maybe stupidity is not such a bad thing?
Or am I just being stupid and assuming too much? - to you my readers: feel free to poke holes in this 'theory'.

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Just talkin' about stuff

I’ve had a thought. How cool would it be if I could build into my schedule a rotational one-on-one time with each of my students? It would be really advantageous for building of repertoire. I think that the time spent should be at least 3 minutes and the topic of conversation should be about anything the student wants to talk about. I’ll try and keep in mind to do more listening than talking during these short meetings.

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