Just to set the context, I do not cook. At all. This means that when it is time for dinner, I either dial for chinese or my husband cooks. Just to set the context, I have been known to ruin pots trying to boil water for tea. So, what I know about how to cook comes from movies, Top Chef and the take out menu for Royal Jade Gardens.

Several years ago, when I was a third grade teacher, a committee was formed of teachers who were interested in collaboratively writing lesson plans.  These plans were to be vertically aligned and use the Understanding by Design (http://www.ascd.org/publications/books/103055/chapters/Introduction.aspx) format.

I was part of the science group and after careful consideration, we decided to work on the concept of renewable/non-renewable and inexhaustible resources.  This is a very difficult concept for students to understand. Many adults don’t understand the difference between the three and it’s rare for kids to be able to touch an inexhaustible resource.

One aspect of this is knowing where to find the different kinds of resources.  In a flash of brilliance I decided to teach the students how to take core samples, look for what they might have in the sample, map out their findings, create a dig plan and then report back to their classmates what natural resources they had been able to find in their core sample. This was my plan: each group of kids would get a plot of “land”, use string to grid it out and then use overhead projector transparencies as core samplers. I decided that Hershey’s kisses would be the coal, chocolate pudding would be crude oil and Twizzler’s (because they are hollow) would be the pockets of natural gas. For reasons I can’t recall, I volunteered to teach this lesson to the whole third grade.

During my planning period, I went to Wal Mart with Purchase Order in hand and my shopping list. It was written on a scrap of paper: Kisses, Chocolate Pudding, Twizzlers, different colored jello. As I was standing there, it occurred to me that I should buy some pans. Deep pans so that I could layer the jello to represent the layers of the Earth’s Crust.  I have no idea now the formula that I used then to decide how many boxes of jello I would need. I came home with what I thought would be “extra” boxes. (In retrospect that is funny because there were no left overs.)

After a full day of teaching, I went on a walk with neighbors at about 5 pm. I told them of my mad scheme to make jello “land” for 7 sections of third graders, totaling 80 pans of jello. I excitedly shared the candy I had chosen and the different colors of jello that I was going to use to represent different layers of the Earth’s crust.

“You’ve already started,right? You’re just taking a break now, right?” I was asked. And I, the teacher who doesn’t cook replied, “No, not yet. How long can it take to make jello?” I had bought all the jello and not bothered to read the directions. They informed me that making jello takes hours. I laughed, thinking, ‘Bill Cosby makes Jello on tv all the time.’

My husband, Duc, got home and asked what I had planned for after dinner. I said, “I need to make 80 pans of multilayered jello.” The look on his face was priceless. Rather than bore you all with dialogue that I can’t write well, let it suffice to say that the conversation ran along the lines of “–You never think things through or plan. –Yeah? Well you never give me credit for cool ideas.”

After dinner, I opened up the first box of jello and read the directions. I thought I might cry. Ever the optimist, I pulled every pot out from under the cabinet and started in. Duc just stood in the doorway watching.  Every once in a while, he offered a suggestion or a tip. Then he just went away to leave me to it. (This was probably the safest move.)

At 10 pm, more or less, the manufacturing engineer and the inner nice guy had gotten the best of Duc and he came back into the kitchen and asked what my game plan was. I had none. I had pans of jello on the cabinets ‘cooling’ over bowls of ice. I had 4 pots of jello going on the stove. I was franticly trying to get the jello to cool enough so that I could add the natural resources to without them melting.

Duc sprung into action. He just started ordering me around. Normally, this is cause for a shoe to the head, but I knew that I had been beaten. We emptied out the stand up freezer in the garage, the freezer in the kitchen and the refrigerator. All of these were filled with pans of jello.  Then, he went into the garage and got every folding table we had in there. He set up the tables in a long, connected row and then put fans on them.  He set up a rotation based on a time schedule:

(1) Liquid Jello poured into pan.

(2) Oldest pan removed from Stand Up Freezer and placed in front of a fan on the table.

(3) Oldest pan moved from refrigerator freezer to the stand up freezer, pan moved from refrigerator to the refrigerator freezer.

(4) Liquid Jello placed in refrigerator.

As they cooled enough, I added the natural resources.  We kept this up for hours and at 3 am, he sent me to bed and kept rotating jello pans. I “slept” until 5 am and then realized that I had no plan to get the pans to school.

Duc went into the garage again and returned with big plastic storage boxes. I started stacking frozen jello into the boxes. We loaded up boxes and I drove to school. I got to school, got into the teacher’s lounge and realized that there was so much food and etc in the two refrigerators that I was going to have to empty at least one of the refrigerators and one of the freezers. I stuffed everything into the other refrigerator and unloaded jello. As I was leaving to go home and reload, my principal walked by and handed me a Dr. Pepper. And smiled.

I made that trip 4 times. Then, I taught. I taught some of the other classes the lesson and I taught my class something. Duc stayed home from work and slept. At about 11:00 my teaching partner and I are standing in the hallway and I realize that I have nothing for lunch and I  have lunch duty. From around the corner,there is the smell of food and there is Duc. He is carrying Wendy’s and the biggest Dr Pepper that you can buy in the free world.

Have you picked up on how great he is? The story isn’t over yet. He stayed to eat lunch with me and then ended up covering my lunch duty: he manned the ketchup dispensers, told students they were being too loud and told one kid to clean up the mess he had made.

When I got home, he had blocked all the windows in the bedroom and threatened all the roommates with death if they woke me up.  I think he even managed to refrain from saying, “I told you so” for several days.

The lesson was great as well. All the kids loved it, their core samples were awesome. Except for one small thing. You know how on TV, Bill Cosby’s jello creations wiggle and jiggle and are thick? Apparently that doesn’t happen with store brand jello. There was a lot of disintegration as the frozen jello melted. It was much more messy than I had imagined. In the end, though, they did understand that different resources are located in different areas and that scientists take core samples to decide where and how to dig.

Someday, I will teach this lesson again, with a bigger budget and the right kind of jello. And some kitchen elves.

I am beginning the official end of year process in the classroom.  We are required to pass along to the second grade teachers a cross-curricular portfolio, the reading level of each student and the results of the state approved standardized reading test for first grade.  These give me standard and measurable benchmarks for each student. Based on these results, second grade teachers will be able to better meet my students where they are and take them to where they need to be at the end of next year. It is very civilized and it is very standard.

It is also very dull. If I relied simply on the results of the portfolio (too numerous to be useful to anyone), the reading level of the students (useful only to teachers who are going to teach reading the way I do) and the results of the state standardized reading test (in first grade? Who are they kidding) I would have to pull my eyeballs out and find a new job.

Luckily, I know better. After ten years in the classroom, I know that phonemic awareness is important but that it develops with time.  I also know that portfolios are useful only if everyone agrees on why the items included are important. No one outside the rubric- writing committee can tell you why the items included are important. The reading level is very important if one knows how to parse out useful information.  For example, if the reading level is given without an analysis of miscues, the next teacher won’t understand  why a child is at a particular reading level.  We might as well use Reading First and Harcourt as actually teach reading in that instance.

At the end of the year, I measure success based on student conversation.  I’d like to share snippets of conversation heard since Spring Break with you.  Some of these will sound like pale renditions of “Kids say the darndest things…” but to me they  aren’t cute so much as they are evidence of hard-won academic growth. Remember, they are 6…

During Reading…

“I wrote a sticky note in the book.  It says, ‘I think Tikki Tembo fell in the well because he slipped.’ It doesn’t tell you that in the text, but I inferred it by looking at the picture and thinking about the last time I fell down.”

Student: “Our poster is funny. This is our favorite part in the book.  The witch starts out all black and mean and at the end, she’s learned her lesson and so she is wearing colors and her house is pretty now. She’s nice now.”

While holding up a non-fiction frog book and a fiction story about a frog: “Look at these books, this one tells you all about the facts.  This books tells you a story using facts.  That’s what I do when I write. I use facts.”

and my favorite quote from reading: “I love this class because we read and read and read.  That’s how you learn. When I grow up, I am going to read just like you do.”

During Math…

“This is math and science together.  When we studied deserts, we measured sand.  We used this <measuring cup> but I didn’t know what to call it. Now we are using the measuring cup to measure capacity. Did you know that we can have math and science together?”

Student 1 : “That can’t be a subtraction problem! <looking at a problem where the starting number is unknown> It says, ’some more rabbits came’ and that means addition. ”  Student 2: “That’s why you have to think about what’s in the problem.  It is subtraction because we only have the biggest number and another number.” Student 1: “Mrs Nguyen, can I build it to find out?”

and my favorite…”I like math because you never guess.  We aren’t playing the lottery, you know!”

During science…

“This is where I drew the male and female ducks.  And  here, this is where I drew the nest. I know we didn’t see the nest, but that is where it would be safe from predators and close to the duck’s prey. They eat bugs.”

Pointing to a poster that they made showing a forest turtle’s life. “It says: ‘The Galapagos turtle has elephant legs.’ That’s a good connection I made there. The turtle is a reptile but he has a mammal’s legs.”

“Snakes aren’t mammals. They lay eggs. The doctor doesn’t go to their house and tell the mom to breathe hard and he doesn’t make the dad wait in the living room. Just think of a snake doctor trying to catch the baby! He wouldn’t go into the living room of the madriguera to tell the dad snake that everything was okay.”

There are a lot of other conversations that go on during group work times. I sometimes wish that I could record what they say because I know that I forget more subtle comments. As the year winds down, I have to remind myself that they are six and not 8 because they have worked so hard and learned so much that I am startled by the academic conversations we have. 

I love this time of year. We kicked academic tail all year and now they are soaring. I am just watching them go and enjoying them. Reading and science are real to them.  They interact authentically with text and with the science experiences that are available to them.  

What about your students? As you all start to plan your summers and the time that you desperately need and deserve to recharge, take a moment and look at each kid in your room and consider how far they’ve come. Enjoy them, you’ve all earned it.

I am trying to work out why my kids got of scott free. There are two trains of thought. One is that I am worn down this year and couldn’t have faced the creating, assigning and then grading of a math packet and a reading packet. I’ll be honest, the whole thing would have been chucked into the recycling bucket the moment I arrived home with the stacks to be graded.  The other possibility is that I made an intentional decision to give the students the space and time to be kids outside.  Which one is true? I am not sure.  I have high hopes that the kids are outside experiencing life (and therefore science) and that they are reading self chosen books from the library each and every day. Hopefully, I am not delusional.

Meanwhile, I am pretending to work. I have started gathering artifacts for the forest unit.  This involves picking up leaves, pine cones and other realia on walks through the urban forests around my town.  Choosing these items is always fun.  I try to think like a 6 year old.  What is going to cause me to think about the urban forest?  What is going to spark  an investigable question? Is that pine cone better than this one because it is flawless?  My dogs (and neighbors) are mystified to see me gathering eco-trash, but I think these will be real assets in the classroom.

I received from friends some unidentified eggs.  R is going to love these. I have no idea what they are, but I am hoping for snakes.  Right now, they are in some sand/dirt in a box on my front porch. I hope that they hatch. Then, feeding them will be another matter. I am going to get worms and possibly snails as well as butterflies and praying mantis to have in the room.  The forest unit has many more touchable things than the desert unit did.

I have also been listening to the Science Friday Podcasts. (Go to http://tinyurl.com/dgjmyj for a snippet if you’ve not listened before.) I have learned so much about what’s going on right now in the scientific community.  There were some interesting podcasts on the state of science in education as well as my favorite so far: a podcast about a butterfly larva that convinces ants that it is the ant colony’s next queen. The ants then feed and protect it at the expense of their own young.  Did you know that ants make noise?

I digress, back to the classroom tie-in.  It’s always nice to hear what’s being studied or tried in classrooms in other states.  For instance, there was a study out of Ohio comparing the scientific reasoning of Chinese High School students (and college freshman) to American High School students (and college freshman.)  The Chinese students, against whom we are always comparing our students, are great at spitting out facts on tests. However, in college programs, they a step behind our students in scientific reasoning. There is speculation as to the length of time needed for those students to catch up to ours (longer than a matter of mere years.) The sponsors of the study hypothesize that our students can learn all the facts they need to compete with Chinese students in a matter of years. The implications are very interesting: there is a need to balance scientific literacy with scientific reasoning in classrooms.  

My reading list for the summer into the fall has been completed.  I am going to start with a book called “Not in our Classrooms”, which sounds like a treatise against mean spirited behavior in a classroom.  In reality (http://tinyurl.com/cjdkga) it is a book explaining why Intelligent Design is wrong for American schools.  To me, this must be a binary decision: 1= science guided by scientific principles in classrooms so that our students can compete in a future that none of us can imagine. 0=science guided by religious ideology in classrooms so that our students are left out of future careers in biology, chemistry, geology and space exploration.  Also,”Intelligent Design” and its corollary, “Strengths and Weaknesses”, allow me to teach the theology of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (http://www.venganza.org/) as a valid scientific possibility. (I am not serious, yet, but I can see the writing on the wall.) Since I can’t say, “You people are living in a cave believing that the shadows are reality” in the midst of a faculty meeting, this book should be a great tool. A tool that I can then wield like a fiery sword of righteousness.

Otherwise, there is not much school happening this week.  I revel in that.  Enjoy your spring everyone!

Conferences are magical. I have written before about conferences and how important they are for teachers and other people involved in education and after this one, I want to say it again.  Conferences are important.  If you are a teacher, go.  If you are a parent, go.  If you pay taxes and want to know which innovations those dollars are paying for, go.  They are unbelievably energizing.

I’ve presented before, and Xochitl and I have presented before, but this was the first national level conference for us.  It was amazing.  We presented to a “standing room only” crowd our parent ed piece for high stakes testing in Texas.  We had materials and suggestions and the tools for a teacher to go home and get started on Monday.  

The presentation focused on what teachers can do to involve parents as educators.  This is an idea that gets a lot of buzz.  Frankly, most parents don’t belong in the classroom anymore than I belong on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.  I could have a lot of fun shouting and waving my hands around, but I would probably lose someone a lot of money.  A parent in the classroom with little or no training is like me on the exchange floor: having a great time, but losing time and money for me and the students.

Don’t get me wrong, parents are necessary and important.  I am not advocating a system of boarding schools for the nation. Parents teach kids a myriad of things that I can not.  Parents teach kids religious values, how to bake a cake and how to get that hat trick on the ice in a hockey game. Parents screen tv shows and music based on their ethics.  So, the trick becomes using these strengths (which naturally reside in parents) to improve their child’s education (a skill which is not innate in parents).  If you move beyond the sound bit and the buzzwords, the reality is that involving parents is hard work. It is also a lot of work. This is not something that should be avoided, but neither should it be something that happens because Dyno the Clown has canceled on the PTA meeting.

The tools that we presented for parents are geared at parents doing what they always do with a slight twist. They were snippets of the reading test paired with specific everyday activities. For example, how to make listening to music in the car a literacy event.  Or, how to make complaining about the end of the soap opera a literacy event.

The presentation was well received.  People were asking relevant questions and they stayed all the way through to the end.  But, more important than the fact that we ran out of materials and more important than the fact that the audience applauded and more important than the fact that we had repeat listeners…more important than all of that was the feeling in that room when we were finished.  

We were talking to our peers from across the country about our experiences with immigrant parents and the high stakes tests and how we had been successful.  We talked with teachers who agreed with us that immigrant parents want success for their children.  We talked to teachers who were waiting and hoping to find the magic bullet.  We didn’t give them the magic bullet, but we did give them a process and possibly a magic monkey wrench.  

The rest of the conference was equally productive for me.  I met teachers who inspired me, who made me laugh and who gave me great ideas to use in my classroom.  The opening speaker had represented the Pueblo Cultures of the American Southwest.  At the end of his discussion, he returned the respect that we had given him by listening to him.  He returned the energy that we had given him by being present for him.  I hope that the energy our audience gave us was returned three fold.

And now, I return your energy and your respect for being here with me today.

I think I remember Open House from when I was a kid and I think I remember the teachers complaining that no one came. I think we did one or two special activities for the day. Maybe.

I don’t remember open house from the first year I taught.  I’m sure we did have one, but I don’t remember it. Other things stick with me, which means Open House must have been “just another night”.

The second year I taught, my mentor teacher (God Bless Her) walked me through open house.  These were her firm rules: 

(1) Every parent gets a hand written (from their child) invitation to Open House.  It is sent two weeks before the date.  

(2) Parents are given  a Scavenger Hunt form during the Open House so that they didn’t focus on the teacher, but instead focused on their kid and the kid’s work.

(3) Anything that the kids did reflected new content, not a new skill. Open House was not to be a dog and pony show, it was a chance for the kids to show off what they could do.  For example, we had worked on making models of the human body from construction paper in the fall and so in the spring, we did construction paper models of ocean animals or farm animals.

(4) Everything fit into a theme and most of what they did went on the wall. It was arranged artistically.

8 years later, I still try to follow those rules. This year, though, is different.  Most things feel different this year.  I can’t put my finger on why, but Open House is an emotional issue for me and for most teachers. The other teachers on my team did not like what I did last year. I was informed of that today. When I asked why, I was told it is because my room and my kids’ work didn’t look anything like their rooms or their kids’ work.  Last year, I did offer to share what I was doing with them and was turned down. “We have our unit finished.  We don’t need anything. Of course, you can do that in your room if you’d like.” 

This year, my Team Lead keeps saying, I don’t want to do a dog and pony show, I want it to be really what we do.  She also keeps saying, it should all be the same. Parents are going to flip out if all the classrooms are not the same.

I am feeling torn, some moments, I want to be really angry that I am being told to hide who I am as a teacher.  Some moments, I don’t care what the other teachers or students do.  Right now  though, I feel confused.  Nothing that I have done all year looks like what they have done.  I have no idea how to look like them or teach like them.  Some of the things I have displayed in the hallway have inspired them to ask about what it is or how to do it, but not many.  This is true on the other side as well: some of their displays have been inspiring, but not many of them fit with my style.  Pretending that we are all the same would be a dog and pony show. From whom does my Team Lead not want a dog and pony show? The students or me?

It leads me to ask: Even if the work that the kids do “for open house” would be done anyway, does the way it is displayed make it a dog and pony show?And (as a related question) how much of this would I do without the pressure of Open House? 

What is Open House for anyway? Is it to bring parents into the school?  Is it to involve the parents in their children’s education? Or is it intended to be a museum style show?

I have had parents in and out of my room a few times already, and the parents have been ‘included’ in the curriculum of the classroom through a “Family Traditions” unit study and a “Who am I?  Who are we?” family unit study.  The families and parents have been asked to help their children by teaching them about family history or family traditions.  The students have shared these interviews and books with their classmates with and without their parents as audience members. Parents are welcome anytime, and often drop in before school to chat with me about what’s going on in the room.

The benefit of Open House is that it allows the students to focus on a theme for several weeks and show off what they have learned to do.  It also allows parents to come and peruse student work at their leisure without interrupting flow of the academic day. It allows the parents to compare their child’s best work against the best work of other students. And see what they can really do when they put their mind to it.

The down side is that it can feel contrived and it relegates the students and parents to exhibitor/patron status and doesn’t really involve parents in the learning process.  In Utopia, parents are involved, authentic contributors to the learning process.  These parents are able to tutor, work with small groups and do more than cut things out. I have yet to meet more than a handful of these parents.  

Is there a way to have Open House be more interactive?  To have it showcase the parents as true partners in their child’s education?  Would parents even want to do so? There always seem to be more questions than answers …

Enjoy!

I also present.  This year, thankfully, I presented with one of my best friends and a great teacher.

Presenting at a conference like this is nerve-wracking and I have to ignore that feeling in order to be successful. I present often and I don’t take the experience for granted. This time I was presenting on immigrant parents’ views of reading comprehension and of the TAKS test, which is Texas’ answer to high stakes testing. Rigor, High Stakes Testing and Comprehension make up my very own Axis of Evil. 

For my students and myself, it isn’t so much that the test is unfair or unflattering, although in  many instances it is; it is that it is completely unknown.  Their parents haven’t lived it, their older siblings haven’t lived it and it is a terrifying, do or die test.  The presentation was about how to “bridge the gap” between the experience of everyone involved and the test.  Specifically, we looked at how everyday activities support true reading comprehension regardless of the level of the student.

I always arrive at the conference thinking that someone, at some point before I present, will say something that I can refer to in my opening. I haven’t been disappointed yet. This habit of picking up other people’s words helps to keep me focused in sessions and, I think, honors other presenters as well.  I always give the original speaker credit. 

This time it was Kathy Escamilla referring to Paolo Freire and the Pedagogy of the Oppressed.  She spoke as a keynote the opening morning of the conference and by the end of her talk, it was everything I could do not to jump up and down while shouting “Say it, sista!”.  I have heard her speak before, but each time I find something new to inspire me.

She spoke at length about how decision makers who are nervous because the status quo  is changing (aka oppressors) use language that at first startles those with a different view (aka the oppressed or those who speak on their behalf).  After listening to the language for months or even years, those oppressed individuals adopt the same language and use it for themselves. This is done without any rancor or malice on anyone’s part.  I read Freire in college and have carried his writings with me ever since and the idea of education for social change is what gets me up in the morning.  His books spend chapters explaining how language is used by individuals to wield power, or to strip it from others. 

The phrase that Kathy used over and over again that has stuck with me over a month later was, “Good teaching is good teaching.”  It is such a benign phrase.  The implication is that if you are teaching well, everyone in your class should be learning and if they aren’t, it isn’t because of your teaching methods.  Unfortunately, many teachers and principals who use the phrase haven’t looked at their teaching methods critically in several years.  It worries me that as the jargon around Best Practices and Rigor weaves an even stronger net cookie cutter methods will continue to be used under those guises.

How often have I used that phrase myself, always in an attempt to persuade someone to change the way that they are approaching a “problem child”.  Looking back on it, it seems apologetic.  I wonder if it was or if it only seems that way after having heard her speak.  The conversation usually started with an appeal from the other teacher and I would dutifully create a laundry list of suggestions, only to be speared with a scathing look or the phrase, “What am I supposed to do with the other students while this one receives special treatment?”  To which I would reply, “Good teaching is good teaching and it can only benefit the other students in your room.”  As if doing it for the benefit of one child wasn’t enough.

I did incorporate that phrase into my opening and borrowed another from Susan Ohanian, “One size does not fit all.”  We have to teach the kids the way that they learn, and that sometimes means that good teaching is good teaching, even if it is a phrase borrowed from the oppressors. 

There are some really great things about teaching a multi-age class.  The first is that I have more freedom to react to the needs of the students as opposed to following the district mandated curriculum.

The second is that the kids are able to scaffold each other in more complex ways than I have encountered in other more traditional classrooms.

I’m sure that there are more, but I can’t think of them right now.

The week started off a little weak. We had the typical “setting up the classroom” lessons, the kid who cried for the entire first day and the dismal dismissal duty that took upwards of 45 minutes. 

All in the typical week, though.

After some searching on the web, I discovered this thing called “Blog”.  I thought that I would be able to use it to kill two birds: technology and writing.  I am not a writer and I am not a good teacher for teaching writing.  Everything the kids write sounds akward to me and I am not certain how to fix that.  So, this seemed perfect.  They could write often about their lives and hopefully for an audience of other kids and then they could read other kids writing and have attainable goals.  Too often, kids try to write like their favorite authors and not like thier peers and they can’t.  They aren’t 40 year olds. 

There were two flaws with that master plan: can first and second graders blog? Are they allowed to in my district? I had three computers, but one didn’t have a hard drive.  I was told that first and second graders are not allowed to blog. I just got the hard drive two weeks ago for the third computer.

So, in the meantime, I bought a digital camera by Fisher Price that I thought we could use as a way to jumpstart journal entries and moved on. The kids have had a great time taking random pictures during recess and lunch.  I have had a great time looking at them, but I haven’t found the time to teach them how to upload them or then to use them to write with. 

This is frustrating.  Having the multi-age class has led to a lot of frustration with my expectations.  The first graders are outnumbered and I tend to forget that they are first graders and then I give them an assignment that they can’t handle. The balancing act is difficult and given that, technology just seems like too big a hurdle.

There is light at the end of the tunnel though-my class is being separated into first graders and second graders and the district will allow first graders to blog now.  I am hoping that that will give me a second wind.

so, I recommend going and reading this now.

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