All Good Things...

...come to those who wait...and pray...and push...and finagle. This year was a challenge, as I've said before and I am so glad I can see real results! Not only did I get good results with testing (although I HATE standardized testing), I've also seen kids become readers who hated books, have grown some future awesome writers and have seen my kids be able to reflect on their own strengths and weaknesses.

How many of us can truly say our kids are reflective about their own work - and I'm not talking the kind they throw together at the end of the day. As a part of my high school English finals this year I asked my kids to read all of their writing from the year and analyze it. Some had more pieces than others, as is always the case, but for most high school kids it is a daunting task to actually look back and read EVERYTHING they've written over the year.

I was rewarded with some great self-analyses/reflections and my kids seem to have seen what I've seen (things they saw without me telling them to look). The day the kids pulled out the folders from their files in my room and started pulling stuff from their binders I had one immediately say, "This just needs to be burned!" He wasn't referring to the idea that it needed to be burned so he "couldn't" do the assignment. He wanted to burn his work because he thought it was terrible. That is how much he felt he'd grown as a writer!

Here are a couple of gems from some of the analyses I got today, I'm pretty proud!

"As a writer, I think I have improved drastically. My writing is not as sloppy as it used to be. I feel that it has more of a purpose now. My purpose now is to create a vivid mental picture that will keep the reader drawn into the story. In the past, I only tried to write something down to fill space. After discovering that I actually liked writing fictional stories, it felt easier to just draw a picture with my words."

"Even though I have become a better writer, I still feel weaknesses. When I write, I sometimes have a hard time beginning my writing and focusing. It's still difficult for me to start off my stories and papers because I can't focus. I usually spend a long time, at times hours, trying to come up with a beginning. I wonder sometimes if there's a way to help me think better so I can find good ways to start my papers."

Winding up

As the year finally draws to a close, I am forced to look back at everything that has happened this year and breathe a sigh of relief. Going from a huge 5A school (with approximately 1500 students in 7th and 8th grade alone) to the smallest school in the state (8 high school students) this year has been more of an adjustment that I could ever possibly imagine. I've always considered myself a good teacher, but I never fathomed how long it would take me to adjust lessons meant for 25 or 30 so they would work for 2 or 4. My students and I were able to accomplish so much this year, I honestly think many of them were surprised at how they grew and how much they read. One of my boys is finally becoming a reader (which means I want to make sure I've got lots of stuff he'll want to read next year, so if you've got suggestions please let me know). One of my girls went to state competition for one of her essays (a HUGE deal in our little town that is usually ignored), both of my seniors got into their first choice schools and have received multiple scholarships. Several of my students are freely writing stories to send into a fiction contest this summer (how cool is that!). And overall I truly believe they have a solid foundation now. Since they've grown so much I feel I can push them, and myself, harder next year. I've already started planning and luckily my best friend is willing to help! Teaching 5th thru 12th grade takes A LOT of planning! I found several books this year that I'm ready to delve into to find some new and exciting stuff for my classes. I'm also getting ready to start my 3rd semester of my doctoral program :) The goals and growth this year has produced for both me and my students has been astounding and I hope I can continue to help my students grow while I'm there. I hope to do more regular postings this summer as I continue to plan and learn!

Spring has Sprung!

As I sit in my empty classroom, all of my students are off at spring sports competitions, I can't help but feel overwhelmed. Finishing my second semester as a doctoral student, preparing my seniors for graduation and ultimately moving away to college and hoping to continue to affect positive change for those who will be in my classroom next year is proving heavy this spring. All I really want to do is enjoy the weather and stare at the mountains with the sun shining on them. Alas, I am a much better student AND teacher than that! My biggest struggle is currently finding articles for a literature review for one of my classes. My review is supposed to be related to my dissertation topic, which makes sense, BUT there seems to be very little research in that vein. My prof said I should read at least 50 articles before I really start writing and exploring the themes....that is amazingly hard! I can't find a whole lot of articles and I feel like this paper might win :(

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!

Bigger, Stronger, Faster

Unlike The 6 Million Dollar Man, teachers weren't offered a way to become stronger and awesome after a near death experience, we have to figure it out for ourselves. As I work to plan this year at a new and very tiny school, begin my doctoral degree and move to a small town out west, I've been thinking a lot about how we connect to each other.

For one of my doctoral classes, I've been asked to create Google+ and Twitter accounts. Because I am a good student and always looking to learn, I have opened them and started to explore. Those accounts, especially Twitter got me thinking. How can we best use technology in our classrooms?

I'm all for using technology to connect with students and help them to learn and become prepared for the future, I will admit however that Twitter bothers me. From what I understand, anyone can follow anyone else. There is no way to keep worlds separate
(assuming you are a constant Tweeter).

That being said I encourage exploration in the world of technology, you never really know what the best way to help a student may be!

Educators should be like Olympians

Before the Olympics began in July, I watched Oprah's special on some of our most famous Olympians. Carl Lewis said that striving for less than excellence is unacceptable...and I think he is onto something.

Our world continues to berate teachers and the education system for being poor. We are, overall, a fairly poor system because not all of us strive for excellence in the classroom. I do not believe, however, that the lack of excellence is because of a lack of desire. I believe it is because of a lack of confidence, support, and preparedness. I realize many of us spend hours upon hours preparing but we are often reworking the same thing instead of working on something new. In order to achieve excellence we must make the leap into new territory, whether that involves new texts, new styles of teaching or a new way of gathering references.

This year I will start a new job in a very tiny district with little budget on which to survive. My challenges will be many, including structuring a classroom for only two students, teaching English to students from 5th to 12th grade and bringing in new frames of reference and materials for my normally remote and somewhat sheltered students. I am lucky to have the support from friends and family who willingly purchased new texts for my classroom. People outside of the classroom really do play a role in improving the world of education, whether they know it or not. Just like Olympians have support systems to help them become the best, educators need support systems to become excellent.

Add your friends and family to your toolbox and see what you can accomplish with a little help. Share new text titles with friends, sign up for an educator blog, check out DonorsChoose.org, visit Teachers Pay Teachers, use ReadWriteThink.org, read new magazines, watch shows the kids enjoy and listen to their music on occasion. You never know what you can use successfully in the classroom until you are willing to explore the routes open to you. Sometimes the seemingly obscure is what you've been looking for all along.

Ending up

The year has finally ended and this has been the hardest of my career to date. I do realize that it will likely not remain that way forever. I made it and the teachers in the trenches seem to have made it as well. As we go forward, at least in the state of Texas, we have new standards to process as well as new TEKS in some of our core areas. I look forward to the summer with friends and family. This is my time to refill my proverbial cup and I'm excited about it. In a couple of weeks a friend and I will be traveling to Florida for a workshop with English teachers. We already have plans for things we'd like to plan while on our road trip - among those plans we want to write some new songs for the classroom. In the fall I will begin my doctoral degree in Reading and I am very excited. I hope to one day become a professor and teach the next generation of teachers. The best way for a novice teacher to learn, aside from being thrust into the classroom, is to learn from other teachers. The way I figure it, if I can teach at least five novice teachers to teach in the way I know it should be done then I've reached hundreds more students than I ever could on my own. For the summer, refill your cup but also read and learn. If we stop learning then we ultimately stop teaching. New things and ways in the classroom are not evil - they are required to keep our students engaged and help them to learn and retain. If you have not yet seen "Waiting for Superman", rent it now! Enjoy the summer and I hope to post more regularly when school begins again.