Pros and Cons

The Where in the World activity was pretty great today, but this year heralded the passing of a long-standing tradition at our school: the sixth grade feast. My recollection is that this pot-luck event had its beginning my first year of teaching, but I could be mistaken; there was a lot of stuff that was new to me going on that year. In any case, for at least seventeen years in a row, our team invited students and their families to contribute favorite dishes to a communal luncheon that we organized for the day before Thanksgiving Break.

In some ways it was a glorious occasion-- imagine folding tables swathed in child-decorated coverings and laden with the favorite foods of students from every continent and corner of our globe. Nice, right? But in other ways it was super stressful-- Will there be enough food? Will it be pathogen-free? What will we do with the left-overs? Despite those annual qualms, though, the event went off beautifully every year.

I can't put my finger on what it was last year that made me decide to propose the elimination of this annual tradition. The activity was perfectly successful-- we cooked and shared and ate and cleaned; the kids had a good time; the parents who were able to attend enjoyed themselves; the staff loved the leftovers-- but something told me that the outcome was not worth the trouble we went to. Maybe it was trying to figure out for the seventeenth time a fair, but compassionate, way to address the students who did not contribute. Maybe it was all the food that went into the trash at the end. Maybe it was the fifteen understandably excited 11 year olds that I spent most of the day with. Or maybe it was simply that completely drained feeling I went home with at the end of the day.

Whatever it was, a couple of months ago I asked my team if they were willing to plan something else in place of our lunch and they jumped at the chance. The fatigue, misgivings, whatever, were not mine alone.

To be honest, I think the students had just as good a time today as any have had in the past. A couple of teachers expressed their relief as well, but none quite so colorfully as one who is no longer on our team. "Thanks a lot!" she said to me when I ran into her in the hall. I must have looked bemused. "You cancel the luncheon after I leave?! I'm still scarred by that Ethiopian chicken!"

It took me a minute to recall what she meant. Over the years, we had a lot of undeniably exotic foods, most of them delicious. At this particular luncheon, a family from Ethiopia brought a spicy chicken dish with its traditional garnish-- an embryonic chicken cooked in the shell. It was with great pride that they cracked that egg and eased the curried fetal chick onto the platter. I thought it was cool, but I can't say I put any on my plate.

Where Are We?

Every year on our team we do an activity called Where in the World...? Students are asked to bring in a picture of themselves at some distant location. These photos are put into a slide show along with three clues for each locale, and then the kids on the team try to place their classmates and teachers on a map of the world. It's all good fun, and because we traditionally hold this event on the day before Thanksgiving Break, the prize is a ginormous chocolate turkey.

Here's where we are this year:

Bolivia
California
Colorado
Costa Rica
Egypt
England
Eritrea
Estonia
Ethiopia
France
Germany
Italy
Kenya
Maine
Maryland
Mexico
Morocco
New Jersey
Peru
Russia
St. Thomas
Utah
Virginia
Washington
Washington, DC

Quite the well traveled bunch, aren't we?

It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

The local station that plays Christmas music 24 hours a day during the season has already begun their holiday programming. I discovered this today while waiting in traffic and fiddling with the scan feature on my radio. It was hard to be shocked: everyone knows that retailers and their accomplices do whatever it takes to stretch the limits of the Christmas shopping season as far as possible. Our neighbor, who is in management at Target, revealed to us that this year November 6 was the deadline for Christmas displays to be set up in all of their stores.

When the music came on, we were out running Thanksgiving errands and enjoying one of the most spectacular falls we have had around here in years. Almost every day for the past few weeks has been flawless blue skies, crisp air, and gorgeous leaves. It has been breathtaking. My mom is coming in tomorrow, and my sister and her family will be here the next day, and as over-played as they might be, those words hearts will be glowing when loved ones are near resonated with me, and I let the music play for a little bit before I hit scan again.

Restless on my Laurels

 It's that time of the year when each school is asked to name their teacher of the year. Such a designation is the first step along the path that ends at being the national teacher of the year for someone. In our district, I have the impression that every school has a different process, although since I have spent my entire career at one school, that's only hearsay.

At our school, the process is flawed at best.  We are all invited to nominate a colleague in a hundred words or less, and then we vote. There is absolutely no criteria provided other than three years of experience. Considering that most teachers are too busy planning and delivering their own instruction to really know what's happening in any other classroom, it's hard to view the voting as anything other than uninformed at best.

I admit though, that, despite my misgivings about the process, I was flattered by the honor when a few years ago I was named teacher of the year at my school. The next step was to submit my credentials for consideration as a candidate for our county-wide teacher of the year. At the time, I had thirteen years of classroom experience, as well as involvement in a host of other activities, including coaching, team leader, and curriculum development, and yet, as I looked over my application, I felt that it was lacking.

Whether or not my opinion was based on insecurity or fact, as a result of those perceived deficits I took two steps: First, I decided to become a candidate for National Board Certification, and secondly I applied for and was accepted to the local chapter of the National Writing Project's Summer Institute.

I was not named teacher of the year for the district, but ultimately the experiences of the Writing Project and the National Board process both reshaped my teaching and undoubtedly, I'm a much better educator because of them.

So there.

Developmentally Speaking

In sixth grade, it's usually pretty easy to separate the "get-it"s from the clueless. Some kids are really capable of higher order thinking, and they definitely stand out from those who aren't quite there, yet. The thing is that people's brain's develop a lot like we grow-- the tallest kid in the class this year may not tower over the crowd in seventh grade. We expect such diversity of development in kids when it's physical, but it's much harder to accept differences in cognitive and emotional growth, perhaps because they are so intangible. Even so, the kid who doesn't grasp a tough concept today in a few years may be able to completely out-think the one who does.

It's important to keep this in mind, because so often the early cognitive bloomers get labeled as smarter than their peers and thus are treated differently, as are the seemingly less intelligent students in the group. There are obvious benefits of being treated like you're smart-- in general, you are asked to attempt more complex tasks and are supported by the confidence of those around you that you are capable of them. More importantly, though, at this age, kids are beginning to form self-concepts, and how the adults in their lives see them is crucial to their opinions of themselves.

As an example, think about how hard it is for people in a family to shed the identities that they acquired as they were growing up-- the responsible, hard-working sibling can rarely do wrong, while the screw-up can rarely earn redemption. Such roles are usually self-fulfilling and self-perpetuating.

For most eleven-year-old kids anything can happen, and it's up to us to make sure that stays true.

Lesson Learned

Our four year old neighbor has developed a fondness for doodling in library books-- Gasp! According to her mom she is not remorseful in the least, either. I suggested having her confess to the librarians herself in hopes that they would give her a little scolding that might stick.

Based on personal experience, I thought for sure that would work. When I was five and my brother was three we found a strawberry patch and picked and ate up all the fruit. The only problem was that the "patch" was actually our neighbor's garden. When my mother discovered our larceny, she told us we had to go next door and knock on the door to apologize.

We lived in a Levitt community, and our cookie cutter houses were not that far apart, but on that day it seemed like a journey of a thousand miles from our pink colonial to their neat gray rancher. There was a little hill between our yards and I remember sitting on that dip in the soft green grass weeping and trying to summon the courage to go over there and make things right, but I just couldn't do it. The guilt and the fear were too overwhelming.

Finally my mom came out and took us by the hands and led us to our neighbor's front porch. There she knocked on the door and stepped back. When Mrs. Huddleston opened the door, I burst into tears again. "Tracey and Billy have something to tell you," my mother started sternly. We confessed through sobs and were summarily forgiven. In retrospect, I think she was a little horrified at the tearful drama unfolding on her stoop. You can bet that those strawberries were safe from us after that.

I can't say the same for the library books... Savannah blithely apologized and was warmly absolved by a friendly librarian. She got off easy.

Junk Mail

I received an unsolicited message to my school email account today. Educator Panel Forming! exclaimed the subject line. Inside it started like this: You play an important role in molding the minds of today's youth, now's your chance to mold the shape of education!

Molding? I don't really consider what I do every day to be molding young minds. I like to think of it more as developing, or maybe nurturing; molding sounds kind of brain-washy if you ask me, like we manipulate the students' minds into what we want them to be.

No wonder people are so afraid of teachers lately.