September Reflection

Extreme Wait... Loss.

     This Monday was like any other May Monday when I woke up. I performed my normal before-work routine, but this time when I arrived, I arrived to extremely somber news.

     Over the weekend, there was a fire at one of my student's homes. The fire started on the first floor while she was on the third floor. Yala was flown to CHOP (Children's Hospital of Philadelphia) in serious condition. Two adults and one child, her 6-year-old sister (Adeni), were pronounced dead at the scene.

     Students came into our computer lab and homeroom balling their eyes out over their friend. With absolutely no time to process these events, my colleagues and I immediately went into consolation mode, confirming what we could about the news and reassuring them that as soon as we learned the absolute facts, we would tell them what we could.

     Social media was of absolutely no help. Over the weekend, rumors had been spread about her death and the causes of the fire, and everybody's aunt, uncle, or second cousin twice removed knew something about the incident. We were on a constant roller coaster of emotions.

     In the morning, we learned that Yala was in a coma and on life support, but that the outlook wasn't very promising... In the afternoon, we learned that we had lost our 11-year-old Yala to the fire as well. As I was in another school when I received the news, my colleagues were sending sobbing children home on the buses with horrible news.

     The next day was no easier. Many children arrived crying. Some were soon sent back home. There was a psychologist on site to help those who stayed through the myriad number of emotions they were attempting to navigate... and we tried our best to keep it together.

     After school on Wednesday, a psychologist was called in for those of us close to her. I missed it for a track meet though. I heard it was helpful. That night was the first night I cried over her loss.

     This was a blossoming student... a super-intelligent, never-in-trouble, always smiling, genuinely happy student. God knows I understand death as the true unknown. It just happens when it happens. She and her sister were the only children her parents had though... Can you imagine?? In the blink of an eye, everything has changed...

     Last week, this young child and I jokingly fought over the math facts sheet she had just filled out so she couldn't add another answer once the time was up... and tomorrow is her funeral.

What a horrible reason to remember that not one of our days together down here on Earth ought to be taken for granted! It's so cliché, but it's true... What do you want?

     This was a long week. One of my longest. When life stops for one person, the others affected by that loss have to somehow continue. It's one of the hardest lessons I've ever had to teach my students...

I'm starting to think that it's so hard because I'm still learning the lesson myself.

Every Failure...

     Yesterday, a student of mine's father arrived to collect her things from her locker and withdraw her from our school district. She'd been in our school, our district... no, our country for only a few months, and now she is leaving.

     She didn't leave because of anything good, but she didn't do anything bad. She didn't leave because her parents needed to relocate due to a job opportunity. In fact, she's leaving the country while her dad stays here to continue to provide for her and the rest of her family back in Mexico. She did nothing wrong, but she is getting the consequences of somebody else's negative actions.

     I'll backtrack a little bit.

     Two weeks ago, this student came to my classroom and handed me a note she had just found in her locker. It was a letter addressed to her personally. In it, she was referred to in an extremely derogatory manner multiple times. The writer, clearly another student, commented negatively on the clothing bought for her by her hard-working father and finished off by threatening to end her life.

     She was visibly shaken up by this demeaning and threatening note. Some colleagues and I immediately took action, notifying administrators and the SRO (school resource officer). Everyone was on top of it.

     The student's father immediately came in. He respectfully expressed his concern and took his daughter home to console and protect her, demanding that we determine the culprit before he makes any decision to send her back to our school. Later that day, we saw that he had filed a police report concerning the incident. I'd have done the same for the safety of my own child.

     Unfortunately, we were unable to see any indication of the letter's delivery on our school's cameras. We put our feelers out to trustworthy students and had them keep their ears perked and ask around to no avail. We became impromptu graphologists and analyzed writing samples from students who interacted with this girl on a regular basis or even rumored to have a beef with her. No leads have emerged from the investigation to date.

     While we took care to reassure the student's father that she would certainly be safe with us in the building. He assured us that he trusted that fact. What he didn't trust was the wait at the bus stop in the mornings. He didn't trust the bus ride to and from school. He didn't trust the walk she would have to take from the bus stop to the neighbor's home where she stayed while he continued to work. He didn't trust the potential danger to his 10-year-old daughter outside of our four walls... and there was nothing we could say or do to instill that trust... and his genuine concern is justifiable.

     Fast forward to now. The girl is leaving the country due to endangerment to her safety that she did not merit. This is a significant life change that she is undergoing due to a cowardly written note done in bad taste and most likely out of some juvenile reaction to jealousy and pain. I'm at a loss for what to do.

     What can be done here? Today, I had a very short restorative circle with my students concerning her situation. I wish I had had more time to allow them to process and share their own feelings regarding the recent events. I gave one last request for anyone to step forward with any possible information that could be helpful.

     I explained that this request wasn't just for their classmate's benefit, but also to help the student who wrote the note deal with anger and frustration in a more positive manner being that such harassing threats receive different consequences when they come from adults.

     I'm reaching a somewhat distant conclusion that we as a district need some sort of school-neighborhood connection so students can feel safe anywhere within our boundaries. There is absolutely no reason that one student should be able to get away with threatening another denizen of our school's community, let alone make her feel unsafe to the point of avoiding interactions in her own neighborhood for fear of being injured by another person.

     If we were to have some sort of grapevine that the local neighborhood is willing to communicate on, we could really bring people together and truly take a step towards actually acting as the village we need to be in order to "raise the child," so to speak.

     Upon some preliminary research, I really like what I see going on in Chicago's LSNA (Logan Square Neighborhood Association). This non-profit organization has been around since 1962, so they have a sound track record. The LSNA seems to have a really comprehensive organization that involves giving the youth power to learn how to make a positive difference in their neighborhoods and schools when they feel a negative emotion in response to something happening around them.

     I see the need here... but I see plenty of needs. What I seem to need is the help and accountability to actually follow through and do something about the problems I see around me. That's where I seem to drop the ball time after time. I'm not down about it though... just in contemplation... soul searching for the way I can be the change I wish to see in the world. Every failure is that step to success, isn't it?

ClassDojo & Read180, UNITE!!!

     Sometimes, I feel like a superhero who is slowly, but surely understanding the powers that have been bestowed upon me.

     So, I'd recently come across a plethora of book quizzes that have been created for the Read 180 classroom. After a bit of research and a few phone calls to Scholastic, I was able to download every quiz available to us, which has opened up access to a large number of mainstream books with which the students are much more familiar!

     Let's backtrack a little bit now. In my classroom, I use an online teaching tool known as Class Dojo. I really enjoy its kid-friendly approach to promoting appropriate behaviors in the classroom. It's also a great way to keep parents up to date with what's happening in the classroom in real time. There's an app, etc... Anyway, the point is that I use the points system through Class Dojo to pay my students with my Folkes dollars at the end of each month. With that money, they can purchase classroom rewards or toys I buy from the local Dollar Tree and the sort.

     Now that I have opened the doors to Book Quiz Heaven, the children are gunning to make more cash and you better believe I am riding that wave! Finding books more appropriate to our lower level beginning readers is finally an attainable goal. Well, it was before, but now, I can quiz their comprehension of the content more easily. Scholastic has definitely helped me out there.

     The kids seem to love the connection between the two programs, and the parents who've signed up in order to stay in the loop really do appreciate the real-time feedback. I just need to get more of them to sign up! See the light, people!
     

Building Something That Lasts

     I recently attended a kids ministry conference along with other staff members from my church. It was a huge eye-opener not only for what I am called to do through my (minimal - and yes, I like it that way) influence in our church's kids ministry, but also what I am called to do right here where I work with my children on a more regular basis.

     Now, one of the breakout sessions was on how to build a ministry that would endure. Of course, I immediately started thinking along the lines of epic proportions. I'm thinking, "Boom! As a teacher, I have built-in leadership capacity... They HAVE to listen to me!" Strategy? "I've got strategy out the wazoo, fueled by the super-human researchers (namely, Dr. Kate Kinsella) behind Read 180! I kept going through the steps, and as I sat there, listening to Jeff Brodie, I felt more and more confident that these parallels exist and that I can pull this off in the public classroom.

     What is my ministry in the classroom, you ask? Why, the love of learning, of course! I know that I don't know everything, but I also know that I can find the answers to the questions I don't know the answers to. We are living in a day and age where the vast majority of people have access to information sitting in their pockets on most days (or in a belt buckle clip for the lucky few). I might not know everything, therefore I cannot teach everything, but I can go into a room full of kids and show them how much I love learning something new... show them why I love learning in such a way that the love for it is infectious! Then show them that the key to being able to learn independently is... to be able to read independently, my true charge.

     This was so easy to envision. In fact, Brodie's second step sounded a lot like the concept of backward design. "Start with the end in mind," Brodie proposed. The information I want to communicate also has to be delivered in the context of my strategy. While Brodie's 4-point strategy was more spiritually oriented, I found a pretty solid correlation between the two sectors:

     I do find that students will be much more engaged when these four tenets are present in the student's life on a regular basis. The first two tenets go hand in hand, somewhat. When parents and guardians are actively involved in their children's education, the result is that children, in turn (more often than not), view education as an important priority in their lives as well - regardless of their natural work ethic. Positive peer pressure also plays an important role in how engaged students are in the academic setting. How do we hook our children into the lure of knowledge? Show them why it's cool to know stuff! When you get them excited about understanding things, the effect truly is infectious. It just doesn't happen as effectively, in my opinion, if their attention is given to you, the teacher, purely based on the fear of consequence-oriented threats. It's like that quote from Monsters, Inc.,

A laugh is ten times more powerful than a scream.

      

     Finally, serving others. The effect of realizing how one's existence positively influences another human being is priceless and it's an extremely powerful self-reproducing incentive. It quite naturally feels good to help others. The sooner we can allow our students to experience how helping out a classmate feels compared to breaking him down by making fun of him when he's struggling with a particular concept, the closer we get to my personal version of an "academic utopia": an environment where the inquisitive learner is attentive to instruction and eager to try, fail, and subsequently try again.

     Who knows where this may lead? I sure don't, but I'll try this approach out with my students, and if it fails, I'll try again... having hopefully learned something of value from the failed attempt. I better lead by example, don't you think?

Happy Father's Day!!! (This Sunday, that is...)

To all my colleagues that this applies to... and anyone else out there:
Happy upcoming Father's Day!

Always strive to be the dad you wish you'd always had!

Let's See What Happens, Shall We?

     So, we now have my original "Parts of Speech" music video:

     However, you will now also see (at the end of the video) that I have added 3 new versions! First of all, we have the "eduoke" version (education + karaoke... I'm always trying to coin new terms or revive old ones, ok?!). In the eduoke version, you can see the lyrics as you watch the video. It should help any student to understand everything I sing as well as study the grammatical rules embedded in the song:

     I also now have a version that I like to call "cloze captioned" (I think this term will catch on!). In this version of the song, you still have the karaoke facet, but key terms have been deleted from the lyrics. This practice, known as a "cloze" activity, will allow students to think critically about what term is missing and why it makes sense in that space. They will also be challenged to slowly, but surely, memorize the song, and subsequently, the grammatical rules concerning the way we use nouns, verbs, and adjectives in the English language in the case of this song:

     Finally, I have the "lyric free and vocally yours" version (this new term doesn't quite flow off of the tongue as easily... but I like it... so, there). It's pretty self-explanatory if you ask me. In this version, you can hear the instrumental version of the music. My vocals have been removed and the lyrics (those of which were an overlay on the original video) have also been omitted. This, in a way, is the big test (but a fun one)! What have students remembered? What are they still unsure of? Can they "show what they know?" This is the video that will help us find out:

     The plan is to make these versions of each music video I do. The music video for "Dangling Participles" is now in the making and the lyrics for "Sentence," describing the possible uses of the four main sentence types, are complete (recording still needs to happen though). I'm excited to see where this goes. I hope you are, too.

Thanks to everyone for your support and encouragement!
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