The comings and goings of the dance commune

Last night, all of the roommates were home. We had a guest and her dog. One of the other roommates had a guest. Life is crowded when you look at a house with 3 dogs and 7 adults. 

We ordered pizza and watched TV and hung out.  While we were hanging out, so were the dogs. They had to play right on top of us. They were running around the living room, slobbery and loud.  So, we put them outside and they immediately laid down and relaxed. I let them back in thinking that they would relax inside. I think that they wanted an audience because they were right back to acting like fools. 

One of the roommates has little experience watching dogs at play and really thought that they were fighting. He was vigilantly watching for bloodshed, convinced that something soon would Go Horribly Wrong. It never did, but it reminded me of teaching.

Here’s why: a new teacher with new and different ideas is in the classroom.  She or He has a new style and it looks a little out of control.  The kids are loud, chaos tends to reign and there is paper everywhere.  There may even be rats. Before long, there are whispers up and down the hall and administrators get nervous the something will Go Horribly Wrong and the rating, the test scores and these Children’s Futures will be ruined. 

My roommate eventually calmed down and even believed that the dogs were having fun.  He learned something, the three dogs learned something and all was right in the world.

Of course, then the extra dog went home and the roommates started playing some dice game that required the RA (me) to go up and enforce quiet hours. (11:45 pm) Did I mention that these are all adults?

Go and Read this Now

I just read this blog and wowza it is a good one.

so, I recommend going and reading this now.

http://borderland.northernattitude.org/2007/08/05/like-cranky-talk-show-hosts/

900 kids

I went to my new school today to check it out.  I haven’t been back since I was interviewed and I was curious.  So, after some technology training (Mantra: This wasn’t working this morning, so you may have to watch me do it), I decided to drive by.  I don’t have a security badge and I was hoping that someone would be there and would believe my story and let me in.

I was lucky, one of the crew let me in.  I wandered around a bit and ran into two teachers, neither of whom are on my team.  They had news about the portables: they haven’t arrived. No one knows when they will arrive.  This means that the teachers who will move into them haven’t moved yet.  For me, this means that I can’t move into the school because I will be moving into one of the displaced teacher’s classrooms.  My garage is stuffed with school supplies that are waiting to be moved.  I am in a more enviable position than many of the teachers as I don’t have anyone waiting on me!

There will be 900 students this year.  900. I can’t get over it.

I do not envy my principal this management job: organizing the school’s day. I am not a schedule person, subjects and activities ebb and flow. Unfortunately, lunch can not ebb and flow, it must march forward. I can’t fathom how he will organize 900 students into lunch, PE, art, music and recess.

The school is a Title I school, which means that a certain percentage of students live at or below the poverty line.  A large percentage of them are second language learners.  Many of them have learning differences or behavior difficulties.  These kids are the ones who most need small, supportive communities. 

I worry about this.  Will my new school prove to be such an environment in spite of the chaos that 900 students inevitably bring? 

Linking Literacies

The signals are all around us: school supplies on sale at Target, commercials about having cool new school clothes are on TV and pre-school staff development has begun.  School is about to start! (It may even cool off soon)

Today, we had the second of a three day Linking Literacies conference.  It was great to walk around the halls and chat with my fellow teachers.  It felt for me the way the first day of school must feel for my students: catching up, making social plans and finally getting to the business of work. 

My piece of the presentation was on Content Area Literacy.  It was so much fun to be able to share tools and strategies to deepen understanding that I’ve used over the past years with other teachers.  There was some reciprocal sharing: teachers adding to what was presented based on their own experiences.

The presentation was framed by Thinking Processes: Summarizing, Inferring, Questioning, etc. We asked the participants to consider two questions with regards to that after we presented each strategy:

What Thinking was fostered by this strategy?  and How can you make this Thinking more transparent for your students?

While we knew that these questions were very deep, we hoped that they would settle into participant’s subconsciousness and be examined periodically throughout the year.  Not only to answer the questions, but to let the questions inform their lesson design.

I know that I will!