Spring has arrived in Michigan y'all! Ok, so it's going to snow next week, but right now, I'm lookin' at eighty degrees and lovin' it!
"When the flowers bloom, so will the children!" was a favorite piece of advice offered by a favorite principal of mine! She always promised us that success will come for even the most frustrated or frustrating student. For many of them, all that is needed is the gift of time.
While you're watering and encouraging those tiny sprouts all year, did you ever wonder what it's like to be a student in your class? I often mused over that question. Sometimes I would sit in a student desk after they had left for the day to get a different perspective on our learning community. It was a very interesting activity, and I highly recommend it! Sometimes it takes walking around a block or two in the sneakers of a student to begin to understand, and hopefully to come up with a change in teaching strategy. (One more reason that it's IMPOSSIBLE to submit lesson plans for the full year in advance. Teaching is as much art as science, but you already knew that!)
As you consider these blooming possibilities, I'd like to suggest a few ways to watch yourself bloom this spring, right alongside your students. Could be humbling, and exhilarating all at the same time!
Have some reluctant writers? Try writing in your own journal right here in class, during journal writing time for students. I wrote in my journal and projected what I was working on right up on the SmartBoard in real time. My students loved it! I had lots of markers, glitter pens, and stickers to add illustrations as I went, and could really see growth in my students as they tried to do what I was doing.
Reluctant readers on your roster? Try reading something in a genre that you yourself don't normally pick up. For me, it was Caste by Isabel Wilkerson. I don't usually read nonfiction with quite so much detail when I select books for pleasure reading. My usual choices are romance, thriller, science fiction, and a sprinkling of historical fiction. Caste was much stickier to wade through, and helped me to see strategies that I needed to use to get myself from one chapter to the next. The same encouragement can be given to students who need a gentle push to keep up with their book group.
Word Work avoiders in your midst? Try some word games like Scrabble, Perquackey (vintage, but you can still find this amazing game in some online selling sites), or SCWORDLE (find it here at Rainbow City Learning!) When we associate working with words with game playing, our interest in the work that follows increases! Have you tried online Wordle yourself? Humbling, I promise!
Attitude issues? Try something new that makes you feel a little awkward or unsure. Then use what you learn to help smooth out the edges of some of those in-class attitudes. Sandra Bullock tells us that "The rule is that you have to dance a little bit in the morning before you leave the house because it changes the way you walk out in the world." We dance in the mornings in my house, and you might be dancing in yours, but can you say for sure that all of your students are doing the same at home? Of course not! So when you have a brain break, don't just turn on the music and sit down. Get up and dance! Everyone, including you, will have a whole new attitude about learning when the music stops!
Hope you have found a little inspiration for springing into the last quarter. Here's another favorite post of mine packed with spring ideas!
For more April inspiration, please check out the fabulous bloggers of Teacher Talk! Posts in this linkup are limited to Teacher Talk member bloggers only.
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