Posts Tagged “semester”

Rigor and Relevance

The staff in my district is focusing on Rigor and Relevance, it’s our professional development task this year and the focus of curriculum committees. I like the creativity it gives me as a teacher to develop new lessons or add to one I use annually. I took a leap this semester in the name of Rigor and Relevance, with my 5th grade guided reading group. This particular group is made up of the highest achieving students in that classroom, many are also TAG students. I chose The Monument by Gary Paulsen as their first novel. I had read this novel but not previously used it with a group of students. If you have not read it, I highly recommend it.

As we are reading, the students are creating a “Novel Guide”. We discuss the book, and the students choose what they feel needs to be addressed and how they think other students would enjoy completing the activities. Upon completion, I have spoken to two other classroom teachers who are willing to use the guide with their students and provide feedback. My students are SO into this assignment.

They are pretty creative, and have used illustrating, describing, and real-life connections by finding websites that add to the understanding of the novel. We have had some very interesting discussions as well. When the main character meets the artist the town has hired, she uses the word “pervert” to initially describe him. Every one of them had made a note to use pervert as a vocabulary word, so this meant we needed a working definition. They struggled and finally we looked it up in the dictionary. I don’t recall the entire definition but “deviant behavior, often sexual in nature” was part of it. This brought giggles, of course. They decided their working definition would be “child molester, creep, all around person to avoid”. As we were wrapping the discussion up, with a very straight face, “Trevor” says, “Well, some people have called me a pervert, and I guess today, I learned I really am NOT one!”

A couple of days later, we are discussing a line from the novel, “Well, there’s seeing and then there’s seeing.” This remark was made in connection with art. It didn’t take them long to figure out it the character was talking about emotion. I pulled up a few “masterpieces” on the computer for them to look at, and then to try to see. One of these was an abstract by Picasso. Again it’s Trevor who says, “Wow, that one makes my eye’s hurt. I can’t “see” that one!”

We go on to talk about other mediums that have emotional effects on us, movies, books, and music. Music was a raucous discussion, as they all had strong opinions. I asked if any of them enjoyed “classical” music, since none had mentioned it. Once more, Trevor pipes up, “Is that like “The Beatles”?”

Yup, I can get a handle on the Rigor……Relevance….that’s going to take some time I think.
(By the way, I LOVE this guided reading group! They are so open to new ideas, so willing to try and to learn…..I think their Novel Guide is going to be super.)

Mentors
In my district, as in most now, we have a mentoring program.  It was just in the beginnings when I was hired, so in the 3 years of mentoring that I and all new hires are required to complete, each year was unique.  Although I didn’t always find the information or assignments helpful, my actual mentors were, well, quite honestly, priceless.
  
My first mentor was Mrs. B.  She had been teaching for well over 30 years.  She had been a special education teacher, classroom teacher and reading teacher.  She was the only Title I teacher in the building where I began my teaching career as a “guided reading teacher”.   (It was a part time, 9/10ths, position – you know where they get you full time really but don’t have to give you full time benefits)  Mrs. B. was a soft spoken, low key, small, gray haired grandma type lady.  She was kind and extremely patient with the students, and with me!  I have since lived on some pearls of wisdom she gave me my first year.  “You can’t save them you know, you can give them strategies, tools, and encouragement, but you can’t save them.  They have to do that themselves.”   I have recited that quote to myself numerous times, as I struggle to “save” one.  “Some are just hardwired different, dear.  You have to figure that out, that’s your job.”  Man, if that isn’t the truth.  Funny thing about that though, the ones that are hardwired differently are the ones that I end up enjoying the most!!  Imagine then, that after you are so impressed by this dignified, upstanding, master teacher who never raises her voice, you are walking by her room one day and hear, “Well, shit, shit, SHIT!”  My head spun ‘round, and I peeked in and said, “Mrs. B.  are you OK????!!!”  Her answer, “Sure, why do you ask?”  I sputtered to explain why I’d asked and she laughed…..laughed long and loud.  She said, “Yeah, I’m a teacher, but that’s just my day job, the rest of the time…..I’m human!”  Probably the most important pearl of wisdom she ever gave me.  As I continued that year, I learned she was very human, smoked like a chimney, drank like a fish and told the dirtiest, funniest jokes you ever heard.
 
My second mentor was also a Mrs. B.  She was different from the first but just as good.  She told me, “Administrators come and go, and you get to jump through new hoops each time.  But, kid, the students stay the same, so just shut your door and teach.”  She gave me OLD stuff.  Old basals, old games, old lesson plans…..and you know what I figured out, for my strugglers, they often WORKED!  That slow building repetition, it was just what they needed.  She LOVED the students and they knew it.  They worked so hard for her.  She most often got those with the biggest behavior issues.  It didn’t matter how quirky they were, they were just another student in the class, expected to follow the rules.  You know, it took some of them the first semester to figure that out, but once they did, she rarely had behavior problems.  She had over 30 years in the district, taught in 4 different buildings, taught reading, classroom, and special education, and survived half a dozen superintendents, and more principals.   Her best piece of advice, “You gotta start where they are and find something about them that you truly like.  They don’t care until you do.”  That was true for academics and behavior, and I remind myself of that almost every day.
 
Both of my mentors have since retired and I miss them both, immensely, if for no other reason than they reminded me to “keep it about the students”.  There is so much other, well, crap that you deal with as you sit on committees and go to professional development and get new administrators that it can be easy to forget why you are really there.  So on those days, I find myself asking not “What would Jesus do?” but rather “What would Mrs. B. do?!” (Either one of them).   After I ponder that for a minute, and pull up one of their pearls of wisdom, I just shut my door and teach.