The End of the School Year ~~~(sigh)

Wow! The year has passed so quickly. Are you sad, happy, excited, and just ready for a break!? Here are some things to help you wind down the school year:

Reflection
If you haven't already, start a reflection journal, blog, or podcast to record your memories of the school year - what lessons were effective, which might have needed more content or tweaking, and what lessons that were total disasters! Making notes in the margins of your teacher editions is a shortened version of this type of reflection.

Have your students reflect on their year by making scrapbooks of pictures you've taken, drawings, stories, stickers, and so on. Some students treasure these memories. Have students write in each other's memory books - just make sure it is something positive!

Reduce, Recycle, Reuse
Go through your desk, closet, shelves, and student desks and get rid of stuff you didn't use or won't use in the future. Most schools have a central location that teachers can leave their "used-up treasures" and others might find new uses for them! A lot of my personal furniture came from other teachers' rejects.

Be sure to recycle or reuse old worksheets that students didn't need. I always kept a couple of extra copies of worksheets for kids who might have lost theirs and for kids who were absent. This pile grew quite large by the end of the year. I sometimes donated the paper to my church for drawing paper for Sunday school students, but I usually just kept them for scrap paper for the following year. Some students even liked going through the stack and taking worksheets home for the summer in order to play school!

If you teach elementary school, have your students toss their extra supplies (scissors, crayons, glue sticks, etc.) in bins so you will have extras at the beginning of the next school year. Make sure parents are aware their kids are donating supplies, just in case they would rather their kids bring extra supplies home. Middle and high school students are quite willing to part with extra pencils, pens, notebooks and paper, so have them donate those things as well.

Celebrate!
In my years of classroom teaching, I always gave out awards to each student - and they weren't always for scholastic ability. I did give the top student in each subject a special award, but EVERY student went home for some kind of certificate or ribbon. Categories always included, best use of school supplies (crayons, markers, kleenex, etc.), artistic and musical abilities, friendliest, most caring, most generous, storyteller, and so on. You can certainly make up your own categories that fit your students' personalities and abilities. I invited parents to the award event on the morning of the last day of school so they could share in the fun. I tried to give awards to parents when they were there, too. (You will cry on the last day of school!)

Give Thanks
Remember Mary Kay Ash of Mary Kay Cosmetics? One of her quotes says that "Everyone has an invisible sign around their neck saying, "Make me feel important". Never forget this message when working with people." This is especially true of your co-workers, including the school custodians, cooks, teachers' aides, and volunteers at your school. Look those people in the eye and say a genuine "thank you" for what they do for you. All of the people in a school make it a better place and they deserve to feel valued for their service.

Be Kind
Leave your room looking better than when you found it. Attend retirement parties - those teachers have worked hard for a long time and deserve dignity and the respect of beginning teachers. Make sure you leave positive notes on students' report cards, even though it takes a long time. Be careful to never burn bridges behind you. You never know...

Using Technology in the Classroom - Edutopia

Edutopia bloggers and writers made short videos to talk about how to use new media in the classroom. They discuss using different tools such as a GPS device, YouTube, wikis, Twitter, and the Wii gaming system. How do you think you could apply any of them to your own classroom?

Celebrate What is Great About Schools

I read this article with much interest this morning. I am touched by the author's elevation and celebration of educators across America. We should celebrate what goes on in classrooms all across our nation!

Lately, all I've been hearing and reading has been quite negative toward public schools and the educators and support people who work in them. It is high time faculty and staff members are congratulated for everything they do to educate our children!

Teacher Appreciation Week is this week here in the United States. Write or email one or two of your former teachers sharing something that you remember that they did to make you feel special!

I kept in touch with my second grade teacher until she died a few years ago. Arlene Shuck loved me and I adored her. She never stifled my creativity and encouraged my love of reading. After leaving Highland Park Elementary, she let me come back and "help" her whenever I asked to do so. In high school, we didn't have to report for semester exams if we had perfect attendance, so I would always return to Mrs. Shuck's room just to bask in her love. After graduation, she and I exchanged Christmas cards every year until her passing. I knew I wanted to be just like her when I grew up. She never played favorites! When my classmates gathered for our tenth high school reunion, everyone who had Mrs. Shuck for second grade thought THEY were her teacher's pet! It just goes to show you, teachers are remembered more for how they treated students, rather than for what they taught them!

Appreciate a teacher today and be proud of your own accomplishments!

Elizabeth Smith, Oklahoma's 2011 Teacher of the Year

I was privileged to attend Oklahoma State University's Celebration of Teachers on Monday. One of the speakers was Oklahoma's Teacher of the Year, Elizabeth Smith.

Elizabeth Smith

Elizabeth Smith is a nationally-board certified reading teacher at Byng Junior High School. She stated that she wasn't a good public speaker, but I had to disagree with her. She was quite polished and gave an excellent program. She listed several educational challenges that affect teachers:

• no money back guarantee
• discipline
• apathy
• financial issues
• pressure of testing mandates
• multiple roles
• creating a safe environment

She went on to discuss all of those topics as to how they related to her experience. She shared how a student advisory board consisting of 9th through 12th graders came up with their top 5 issues in education. The issues were bullying, funding, apathy, dropouts, and quality of education. You see, even students notice educational issues in the classroom. They know what problems exist in our schools. Ms. Smith went on to say that students are motivated by teachers who relate to them through connections, love, and inspiration. Kids don't want a perfect teacher, they just want one that can forgive, be genuine, love the unlovable, and celebrate good things. They need their teachers to motivate them, show passion in their teaching practice, be relevant, meaningful, memorable, and to unleash the potential in them.

"How can teachers accomplish all this?" you may ask. Ms. Smith asked the audience members to go back and think of the most influential teacher they had in school. Remember that teacher? How did they treat you? Why do you remember that teacher above all others? Ms. Smith asked us why that certain teacher was so influential, and stated that the teacher probably was not so important in what they taught, or how they taught, but how they treated us. She read this poem and asked if we were wreckers or builders:

Wreckers or Builders

I watched them tearing a building down,
A gang of men in a busy town.
With a ho-heave-ho and lusty yell,
They swung a beam and a sidewall fell.

I asked the foreman, "Are these men skilled,
As the men you'd hire if you had to build?"
He gave me a laugh and said, "No indeed!
Just common labor is all I need.

I can easily wreck in a day or two
What builders have taken a year to do."
And I tho't to myself as I went my way,
Which of these two roles have I tried to play?

Am I a builder who works with care,
Measuring life by the rule and square?
Am I shaping my deeds by a well-made plan,
Patiently doing the best I can?

Or am I a wrecker who walks the town,
Content with the labor of tearing down?

-- Unknown

I hope you are as motivated by this poem as I am, as well as by Ms. Smith's presentation. She didn't talk much about her teaching methods, but she shared her students and their stories with us. I could tell, Elizabeth Smith is a builder.

Think about your special teacher...sharing welcome!

Management Monday – Creating Community I

I read several teacher blogs a day and subscribe to some listservs as well. Teachers talk about today’s students as being less respectful of authority and harder to discipline. I have found this to be true to a certain extent in my own years of teaching. Kids say, “Who cares?” Well, I say, “I care” to that. Most of the time I would get an argument or a kid stomping off to their desk or a corner, but I really do care. Most educators have developed approaches to behavior management that do work with today’s kids and they are practical, everyday strategies that any teacher can use. Your colleagues are finding that in classrooms, rewards for excellent work and consequences for poor work are not great motivators. Behavior management is more effective if students set their own goals, rules and procedures, have opportunities to share concerns, and use open discussions to solve problems in the classroom. We need to be looking toward creating mutual respect, and sharing a vision for success and dignity for everyone in order to promote better behavior in the classroom.

I will take this opportunity to post every Monday about classroom management strategies I have found that work. I’ll try to find ones that are positive ways to inspire good behavior by students.

The first thing you must do with a group of students is to build community in your classroom. “Getting Along” needs to be a class goal. You must be intentional about this. You should announce to your class on the first day of class that you want the class to be good at getting along, helping one another and supportive of one another. Tell them you want them to work together as a happy, cooperative community of learners. Also, tell them that they should enjoy being in class each day. If YOU expect this kind of behavior the students may come to expect that they will behave in this manner.

Icebreakers during the first few days of school will help your students get to know one another. You will also participate in these activities so the students will obtain information about you as well! If you need ideas for icebreakers, just Google “school icebreakers” for a voluminous list of them. Always take into consideration the age and abilities of the students for which you will be using these engaging activities. If you have any students with special needs, be sure they are able to participate. I particularly like games that have the students “against” the teacher in some way – this unites the class and is a great bonding activity.

I hope you will enjoy receiving a new behavior management tip every Monday. Check back tomorrow for Tuesday “Truths”!

Two Exceedingly Helpful Websites for New Teachers

When I started teaching 20 years ago or so, we didn't have the internet. I believe the web has become the most influential tool used by educators that I know. As for myself, I have come to rely on a great number of websites the last few years. For newer teachers, these two are probably the most supportive: Education World and Scholastic. Both of them offer voluminous amounts of free teaching ideas, lesson plans, and other resources across the curriculum. Education World has free newsletters that you can elect to have sent to your email on a weekly basis. The one I most used when I discovered EdWorld was the Lesson Planning Newsletter. It includes lesson plans, thematic units, bulletin board ideas, blogs and articles written by teachers and administrators and other specialists in the field, as well as advice on classroom management and discipline. They both have ideas on technology integration and book and website reviews.

Scholastic has a class homepage builder and video center that are user-friendly. They even have a separate page just for new teachers' survival! Newer teachers, please go and check out these websites and come back to let me know what you found most useful. Enjoy!

Paying it Forward

This evening, while scrolling through the list of blogs I follow, I found "Pay It Forward" on Becky Povich's Blog. What a wonderful idea!

~The Rules~

ME: I will create something handmade to send to the First Five People who leave a comment on this post saying they would like to participate!

YOU: To play along you must be willing to repost this and do the same, offering something handmade to five other people. (At this part of The Rules, it didn't say the five people must be the first five to leave a comment on your blog, but that seems to be the thing to do.)

ME: So, I left a comment on Becky Povich's Blog and if I'm correct, I was the first person! Yay! That means I'll get something homemade from her!

My handmade "something" will probably be teacher-related. I hope you enjoy paying it forward in your teaching career. I know I've paid lots of stuff forward to my colleagues. Be sure you do the same.

YOU & ME, BOTH: All handmade "gifts" will be sent sometime in 2011. Mine will be sent by the end of February...or else I'll forget! ☺

FREE resources

I was visiting with the CML Librarian before Christmas and she pointed me to a wonderful resource I had never heard of before. It is called the Elementary Teachers Guide to Free Curriculum Materials. It is published yearly by Educators Progress Service, Inc. This year's publication provides teachers with information about over 1,000 free books, teacher's guides, web sites, charts, posters, lesson plans, maps, and articles that will save you money and enrich your classroom.  There are free curriculum materials for all subjects, all levels of instruction (elementary and early childhood), and even includes special education and teacher reference materials. There are title, subject, and source indexes. Some sources have multiple entries, including the American Museum of Natural History, Federal Citizen Information Center, and ThinkQuest. These are creative and FREE materials for teachers. The book is in it's 67th edition. The ISBN is 978-0-87708-503-4 in case you would like to order it. I highly recommend you ask your librarian to purchase the book for your school.

NEW JOB!

I'm so excited to begin a new journey - working on the college level. I'm already noticing many differences between teaching in an elementary school and working at a college. Some things never change, though. You still need to know where the bathroom is, where you can get supplies, and how to make new friends. I hope I will be able to be a touch point for beginning teachers starting out on their own new journey.