A Bill of Rights for Students

Mark Pullen, a third grade teacher in Michigan, has a blog post called The Student's Bill of Rights. He has some good ideas that I wholeheartedly agree with that look at life in the classroom from the student's point of view. After all education is really about the students! To sum up his ideas students have a right to qualified and caring teachers. They have a right to be safe and have their physical needs met throughout the day. They should have at least one unstructured recess period per day and have teachers who do not read from scripts. Students need both challenge and some choice in their studies. They need to be assessed based on their improvements and they need cutting-edge instruction with a focus on current technologies. They also should have an enjoyable life outside the classroom without the burden of too much homework.
He has a thoughtful blog. Check it out!

The First Week of High School and Science at the Olympics: What Do They Teach Us About Creating Success?

Last week my daughter had her first week of 9th grade at Nashua High School South. She worried and prepared herself for the daunting task of being a freshman at a very large school. You could see her wheels turning in anticipation of how she could ever survive in such a school. Well on the third day of school an administrator took it upon himself to make an example of my very shy and quiet little girl.

It seems he didn't like the fact that she had left her food tray in the cafeteria. She had left it with her friends because they were still eating the french fries on her tray. He sent a girl to chase her down and bring her back. He took her ID card while yelling at her and told her to go to his office. She got lost having no idea where the office was and she was again reprimanded for getting there late. By this time she was in hysterics having no idea what was going on or how to get out of this problem that kept escalating. Then the administrator called my wife on the phone to complain about her behavior. My daughter was in complete meltdown at this point and could barely speak to my wife. The administrator then had the nerve to tell my wife that he expects parents to support the school and make sure that students pick up after themselves. He strongly hinted that we were not making the grade as parents. My wife was now shocked and didn't know what to say. What a complete buffoon that man was. I am sure he felt powerful and in control having picked on the smallest and quietest girl he could find in the school and I guess the students at Nashua South know who the "big man" is in charge of things now!

How easy it would have been for this man to gently say to my daughter's friends, "I know that when you are finished eating the fries that you will put your friend's tray away!" That would have solved the "clean-up" issue and we wouldn't have to do damage control all weekend trying to let her know that high school will be OK! In fact now we have the task of trying to get her back into a positive frame of mind about the next four years at this school.

Teachers and administrators there is a much better way to teach and lead children. If you can only get control by berating and bullying students then get out of the profession as you have no business being an educator!


Which brings me to an article called, "SCIENCE AT THE OLYMPICS:Can Neuroscience Provide a Mental Edge?" Maybe you saw the Olympics and American Jenn Stuczynski get berated by her coach on NBC after winning the silver medal in the pole vault. Is this good coaching? According to the psychologists and neuroscientists doing studies on athletes, a quick positive intervention helps an athlete bounce back after a poor performance. Berating an athlete seems to keep an athlete performing poorly. I don't think this is rocket science. Quality educators have known the same thing for years. Guiding is a much more effective approach than bullying.

Do you let your student's minds wander?

What do you think of wandering minds in school? Is there a place for letting children get lost in their thoughts and do we let them actually daydream a bit? Do we encourage this as teachers or is it one of the many things we try to drill out of our students with work to keep them busy. What about teachers? Do we allow ourselves to just daydream a bit in our hectic days in the classroom?

According to Jonah Lehrer in the article "Daydream Achiever" in the Boston Globe scientists are telling us that a wandering mind cam do important work and may even be essential.

We read about a choir member's mind wandering during a Sunday sermon and coming up with the idea of Post-It notes to keep his place in the choir book. With that inspiration Arthur Fry invented one of the most successful office supplies today and I bet it made him a very wealthy man!

Even though thinkers like Einstein were notorious daydreamers, Lehrer writes, "In a culture obsessed with efficiency, daydreaming is derided as a lazy habit or a lack of discipline, the kind of thinking we rely on when we don't really want to think. It's a sign of procrastination, not productivity."

A daydreaming mind is an important tool for creativity, making connections, abstract thought, and imagination. It even helps us socially as we imagine "what if?" scenarios to problem solve or to rework social circumstances to explore what we could have or should have done or how things should be in the future.

One researcher, Teresa Belton, wanted to find out why schoolchildren were writing "creative" stories that were vastly uninspired. Lehrer writes, "After monitoring the daily schedule of the children for several months, Belton came to the conclusion that their lack of imagination was, at least in part, caused by the absence of "empty time," or periods without any activity or sensory stimulation. She noticed that as soon as these children got even a little bit bored, they simply turned on the television: the moving images kept their minds occupied. "It was a very automatic reaction," she says. "Television was what they did when they didn't know what else to do."" Television takes away from the practice of daydreaming and daydreaming takes practice.

Lehrer writes that that daydreaming is easy, the hard part is recognizing that when you have a creative insight while daydreaming and then to use that idea!

Other interesting ideas that research is uncovering is that people with autism may daydream less and people with schizophrenia daydream more: "people with autism tend to fixate on things in their environment" and people with schizophrenia may be unable to "differentiate properly between reality and the ideas generated by the imagination."



So if daydreaming is so good why are we so frightened of allowing others to do it? One of my favorite books on teaching is "Time to Teach, Time to Learn" by Chip Wood. In it he writes about some of the busyness in today's school and the need for reflective time throughout the school day.

And I know what I am going to be doing during the next church sermon I am sitting through. I will be daydreaming my way to solving a simple problem with an easy solution.

A Simple Video with an Inspiring Message

Here is an award winning short video that has nothing at all to do with teaching and everything possible to do with teaching. In just a few short minutes you can see compassion, kindness, problem solving, the power of words (don't worry that this video is in Spanish), and be inspired to "see" the world in new ways!

Enjoy!

Cooperative Learning in the Math Classroom

Here is a wonderful video from Edutopia. It shows Chris Opitz, a teacher in Anchorage, Alaska, and how he teaches social and emotional skills at the beginning of the academic year with his fifth grade students. The children in his class learn to talk and listen to each other with respect and when they can do that, the lessons can really take off. This is a 9 minute video, but you will want to watch it more than once. This is a great teacher at work and there is so much modeling being done and Chris explains what he is doing as the video plays. You can also see the video here along with all sorts of resources that Chris includes to take you deeper into how he runs his class.

Take a Dance Around the World

This is fun! To make this oddly appealing video, Connecticut native Matt Harding danced in 42 countries in 14 months. What a great way to get a glimpse of the world. It makes you want to go out and be a bit silly with a bunch of friends. Keep it simple. Keep it fun. Have a great summer!

And why can't I go on field trips like that?

Here is an earlier video he did. The dance is the same, but the locations are different. I think I have had a few kids with that same amount of energy in my class through the years. There were times I wanted to send a few of them on a trip to the other side of the world. So I wonder what Matt's story is?

Getting Rid of Classroom Clutter

I was reading Time magazine this week and there was an article called How to Live With Just 100 Things about Dave Bruno from San Diego who is on a decluttering mission. According to his Blog, GuyNamedDave, Dave has a goal to challenge stuff and fight consumerism. He intends to get rid of most of his junk and live with 100 personal possessions for a year. He does set his own rules about what counts as a personal possession and the challenge is for him and not the rest of his family. However in the Time article Dave does declare that. "Stuff starts to overwhelm you."

Teachers are notorious for collecting junk (at least most teachers I know, there are a few misfits around who keep a clean, tidy, and junk free classroom). We have our old lesson plans and materials, books and books, things that "could" be useful for a science or art project someday. knick-knacks that some kid gave us years ago, and all sorts of odd assortments of flotsam and jetsam that could be useful "next year" that just keep accumulating and multiplying. Don't forget our desktops that are just covered with all sorts of teaching debris. When one desktop gets too cluttered I just move on to the next desk. That is why I have 3 desks in my room!

So as this school year ends, it would be a good time to get rid of all that stuff falling out of closets, stored in boxes, and trapped on shelves throughout our classrooms. Trash it, donate it to a new teacher, or give things to kids to clutter their bedrooms. I hope to get rid of tons of accumulated teacher trash (well except for the stuff that I could possibly use some time in the future!)I probably can't get it down to 100 things to teach with next year, but I am sure I can get rid of 100, 200, 300 or more things that have outlived their intended purpose or usefulness.

Important: Please don't let my wife know about these plans. She will expect me to do the same thing at home!