Dreams

The other day one of my students asked me what my dream is. I took pause because none of them had ever asked that before. I told him my dream is to change the world and he asked me how I was going to do that. My answer was simple, each time I help a student succeed and learn I'm changing the world for the better...a little at a time. Kylene Beers is one of my literacy goddesses and she wrote on her own blog (kylenebeers.com/blog) "Dear teachers, don’t you lose sight of the opportunity you have each day to make a difference in each child’s life." This time of year we all need to be reminded of the importance of our students' dreams so we don't get overwhelmed with all of the testing. I firmly believe it is one of my purposes in life to change the world and help my students achieve their own dreams. Standardized tests are just a test, they can only truly measure how a student did that one day at that particular time in that specific place. The multiple choice questions do not actually help us to help our students to learn, in some ways they actually inhibit our abilities to encourage the joys of learning. Yes, we must assess our students and yes, they need to know strategies to read questions and understand what is expected of them in any given situation. No matter what you can do, or must do, in your classroom don't lose sight of why we teach. We teach to help our students discover their passions and we encourage them to follow their dreams. We are the change makers in the world!