The BFM has been challenging each other to blog about something.  Tony asked the question about whether he is the enemy…he is.  Anna wrote a touching tribute to her dad after our BFM field trip to see the King’s Speech…one of the better movies I have seen this year…almost as good as Machette.  But for some reason I do not possess a singular train of thought.

  • I have pondered on my place in the teaching profession of today.  Once apon a time I was considered cutting edge.  Project-based, thematically geared, visual, Socratic, query-based, and genuinely sought to inspire my students to become more…more of a person, more of a learner…more.  Today I feel that what I am out of sync.  I don’t care about data.  I care about kids.  My data is based on observation of growth.  My growth model is not found in DASH, it is built on watching my students take on bigger challenges, pushing their answers from rote to thought, it is based on listening to the nuances of answers, it is from watching extra effort done for the sake of proving themselves to me, it is from me caring enought to notice my students’ actions.  I can’t put it into a spreadsheet so therefore I am out of sync.  I may well be judged ineffective on the rubric that made Tony the enemy; of course,  this would someone wired like me. 
  • My kids are so very visual.  It is amazing to me that my students can still attach words to pictures (no matter how metaphoric), but struggle with simple definitions.  I am building a vocabulary model for my class where I present vocabulary through sights and sounds, but don’t necessarily have the kids write anything down.   I want to see if my dealing to their strengths that I can break the vocabulary cycle that we all know does not work.  I write more about that later.
  • I need to be more intentional with the learning in my class.  I have always struggled articulating my learning objectives to my kids…for those of you that have never been in my class I tend to like to build to the end by stringing my students on…it can be a little like watching Lost…  I’m going to work on incorporating a daily entry and exit task.  This will be tough for me, but I am going to try.