Teaching without a voice

The title of this post feels metaphorical but it is literal.  I have no voice, literally.  Yes, I whine a lot about feeling like I have very little voice in the grand scheme of things, but as I get older, I continue to realize that change is rarely inspired by those who do the work of the trade.  But, that is another post on another day.

For some reason (most likely seasonal allergies) I woke up yesterday with my voice pretty much gone.  Fortunately, I had already planned my science classes around a few TED talks about pollination.  My students did Ok, but I flailed because I was a bit blindsided by my ailment.  By the end of the day, I had e-mailed every sub in the district (I could not call because I have no voice) with no response to my plee for a sub.  Fortunately I work with an amazing group of teachers. 

My delima was that today is flower dissection day, which means lots of directions and working one on one with groups.  One of my fellow teachers suggested, "put all group directions with labeled diagrams on a power point and have the kids read the slides."  Done, and what a great idea.  Another teacher on my team, volunteered to switch classes with me because her kids were working on a project.  While I have not needed to take her up on this, it makes my heart happy to know that I have meaningful support in getting the great work we do, done. 

How have my students responded?  Well my most challenging class that usually flails during labs did great.  They had to take charge.  I had to delegate my loudest kids to reading directions to the group and explaining directions.  They had to get the classes attention, students had to tell me what they saw when I walked around, and because of my voice, I could not jump in and disrupt my slower thinkers. 

At home it has been fascinating as well.  One of my son's learns 90% on the visual spectrum.  He was born with a cleft pallet which left him hearing impaired until it was repaired at age three.  He also spent his first three years in a world void of verbal communication.  He was not spoken to and thus, when he came to us he could speak 4-5 words.  The point of all of this is to say, that verbal language is not his strong suit.  We have done loads of work with him and he speaks a ton now, comprehends most basic commands.  But, with all that said, he is still a definitive visual learner. 

What has been wonderful about being non-verbal right now is my relationship with my little "I".  Yesterday as I was doing charades to try and communicate without words I got to see him shine.  He was consistently interpreting what I was trying to say.  This is the little boy that regularly looks at me like I am from Mars when I ask him a question.  But, not yesterday.  Yesterday we were on the same page and we were closer than I think we have been in a long time. 

I have also gotten to be reminded of the value of just listening.  Sometimes to the words, sometimes to the silence, and mostly to the dynamic between noise, language and listening. 

Maybe today was my day to get to be the learner, because I sure have learned a lot from being voiceless. 

1st Grade Here We Come

I have done it.  I have ordered materials for teaching my boys next year, and I am really excited.  Yes, I am a teacher with a masters degree and 10 years of classroom experience, and 7 years of leading outdoor science field school groups.  And, I bought curriculum for next year.  But, not just any curriculum. 

Before I go into the details about what we chose and why we chose it, I feel it is important to mention why we home school our boys.  Homeschooling was not something my husband and I ever considered, I am sure I have mentioned this 1000 times on here.  But, once we made the decision, we have not looked back.  Yes, we have been questioned about our decision by friends, family and strangers countless times.  As parents, though, we have to make tough choices about what is best for our kids. 

See, both of our boys came to us through adoption.  Both had spent their crucial early months (for E) and years (for I) missing out on youth, family, direct positive learning environments, or stimuli.  One of our son's spent his first 3 months in an incubator, only to spend the next 5 months in an orphanage with very limited stimulus or interaction with others.  Our other son was shuffled between four homes in his first 3.5 years and came to us with lots of negative experiences, drug addicted, nearly starving, hearing impaired and mute. 

Needless to say, they both had a lousy and damaged foundation.  John and I also believe that kids need to be kids.  We spend a lot of time being grown up in our lives, and well, we don't believe in forcing that sooner than latter.  Also, our kids did not get to be kids when they were supposed to get to, so we feel it is all the more important to foster their imagination, curiosity and sense of wonder. 

For these reasons we have decided to use the Oak Meadow for next year.  I love that it has art, music, and health incorporated as these are areas I am weak in as a teacher.  I love that it encourages imagination, and a logical flow, without a illogical time line. 

We ordered this morning, and I should be getting the whole packet in the mail soon.  I am looking very forward to doing my homework, and then starting the boys this summer on their 1st trimester of 1st grade.  I am thinking that if I do this, they will get to do some cool unit studies in between trimesters and this will allow John some necessary flex time next spring when he is supper busy with the business. 

Well Hello Monday

I ended last week with a bit of a temper tantrum.  OK, who and I kidding.  I threw a huge temper tantrum on Friday morning that made some of Emerson’s pale in comparison.  What about you may wonder… I did not want to go to work.  I had enough of running around, getting up early, bureaucracy, begging for attention from those who have used up all of their attention and will power, issuing of pilot standardize test, learning about giving more standardize test, and just plain old missing my boys and the garden. 

But, thank goodness for the weekend.  I would say “Bring it on Monday!”  But, I distinctly remember a presidential figure saying that not too long ago and the results were not that great.  So, instead I will say “Monday, I am ready for you and what you have to offer.” 

I know I am going into 5 days of back-to-back standardize testing (really 4 this week and one on Monday of next week.)  I am prepared to let my students know that they are wonderful, creative, and capable and have loads to offer the world, despite how these test categorize them.  I know that highly successful people (not in academia) who have toughed the importance and value to these test as an indicator of their very successes, but when asked to take the test, they bombed them.   I know that these test are designed by educators, for educators and used to see how good kids are at being educated.  That is great, but we are educating them to become members of the world and this I will remind them of with a simple phrase that I am permitted to say “do the best you can..” 

To the test, I tell you, I will follow your rules, read the script without enthusiasm and I refuse to allow you to crush my spirit or the spirit of my students.  We will have our pencils ready, technology gone, and a creativity and divergent thinking stashed.  See you will be gone in 5 days and we will still be here.  Of course until your numbers arrive and strive to box in my students.  But I say to you, you are paper and we are scissors.  So there….

To my waist line and my jeans:  I say to you, the diet is on and I am ready to be strong.  I am armed with cheese sticks, and toasted pecans, and a cup of no sugar yogurt for the staff meeting that will have lots of forbidden food.  I will no longer carry the pounds of stress eating, that wear me down psychologically and physiologically. 

So, here is to you Monday.  We can work together and I am offering you this declaration, with a few compromises thrown in so let us make the best of our time together as we go forward and onward.

Comming to the end of the year...

As a teacher I definitely see the year as starting in August and ending in May, not the traditional calender, but for me a perpetual ground hogs day of repeating a year until I hopefully get it right.  This year though I am not only a middle school science teacher with 120 students that I have watched grow over the year, but I am also a homeschooling parent of my own children who technically will be completing kindergarten this year. 

I say technically, because I don't particularly like the idea that children develop into a new box because they completed a number of instructional days, or met a list of standards.  When it comes to my own kids, I can't take the ground hog's day approach of go back and revise the year to get it even better for next year.  I have to get it right as we go through, or re-teach the concepts until they are a part of their schema. 

As I come to the end of the year with my students, I am mostly looking forward to getting to be the primary teacher for my boys this summer.  I am often asked if they will have the summer off.  I'd like to think that John and I are keeping the lessons engaging and as closely related to real world skills, that they won't even notice that learning is something that gets turned off for the summer or on the weekend. 

I will also say, that spring is a crazy busy time for my husband.  If there is a season for sit down lessons to be reduced, spring is definitely it.  So, with that, I have had the boys doing a lot of big picture self directed projects.   We have gotten in our required 160 days and the next school year officially starts on June 1.  My goal is to keep moving them along as learners, readers, mathematicians, explorers and good citizens throughout the summer. 

It is crazy to think that this time a year ago I was having IEP meetings, and registering them for kindergarten with hope and anticipation and a bit of sadness that my boys were growing up.  I really did not even imagine a year ago that we would be homeschooling our boys.  Admittedly, we judged homeschoolers pretty harshly. We never could have imagined we would become one of "those families."  We underestimated ourselves, and the ability to teach younger children.  We did not know the power of education outside of the institution, and how for many kids this is the best choice.

Ultimately though, when it came down to making the decision it was the right one for our family and for our boys.  It has not been easy on our schedules, our finances, or on our sleep needs, but looking back, neither was "school-school." 

So here is what our kids can do now, that they really could not do before this year:

• They can read...  I mean like read and act out Piggy and Gerald books and Dick and Jane Books (yes, I did use these because the repetition helped the boys a ton and also built up their confidence) and most level 1 readers.
• They can have great discussions about longer chapter books that I read to them:  Charlotte's web, Magic Tree House books...They know about characters, foreshadowing, clues, prediction and inference.
• They can write all of the letters of the alphabet and know their sounds
• They know about long and short vowels and how to apply the rules to the sound the vowel makes when sounding out a word.
• They are in the process of learning about blends
• They know most of their sight words.
• 2-D and 3-D shapes
• Basics of Measurements
• Addition and subtraction with 0-10
• Counting to 100
• Reading a digital clock and a thermometer and what the numbers mean.
• Know about greater and lesser numbers
• They can build a catapult then redesign it to make it better, and tell you why it is better.
• Design a self cleaning hot wheels track
• Explain how steepness effects speed and distance of a rolling object
• Life cycles of plants and butterflies
• They are starting to learn the states, continents and oceans. 
• We have done loads of art projects
• Tons of facts about wild animals
• And this is just off the top of my head. 

My next step, is I need to really plan out what next.. What are my goals for them next year?  How do I want them to get there?  How do I design their learning experience to match their needs and their interest?  Blog post soon to follow on just that topic.