Through the wonderful resource of social media, I was able to find out about a local educators event in my town that a friend was organizing. It sounded interesting and was close enough to home for it to be something I would consider attending on a Saturday morning. The event was EdCamp Garden State held at Collingswood High School on Saturday, April 30th, 2016.
Since the event, I was able to connect with many like-minded educators and organizations through the resource of twitter. I came across an upcoming conference called ECET2, which stands for Elevating and Celebrating Effective Teaching and Teachers. http://www.ecet2njpa.org/
I was immediately drawn to a statement on their website:
"When educators share openly, vulnerably, in a trusting environment, where the focus is on supporting the profession as a whole, students and their families prosper."
The EdCamp Garden State was an event where educators were able to share openly and freely in a trusting environment. People came to the table with ideas and mere suggestions. Conversations emerged and pushed educators to expand their minds and preconceived notions that they are an island or the only one seeing problems inside the classroom.
If a school can create a culture where doors are open, walls of isolation crumble. We notice more differences across content area classrooms and can help each other navigate the complex, and sometimes emotional, conditions of meeting students needs. I was excited to be a part of this event and hope that it will grow each year.
Saturday, April 30, 2016
Tuesday, August 4, 2015
Growth Mindset
On the last day of school, our principal joyously passed out copies for all staff of Carol Dweck's Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. It was no secret that we as a school had a tough year and this was the final period at the end of the sentence, "Things have to change next year." We were assigned to read the book over the summer as it would become a focal point of discussion in the academic year ahead.
I happened to already own a copy of the book. I want to say I bought it after an orientation session where the concept of growth mindset was introduced. When people recommend books to me, I am quick to buy them on Amazon and make them a part of my collection. Sometimes they are useful as reference tools, but this particular book, I devoured the book from a personal, self-help approach. I was just beginning to develop my own mind of independence in my early 20's and it truly helped me shape my ideas during this time.
Aspects of relationships and communication spoke volumes to me. The book helped me identify all the things that I was doing wrong in my personal relationships and justify why I felt like things weren't right. The book provided the "aha!" moment to things I was feeling and couldn't express. Suddenly, "fixed-mindset" and "growth-mindset" became a part of my day-to-day language. These concepts were shared with friends and family, and more specifically family that I felt would truly benefit from this new psychology and way of thinking.
Now, as I re-read the book through the lens of an educator and apply it to my upcoming academic year, I am having a different reaction. The chapter on teaching is written in a way that exposes growth-mindset as the only way to think if you are a teacher and the fixed-mindset as the evils that are bringing down society. Yet, in the beginning the self-reflection explains that we can change and just because we are on or the other does not make us wrong or right. Now for those that already have a spirit of growth in the classroom, I think that this book preaches to the choir. It gives anecdotes that you can apply to your classroom and move forward. However, if you are the disciplinary-type who has done things the same way for many years, this book may make you defensive (mostly because of your fix-mindset; see what I did there?).
There passage that led me to write this blog can be found on page 197:
"Teachers with the fixed mindset create an atmosphere of judging. These teachers look at students' beginning performance and decide who's smart and who's dumb. Then they give up on the "dumb" ones. "They're not my responsibility." As a special educator, I know I have heard people say that the special education students are the responsibility of the special educator. I am sure that kids have felt judged in certain environments, but I have a hard time believing that any educator truly gives up. We might feel like we should out of frustration, but most educators I have come across will keep trying. Education is a give and take. I have seen teachers who have a "fixed-mindset" classroom have much success even with the hard-to-reach students. Perhaps this is because the students were also of the fixed-mindset.
The question arises, if there needs to be a culture change in a school, how do you make people change? By reading a book you may become more aware of what is "wrong," but without being given practical ways to change it throughout practice, this book will soon become a dust collector. Awareness is step one, but I truly hope this book is backed with more understanding and self-reflective activities that will make the growth mind-set a part of our culture. There is no way we can teach it to children if we do not believe in what it is saying.
If you are not willing to listen to the message, it may become hard to digest. I wish the book was more wrought with statistical information. Much of the information is anecdotal and/or situational. While the author has notes in the back of her book, much are memoir materials. She briefly discusses the neuroscience behind positivity, but I wish there was more information. Unfortunately, this may be a case of her "dumbing" down reading material for the masses, yet doesn't that go against her own psychology? Especially since she introduces herself as a researcher, it would be nice to have more of the research embedded into the text.
This article gives more more light into Dweck's research and credibility: https://alumni.stanford.edu/get/page/magazine/article/?article_id=32124
I happened to already own a copy of the book. I want to say I bought it after an orientation session where the concept of growth mindset was introduced. When people recommend books to me, I am quick to buy them on Amazon and make them a part of my collection. Sometimes they are useful as reference tools, but this particular book, I devoured the book from a personal, self-help approach. I was just beginning to develop my own mind of independence in my early 20's and it truly helped me shape my ideas during this time.
Aspects of relationships and communication spoke volumes to me. The book helped me identify all the things that I was doing wrong in my personal relationships and justify why I felt like things weren't right. The book provided the "aha!" moment to things I was feeling and couldn't express. Suddenly, "fixed-mindset" and "growth-mindset" became a part of my day-to-day language. These concepts were shared with friends and family, and more specifically family that I felt would truly benefit from this new psychology and way of thinking.
Now, as I re-read the book through the lens of an educator and apply it to my upcoming academic year, I am having a different reaction. The chapter on teaching is written in a way that exposes growth-mindset as the only way to think if you are a teacher and the fixed-mindset as the evils that are bringing down society. Yet, in the beginning the self-reflection explains that we can change and just because we are on or the other does not make us wrong or right. Now for those that already have a spirit of growth in the classroom, I think that this book preaches to the choir. It gives anecdotes that you can apply to your classroom and move forward. However, if you are the disciplinary-type who has done things the same way for many years, this book may make you defensive (mostly because of your fix-mindset; see what I did there?).
There passage that led me to write this blog can be found on page 197:
"Teachers with the fixed mindset create an atmosphere of judging. These teachers look at students' beginning performance and decide who's smart and who's dumb. Then they give up on the "dumb" ones. "They're not my responsibility." As a special educator, I know I have heard people say that the special education students are the responsibility of the special educator. I am sure that kids have felt judged in certain environments, but I have a hard time believing that any educator truly gives up. We might feel like we should out of frustration, but most educators I have come across will keep trying. Education is a give and take. I have seen teachers who have a "fixed-mindset" classroom have much success even with the hard-to-reach students. Perhaps this is because the students were also of the fixed-mindset.
The question arises, if there needs to be a culture change in a school, how do you make people change? By reading a book you may become more aware of what is "wrong," but without being given practical ways to change it throughout practice, this book will soon become a dust collector. Awareness is step one, but I truly hope this book is backed with more understanding and self-reflective activities that will make the growth mind-set a part of our culture. There is no way we can teach it to children if we do not believe in what it is saying.
If you are not willing to listen to the message, it may become hard to digest. I wish the book was more wrought with statistical information. Much of the information is anecdotal and/or situational. While the author has notes in the back of her book, much are memoir materials. She briefly discusses the neuroscience behind positivity, but I wish there was more information. Unfortunately, this may be a case of her "dumbing" down reading material for the masses, yet doesn't that go against her own psychology? Especially since she introduces herself as a researcher, it would be nice to have more of the research embedded into the text.
This article gives more more light into Dweck's research and credibility: https://alumni.stanford.edu/get/page/magazine/article/?article_id=32124
Monday, July 13, 2015
A blog of thought
In 2011 I was a struggling teacher looking for a full-time contract job like so many of my fellow education majors. If you graduated colleges with an education degree in the 2000s, most likely you were granted the promised retirement boom that was expected and getting a job was a lot harder than you even expected. Due to that, many of us are finally in positions that we have fought for and are ready to make a difference in classrooms we are grateful to teach.
When trying to search for a job, I had an online portfolio, twitter accounts, linked-in, and even an education blog trying to search for the sign that would led me to my career in a school district. It turned out that social media played no part in my experience, but instead I gained success through making face-to-face contact at a job fair and traveling to Virginia for interviews. My job in Virginia subsequently led me back to New Jersey as the superintendent of schools in Alexandria used to be the superintendent of school of Cherry Hill. My work in Alexandria gave me the credentials to be recommended for a position and after 16 interviews at various districts in South Jersey, I found my home in a middle school as a special education resource teacher.
Now that I am entering my third year in Cherry Hill and my fifth overall year teaching in the public sector, I feel the need to get back to my social media roots to connect with the ever changing, ever growing world of education. The urge to start this today was sparked by my needing to change my old accounts from my maiden name to my new married name, but more than that I find that I do best when I am reflective in my practice. I need a place to empty the thoughts of the day so that I can enjoy quiet time with my husband.
I found myself this past year reading great passages and books on education. I write down these great ideas in notebooks and soon I cannot retrieve my original thoughts as the notebooks get "put away in a safe place." Or I have great conversations with colleagues about things we want to change and how we can make our school better only to leave the meeting to attend to our personal lives and never make that idea a reality. I don't want to lose sight of what can sometimes be buried deep in my thoughts.
I also want this to be used as a forum for me to improve my own writing. Taking a graduate class online is making me realize I want to become better at forming my thoughts. I tend to brain dump, such as in this post, without having a clear beginning, middle, end. I find in our fast paced world people want you to get the point. My students want me to get to the point. I tend to ramble and it is an area I want to improve upon.
This will be a place for me to consolidate my notebooks, notes on my phone, google docs of ideas, and document my growth as an educator.
Even if no one ever reads this blog, I feel it is important for me to get out my thoughts. I want to surround myself in research, best practice, and reflection. The best way to do this is in a journal.
When trying to search for a job, I had an online portfolio, twitter accounts, linked-in, and even an education blog trying to search for the sign that would led me to my career in a school district. It turned out that social media played no part in my experience, but instead I gained success through making face-to-face contact at a job fair and traveling to Virginia for interviews. My job in Virginia subsequently led me back to New Jersey as the superintendent of schools in Alexandria used to be the superintendent of school of Cherry Hill. My work in Alexandria gave me the credentials to be recommended for a position and after 16 interviews at various districts in South Jersey, I found my home in a middle school as a special education resource teacher.
Now that I am entering my third year in Cherry Hill and my fifth overall year teaching in the public sector, I feel the need to get back to my social media roots to connect with the ever changing, ever growing world of education. The urge to start this today was sparked by my needing to change my old accounts from my maiden name to my new married name, but more than that I find that I do best when I am reflective in my practice. I need a place to empty the thoughts of the day so that I can enjoy quiet time with my husband.
I found myself this past year reading great passages and books on education. I write down these great ideas in notebooks and soon I cannot retrieve my original thoughts as the notebooks get "put away in a safe place." Or I have great conversations with colleagues about things we want to change and how we can make our school better only to leave the meeting to attend to our personal lives and never make that idea a reality. I don't want to lose sight of what can sometimes be buried deep in my thoughts.
I also want this to be used as a forum for me to improve my own writing. Taking a graduate class online is making me realize I want to become better at forming my thoughts. I tend to brain dump, such as in this post, without having a clear beginning, middle, end. I find in our fast paced world people want you to get the point. My students want me to get to the point. I tend to ramble and it is an area I want to improve upon.
This will be a place for me to consolidate my notebooks, notes on my phone, google docs of ideas, and document my growth as an educator.
Even if no one ever reads this blog, I feel it is important for me to get out my thoughts. I want to surround myself in research, best practice, and reflection. The best way to do this is in a journal.
10 Ways to Support Reading Challenging Text
It's summer time. A time off for teachers. A time to hit the reset button.
For me, it has been a summer of reflection and idea creation to make my upcoming year more cohesive and productive. Several personal and professional life events made last year more difficult that I would have liked and I am trying to make as many proactive steps as possible to avoid those downfalls this year. I also am very aware of the fact that I will be writing my thesis during the academic year and can only hope that adds to my experience, not subtract from it.
As per advice of my professor of my current class, I recently started browsing the NJDOE website. It led me to NJcore.org. This led me to Clark County School District Wiki-teacher page. The great thing about being a teacher in this day and age is that there are resources everywhere! That meaning that creating lessons plans is like a virtual game of 52-pick-up with everything scattered on the ground below leaving the teacher to put the pieces together in order for it to make sense for her students. As I began sifting through the resources I came across a webcast of Dr. Timothy Shanahan titled, "10 Ways to Support Reading Challenging Text."
So at 12:00am on a Tuesday I decide to watch what Dr. Shanahan has to say.
Anybody who has tried to teach reading knows how many different strategies there are to teach and how it is hard to pick just the right one for that particular lesson that aligns with curriculum but also teaches students the most effective way to read. Dr. Shanahan's list of 10 are as follows:
#1- Clarify Purpose for Reading
Why are we reading this? What do we hope to gain? More powerful than a simple prediction
#2- Build and Access Prior Knowledge
More of a focus on emotional reactions and inferences. Finding the key knowledge needed. Do we need to know content/facts or how a character reacts to a situation?
#3- Provide Apprentice Text
Start with an easier text but always move up to the more difficult text. Never allow a student to get just a little bit of information even though it is on their reading level. Challenge them to make connections from the apprentice text. Introduce easier text prior to harder text. For example, Jim Murphy's Great Fire prior to Blizzard. Make your students be successful- let them know it is going to be hard! It is not okay to just give them the simpler text. Apprentice text should be the stepping stones of content. Needs to be the same intellectual challenge. (7th Grade stepping stones- Touching Spirit Bear, The Outsiders, The Giver, etc.)
#4- Build Text Reading Fluency
It is not always the ideas that are hard, it is the text that is difficult. Students may have a hard time processing the language. He commented on Read First schools (need to look into this). Teach where to pause. Fluency practice with repeated reading, paired reading. I need more training in this area.
#5- Teach Vocabulary
We focus on decodable language first or general academic language, but the things that get in the way of comprehension are often metaphors, homophones, homonyms, idioms, etc. The example given was a science word of turbine. If we just teach turbine without teaching generate, the student will still have no concept of the work turbine. Ask, what words block understanding/comprehension? Teach them in addition. The vocabulary words chosen by editors focus on decoding and/or concepts. Focus on phrases, pragmatics, and key general terms. Make it a part of every day language. Additional idea- send these everyday words home to be used, even in junior/high school.
#6- Provide Help with Sentence Structure
Cause and phrase analysis, subject verb agreement, complex punctuation (split quotes)
#7- Provide help with Cohesion
Connection among ideas, pronoun relationships, WHO IS HE?, Anaphoric relationships, dealing with ellipses, substitutions, conjunctions. Finding out WHO IS THE SPEAKER? Repeating the subject is boring, so writers don't use it, but it sometimes makes it hard to interpret who is speaking.
#8- Guide use of Text Structure
How writer's organize their thinking, USE GRAPHIC ORGANIZERS, find patterns.
Idea- newspapers are great for this. Structure helps determine the importance.
#9- Guide Students to Recognize Author's Tone
Tone is subtle. Teach it through different points of view.
#10- Teach Reading Comprehension Strategies
-Preview text, activate prior knowledge, how to set purpose, monitor comprehension, ask/answer questions, summarize- BUT DON'T MAKE IT A ROUTINE. Teach students to monitor their own comprehension and be okay with no understanding it. Make the strategies focus on the text and allow students to make this a part of their practice. Reciprocal teaching EVERY time is not effective. Prediction isn't always the best for every text. Change it up! Make it meaningful.
#Bonus- Keep Kid Motivated
Make them see growth and gains.
Other key points that I liked from his presentation:
-Having a group of teachers read a common text ahead of time to discuss the important aspects that need to be taught. Teachers create achievement, not the curriculum.
-Stop teaching failure first! Give kids a chance to be successful.
-When you get lost, you go further. (Example, long distance running) Result: get stronger. Compared to weight training and other long distance activities. Make kids stretch.
-Don't avoid what is difficult. Push past what you already know and go further.
-There is not ONE right way to teach reading, there are MANY right ways because each text is different (like every person you meet).
Summary: Reading is a multi-layered task that takes much cognitive ability. It is linked to our speaking and writing skills. I need to strengthen teaching fluency to students and focusing on one strategy to teacher explicitly so my students can eventually do them implicitly. Also, I need to create stratified reading goals so that students can continue to grow no matter what level they are at and not feel like they are unsuccessful. What system can I use instead of 1-4? How can students gain their skills, see their progress, chart their growth, and find meaning in their reading?
What have you used in the past? Has it worked? How did you document growth?
For me, it has been a summer of reflection and idea creation to make my upcoming year more cohesive and productive. Several personal and professional life events made last year more difficult that I would have liked and I am trying to make as many proactive steps as possible to avoid those downfalls this year. I also am very aware of the fact that I will be writing my thesis during the academic year and can only hope that adds to my experience, not subtract from it.
As per advice of my professor of my current class, I recently started browsing the NJDOE website. It led me to NJcore.org. This led me to Clark County School District Wiki-teacher page. The great thing about being a teacher in this day and age is that there are resources everywhere! That meaning that creating lessons plans is like a virtual game of 52-pick-up with everything scattered on the ground below leaving the teacher to put the pieces together in order for it to make sense for her students. As I began sifting through the resources I came across a webcast of Dr. Timothy Shanahan titled, "10 Ways to Support Reading Challenging Text."
So at 12:00am on a Tuesday I decide to watch what Dr. Shanahan has to say.
Anybody who has tried to teach reading knows how many different strategies there are to teach and how it is hard to pick just the right one for that particular lesson that aligns with curriculum but also teaches students the most effective way to read. Dr. Shanahan's list of 10 are as follows:
#1- Clarify Purpose for Reading
Why are we reading this? What do we hope to gain? More powerful than a simple prediction
#2- Build and Access Prior Knowledge
More of a focus on emotional reactions and inferences. Finding the key knowledge needed. Do we need to know content/facts or how a character reacts to a situation?
#3- Provide Apprentice Text
Start with an easier text but always move up to the more difficult text. Never allow a student to get just a little bit of information even though it is on their reading level. Challenge them to make connections from the apprentice text. Introduce easier text prior to harder text. For example, Jim Murphy's Great Fire prior to Blizzard. Make your students be successful- let them know it is going to be hard! It is not okay to just give them the simpler text. Apprentice text should be the stepping stones of content. Needs to be the same intellectual challenge. (7th Grade stepping stones- Touching Spirit Bear, The Outsiders, The Giver, etc.)
#4- Build Text Reading Fluency
It is not always the ideas that are hard, it is the text that is difficult. Students may have a hard time processing the language. He commented on Read First schools (need to look into this). Teach where to pause. Fluency practice with repeated reading, paired reading. I need more training in this area.
#5- Teach Vocabulary
We focus on decodable language first or general academic language, but the things that get in the way of comprehension are often metaphors, homophones, homonyms, idioms, etc. The example given was a science word of turbine. If we just teach turbine without teaching generate, the student will still have no concept of the work turbine. Ask, what words block understanding/comprehension? Teach them in addition. The vocabulary words chosen by editors focus on decoding and/or concepts. Focus on phrases, pragmatics, and key general terms. Make it a part of every day language. Additional idea- send these everyday words home to be used, even in junior/high school.
#6- Provide Help with Sentence Structure
Cause and phrase analysis, subject verb agreement, complex punctuation (split quotes)
#7- Provide help with Cohesion
Connection among ideas, pronoun relationships, WHO IS HE?, Anaphoric relationships, dealing with ellipses, substitutions, conjunctions. Finding out WHO IS THE SPEAKER? Repeating the subject is boring, so writers don't use it, but it sometimes makes it hard to interpret who is speaking.
#8- Guide use of Text Structure
How writer's organize their thinking, USE GRAPHIC ORGANIZERS, find patterns.
Idea- newspapers are great for this. Structure helps determine the importance.
#9- Guide Students to Recognize Author's Tone
Tone is subtle. Teach it through different points of view.
#10- Teach Reading Comprehension Strategies
-Preview text, activate prior knowledge, how to set purpose, monitor comprehension, ask/answer questions, summarize- BUT DON'T MAKE IT A ROUTINE. Teach students to monitor their own comprehension and be okay with no understanding it. Make the strategies focus on the text and allow students to make this a part of their practice. Reciprocal teaching EVERY time is not effective. Prediction isn't always the best for every text. Change it up! Make it meaningful.
#Bonus- Keep Kid Motivated
Make them see growth and gains.
Other key points that I liked from his presentation:
-Having a group of teachers read a common text ahead of time to discuss the important aspects that need to be taught. Teachers create achievement, not the curriculum.
-Stop teaching failure first! Give kids a chance to be successful.
-When you get lost, you go further. (Example, long distance running) Result: get stronger. Compared to weight training and other long distance activities. Make kids stretch.
-Don't avoid what is difficult. Push past what you already know and go further.
-There is not ONE right way to teach reading, there are MANY right ways because each text is different (like every person you meet).
Summary: Reading is a multi-layered task that takes much cognitive ability. It is linked to our speaking and writing skills. I need to strengthen teaching fluency to students and focusing on one strategy to teacher explicitly so my students can eventually do them implicitly. Also, I need to create stratified reading goals so that students can continue to grow no matter what level they are at and not feel like they are unsuccessful. What system can I use instead of 1-4? How can students gain their skills, see their progress, chart their growth, and find meaning in their reading?
What have you used in the past? Has it worked? How did you document growth?
Wednesday, July 1, 2015
Standardized Individualism: My view on education 2010
(Note: Original blog was written October 2010, but still holds true to my ideals and experiences today.)
When I was in high school I had a blog titled "Commonly Unique." It was a song by the Real Group, an a cappella singing group from Sweden whose lyrics struck a chord in me. How many times are we told that we are unique, we are special, that it is okay to be different? And I think those who say that, mean it. But yet, when it comes to assessment of children, our scores are normed; they are based on the scored of populations of everyone else. We are judged and placed accordingly.
Parents pride themselves based on the percentile their child has achieved based on weight and height during annual physical examinations at the doctors. I was never even on those charts. I was always below the norm. And instead of my parents freaking out that there might be something wrong with me, they assessed whether or not I was healthy, and we went on with our lives and did not engaged in "percentile" conversations during family gatherings and birthday parties. Not to say I was the healthiest kid in the world with ear infections, strep throat, tonsillitis, etc. but I never felt inferior because I was not growing as fast as the other kids in class. The point was that I WAS growing and was "typical" in development. When my parents tried to go to ear, nose, and throat specialists to help me not get sick as often, "literature said" that it was not good to take out tonsils or adenoids in young children. So, we got a second opinion. And "literature" continued to say that it was not an appropriate approach to remedying the reoccurring illnesses. Several years later, "literature" changed. It now said that removal of tonsils IS an appropriate method, but should be done in the younger years because as a child gets older it becomes a more evasive procedure. I crossed my fingers and hoped I grew out of it and learned not to trust literature as "literature" is only opinion.
When I was in high school I had a blog titled "Commonly Unique." It was a song by the Real Group, an a cappella singing group from Sweden whose lyrics struck a chord in me. How many times are we told that we are unique, we are special, that it is okay to be different? And I think those who say that, mean it. But yet, when it comes to assessment of children, our scores are normed; they are based on the scored of populations of everyone else. We are judged and placed accordingly.
Parents pride themselves based on the percentile their child has achieved based on weight and height during annual physical examinations at the doctors. I was never even on those charts. I was always below the norm. And instead of my parents freaking out that there might be something wrong with me, they assessed whether or not I was healthy, and we went on with our lives and did not engaged in "percentile" conversations during family gatherings and birthday parties. Not to say I was the healthiest kid in the world with ear infections, strep throat, tonsillitis, etc. but I never felt inferior because I was not growing as fast as the other kids in class. The point was that I WAS growing and was "typical" in development. When my parents tried to go to ear, nose, and throat specialists to help me not get sick as often, "literature said" that it was not good to take out tonsils or adenoids in young children. So, we got a second opinion. And "literature" continued to say that it was not an appropriate approach to remedying the reoccurring illnesses. Several years later, "literature" changed. It now said that removal of tonsils IS an appropriate method, but should be done in the younger years because as a child gets older it becomes a more evasive procedure. I crossed my fingers and hoped I grew out of it and learned not to trust literature as "literature" is only opinion.
Little events like those, I believe, have lead me to the world of special education. Talk about a career that is FILLED with literature, constantly changing continuums and philosophies that are adapted to different administrations and trends. Every child is different, whether they have a disability or not. Therefore it makes sense that each child learns differently. There is no ONE approach that is going to work for every single child, classroom, teacher, situation. It is finding an appropriate mix and being able to have exposure to many different methods to best serve our children. As educators we should never become static in thinking that we will find a fix-all cure-all 100% accurate method. Flexibility is everything in education. This is why I become so agitated when it comes to the standardization of education. Sure, we need to have some sort of standardization to be able to see if our programs are working, but there are SO many factors that affect scores. I want to met the people who create these tests to understand how they figure it all out. We need diagnostic tools, I understand this, but why not focus on positive formative assessment instead of standardized mumbo jumbo. Formative assessment such as teacher conference and self-monitoring helps guide a child's education based on his or her own abilities and include them on the process. Who cares where they are in comparison to the rest of the class!?!? Are they functioning? Are they happy? Are they gaining skills to help advance them in the world? Do they have friends? What is their quality of life? Why are these not the questions we are not only asking, but answering?!?
I think by comparing children to their peers at a young age sets a precedent of the bigger the better, more is best. People want to be better than the Jones family- have a bigger house, better job, make more money- status is how we classify ourselves as who we are. Doesn't that limit a person? I don't care where you are from, how do you treat other people? I don't care what your title is, are you doing your job? I don't care how much money you make, are you healthy and providing for your family?
There needs to be more work in the world for emotional development. I see too many of the people around me stressed out, worried, anxious and not enough people knowing how to handle the world around them. I think it is so important to have leadership training and character education from a young age to really integrate its value into society. How many business leaders or administrators do you know who could have benefiting from have tact? Or better people skills? I work with children who have autism and some of the methods we use for these children to build social skills could work very well on some neurotypical adults I know! Who ever takes the time to teach these skills? I guess they are supposed to be innate skills. If you have no one modeling them, scaffolding the progression how to develop such skills.
Now another point I want to bring up is that a school cannot be a solution for all problems. Emotional development needs to be taught in the home as well. We need to take more time parenting, and less time worrying about status and where our kids are compared to our friends' kids.
It is so hard working with a unseen disability. If a child has a broken leg, we would never take away their crutches and make them walk up stairs. It would be seen as cruel. YET! for many children with issues such as sensory integration disorder and anxiety, the first thing we want to do is to see their disability as a behavior and fix the behavior REGARDLESS of where it may be coming from. I know why a child with a broken leg would not want to go up a flight of stairs without supports. I also understand that a child with an unseen disability might not want to go up a flight of stairs, even if he tells me so by acting out in another way. He doesn't know why he can't climb and that frustrates him. I need to understand that and figure out what it may be that is preventing it and help get him up that staircase with whatever crutch he may need. The hope is eventually we will remove the crutch and whatever was causing him not to go up that flight would be healed, as if a bone. Now that bone might still be brittle, but sometimes those bones become even stronger- the longer it is supported. I want to look at every kid and think about what lies in the future. Even if today I do not get the results I wanted, if I got a few glimpses into what skills he may gain in the future with continue support, then I know I have made a difference. It is hard. It takes patience. It can be frustrating, but it is more frustrating knowing that nothing has been done.
And when your child has a disability, everyone wants to tell you what to do- all with good intention to help. You can listen to a thousand professionals, with credentials and certificates and experiences but the fact it will still be a guessing game to see what works for that specific, individualized child. Every child truly is a puzzle. They learn different, they grow different, disabilities affect them differently, they have different abilities and talents and each one needs to be seen like that. Every disability is a spectrum disability. There are personalities to be taken into account. For anyone to say they have the secret is lying. The secret is that every child needs to be approached differently and that we have to stop looking for quick fixes. We have been looking for easier to manage quick fixes for years and look how far that has gotten us.
Education needs to be a team sport. Teachers, parents, professionals, administration, doctors, etc. need to work as a team- that doesn't mean agree all the time, but they need to really have the best interest of the child in mind. But egos get in the way. People want a bigger salary for the more work they do. And this all goes back to status and comparing ourselves to others.
As we grow up as a society, we are realizing more and more the importance of childhood. Just recently have we started to define what it is to be a child. This is affecting how we are educating our children, caring for our children from prenatal, postnatal, and throughout our lives. I believe each child is special and individualized and I will see each child as such. I may not know always what to do, but I will try the best within my means to help a child truly reach their potential.
I hope this is not me living in my young, rose-colored glasses world where I can make a difference. I never want to lose sight of this no matter how hard my job may seem at times. When I think I am not doing any good and get caught up in my salary, that is when I know I will need a career change. For now, I am okay knowing I am making a difference in a few children's lives, and I hope that continues to grow at an exponential rate.
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