Road Trip!

Hubs and I are leaving tomorrow for a little road trip and I am super excited. I never travel without my iPad so hopefully I will put up some posts while we are away. Most likely they won't be too teachery, but I think you'll forgive me for that. I should change the name of this blog to Travel Teacher because I talk about teaching and traveling a lot more than I talk about teaching and fitness these days. Oh well, travel talk is fun!

Maybe I will post a nice darling video of myself singing a little do re mi during the Sound of Music Tour. Not really, since I do want you to come back!

I am happy to share that I have stuck to my one page per day writing goal and I actually have moved onto my sixth page in just three days. Once I start writing, it's a lot easier to fill the pages and get it done, but for some reason, it is SO hard start when I am facing a completely blank page. I sent my work so far off to a few friends from class for their feedback and it was hard to share my work when it is still so rough. The ultimate challenge would be to post it here, but that is a lot scarier than sharing it with a few people from class. I really struggled with organizing my ideas into an outline and I know at some point that will bite me, but for now I am just freely writing and letting it all spill out. When it comes time to edit, I will be more critical, but for now, I am just getting it out.

If we have internet, I will stay in the bloggy loop, but if not, I'll check ya later!

Discuss

You all know Pioneer Woman, right? If you don't, I highly recommend checking out her very multifaceted blog and I highly recommend her recipe for sangria! She is pretty much a Jack Jane of all trades and has mad cooking skills as evidenced here. Today her blog featured a guest post from a woman by the name of Kristen Chase called Does School Help or Hurt Intellectual Growth referencing this article...

 

which starts off with this quote...

Here are some excerpts:

I tried to pull out some of the really catching ideas presented in the article, but if you are interested to read the whole thing (please do!) you can find the entire text here. 

Thoughts?

I have mixed feelings when it comes to people who criticize the education that takes place in schools. On the one hand, as a teacher, I definitely recognize areas of our current educational system that need improvement. I am focusing my doctoral work and my current specialty paper on culturally responsive instruction and what we can do to meet the needs of culturally and linguistic learners, especially in the context of being given a scripted program as if the preselected stories and images can possibly apply to all children and their unique experiences. I frequently wish that I could simply close my door and teach my students in the manner that I know is more appropriate, yet there is another side to the coin. 

When I read or hear remarks from people who speak negatively of what happens in schools, I start feeling very defensive because I know that teachers work incredibly hard to do the very best we can for our students, working with the day in and day out to help them succeed and often feeling like they belong to us and we are solely responsible for their very well being. We bust out butts in our work and we are skilled at what we do. 

We do the best we can with what we have.

Yes, I want my students to be creative.

Yes, I want my students to be critical thinkers and problem solvers.

Yes, I want my students to be kind people with strong character and work ethic.

Yes, I want my students to navigate different situations and interact with each other.

And guess what... those things happen in my classroom.

Despite the mandates to use a teacher manual to teach Phonics and Math, my students are not simply robots. Sure, I would love to have more freedom to teach in different ways and yes, I do feel restrained by the requirements for a particular number of minutes on each subject and the very tightly packed schedule that we have in half day Kindergarten, but I definitely think that my students benefit my being in my classroom. They grow as people and as learners and I hate that despite who we are as individuals we have a bad rap for stifling creativity and squashing dreams.

This whole topic is exactly what fuels me in my dissertation work because I agree that we have to change and we have to do more to navigate American education in a new direction. I very much agree with the article's author about types of activities and thinking kids should be doing and I try my darndest to include those things in what we do and what I teach so that children experience education in my classroom in a way that opens them up to a world of learning and experiences. 

I want more of those experiences for my students so perhaps a little of my own creative disobedience is in order, but it's difficult because it feels like going with my beliefs results in being a rule breaker....kind of like Kristen says in her post. This article was really interesting to me and I hope you read both Kristen's post on Pioneer Woman and the article. Here are the links one more time...

Kristen's Post

The Educational Value of Creative Disobedience

What are your thoughts on the article or the bits I pulled out?

What do you do with your students to encourage creativity and critical thinking?

How much freedom do you have to teach how/what you want?

Discuss!

Wax & Wane

Holy 300 followers! Love it! Thanks for visiting.

***

Yesterday was very productive.

Today, not so much as evidenced by the fact that it's approaching 2:30 and I am once again still in my pjs.

I wish someone could observe me and take notes indicating how I spend all of the minutes in my day. I bet I would be sickened fascinated to realize how much of my time is wasted doing meaningless things rather than making good use of my time.

I did sit down to write my daily page, so I am 2 for 2 on that little self bargain and that is good.

I also booked our tickets for the Sound of Music Tour in Austria on Friday. Apparently the 4 hour tour is filled with all kinds of singing. I don't think anyone wants to hear me sing, but I can't wait! Maybe hubs should wear his lederhosen.

Seriously, how cute is Mr. Sneaker in his traditional German attire?

So I guess the day hasn't been entirely unproductive, but the whole pj thing makes me feel like Miss Lazypants. Must. Get. Dressed. Maybe I should put on the lederhosen.

Rather than boring you with more details of  my already confessed laziness, let's talk behavior management. Do you use a behavior management system in your classroom? I started a system mid year and I really liked it, so I think starting it on the very first day this year will be great and will produce even better results.

Here's the deal:

I have two calendar pocket charts hanging on the wall (one for each class). Each pocket has a label with a child's name on it. Inside the pocket are three small popsicle sticks. The teacher who I got this idea from used a calculator pocket chart but I couldn't find those so I used a smaller version and just got the mini sticks to use. Each of the child's sticks has his or her name written on it in black Sharpie.

I explain the system to my class in terms of making good choices. If they make good choices all week and keep all three sticks, on Friday they get 15-20 minutes of choice time which is like telling them they get unlimited access to a candy store because they just love choice time since they otherwise don't have any play time or recess time.

If on the other hand, a child chooses something that is not okay, I ask them to remove a stick from the pocket and bring it to me. I store all the "lost" sticks on a cup that I stapled high up on the wall.

On Fridays, I do a little "ceremony" with certificates. Any child that kept all three sticks gets a little yellow certificate with their name on it that says "Yay I made good choices all week." Any child that lost all three sticks, gets a refocus note. I don't give those out during the ceremony, but I do pull the child aside during the choice time (which they didn't earn) and we talk about what happened. I made the form really simple to fill out because I wouldn't keep up with it if it was complicated. The form lists our three school rules

• Be kind
• Be safe
• Be responsible

and I check off which rule was not followed. Then there is a spot for notes where I can write John hit another student or Sally was talking a lot while I was teaching. The form goes home in the Friday folder and there is a spot for parent signature.

Overall I found that this system really worked. Each Monday the kids start with all three sticks and if they lose any they get them back the following Monday. Having choice time was definitely a great motivation and the certificates were an extra incentive for kids to keep all of their sticks. They also got to add a sticker to a little chart next to their name each time they kept all three sticks. Most kids hated losing sticks and really refocused themselves when they lost one without me having so say much more than bring me a stick. Yes, there were several kiddos who needed additional behavior support, but for the greens and the yellows (can you picture the triangle right now?) this system really worked.

I first discovered it when I visited a friend's Kinder classroom and I was FLOORED by how well behaved her kiddos were. Absolutely. Shocked. She said she was really strict with this system at the beginning of the year and she felt mean all the time, but it really worked and the kids learned that some stuff just doesn't fly in the classroom. I am excited to try it out from the getgo, yet I feel like I don't have it in me to be a "strict" teacher.

I'm just not. Yet, I don't think that is what I aspire to be either. I want to have clear expectations and I expect good behavior, but I don't want kids to be overly worried about making a mistake or being called out for every little thing. I have seen kids lose their mojo in classrooms as a result of having a teacher that was too strict. Last year I knew that kids were happy to be in my class and loved coming to school. Those things are very important to me.

Do you consider yourself a strict teacher? How so?

I am not at all saying it's negative to be strict--in fact I admire teachers who have classroom management down pat, but I need to do it the way I am comfortable with and I am working on focusing more on the positive and making the good choices so much more desirable than the poor ones that kids don't want to misbehave.

So the stick system in addition to all the awesome new social skills books I ordered from amazon (yes, you read that right..all the new books as in I didn't pick out my favorites I ordered all $150 dollars worth of my awesome list which I will get reimbursed for ) will hopefully make for a great year of successful Kindie managing.

I wish I had pictures of the sticks, but I hope you can use your imagination. I am planning to start out and allow them three sticks per day for the first month or so of school so they can get used to what kinds of things result in lost sticks. I will probably do a daily sticker for kids who have kept all three. At the beginning of Kinder I think a week is too long and I want them to have more frequent reinforcement for making good choices.

::PS have any of you read Punished By Rewards by Alfie Kohn? My friend who I worked with at the international school said that a parent of one of her students insisted she read it because this parent did not like her token economy system in the classroom because said parent did not believe in rewards. I would like to read the book to see what it says, but I am pretty comfortable with my belief that it is okay to use extrinsic motivation for young kids, especially little Kindies. Thoughts? ::

So now tell me about how you do you get all of your little angels to make good choices and follow classroom rules and directions?

Success!

Oh how good it feels to get things done. Hubs got up early today to compete in his second day of this crazy sports competition that includes basketball, volleyball, soccer, and handball. Rather than rolling over and going back to sleep after I sent him off with a cute red cooler full of snacks packed with love, I jumped right on my To Do list and have been knocking it out of the park.

• I baked a loaf of banana bread with chocolate chunks ::yummy!::

• I made a batch of cookie dough to put in the freezer for a BBQ we are going to on the 29th. We are getting back from our trip just a few hours before the party, so I wanted to have the dough pre-made so I can just plop some balls on a tray and put them in the oven!

• I cut up some peppers and onions for our fajita dinner so I could clean the horrendous hot mess that was my kitchen and not have make another mess later.

• I cleaned the whole apartment, vacuumed, and am working on load of laundry #2.

• And yes, I wrote 1 page of my paper! Actually, including the chart I put in that outlines the four major curriculum theories, I wrote about a page and a half. Score!

• The list still says run & read and it should say Skype date with my bestie, but I would never forget to do that! Unfortunately when I looked out the window in the midst of my cleaning frenzy, it was pouring rain. Not such a good day for a long run.....but I do reside in Oregon (unless I am spending a fabby summer in Europe!), so I know that a little rain doesn't hurt.

 So....now that all that productivity is out of the way (minus the run which I will do at some point), I have Kindergarten on my brain.

More specifically...objectives.

Do you have to write out content and language objectives for your lessons?

At my school we are supposed to.

But, I don't.

::cringe::

I hate to admit that I don't because I completely believe in the important of making sure the goal of the lesson is clear, but for some reason, writing the goal out for each lesson when we are doing something different approximately every 15 minutes seems like too much.

too. much.

I have toyed with different ways to make sure that I am at least verbally stating the objective for each lesson including singing our goals to the tune of "we will rock you" each morning during our good morning circle. But, I have not yet gotten into the habit of actually writing out my daily content and language objectives.

Towards the end of the year, I started using my magnetic letters to show the kiddos what our letter and sight word of the week were and I found that helpful, so I am trying to brainstorm ways to include my lesson objectives in picture or written form this year. The good thing is that we typically study the same letter or word all week, so my fear of having to rewrite objective numerous times a day is pretty nonsensical.

I am picturing some type of dry erase board on my instructional wall where I can write our weekly objectives (at least for reading) and just keep them up all week. That would include a few sounds from Fast Track, our special letter of the week that is tied to our star of the week, and our sight word of the week. That way the kiddos could see them and know what our focus is, but I won't have to erase them in order to write other things if I use an entirely separate dry erase board. I am hoping to just buy a sheet of dry erase board from Home Depot and drill holes in it so I can just hang it on my instructional wall somewhere. Then I would use my other dry erase board that I prop on my big book stand for writing other things during my lessons.

I used to do a written morning message with my firsties and I loved it, so that is something I would of course love to incorporate with the objectives if I can somehow miraculous infuse more time into the day. There are so many things I wish I could do if only I had the time. What about choosing one sentence from a newspaper article each day and have the kids practice finding the sight word and then talking about what happened in the news.... Or, writing a sentence about something we have worked on in class or something about our daily schedule. I used to love making mistakes on purpose in my message and asking the kiddos to tell me what was wrong and how to fix it. Again, if only I had the time!

I can't wait to get back into my classroom so I can start arranging the furniture and working on my separate math and literacy walls. I am not sure what to do with math objectives because our new math program often has us doing 5 completely unrelated lessons a week, but my team did talk about rearranging some of our units so that we can kind of work on one thing at a time instead of jumping around so much. Maybe if we do that, math objectives will be easier.

In theory, writing the daily objective doesn't seem that hard, but neither does sharpening pencils and I seem to have major issues getting that done as well. It's just those little things that seem to fall through the cracks in the grand scheme of everything I need to do. Speaking of sharpening pencils, last night we had dinner with a friend of Mr. Sneaker who has a pencil sharpener company here in Germany. He gave me about 8 different kinds of little sharpeners to bring to my classroom!

Hopefully given the changes I want to make in the organization of my room and with the addition of my awesome new rug, I will be able to create special locations just for posting my daily objectives. I would love to feel that organized and I do think that it's a good thing to specifically point out to the kiddos what I want them to know or be able to show me at the end of a lesson. There is so much potential for being explicit about that and I would love to think of ways to involve the kids so they somehow interact with the written objective and get into the habit of checking for it, reading it, and making sure they get it.

Oh, how we expect so much from our little Kindies.

Do you do a morning message with your kiddos?
What kinds of things do you write?

How do your kiddos interact with it?

Break it Down

I have posted several times already this summer about my guilt over not being overly productive since school let out. I have gone on two trips (with two more to come--next week is Salzburg, Venice, and Lake Como then hopefully Barcelona in early August!), gone on some great runs in the forest, read a few good books, cooked some real food for hubs, and slept late.

But, I have not written a single word of my paper.

So regardless of what else I do, not writing the paper= unproductive

I successfully defended my core paper on June 16th and because I was the 5th out of 6 people in my cohort to do that, I already felt behind on my next paper, which is called the Pre-Proposal Comprehensive Specialty Exam (Specialty Paper for short).

::Just a little catch up for those of you who are newer readers==> In early 2009, I got accepted into the doctoral program at Portland State University. Shortly after that, hubs got an offer to relocate to Germany with his company. In August 2009 hubs and I moved to Germany and I taught at an International School for the 2009-2010 school year while doing independent study with my adviser, skyping with him every other week, and skyping into class in the wee hours of the morning during spring term to get as much of the work completed as I could from afar. In early 2010, hubs and I decided that in order to stay in the program, I would return to Portland (sans Mr. Sneaker) for the 2010-2011 school year to complete my doctoral coursework and keep my position in my school district since I was only granted a one year leave of absence. So, I lived in Portland while Mr. Sneaker lived in Germany from August 15, 2010-June 18th, 2011. It was a very challenging year for many reasons (being away from hubs, teaching Kinder for the first time, being observed by my principal a lot, and spending almost all of my free time doing homework), but it flew by seemingly on fast forward and now I am back in Germany with Mr. Sneaker until August 20th when we are officially moving back to Portland where I will return to the same school I worked at last year and he will take a new position within the same company at the Portland office. whew...are you caught up?::

Anywho....All throughout this past school year I pictured the gloriousness of being able to wake up, grab a cup o joe and leisurely spend several hours a day reading the large pile of books I collected all year and writing my specialty paper. It was so hard to get my core paper done with all the other coursework and teaching work that it seemed like writing the specialty paper when I wasn't working would be a total cake walk.

I was wrong.

I am aimless without a schedule.

::confession--on Friday when hubs got home at 6:00, I was still in my pajamas...I don't think I did a single productive thing all day long...don't judge::

What I imagined to be a blissful breezy effort in scholarly writing has turned into a daily guiltfest over not yet having written a single word.

not. one. word.

I have been reading a lot on curriculum theory, which may sound boring, but is actually quite interesting and makes 30 minutes on the elliptical go by in a flash. I am loving all that John Dewey had to say and finding myself really siding with the social meliorists over the proponents of social efficiency (education for social justice over education operated like a business or a factory) and I can picture all this info somehow fitting together to make a great paper, but as of now I don't even have a word doc dedicated to said paper.

So I started to think about how I am going to figure this out--how I will get it done this summer before the craziness of school starts up again. I want to be able to move on to my dissertation and my own research this coming school year, so my specialty paper needs to be dunzo. I am starting 30 empty pages in the face and I need to somehow whip myself into a paper writing frenzy before I move back to Portland (because once I am there, life is going to be all about setting up my classroom with the help of Mrs. Bee).

So, I though to myself what if I wrote one page a day. That doesn't sound so bad.

One page a day for thirty days and I will have myself a draft.

One page on curriculum theory here. One page on culturally responsive teaching there. A page on why scripted curricula don't connect with all students and pretty soon I will have myself a paper!

When we teach kids we take big things that seem difficult or overwhelming and we break them down into reasonable steps. This paper is so daunting that I just haven't even begun and let's be honest...it's about time.

So, tomorrow I am going to write one page. Chances are if I write one page, I will probably get a good flow going and I will want to keep writing. Chances are, if I keep writing, I will get really excited about curriculum theory and how it relates to learning theory and what reading instruction looks like in our classrooms today which will inspire me to spout off ideas about how we could to use scripted curricula as a foundation for reading instruction while enhancing the lessons with culturally responsive instruction that helps all kids connect with the importance of reading in meaningful ways. Chances are while feeling inspired about what kind of reading instruction is best for culturally and linguistically diverse learners, I will keep writing more and more all the while dreaming of being the most organized, fabulous, creative, wonderful, and amazing teacher ever. Chances are, if I start feeling the best teacher ever, I will want to eat, sleep, live all things teachery and will write page after page after page until my paper is done. Chances are, if I write one page tomorrow, I will finish my paper by August 20th.

And, I am counting on you all to hold me accountable. Shoot me a comment every once in awhile. Something like, Hey Mrs. Sneaker, how is that amazing paper coming? I will be eternally grateful and maybe when I'm finished, I will do a giveaway. The winner gets a copy of my paper! (Just kidding!).

In all seriousness, this paper needs to happen. I need to get out of my aimless summer funk and just start writing.

One page a day.

30 days.

Completed paper.

Well, ok let's be honest...completed first draft which will be covered in red after being reviewed by my wonderful advisers, but hey, editing is a different ball game than writing. The act of composing when starting at a blank page is far more frightening than rearranging, deleting, adding, and spell checking. But, a completed first draft is good with me!

Wish me luck!

How do you tackle huge projects that seem overwhelming?

What are summers like for you? productive or lazy and guilt free?

Linky Party Blog Mixer

As I mentioned yesterday, Yearn to Learn is hosting a blog mixer to spread the word about new teacher bloggies and give other teacher bloggies a chance to uncover some new awesomeness.

You should definitely play along! Here's how:

1. Find a blogger who is a "New Kid on the Blog".
(Someone who has blogged 2 months or less and has less than 200 followers).
2. Post a blogger in your same grade level.
3. Post a blogger in a different grade level.
4. Find a cute blog button and post it.

1. For the newbie blogger my natural choice is Mrs. Bee because she teaches Kinder at my school and she is my awesome friend. I have an issue with being pretty shy about my blog and I tend to not tell teachers I work with about it, but I shared it with Mrs. Bee this past spring and she was super supportive of it and decided to start her own. Now that I have completely sucked her into the world of blogging our relationship is even closer because of our shared obsession with all things Kinder and bloggy! Mrs. B has quickly acclimated to the world of blogging with a super cute blog, joining in on linky parties, becoming a teacher blog addict, and sharing ideas about parent involvement and classroom management.

::sidenote:: I kind of think it's funny that for the first one it says a new kid on the block that has less than 200 followers. I think I blogged for two years before I got 200 followers! I have been noticing several new followers popping up recently and I am really happy new people are interested in Sneaker Teacher. I promise more talk of summer teacher prep and travel adventures to come!

2. Well, technically Mrs. B fits the bill for #1 and #2 since we both teach Kindergarten, but I am going to choose another Kinder blog too. I have to go with Look at My Happy Rainbow his was the first Kindergarten blog I ever followed (even in the days when I taught first grade and NEVER wanted to teach Kinder!). His blog is filled with stories about being a male Kinder teacher and the funny/charming/adorable/worrisome things that happen in Kindergarten. When I got reassigned to teach Kindergarten after living in Germany for a year, one of the things that got me excited about it was remembering some of his posts and stories about the unmatchable joys of teaching Kindergarten. And, after doing it for a year, I agree--It's magical! Also, I will give a shout out to Kelly. Her main blog focuses more on fitness, food, and travel. But, she also started a teaching blog called Kelly Teaches where she gives good descriptions of what she does in the classroom and why. I heart Kelly!

3. My choice for a blog about a different grade level is The Caffeinated Teacher. Sunny taught 5th grade last year and will be moving to 2nd grade this year. She has just decided to go for her National Board Certification (go girl!) and is the queen of organization, binders, and Diet Coke. I would love a chance to watch her in action for a day! She recently wrote a great post about using Words Their Way and she shares my profound love of books!

4. And last but not least...a cute button

http://misskindergartenlove.blogspot.com/

Hope you join in the linky party fun! If you do, leave a comment with your link so I can check it out!