Reflections 1 – 2012

Myself and colleague Landon O’Hara on the first day of school in September

It is hard for me to believe that it has been a year since my first post to this blog. I think of how new this all was to me and how excited I was to learn more and do more.  I haven’t felt that kind of energy for learning in a long time and I was jazzed.

When I look back, I can say that a lot of great things happened this year and it was, by far, one of my best years of teaching in my career.  I have the most amazing group of kids in grade 8. They are bright, they work hard, they are funny, they are active, they are independent, but most importantly, they are kind.  Oh, I am not saying we didn’t have any issues this year, or that we all got along perfectly every day – we certainly did not.  Just that issues were resolved quickly and there was never any question about right vs wrong with this group.  I am so looking forward to watching them continue to grow and to have them as our school leaders next year in their grade 9 year.

A few days ago, someone posted a question on Twitter that said something like, “What was the best thing you did this year”? I knew the answer to that right away…The Renaissance Faire.  But with that knowledge, there was some sadness too.  That activity was held in December.  So I peaked in December.  Ughhh.

I definitely had the “pedal to the metal” for the first term of the year.  I crashed and burned a bit after that.  After taking a break from the high intensity volleyball season and classroom activities, I struggled to regain my momentum in the classroom.  My blogging became stagnant too.  A focus for the 2012/2013 school year will be to improve my stamina and carry that momentum through to the end of the year.

The funny thing is that I knew that I was lagging.  I tried to start new blog posts a number of times.  I haven’t posted one since March.  When I look back now and read some of those drafts (there are 8 of them sitting there right now), they are actually pretty good.  I am definitely going to finish some of them and post them this summer some time.

There are a few more topics that I would like to reflect on from this school year – keep your eyes open for “Reflections 2″ coming soon.

Have a great summer!

The Great Debate

Balanced debate, a photo by Articulate Matter on Flickr.

Once again I have been amazed by the abilities of my students. So many times I worry about the things they CAN’T do and how I am going to find a way to improve them, that I forget about all the great things they CAN do.

The most recent example of this for me was this past week in my Knowledge and Employability grade 9 Social Studies class. I have 14 students with varying degrees of learning, behavioural and health issues. This is the first time I have taught them an academic subject and I would say that we have ALL struggled at one point or another with the material so far. They have some pretty large limitations with reading and writing and I am not sure I have always found effective ways to bridge this gap when directing their learning.

When sharing some of these problems with Brad Arndt (@barndt_77), a colleague who taught the class to last year’s grade 9s, he told me that he had had a lot of success with staging class debates. Ok…to be honest, I wasn’t too optimistic, but I was willing to give it a shot.

We took two full classes to discuss what a debate looked like and they watched some video of actual middle school debate teams competing. Then we tried to come up with ideas on what makes a good argument – this was not easy and I got some push back from the class. Then I brought up easy topics and we quickly wrote up arguments for both sides. The first topic was Cats vs Dogs, then 11:00pm curfews for teens under 16, and lastly lowering the voter age to 16. With every topic, they got stronger and stronger at formulating effective arguments and rebutting the arguments of the opposition.

During our last debate on lowering the voting age, I was astounded at some of the points made and at how articulately these “special needs” students were. At one point, a student who was speaking FOR lowering the voter age stated (I am paraphrasing here) “its like going down the road and choosing which path to take…we want to have a say in the path of our country”

Good point.

In rebuttal another student said “It is like choosing which path to take, but 16 year olds are too inexperienced to choose a good path. They will choose a bumpy path instead of a smooth one…if we drove our car down a bumpy path, it would get ruined, so why would we take our country down one?”

Whoa…remember if I asked these students to write down these arguments, they would need assistance to even get started. If I asked them to turn their argument into a simile or a metaphor I would get mostly blank stares. Yet here they were eloquently and confidently arguing their points. Amazing.

The the first student responded by saying “It may be a bumpier path, but if each of those bumps is an idea then that is the path we should take.”

There were more contributions than just these two students and I definitely felt rejuvenated by their enthusiasm and receptiveness for the debate. Mostly I was reminded not to dwell so much on the things they struggle with.

“Quotes From the Refrigerator Door”

“Love is short. Forgetting is long and understanding takes longer still.  It is hard to know what someone has given us, or even what we have given them, until a long time after the fact.  Sometimes its just best to have loved and learned.”

I memorized that quote in my grade 12 AP English class.  Our teacher, Ms. Virginia Clover, had us choose from a number of quotes that, she said, were from her refrigerator door. We were asked to choose the one that we connected with most and write a short explanation of why (at least I think that’s what it was…1992 was a long time ago, you know).

Anyway, I predictably chose this quote because I had just had my heart-broken by my first love and was finding  solace in song lyrics and love quotes. Definitely not cool.  The “cool” comes in the many times that I have looked back at this quote since then.  That broken heart has long ago been healed and replaced by other heart breaks and consequent healings. Still, I remember, word for word, this quote from my high school English class.

A few months after this assignment was given, I went off to college in North Dakota.  I was far away from my family and all of my friends AND I was even in a new country. I wrote the quote down and kept it in my drawer at Jamestown College. I looked at it many times when I missed my parents, my sister, my friends and my home town. I thought about how I didn’t want to forget them, and about the things that I had learned from each of them. I even reflected on what I may have given to them and if that was something I was proud of, or not so much.

The next time I used this quote to help me through was a few years later when I was working at my first teaching assignment. My boyfriend (now husband) and I spent three years teaching in northern Alberta on a First Nations Reserve called John D’or Prairie. To say that we were connected to the people there would be a gross understatement. We lived right in the community and formed strong bonds with a number of our students and their families. There were some frustrations with our teaching assignments, though, and we eventually made the decision to move on. It was a relatively short time spent there, and it was more than 10 years ago, but we are still in touch with some students, families and colleagues from our time there.  We learned so much about community, resiliency, family, culture and loyalty from our 3 years at John D’or Prairie.  We loved and learned there and will never forget that.

Then, 10 years ago exactly, I became a teacher at Stony Plain Central School.  I had been seriously considering a move to a different career path.  Thankfully, I  stumbled upon my dream job.  In an attempt to turn around a school that had been seen in the community as less than appealing, the admin team at SPC had come up with two new academic programs.  I was lucky enough to become a member of the teaching team for the SPLA (Sports Language Arts) program. Russ Foster (@ruskat1952) and I taught a group of about 30 grade 8 and 9 students Language Arts and combined it with their – and our – love for sport.  Everything they studied in LA centered around sport.  We covered the regular LA curriculum, we just used our own locally developed resources to do so.  The program (and its sister program, LAMA – combined drama and LA) thrived for about five years.  I have never loved a job like I loved that job.  Alas, for many reasons, not the least of which was Russ’s departure from SPC to be the Principal of Woodhaven Middle School, the program as we knew it had to come to an end.  I literally grieved.  I felt like a trusted, beloved friend had died. It has taken me a long time to get over that loss.

The great thing though, is that now that there is about five years distance I can look back and reflect on what I was given and maybe even what I gave during that time.  I learned about what it meant to be a part of a professional team. I learned about what it took to be a leader in my school by following great school leaders. I learned that relationships trump curriculum every time. I learned the importance of confidence – in myself, in my students and in my colleagues. I am a much better teacher than I was then and much of that is due to the lessons I learned in SPLA. I think also that I was a great “role player”.  I was an important part of that teaching team and that school team.  I knew my role and I fulfilled it.

At this point, I am about half-way through my teaching career.  I know that there is much more loving and learning and happiness and heartbreak ahead of me on this journey. The fridge will be covered with new quotes.  Thanks Ms. Clover.