Teaching Perseverance Through the Arts

 

"It's a country club over there," my parents could often be heard to say during my fifth and sixth grade years. We had just moved back to the neighborhood and new, progressive school that we had to leave after my Kindergarten year.

We had moved next door to my grandparents and my mom's large and loving family, so as a kid I wasn't aware of the financial difficulties that had caused the move "back home", just thrilled to be up in the business of my young aunts and uncle all.the.time. I was known as the world's youngest teenager, showing up at my Aunt Harriet's after school living room dance parties, and a careful observer of my Aunt Rhoda's makeup application and hair styling as she left for work or dates. They took me to the library every week for stacks of books, taught me to twirl a baton, and drove me to school. We had long and serious discussions about Elvis, Richie Valens, Buddy Holly, and the Big Bopper. A member of a for real actual singing group, The Tempos, actually lived across the street! Two of the songs that they briefly made famous were "Since I Don't Have You" and "See You in September". My grandma always said that Gene was a very nice boy who served his country.  I think he was a friend of my uncle, but who knows? My uncle always seemed to be in his room studying. That room was the only space in my grandparents' house that was off limits to me, but that was ok. He knew nothing about hair and clothes and makeup, and I just went in to look around when he wasn't there. We danced the Strand. We drew and colored, knitted, cooked and ate together, laughed together, and took full part in each other's lives. I missed nothing in the area of life enrichments, and I liked my school and friends.

BUT... the summer before fifth grade, life was heading in a positive direction for my very young parents. My dad finished college, had a CPA practice, and was beginning to invest in deli restaurants among other businesses. They bought their first home, and I returned to my original school in fifth grade while my little sister started kindergarten. Our little brother was nine months old when we moved in, so no school for him yet!

Apparently, while I was gone, our public school system had decided to try out some new programs and practices at the newest building in their district. When I arrived in Miss Brooke's fifth grade, things were happening! Kids who were academically successful appeared to have been placed together in class, so there was never a chance to read any of the books that I had become used to shlepping to school with me every day for four years. (Well, actually three years. Too busy throwing up every day in first grade when reading groups started. Membership in the blue birds was not all it was cracked up to be.) Aside from watching super smart kids learning and responding and interacting on all sides, we had ENRICHMENTS! Yes, our district was on the cutting edge in the 60s with the very beginnings of gifted education. They didn't call it GT or anything like that, but in my opinion, they should have named it something because the confused young parents just called it a "country club over there".

At the "country club over there", we could leave our classrooms without having to make up anything that we missed while gone, and take Creative Dance, Art Enrichment, Science Explorations, and Chorus. We could also learn square dancing and polka. Yes, polka. It was Pennsylvania after all! As a dancing school dropout, I loved Creative Dance the most. Could not believe my good fortune at being part of a group with actual current dancing school students.  (Being a dancing school dropout is absolutely true - I left Saturday morning dancing school for Saturday morning cartoons at the ripe old age of seven because I just couldn't keep up with the other dancers.) In Creative Dance, we were presented with music and could create our own choreography. It was amazing! My love for dancing, nurtured as the world's youngest teenager dancing with Bandstand every day, was restored!

I took that "country club at school" spirit with me throughout the rest of my education and my career as a teacher. As I got to higher grades, I learned perseverance. Perseverance made everything I tried to do better. Study and practice became enjoyable pursuits because there was always a goal ahead, a reason for persevering. I studied harder in French class so that I could spend more time in Ceramics class in high school. I studied for and passed out of basic language arts, foreign language, and math courses in college so that I could load up on Art History and Anthropology. And when I became a teacher, I tried to make sure that my own students had opportunities to explore the arts and sciences as much they possibly could. I did this through project based learning and through centers, including Inventor's Center, an early incarnation of STEAM. My students' journals always had a drawing/sketching/diagramming component. A kid more in tune with art could use more art than words and still succeed in journal writing. I can point to several professional artists today who have told me that they appreciated being able to journal through art in those elementary years.

After that loooonnnngggg intro, this post on Perseverance is turning to the importance of including the arts in an elementary education. We learn to be awesome dancers by dancing. We learn to be artists by crumpling papers, erasing, and starting again. We learn to be writers by writing. I always had two signs in my classroom: Good Writers Write and Good Readers Read. Perseverance is what makes us successful, and I believe that it is best learned in the pursuit of the arts.

When I was thinking of picture books to use with this important topic, I couldn't narrow it down any further than four. I simply took all four out of the library. You don't have to own every book that you touch. I donated three of these when I retired, and just discovered the fourth one. The public library is a great place to find books, especially books that you will use for a brief lesson. School libraries are another great source, if you are lucky enough to still have one. I won't speak badly here of the district that I retired from, but no librarians? Seriously?

The very first book that came to mind was Dancing in the Wings by Debbie Allen. In this book, Sassy is a dancing school student who, unlike yours truly, persevered. She was "too tall" and her feet were "too big" for all the roles and participation that she longed for. Rather than drop out, she practiced, observed, and danced every dance from the wings, learning it as well as if she was on stage herself. Her hard work and perseverance pay off when a director of an important Washington dance festival notices her, chooses her from her entire dancing school and invites her to be part of a performance troupe. This is based on Debbie Allen's life and the experience of her daughter Vivian in dancing school.

Of course, a read of Dancing in the Wings naturally leads to a read of Brothers of the Knight also by Debbie Allen. It's an amazing retelling of the fairy tale "The Twelve Dancing Princesses", and in light of the recent public controversy over whether men should be dancers, it got my attention. In Brothers of the Knight, Reverend Knight is a single father raising twelve sons. The story is narrated by their dog, Happy. Reverend Knight is befuddled by the fact that his sons' shoes are tattered, torn, and generally wrecked every morning, although they appear to have been sound asleep every night. A new housekeeper solves the mystery, and the brothers come clean about their passion for dancing. They had thought it necessary to sneak out to the ballroom at night because they thought that their father would disapprove. Reverend Knight marries the housekeeper, adds dance to his sermons, and all live happily ever after. Dancing with perseverance can sure wear out your shoes!

And speaking of shoes, a story from the childhood of Michael Jordan, Salt in His Shoes, is another great example of how perseverance can lead to success. Michel Jordan was once a short child who wanted to play basketball with the neighborhood kids. He was shorter than they were and had a difficult time keeping up. He measured himself over and over, but never seemed to grow. His dad advised him to keep practicing and his mom advised him to put salt in his shoes and to pray every night to be just a little taller each day. Michael took the advice seriously, praying, salting, and PRACTICING at home. He eventually scored the winning point in a neighborhood game when another player was injured and unable to play. And... as we know.... he grew to be a famous six foot six pro basketball player! Was it the salt? Or the perseverance?

Amazing Grace by Mary Hoffman is also nothing short of amazing as a model for perseverance. Grace loves to read and to act. She loves stories - telling them, hearing them, acting them out. When she learns that her class is about to cast and perform "Peter Pan", Grace wants to be Peter. She is focused on her goal, and sticks with it through practice and auditions even though one classmate tells her that a girl can't play Peter, and another tells her that Peter is white. (Grace is African American.) Enter Grace's Ma and her Nana (gotta love the Nanas!), who inform Grace that those two kids who discouraged her don't know anything. Nana then takes Grace to a ballet performance where a famous brown-skinned dancer named Rosalie Wilkins ballet dances the part of Juliet in "Romeo and Juliet". After the performance, Grace adds the dance of Juliet to her practice, auditions for and gets the part of Peter Pan. Grace is an amazing Peter Pan, and according to her Nana, "If Grace put her mind to it, she can do anything she want." True for Grace. And true for all of our kids.  Putting your mind to it is perseverance!

Sometimes I wonder what might have happened if I had chosen to stick with Chorus when I was told by the teacher to sit in the back where no one had to listen to me. I could have been a famous singer! Nah, I just pursued the arts that mattered to me. Teachers, the important thing is to present the arts as possibilities to our students. Let them tinker and explore. Let them respond to assignments and projects infusing a piece of the arts that is important to them. Find time for performances in class. There are ways! Make your room just a little bit of "a country club over there". You never know what future artist, dancer, singer, writer, or scientist is sitting right before your eyes!

Check out some of the STEAM resources at Rainbow City Learning to add a little art to the learning in your classroom!

Click below for a FREE introductory lesson on using the arts to teach perseverance.

To hear the thoughts of our "We Teach So Hard" blogging group on this topic with lots of book suggestions, just click!

For the blog posts of our We Teach So Hard podcasters, click below!

Teaching Perseverance: Powerful Books to Change a Student’s Mindset

Books to Teach Perseverance

Never Give Up. . . Persevere!

Using the Arts to Teach Perseverance

And... before you go... Check out some amazing posts for the month ahead from my awesome blogging buddies at Teacher Talk!

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Teach What's Important

Happy New School Year, teachers! I hope you all have those wishlists set up on Amazon, and that your family and friends are busy making all of your wishes come true for this year! So much has changed since I've left the classroom, but I think that wishlist idea is a definite move in the right direction! 

So many friends have been super busy setting up their rooms and getting ahead on the lesson plans. With all the required standards to meet, and district adopted curriculum to pursue, deciding what goes into the plans for a day, a week, or a month seems like a huge task. 

The most important lessons you can teach in these early days can set you up for student success and your own peace all year. May I suggest teaching that you are someone who cares about each student, and who can be trusted? I would also like to suggest that you teach students that they belong to a caring community this year, and can count on each other. Our brains are so much more open to new learnings when not burdened by stress. Take the time to read parent letters about their children, and to talk with each parent even if it's not conference time yet. The more you know about your students as people, the better you will be able to serve them as learners. I know it's surprising to many adults, but kindness, empathy, collaboration, and compassion actually have to be taught. We may be born with the basics of these attributes, but young children need some instruction and direction to develop these traits. My third and final suggestion is that you always teach that learning is fun! You do that by example. If you are truly interested in the subject matter that you are teaching, and enjoyed learning about it yourself, share that with your students. Enthusiasm is infectious! Click on the highlighted words above fo some Rainbow City Learning style activities to get there!

A favorite little set up trick of mine was to take some time on the first day to just observe my students with the class list in my hand. Saying nothing, I would just smile, looks at the list, and look at the kids. Then I'd close the door, and say very quietly, "It's true! The office really did put ALL the best kids in my class! Wow! I hope they don't realize that they have done this. Shhhhh...please don't tell them! We're going to have the best year ever!" You need to practice this, using your own way of saying things, until it sounds real and natural. If they believe you, and I think they will, the result is pure teacher magic!

This is a time when many school districts are discouraging and even forbidding the use of TPT resources. While I am not trying to convince you to adopt a ready to print curriculum from my store or anyone else's, there are definitely some time saving shorter activities that will help you to create the classroom atmosphere of your dreams. They can be used to build the base for a solid year with all the attention to curriculum standards that you need. I hope you'll visit Rainbow City Learning on TPT, and put a bundle together that will work for your classroom! Small bites or activities taught more intensely at the beginning of the year, and then sprinkled lightly throughout the rest of the year! Why not try it? Would love hear from you how it is working!

If you would like to try a preselected bundle of activities to build your community and share the pure joy of learning, why not start with one of my monthly themed bundles? Click the links below to get started!

Wishing you the best school year ever!

For more ideas to get your year off to a great start, check out these posts from our blogging group!

If you would also like to be a part of Teacher Talk this school year, we are a group of teacher bloggers who share posts that are heavy on the ideas with just a little selling of our educational materials at TPT. For more information about joining The Best of Teacher Entrepreneurs Marketing Cooperative, go to https://bit.ly/3o7D1Dv.  Feel free to email me at retta.london@gmail.com if you have any questions. 

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The post below is another blast from the past, and it's been on my mind lately. As my honey and I have been setting up our home for the next chapter, we sink exhausted into the couch each evening and have been binging on "Atypical" on Netflix. As we watch, we often pause the show and discuss. (We do this with most shows we watch - he's been married to a teacher for too long!) We ask each other if we can identify at all with each of the unique characters in this brilliant portrayal of a neurotypical family living with a family member who is on the Autism Spectrum. 

Our favorite character is Sam, who is the family member on the Spectrum. I have always had students who were on the spectrum mainstreamed in my classroom. This was not because I had specialized training, but because I had the heart to connect with every student. Making a personal connection has always been job one for me. Sam is a life mentor for me as I watch "Atypical". As someone with an over the top reeling imagination, I love the clearly black/white manner in which Sam views the world. He reminds me to slow down and realize that different people react to the very same situations in very different ways. 

Watching "Atypical" each evening has also reminded me of the many forms that Mentor Text can take. Characters in TV shows and in movies, even in songs, can all be life mentors for us in so many ways. I hope you will enjoy reading the post below, and will find something useful to take back to your own classroom this year! 

Here it is:

I've been thinking a lot about mentor text lately. Mentor Text. Another piece of education-speak. Sounds official, important, and perhaps a bit daunting for a new teacher or a seasoned one like me, who may not have attended a training or researched  the term. The first time I heard the term, it sent me running to Google for a definition. I found that mentor text is a piece of literature that teachers and students can study, imitate, and apply to other texts and for different purposes.

Wait! What? So using mentor text is the same thing that I (we) have been doing for years: teaching a reading or writing strategy by using a picture book or short piece of text as a model or example. So my favorite mini-lesson practice of starting with a picture book or a passage from a favorite author is using mentor text? Yes! Got it!

As with all trends in education and in life, this idea of using mentor texts in the upper elementary classroom has me asking once again.... What if? What if, as we work through a text to determine a character's motivation and emotions, to learn more about a character, might we also learn a little more about ourselves. I think we might! Think back for a minute to some of your all-time favorite characters from your own reading and/or movie and tv viewing. What if we could apply the positive character traits and emotional intelligence that we find in character study to our own lives?

My greatest personal life mentor was my Aunt Harriet. I was born three days before her eighth birthday, a fun birthday present for a little girl. She gave me countless gifts as my guide through life as we grew up together. She was out-going, chill, fun, and loved to learn and try new things. She was beautiful and a great dancer and baton twirler, to name just a few of her talents. We went to the library together every week and she helped me to pick out books, some of which I remember to this day. I joined her many friends at her house every day after school to dance to American Bandstand, making me most likely the world's youngest teenager at the time! (I'm now probably the world's oldest one!) She continued to serve as an example to me as she raised her family and volunteered so often to help others in her community. She passed away so young, leaving me without her guidance for as many years now as the years that I was lucky to spend with her. I miss her more than I can say, and hope that some of who I am as a human can be traced to her mentoring.

Some of my personal literary life mentors are Francie from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (placed in my hands by Aunt Harriet), who can find joy in the smallest and most ordinary seeming things, Professor Dumbledore from (you guessed it- Harry Potter), whose famous words hung on my classroom wall from the first day that I read them ("It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities."), and Professor John Keating (played by Robin Williams in "Dead Poets' Society"), who encouraged his students to find their own voice. This serendipitous mentoring that occurs when we find a richly drawn character who touches our soul is, to me, the best kind. It's the way a book or movie that you have fallen into stays with you forever. It's the reason you ask yourself at times of emotional duress what that mentoring character would do in a similar situation.

There are endless opportunities in our Reader's Workshop lessons to set up a character as an emotional mentor at the same time that we are teaching specific reading and writing skills. As teachers, we have minds on, heart touched moments to explore how a character is feeling in a particular situation, and to closely watch how that character responds and gets on with life. It's something to recall over and over with your class throughout the year. Along with internalizing a character's emotions and responses, some of those strategies naturally find their way into our own emotional tool boxes.

My favorite grades to teach have always been grades 3-6. My suggestions here will be focused on reading that will most appeal to students in those grades, but all can be used in other grades as well depending on your lesson focus, reading levels in your class, and whether it will be read-aloud, partner reading, or independent. I hope this list will inspire you to make one of your own, listing life mentoring examples that might be found in some of the texts that you are already using. It can slip into your lessons and conversations as smoothly as fudge slides down the side of a sundae.

My favorite characters for a little life mentoring (no affiliate links - just making it easier for you to find these):

Quila from Gifts From The Sea (strong under pressure, nurturing, mature)
Zoe from A Crooked Kind of Perfect (flexible, looking at life with humor)
Brian from Hatchet (resourceful, innovative, strong under pressure, self-reliant)
Rob and also Sistine from The Tiger Rising (owning your feelings and dealing with bullying)
Claudia from The Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler (adventurous, lover of learning)
Meg (of course) from A Wrinkle in Time (persistent, brave, caring)
Rosie from Granny Torelli Makes Soup (valuing friendship, empathy)
Opal from Because of Winn-Dixie (developing understanding, nurturing friendships, learning to let
go of emotional baggage)
Comfort from Each Little Bird that Sings (dealing with the unexpected, having a positive outlook)

I could add ten or twenty more to the above list, but you get the idea. Life mentors can be found in countless books. When I've added life mentoring to our discussions of read-alouds and book club choices, I have found over and over that my students start to identify the life lessons in their own reading. They bring those discoveries to reading conferences, making that discussion even richer.

If you like the idea of adding life mentoring to your readers' workshop and would like a little more direction on how to do it, I have placed some of my favorite lessons doing just that into this year-long program for character development and behavior improvement! Hope you'll click and explore!

For some easy to use forms to keep track of your Reader's Workshop results, check out Rainbow City Learning's Conferring Notebook! Just click here!

For more September teaching inspiration, be sure to take at look at some of the posts below. If you are a blogger and interested in joining Teacher Talk, please contact me at retta.london@gmail.com and I'll explain how to get started!

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Lead Like a Girl Part Two

 Four years ago, I posted Part One of Lead Like a Girl. Didn't realize back then that it would be a Part One, but waking up this morning, it occurred to me that it must be. The blog fairies are insisting that I write this one today. Part one was written in March of 2016. Today is September 19 of 2020. Today is the first day in a world without Ruth Bader Ginsburg. 

Ruth Bader Ginsburg left us last night on the first night of Rosh Hashanah, the beginning of the Jewish High Holy Days, The Days of Awe, when the Book of Life is opened and God sits in judgement of how we, as Jews, have lived our life during the past year. We are offered an opportunity to atone for our sins, ask for forgiveness from those we may have wronged, and promise to be better humans in the year ahead. We ask God to inscribe our names in the Book of Life for the year ahead. Today marks the beginning of the year 5781 on the Hebrew calendar.  

I heard the news about Justice Ginsburg's death just as we finished watching the pandemic streaming version of Rosh Hashanah services. I took it hard, with disbelief, as if she had been a member of my own family. Many people that I know took the news just as hard. As a Jew, however, knowing that Justice Ginsburg was also a Jew, I remembered that a death during the High Holy Days has a special meaning. It took some searching, but it gave me something to do as I wiped my tears. Ruth Bader Ginsburg's death just as the Days of Awe were commencing, means that God judged her to be a tzaddik, a person of great righteousness, and though she has been extremely ill recently, she was given the full measure of the year 5780. Ruth Bader Ginsburg seems to have been judged by the One True Judge to have been a good and worthy human. I take great consolation in believing that. 

A political maelstrom is just beginning to swirl over which party will be awarded her seat on the Supreme Court. My focus here will not be on that, rather on the legacy she left to all of us, especially to little girls. I know we have all seen the baby and toddler RBG Halloween costumes, more I expect this year, and the myriad of elementary and middle schoolers who have chosen the Notorious RBG as their model for wax museum presentations. I'm sure that we will be seeing many more in the coming days. I even heard that Ruth is predicted to be a popular baby name in the months ahead. Why not? Her name is synonymous with strength, intelligence, and fairness. New parents could do worse than that in naming their offspring. 

Described as tiny "as a hummingbird", Ruth Bader Ginsburg grew up in an era very different from this one, destined for strength, determination, and power. Her mother's advice to her was to act "like a lady", and not to waste time on useless emotions like anger, resentment, jealousy, or envy. She learned that giving into emotions like that would sap time from productivity and achievement. Some advice as a young bride from her mother-in-law was to be "deaf" sometimes - tune out what might not be necessary or recommended for you to hear. To Ruth, "acting like a lady" meant clear-thinking independence. 

As a recent law school graduate and young mother, Ruth wanted to pursue her career in law. She had, as she told it, "three strikes" against her: She was a woman, she had a child, and she was Jewish. Acting "like a lady", or as I like to call it, "leading like a girl", Ruth shut out the unnecessary distractions and time-wasting emotions to become first a law professor, then director of the ACLU's Women's Right Project, then on to judgeship in the US Court of Appeals, and finally an appointment to the Supreme Court. Her entire life was lived in an "eyes on the prize" kind of way. In my opinion, her story is pure motivation and inspiration for our students, male or female. 

I just posted a Close Reads resource on Ruth Bader Ginsburg, much like my other Women's History Close Reads. (Also available for Google Drive.)If you'd like to receive some free sample pages to share with your students, be sure to sign up for my mailing list when the little box pops up on this post. You can grab some free Yoga samples at the same time!

If you have some students celebrating the High Holy Days right now, you may be interested in my Jewish Holidays SCOOT Bundle. The cards make for some interesting conversation in person or in an online meeting situation. I've been told that people use these cards while celebrating with family and friends at holiday times. Should work for ZOOM celebrations too. Try it! Fun and informative!

At Rosh Hashanah time, we dip apples in honey and wish each other a sweet year ahead. Whatever your faith, I wish you much sweetness and success as we continue to find our way through a challenging time. 

For more September teaching thoughts and ideas, be sure to take a look at these amazing blogs:

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