November Blogging Challenge: What I want my students to learn...

Day 11

What is the most important 'lesson' you want to teach your students?

I don't know if there is just one lesson I want to teach my students. Of course I want them to learn and master my content, but education is about so much more. The prompt asks for one lesson, but as an English teacher, I have an entire alphabet of lessons I want to teach my students:

Always share your joy.

Be willing to listen with an open mind.

Carry on when times get rough.

Don't ever give up.

Enjoy solitude when you can get it.

Feel the wonder of little miracles.

Give generously of your resources.

Help someone you normally would not.

Imagine. Imagine. Imagine.

Journeys are worth the effort.

Keep on hoping for the best, even during the hard times.

Let laughter live and love in your life.

Make friends wherever you can.

Never stop learning.

Occasionally take the long way ‘round.

Perception is not reality.

Question. Question. Question.

Rejoice in all things.

Spend time, not money, on your loved ones.

Take no one for granted.

Understand more than you let on.

Voice your opinions--and support them.

Wonder “why” more often.

(e)Xamine your motives.

Yearn for the Forever Now.

Zealously guard your humanity.

November Blogging Challenge: Thankful for strengths...

Day 5

What are your strengths? Which are you most grateful for?

Grades were due today at noon, so I spent last night grading papers instead of writing a blog post about my strengths. Instead, I'll share the post I wrote about my strengths for the September Blogging Challenge:

Day 15--Name three strengths you have as an educator. 

1. Content knowledge--I love my content: English Language Arts. I have enjoyed reading and writing for as long as I can remember. Analyzing literature for themes and deep thoughts, writing fiction and nonfiction of varying genres, using proper grammar--presenting all that information to my students so that they, too, can get the same joy from the written word as I do is one of my strengths as an educator. 

2. Willing to learn and try new things--My grandfather used to tell us that a day's not been wasted if you've learned something. When we can learn how to help our students grasp our material in a better way (or deeper in a way that we already knew), or when we can learn how to use a technology that helps us do our jobs better, that's a great thing, and I think that is one of my strengths. 

3. Desire that students succeed--When a teacher knows what a student can do, she can inspire the student to do even more. Sometimes the teacher is the only one in the student's corner--not even the student is always in his or her own corner. My students always know I am their loudest cheerleader even as I correct their papers and push them to better scholarship; my desire that my students succeed is one of my best strengths as their teacher.

Of those strengths, the one I'm most grateful for is the third one: desire that my students succeed. I think that as teachers we have no better strength than the desire to make a difference in our students' lives. When we believe that all students can learn and succeed, we look at our jobs as more than just jobs. We have a mission field, and our students are the harvest. Not to get too Biblical, but these fields are rich unto harvest. Now we just need the workers to bring in the harvest.

November Challenge: What I'm proud of...

Day 3

What are you most proud of to date in your teaching career?

This may sound weird, but the thing I'm most proud of are the number of students who "friend" me on Facebook after they graduate from high school.  To add to that "weirdness" is that sometimes the students who wish to stay in contact with me are not the ones I would have thought might want to do so.  

The students I get friend requests from are often the students who talked back or claimed they didn't like English or didn't get the highest grades.  I find this knowledge to be extremely gratifying because that means I succeeded in creating a rapport with my students, even if they didn't make the best grades.  

So, that saying I have pictured here is true.

Connecting with my students in some way that makes the ones who didn't even like my content area want to befriend me after high school, that is what I'm most proud of in my teaching career.  I get to see pictures of their kids.  I get to see statuses (even those non-grammatical ones which make my English teacher heart and soul cringe) about their lives.  And all of that makes this teacher's heart and soul puff out with pride; I made a difference.

November Challenge: Small Delights

Day 2

What is one small delight in the day that you always look forward to?

If we're talking the school day and not the day in general, I would say the small delight I look forward to is the moment just before the first bell rings for the day.  I think of it kind of like the moment just before the curtains open on a stage: everything is set, the desks are--for the only time in the day--perfectly in lines, the room is quiet, and I am taking a deep breath.  The bell rings, and I open the door to a new day.  Kids will come into my room and disrupt the quiet, move the desks, and take my breath away.  The students are then the focus; but that tiny moment just before bell rings is all mine.

November Challenge: The best aspects...

Day 1

What are the best aspects of being a teacher?

Some of the best aspects of being a teacher stare back at me every Monday-Friday for 180 days from mid-August to mid-May with holidays off.  The students.  I know that seems cliche', but it's really true.  The students really are some of the best aspects of being a teacher.  I teach high school kids, and they are filled with hormones and attitude and angst...and I love it.  Every day is a new day with them, and that makes teaching them a challenge.  A challenge I really enjoy.

Another of the best aspects of being a teacher are my colleagues down the hallways of my school.  The people I work with are some of the most devoted people I know.  We work hard to help the students in our charge.  These teachers I work with spend hours of precious time giving their all to our community.  The parents in our community are sending the best they have to us, and we honor that trust by giving our utmost in all our endeavors.

These are the best aspects of being a teacher--the students we serve and the people we serve with.

Reflective Teaching: Day 11, Favorite Part of the School Day

Day 11--What is your favorite part of the school day and why?

I like the morning before school starts when I'm at school early so I can get to the copy machine before a line starts and can have some time in my room to prepare for the day.  There is a peaceful anticipation in the quiet halls.  There are no lockers slamming.  There is no hustle and bustle as students shove their way through the burgeoning halls like salmon swimming upstream.  There are no disruptions to the quiet.  Yes, the morning before school is one of my favorite times of the school day.

Another favorite time of the school day is the Professional Learning Community Late-Start time we have at our school  It affords us teachers who teach in the same department a time during the school day once a week when we can make curriculum decisions, work on Common Assessments, pour over data, and have collaborative talks.  When teachers who teach the same content can work together to share their knowledge, the result is greater than the sum of its parts.  So, PLC time is some of my favorite time spent at school.

However, my most favorite time of the school day varies from day to day and hour to hour.  It occurs at those moments I mentioned in my fourth blog of this series. I love those moments in a school day when the kids are involved and actively participating in the lesson.  They are learning.  When the students are working and unaware of the time, when they are surprised by the bell, when they feel that the class has sped by: those are my favorite parts of the school day.

Homecoming Dance

The homecoming dance for my high school occurred this past Friday night.  The dance was a "black light and neon" format, so kids were coming in white or neon colors so that they showed up brilliantly in the black light.   I had fun checking outfits for school-appropriateness and embarrassing students when I told them they couldn't pass me until they'd proven they knew how to dance by showing me their signature dance moves.  I was doing this job as a chaperone when one of my Creative Writing students "assigned" me some homework: "Write a poem about the dance by Monday, Miss Schneider," said Aaron T.

Challenge accepted.

Since the dance had been going on for a while, and I was just standing in the doorway as the "bouncer and self-proclaimed dance-move checker" anyway, I decided to write the poem then and there.  I grabbed a notebook from my purse and the pen from the lanyard around my neck and began to compose my poem.  The principal and several students came by to check on my progress, and one even gave me the idea for the title.  Before the end of the dance, my poem was finished.  Here it is...

"A Handful of Dances"
(thanks for the title to Seth R.)

Students glowing with neon fire
Stand in groups of three or five
While beats pound unmercifully dire
Upon my ears, and, lands alive!

The smell of nerves, of dance, of sweat--
Not unlike that of an old, wet dog--
Assaults my lungs with odor, and yet,
Fills the air with a pluming fog.

Lights blaze and strobe and blind the eyes
With pink and green and orange and blue;
The black lights give us quite a surprise
When they turn all things white a ghostly hue.

The students jump and spin and whirl
Or stand like stones against the wall.
The boys dare each other to ask the girl
Whom they've only seen out in the hall.

The songs progress from slow to fast
And back again from fast to slow;
The dancers beg the DJ to make it last,
For alas, too soon, it's time to go.