A Fresh New Year

Four more days of official vacation.  I'm excited about a new year, but I can't help feeling a little sad that my days of reading in the hammock by the pool and sleeping past 8:00am are coming to an end.  It is crazy to think that so much time has passed since my last post, a whole two years and all of the learning that I didn't log.  I am hoping that I will be more on top of things this year.

Things that have changed:

1. I used to hate teaching math, and now, teaching 7th grade math is one of my favorite times of the day.  I've spent the summer researching, revamping, and revitalizing my math lesson plans.  I've analyzed the common core and Florida standards, figured out what "I can" statements I want students to be able to make, planned pretests and lesson cards similar to the SRA Math Lab boxes, and found what fun hands on projects and extensions I want to offer for each cycle unit.  This year, I will even be presenting a talk about motivating middle school math students at the American Montessori Society annual conference.  Once I cozied up to math and started having fun with it, I felt more knowledgeable and had so much more fun.
2. This year, my co-teacher and I will be doing block scheduling.  I will teach a 6 week Social Studies/Language integrated unit to one group of 30 while she has the other 30 students for Science/Language.  After 6 weeks, we'll switch.  This will really allow us to facilitate deep understanding of the content and context of our curriculum.  I hope to pretty up the lessons I wrote myself and post them on my TPT store.  
3. This summer, I went to the coolest training ever.  I was trained in implementing the Montessori Model United Nations curriculum.  I'll be guiding my students through a small version of it this year, but next year, I hope to be able to bring a group of delegates to present at the MMUN in NYC.  Imagine you are 12 or 13 years old, sitting in a cushioned chair that the ambassador from China usually sits in, around the room...the buzz of negotiations between students from all of the country and more than 13 other countries, adolescents all focused on playing the role of their assigned country, challenged to come up with solutions for the world's most pressing problems.  I get chills just thinking of it.  
4. I think we'll be starting this school year with, amazingly, all of our intersessions planned. Intersessions are always one of the most fun parts of our school, but scheduling them seems to be so hard during the school year.  Between my co-teacher's awesome ideas and mine, it looks like we'll have a very connected set of trips to really enhance the content with which students will be working.

There are more changes, but I do not want to post for too long.  Setting my phone reminder to post each week, at least once.  

I’ve begun summer, sort of. My summer will consist of a series of cool trainings and hanging out with my children.  My favorite thing about summer, though, is the chance to read, read, read.  I read a book this past weekend, and it was a joy to completely lose myself in it.  The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate by Jacqueline Kelly is a book that completely stole my heart.  I simultaneously wanted to be Calpurnia and save her from history.  Calpurnia is a young girl in 1899, trying to figure out how she can grow up to be a scientist while dealing with the educational demands of young ladies at the time…In school, she is graded for her posture, hand-sewing, and lace making. Her mother is trying to teach her house-keeping and cooking.  Meanwhile, Calpurnia slinks away any chance she gets to spend time with her naturalist grandfather, digging in the mud for worms, collecting and logging specimens, classifying new plants, reading Darwin and trying her best to avoid becoming a debutante. Even though I don’t really like bugs and plants, I identified with Calpurnia.  She is a girl trying to make a place for herself in the world, even though she is kind of different from all the other girls.    I won’t spoil the book for you, but highly recommend it!

When I told my marine biologist co-teacher about how much I liked the book, she passed me Emma and Charles: The Darwin’s Leap of Faith by Deborah Heiligman.  I’m about halfway through, and I am learning so much!  I never knew all of the scientists that were getting close to figuring out the same theory (or pieces of it) as Darwin.  I also never knew how religious Darwin’s wife was.  How incredible.  I can’t wait to find out how they deal with their differences of perspectives on the world.

I say I have  ”sort of”  begun summer because I’ve been in class for the last four days, ten hours a day.  No breaks. (Not even for lunch!)  I've learned a lot about what not  to do.  I also learned some great strategies for teaching reading skills.  We’ve got a great text, Literacy and Learning in the Content Areas by Sharon Kane.  It is a thick book with tons of wonderful activities that I think (hope) we will enjoy.  Some of the important things to help support struggling (and even non-struggling) readers include building background and vocabulary, teaching comprehension monitoring skills and teaching how to boil things down to the relevant information and summarize.  Here is an interesting podcast from the author of another book I've recently read:

Janet Allen Podcast

Cast a Vote: Should We Enter the War of 1812

I've been exploring the use of games in the classroom.  This website is cool.  In a short, 90 minute period, students learn multiple perspectives of people living in the United States in 1812.  After analyzing their different viewpoints, they debate, in small groups, whether or not the United States should enter the war.  I'm always up for an interactive activity that gets my students considering many different ways of thinking about issues.  I don't think this will come up for next year when we explore world history, but just for fun, some students might like to explore it.

Political Cartoons

As the elections come upon us, I wonder the best ways to help students think about the role they can play, not only someday but also right now,  in electing people to office who understand and will address issues important to them.  The challenge is not finding material.  It is everywhere around.  If anything, it is narrowing down the field and taking care not to introduce so much that it overwhelms.  An overloaded mind shuts down.   

I try, as often as possible, to keep my political thoughts to myself.  I don't really care to influence the way my students think about issues.   I just want them to be interested, to have their minds open to other points of views, to think critically.  I want them to compare their thoughts and listen thoughtfully to each other.  But let's face it.  Most writing writing and even television about politics is pretty boring for the average adolescent.  It's not like Alex P. Keaton is normally sitting in my middle school classroom.  

This is an interesting resource for teachers using political cartoons.  I'm not sure where I'll plug it in, but as we move into elections, I will be keeping my eye open for good political cartoons, both left and right.  

Decreasing the Negative Effects of Materialism

It seems as if people want more and more things these days.  I'm often guilty of it too, seeing the new and better version and wanting the upgrade, an additional pair of shoes or cute jeans, a copy of the book instead of the library borrowed version. I love the simple reminder in this video, especially in the week following such a busy holiday.

This year, I spent a great deal of time making presents for family and friends.  I jokingly said that they were the most expensive presents I had ever given, considering the time I put into them.  While they may not have all turned out professional looking, I can say that I poured my love into them.  Working with a small budget, I used a lot of recycled materials- half used paints reclaimed from the dump, canvas, fabrics and picture frames  purchased from garage sales, glue, pages from the funnies and old magazines, and a little ingenuity.  My children, too, had fun creating home made gifts- painting, finger knitting, hot glue gunning, collecting, and wrapping up things they had once enjoyed and knew their cousin or sibling would now enjoy.

My favorite gifts from the holiday- the lovely book my eight year old son wrote about me and the beautiful generosity of my daughter who chose three children off the angel tree and said I could use whatever money I had planned to spend on her, because she didn't need anything.

Civil Rights Education

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There is a huge push to improve science, reading and math education, and now, social studies which includes history, economics, geography and civics is joining the bunch. Well, it's about time! Afterall, there is so much talk about the economy and how to fix it, how to get citizens involved in the political process, and the move towards participation in a global community. Crazy when some kids don't know how to read a map and don't have any general idea about where things are located in the world. Crazier even still when students leave high school without a fundamental understanding of the principles upon which the United States was built, the principles which work to protect their individual freedoms. Not every student will leave my classroom ready to become a lawyer, but I hope that I am able to teach them the foundations of our Constitution which protect their rights, and instill a respect for the sacrifices of the many people before us who have led the way to a more just society. Even more, I hope that that education inspires them to non-violently stand up for just causes in which they believe.

It is discouraging to read this report from Teaching Tolerance which rates 35 states as an F in civil rights education. Florida is one of three states that received an A, but even our great state shows room for improvement. When I look at history and civics, the civil rights movement stands out as an illustration on the power of nonviolent protest to making wide scale changes in society. This Southern Poverty Law Center further analyzes the data, and an interesting trend emerges. The educational institutions in the South score significantly higher than the north, west and midwest.

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Growth Mindset

What causes some students to persist when things get challenging and some to quit easily? I'm sure there are many reasons, many of which educators can't influence, but teaching students to look at their learning through a growth mindset has been shown to make a huge difference, not only in learning outcomes, but also in positive self concept. My co-teacher sent me this great link that has a nice diagram of the difference it makes.