This is an open letter to all teachers across the world no matter what your role. This past summer I was part of a campaign entitled ‘Project Hero’. Teachers and students from across Canada wrote to teachers in Sierra Leone celebrating the extraordinary courage and resiliency they demonstrated during the Ebola crisis in their country. My team and I were able to hand deliver over 300 letters to teachers from all regions of that country. In continuing with this campaign, I am sharing a letter from me to teachers around the world.
Dear Teacher,
What words describe a hero? One might say kind, super hero strong, courageous, resilient, compassionate, generous, self-sacrificing, trustworthy, gracious, fearless and loyal (only to name a few). Each and every day you demonstrate these altruistic characteristics in so many ways that make a difference for the students you are entrusted with.
Yet, your tireless efforts are not celebrated in books, movies or on the television. Your efforts are not worthy enough to make the evening news or local headline. There are precious few times when even a thank you is shared. That is what makes you a hero. You are not seeking public fame. You are not trying to get unlimited likes on social media and you do not seek out recognition of any kind. You simply do what you do because it makes a difference in the life of a child and ultimately the world in which we live in.
I have had the honour of being a teacher for thirty-one years and am ready to start another voyage in the life of a group of children. I am honoured and humbled to be in such a noble profession working with heroes like you each and every day. I wish you the best in this school year and will say thank you in advance for the many, many heroic acts you will carry out on behalf of children around the world.
Desks emptied, stacked and put aside. Check. Dormant superfluous paper recycled with extreme prejudice. Check. Walls filled with student work, learning goals, art, and inspirational messages now returned to vanilla coloured vacant voids in waiting. Check. Boxes packed and piled in preparation for transport to my new pending portable location (second in 4 years). Cool.
As you’ve observed from the picture on the left, Room 103 is on vacation along with my students. Until the middle of this week it has been a 10 month hive of activity home to 31 + 1 learners all buzzing at their own frequency. Our class was a hub of inquiry, personal growth, and constant learning. And now it’s all gone.
With 9 weeks of summer ahead, I wonder how much of what has been taught over this past year will come back with students when they return in September? Have you ever thought about why we the school year is paused in the modern learning era? Have you ever wondered what it might be like to embrace a balanced teaching year?
I am not advocating additional teaching days beyond the 190+/-, but am asking if we could consider alternatives to a schedule that seems more suited as a throwback to our hunter gatherer ancestors. This got me asking how the schedule we work around really came to be used? Other than the fact that our elementary schools are not equipped with any climate control in the classrooms I am not sure what else it might be from balancing the instructional year? A post from Learning Lab Why Does School Start in September? Hint: It’s not the crops provides some context to this issue.
Now before the hate mail about how important the summer break is for teachers and students, let’s consider the positives. Balanced school schedules allow for greater retention of instructional concepts. That means less knowledge hemorrhage from year to year. Imagine students having the same amount of instruction time, but spread out more evenly, but they retain more of what they’ve learned? Secondly, with a balanced year, there will be weeks off at different times for families to enjoy time together around already existing holidays. Think of the travel savings? Imagine if March Break was 2 weeks? We could all drive to Florida and back relaxed and ready for Spring.
Okay, I’ve shared the sunny side of this, but here’s the shady side. Balanced school years impede students’ ability to make money from summer jobs which may be crucial to helping them attend school, or helping their families. Balanced school years may not provide enough recovery/down time for students or educators to relax and recharge. This might lead to mental health issues such as stress and anxiety. Not good.
Weighing both sides of the conversation is healthy. There are schools already operating on a more balanced schedule with positive results. So where do stand with the classroom empty and the students/staff all gone. Where would you want education to go with this one? Holler when you get a chance. After some down time.
Happy summer. Thanks for reading, responding, and sharing. See you in September. Will
I write this post as a tribute and thank you to all educators who breathe inspiration into the lives of their students and into one another from September’s strong start to June’s stronger finish.
This post is the completion of a promise after a response reminiscent of a rant written to address comments in the media about educators. In the spirit of warmth and fuzziness I’ll keep my word(s) positive.
You did it!
10 months in the books, out of the books, torn away from the books, and complete with several second looks. From field trip bookings and to figurative (text)book burnings the school year sparked a 5/6s of a year long fire of growth. And now, as the embers cool, the ash settles, and the warmth fades another year of memories will linger as ember in the mind to be stoked again soon.
Does anyone else feel the same way? I do and know that I’m not alone on this one.
This year, my seventh, which I am privileged to witness many intellectual and life fires lit, fanned, spread wildly, and occasionally control burned. A feat, I am sure, that was accomplished throughout millions of classrooms around the world thanks to incredibly caring educators like you.
Imagine that you were part of the transformation, edification, and education of a student. You helped someone, or several someones, be a part of something, achieve something or realize something they’d never known before? Could there be a more noble calling?
When students arrived in your classroom last September, they were rough around the edges, unsure of what was to come, carrying some of the baggage from the previous year, and full of energy (nervous and otherwise). And from that you set out rough around the edges, unsure of what was to come, carrying some of the baggage from the previous year, and full of energy (nervous and otherwise).
There were times, too many to mention (reports, parent meetings, phone calls, bombed lessons, planning lapses, sick days, and life in general) that required us to dig deep into our vaults to rise above, resolve, and retain our raison d’etre.
And now?
Rest, raise a toast to one another, as I do to you because you started strong and you finished stronger.
Cheers! Santé! Gom bui! Kampai! Prosit! Djam! Mabuhay!
Thank you for the inspiration.
It is that time of year when I am able to enjoy the labours of my endless hours of worrying, endless hours of commitment and endless hours of planning for my students. We call it our harvest time.
At the beginning of every school year a new group of students come into our program with a variety of dysfunctional behaviours accompanied by a lack of success in school and we always start with the same story. I bring out a group of apples in various conditions and ask them which one would they choose. Of course all of their decisions are based on what they see on the outside. Is it bruised? Is it ripe enough? Does it have the right shape as compared to all the other apples? But yet the best part of the apple is the part that nobody can see, the inside. That is who my students are. They are completely judged by what people see on the outside and from what they have experienced from the outside. Often, past teachers have no opportunity to experience what a wonderful, young person they truly are due to the violent, aggressive behaviour they exhibit. My first question to the students is how do we show people what an amazing person you really are on the inside. How do we show them your best part?
That is the question that was first asked over 10 months ago and after a year of academic and behavioural programming we have arrived at harvest time. They are now being judged for who they truly are and not what they previously looked like. Both the adults and students in Room 16 take great pride and enjoyment during harvest time. In our daily circles we are preparing them for that transition back to the regular world. That begins by revisiting awkward or negative scenarios that took place in our room, except at this time of the year we are able to laugh about it. The students shake their heads in disbelief as they have come so far and changed for the good so much, those past behaviours seem incomprehensible to them (self evaluation at its best).
They then begin to identify which strategies or skills have worked best for them over the year. They make a list of their most effective strategies, expressions or visuals and we put that together into a laminated bookmark. That is taken with them as they transition back to their next academic setting and becomes the foundation for their next year’s success.
I hope you are taking the time to enjoy your harvest time!
As part of our end of the week celebration my class convenes with our daily circle discussion. In addition to our debrief of the week’s events, we add our ‘Get, Give or Pass’ activity. Each person in the circle is asked whether they would like to give a compliment to another person, get a compliment from a fellow student or pass. This is truly a very powerful measure of the level of community that my class has evolved into.
In order for this level of comfort to be present in my group I have to spend time daily working on team building tasks that facilitate a comfort level between all members of the class. In addition, there is extensive time spent modelling and supporting effective communication skills. As with any other outcome, this has to be scaffolded over time in order for the activity to be successful. If this activity is done without the time spent in building to this level of trust it could and will most often produce negative results.
Two pieces of advice I would offer to teachers in implementing this strategy are first and foremost to spend daily time reinforcing the expectations you have around how people are expected to treat each other in your room. This is best done by finding and recognizing students who are exhibiting the target behaviours you seek to develop.These expectations must be clear and consistently followed through on. The second critical piece is the modelling by you of the way to speak, to listen and how to give and receive compliments from other people.
When my students arrive into my alternative behaviour classroom in September, so do their parents and families. The family’s beliefs and attitudes about school have been shaping ever since their child became a part of the formal school system. For the family of my students, that means that most communication from the school has almost certainly been a negative scenario that had unfolded. So when I complete my first call home in September what do you think the response is from the parent who answers the phone? You are right, “Okay what did my child do now?”
Just as it takes time to build relationships with your students, so does it take time and effort to connect with families. This is especially true for families of students who have struggled in school or have had difficulty adjusting to school and classroom expectations. For me this starts with an onslaught of ‘Sunshine Calls’. A Sunshine Call is a strategy that I use to gain the confidence of my families by showing that I care about their child, I believe in their child and will balance the type of information that comes home and not dwell on the negative (attribute based approach).
The best analogy I can use to explain the benefits of this strategy is to compare it to banking. The more positive deposits that I put into my account (compliments, sunshine calls) the stronger that balance will be. When I do have to make a withdrawal (call home about a negative scenario) my positive balance will hold me over and the relationship will remain stable and the family will be more likely to support me knowing that it must be concerning for Mr. B. to be calling home about it.
What is exciting for me, is when my students start to understand and realize that their best efforts and positive changes will be shared often and ongoing with their family. I start by asking them if they would like me to call home and tell their parents about some positive scenario that took place that day. They 100% of the time say an astounding yes. As they come to realize this is a regular part of our classroom, they begin to ask me to call their family and let them know about their math work or reading. That is the time that I know why I will always look to see the glass as half full.
This is the second post in my word series in spirit of circling the bases of baseball and education. I’m back at the plate to take another swing. Click here for an instant ‘read’play of my first at bat.
It’s the 7th inning, and your back at the plate, again. So far you have popped out to short stop, struck out looking, and are starting to regret getting out of bed today because you are sitting on 2 strikes already for this at bat; and the pitcher is feeling pretty smug about setting you down for the third time in a row.
photo by jcclark74 CC0
You shake off the crowd noise and focus on the pitcher itching to make you look bad, again. Here it comes. The moment that defines you, validates you, and proves to the watching world, and yourself, that you deserve to be here. Your focus is Zen like. You want to hit one out of the park so badly, and leave the doubters gawking in awestruck wonder of your talent, and requisite, albeit, controversial bat-flip.
Here’s the pitch! Muscles tensed, eyes trained to the ball, hips and hands executing the swing in a fraction of a second, and in your mind play the immortal words of Jerry Howarth, “There she goes!” But the sound you hear is more of a thunk! You make contact, and the ball leaves the bat with barely enough force to escape the infield. Somehow, you are on base with a blooper, and after 2 failed attempts to get on base, you take what you can get. Time to make the most of it.
The classroom, like the baseball diamond, is where learning gets ugly and messy. Mistakes are going to be made, and that’s ok. Thoughts of perfection on every play only lead to frustration and disappointment. They are also unrealistic and can come at the detriment of the learner/player.
In baseball, like education, the goal is to get better every day. Results may often not be a result of what was planned or prepared for, but they allow us immediate feedback to keep our heads in the game. Do we quit when things are not going our way? Of course not. A perfect lesson in education, like a home run in baseball or pitching a perfect game, may be moonshot goals that should not keep us from swinging for the fences anyway.
Funny how life is like that too. The sweetest victories usually come after the most difficult times. As long as we are willing to be learning we are capable of achieving something. Success will look different from day to day. Are we preparing our students to stay in the games, step up to the plate, and take their swings? How we prepare our students will make all the difference. This comes through coaching, practice, resilience, and confidence. There is only one way to make this happen and it comes from believing in our students.
In a sport loaded with statistics, it is easy to glean relevant information about everything in baseball. Did you know that the last person to hit 400 was Ted Williams of the Boston Red Sox. It was in 1941 and few players ever since have even come close to attaining, what is arguably, the most illusive achievement in professional baseball. Education has been known to keep stats too. Between government standardized tests, and need for assessment metrics from JK to infinity in the classroom, there is no shortage of data. But what of it? Are we using the data to its fullest? Are there better ways to measure success in the classroom like Sabremetrics I mentioned in my first post?
Baseball Player by Paul Brennan little paul – Public Domain
Imagine that since 1941, not a single player has been able to hit the baseball 4 times out of every 10 at bats. That’s a 40% success rate! What if we looked at our students that way. Would any of them be in the hall of fame with a success rate like Ted Williams? What would are world look like if our students were lauded for their swings and misses as much as their hits?
To some, it gets worse. In the modern era, if a player is able to hit the ball 3 times out of 10 over lengthy career he too has a good chance of being enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame*. That’s by being successful only 30%. This got me thinking. How are you celebrating the success of your students? Are you finding them stressing over their last at bat(test result, essay, project)? Are they able to learn each time they come to the plate and take a swing without losing confidence when they get out?
In her incredible TED Talk Every kid needs a champion Rita Pierson shared how important it was to celebrate success in learning, even if it was a failure by all standards. I often lose track of this myself and need to take stock of the little victories that happen in the process. As teachers, if we are greeting students heading back to the dugout after an out with disappointment or derision then we are missing a chance to build confidence in them, and a chance to help reflect and prepare for what needs to happen for success next time.
If we can share this with our learners then success is possibly only a few innings away. In this way we can encourage and equip students to be ready for when their turns in the batting order come around again.
I want to share with you an experiment gone really right. Over 2o years ago, a very good friend of mine and I started working with high-risk youth (Grade 6 -8) in our board in the summers. We had developed a program based around adventure-based learning. Our focus was to use the outdoors and physical challenges to assist them in developing social and self-regulation skills that would increase the probability of their success in school. One of the tools we developed was a Daily Newsletter (as we called it at that time) to inform families of their child’s progress as well as provide a summary of the days successes and occasional not so good outcomes. That one teaching tool has evolved over the last twenty years into what is now my Weekly Parent Book.
At the end of each week, at my classroom computer station I sit, look around my room and ask myself the following questions:
How well did I meet the needs of each of my students?
Did I make time to talk with each student on a one-to-one basis to find out how their life is going?
Did I push too hard or not hard enough in moving them along their academic journey?
What did I accomplish this week in literacy, numeracy etc.?
What went well in Room 16 this week?
What did not go well in Room 16 this week?
How will I use that information to make the next week more successful for everyone?
That weekly routine has turned into one of the most rewarding and successful self-reflection tools I have ever had. Its initial, sole intent was to inform parents of what was going on in their child’s classroom. What it has become is a tool that I use to inform families, publish good news stories, share advice on how parents can help their child, updates on school-wide initiatives and most importantly, a tool to reflect on my week’s teaching.
It is a time that I actually use to decompress from the week’s events, look back in order to plan ahead for my next week and set goals of what I need to accomplish the following week (from a curriculum standpoint or what is needed to help specific students move forward). As the year progresses, the content of the weekly news becomes a shared work whereby students start to contribute to its production. That is when this tool becomes a very powerful learning tool for all of us.
Of course being the old school type, every Monday our morning circle starts with the sharing of the past week, goal setting using the feedback on that two-sided sheet of paper and then the ritual of adding it to their Parent Book to go home and be read and signed by an adult in their home. It goes home on Monday and is not due back until the following Monday to accommodate a wide variety of family scenarios and work schedules. The back of the page usually has some photograph that was taken during the week, an advice column, new goals for the class, a funny parent story or some other kind of important read for my families. At the end of the year it turns into a yearbook that can serve as a memory of their year. I still have all of my copies and when I need a little nostalgia fix all I have to do is go back and look through my career, year-by-year.
I secretly want to be a conductor of a large musical ensemble. My visits to the Toronto Symphony Orchestra always reignites my passion for music and I will always catch myself using my hands and body to dance with the beautiful arrangements of the melodious notes. However, one small obstacle has barred me from realizing this dream: I have not yet been able to master any instruments much less lead a body of musicians. Sigh! Nonetheless, being a teacher gives me the opportunity to integrate many of my passions into my classroom practice. As such, my love of teaching and my dream of conducting an orchestra have a place to collide. My class call signal – teacher: “Bah dah bump bah dah dah…” students: “Hey!” – can seem to go on for hours as I engage my students in various melodious versions of the common tune. Needless to say, I can totally get lost in the call and response clap patterns that allow me to use my hands as if they were conducting an orchestra, pulling out the very beat of each note value as students respond with the exact arrangement of claps. Each time I am left invigorated and excited and my students love it. These sessions often end up with smiles and laughter in our classroom, opposite to the quiet tone I originally was trying to achieve.
This year I teach math to Primary, Junior and Intermediate students. Math and music have long enjoyed a harmonious marriage with the plethora of interconnected concepts that can be explored simultaneously. This year in my Grade 3/4 math class, we had the opportunity to embrace this fusion. We have been exploring geometry concepts by naming, sorting and identifying characteristics of polygons. This aspect of geometry is extremely language-rich and I needed a way to solidify the students’ conceptual understanding of the principles of geometry while not losing my students in the barrage of its discourse. So we decided to accent our learning by capturing it in a song.
I invited my class to decide on a familiar tune that we could arrange our lyrics to fit. Hot Line Bling and Watch Me (Whip/Nae Nae) were among the tunes that were suggested, but didn’t make the cut. We opted to use the infamous Mary Had A Little Lamb as our melody base since it offered a simple structure for the type of song that we wanted to construct. We then brainstormed all of the ideas we had learned up to that point in our polygon journey. These were written on the board and were the ‘meat and potatoes’ of our song. Then the creative juices began to flow. Each aspect of our learning was written as a verse in our song. We had to be creative with our word choices and syncopation, as we had more to say than the structure of our tune would allow. So once the lyrics were written, the music teacher and I collaborated to hash out the note values of our song. Ta-dah! Music literally met math. Coupled with this, Mary Had A Little Lamb just happened to be the song that my students just finished learning to play on their recorders. Bazinga! Music met math again. And guess who got to direct this beautiful masterpiece?… ME!
So what’s my point? Learning is awesome! No really – when a passion for teaching meets willingness to embrace creativity, amazingness happens. Children learn and teachers have fun. Being authentically excited about what you do is an important ingredient to any meaningful experience and the polygon song is such an experience which I hope my students will never forget. Because of this, neither will the concepts be lost. As for me, my dream will continue to grow. Who knows what else I might try? I’ve secretly wanted to be an opera singer…
It’s Monday.
I should be in the classroom right?
Nope, not this week, or the next one either (insert thoughts of appreciation here).
It’s the Winter break and millions of students and teachers are waking up to the first of 10 vacation days. WooHOO! My internal clock did not get that message. Neither did my clock radio alarm as it went off at 5:55 am as always. So as the chorus of Pat Benatar’s Love is a Battlefield blared, I pressed snooze for the first time since September.
15 minutes later I’m up, dressed, and drinking the first of the day’s many coffees. That’s enough sleeping in for one day.
It has been a hectic 4 months in the classroom.
The months have flown by at the speed of learning(my term).
Not that it’s a bad thing, but frenetic might be an apt single word descriptor.
With reports going home late this year, ongoing committees, teams and extra-curricular activities in full swing to accompany day to day instruction my schedule is full. Needless to say, free time is in short supply.
As the Christmas/Winter Holidays approached, students started hinting about gifts, our school concert, and ideas for class parties. Soon we were discussing clothing and toy drives and plans for the break.
1. “Mr G., I noticed you drink a lot of coffee. Would you like coffee for Christmas?”
2. “Can I volunteer to be an ambassador for the school concert?”
3. “Mr G., here are some toys I brought in for our toy drive. Can I bake some cookies for the class?”
4. “I don’t have a gift for you. I’m sorry.”
Here are my answers in order;
1. Yes please and that’s very thoughtful of you to ask.
2. Yes, you’d be a great ambassador. Thank you for stepping up.
3. What a kind gesture. Some cookies would be awesome as long as they are peanut free.
4. You do not need to apologize or give me a gift. Coming to class, everyday, willing to learn has been the best gift a teacher could receive, and you have been giving it since September. I should be giving you a present.
On the last day before the break we tidied the class, stacked desks, and arranged chairs in a circle for a social activity. Cookies, candy canes, and cheer were shared – along with fun draw prizes for every student. I was blessed with a number of thoughtfully worded cards and generous gifts including coffee(I can quit anytime).
While were all sitting in our social circle I began reflecting more on the conversation with the student who said he had no gift to give. As I shared with him then, his gift to me arrived everyday in his hard work and positive attitude. I realized he had offered me another amazing gift – a chance to encourage my class; to let all of the students know how their hard work and desire to learn were the best gifts a teacher could ever receive. So before the bells rang and the best wishes wished that gift was shared with the class.
As I look back on the first four months it is clear to see that the holidays in our class started in September because we gathered, we shared, and gifts were given.
Merry Christmas Joyeux Noel
Happy Holidays Season’s Greetings
Happy Gregorian Calendar New Year
PS – please share this video with a hero you know
all home and tell their parents about some positive scenario that took place that day. They 100% of the time say an astounding yes. As they come to realize this is a regular part of our classroom, they begin to ask me to call their family and let them know about their math work or reading. That is the time that I know why I will always look to see the glass as half full.
Merry Christmas Joyeux Noel