Blue-Sky Teaching

When someone asks you what's going on in your classroom, how do you respond?  Do you tell them what you are teaching, or do you tell them what students are learning? The wording of your answer actually matters quite a lot.  It affects just about everything from how you plan lessons and units to how you reflect on the success or failure of any task in your room. I'm in Minneapolis right now at the AVID Summer Institute.  One of the activities that struck me most was watching a TED Talk called The Child-Driven Education and practicing Cornell Notes.  The video is about an education researcher named Sugata Mitra and his experiments with putting computers in places where children have no experience with technology, and seeing what happens.  Amazingly (or not), the children teach themselves!  It highlighted the idea that when a teacher sets up a compelling learning situation and then gets out of kids' way, learning will happen.  There's a lot more in the video, but this

 I know it's only July, but I can't help it, I'm excited about the new school year.  Not the busyness, the exhaustion, or the hectic schedule of having three kids and a full time job. It's the possibilities that come with a new school year that excite me (and maybe new school supplies, but mostly the possibilities).  If I were going back to school next month to do the same thing in the same way all over again (for the 23rd time), I would not be excited.  But that's not how I do it.  Not once in my 22 years of teaching have I planned my instruction or my routines in just the same way.  Every year I want to improve, refine, or completely change structures that did not work.  Every year my teaching needs to be relevant and timely, and so it must grow. As I thought about where my energy comes from, three things came to mind.  Try these and you just might make the upcoming school year your best one yet: 1.  Go to a Conference...or, Better Yet, Present at a Conferen

Have you ever had a student come into class on presentation day with an excuse why he absolutely cannot possibly present today?  How about one who came in the day a paper was due and didn’t have it done?  What about a student who didn’t read an assigned book, or even a choice one?  There might be a lot of reasons that these students are not ready for the speaking, writing or reading performance they’ve been asked to do, but (since I can’t read minds) I like to choose the explanation that gives the kid the benefit of the doubt:  FEAR.  It’s scary to present in front of peers; it’s scary to create a piece of writing, put your name on it, and send it off to a pair of critical eyes.  And it’s scary to try to read a book that feels too hard, too long and totally incomprehensible, knowing you might be called on in a discussion, or worse, expected to answer quiz questions you absolutely won’t know.  Sometimes as teachers it’s easy to believe that these kids are just making excuses, tha