A Mile in her Moccasins

The IB Learner Profile trait in December is always "Caring" and so we are given activities meant to instill empathy in the 11 and 12-year-olds in our homerooms. Today was the day designated for those discussions, and I confess to not doing the assigned lesson, mostly because it was not appropriate for my group.

My homeroom is comprised of 12 sixth graders who range in age from 12 in October to 11, turning 12 next September. They also represent the spectrum from life skills to Gifted, with 1/3 of them identified as qualifying for special education services. There are kids who grew up speaking Spanish, Urdu, and not speaking at all, and so this morning we watched a video about empathy, twice, and then another video about the difference between empathy and sympathy, also twice. Then we talked about caring and kindness.

I think it went pretty well, but often I am skeptical of such attempts to overtly instruct human beings on "character", especially out of context. Still, in the very next class, I gave the students a short passage from the novel Breadcrumbs by Anne Ursu. 

The desks were in five perfect lines of six. If ever these lines strayed from perfect, if someone should move his by scooting back too vigorously, or trying to get just the right angle to pass a note, Mrs. Jacobs got very cranky.

The topic of the lesson was finding big ideas about characters in small details. "What does this passage tell us about Mrs. Jacobs?" I asked.

I expected the students to answer with some variation of the idea that she was strict, a perfectionist, or inflexible; then I would push them to dig deeper into her motivation or at least into how her actions might affect her students.

One girl raised her hand immediately. "Maybe she has a lot of chaos in her life, and this is something she can control, so it's really important to her," she suggested.

I caught my breath. "Now, that is empathy," I told her.

Heard on High

"Are you finished with your holiday decorating?" a friendly salesperson asked me yesterday as I browsed in her pricey gift shop.

I nodded politely. "Actually, I just finished today," I answered.

"You can't really be done without an ornament from us," she smiled.

"You do have some beautiful things," I told her and shrugged, for truly there was nothing there for me.

A few years ago I wrote about how as children whenever my brother, sister, and I received ornaments as gifts, mine was always the angel, and I always wished it was something else, something more fun, like the Santas my brother always received, or the stockings, teddy bears, and drums my sister got. Back then I ended my post like this:

When I think about it, I wonder, though. What's my problem? Seriously, who could possibly object to angels? 

These days when I hang the ornaments on my own Christmas tree, each one of them sparks in me appreciation of the things I love. Among them there is a skillet, a fountain pen, a school house, garlic, snowshoes, several dogs, a basketball, a Navajo polar bear kachina, and a suit case labeled with destinations all over the world. Are these not all angels in some form? Do they not represent a bit of the divinity that inhabits our everyday lives? 

I'm going to go with yes.

After my conversation with the saleswoman, I waited patiently as Heidi continued to shop, my attention on the Christmas display. A basket of glass ornaments sparkled from beneath the tree in the window. "Do you like those?" Heidi startled me from behind. She reached down and picked up a tear-shaped ornament and held it up. Thin lines of glitter spiraled across the frosted glass below and crystal wings and halo shined above.

"Yes," I told her. "I do."

"You know, we don't have any angels on our tree," she reminded me.

"I know," I said. "I think we need this one."

As we turned to the register, the saleswoman was looking on.

"You were absolutely right," I told her. "I wasn't finished, yet."

It's Better to Light a Candle than Curse the Darkness

The day started and ended with lights.

After a week standing bare in the stand, the little Frazier fir in the living room finally became a Christmas Tree this morning as I laced five strings of lights in and out of its dense boughs, holiday music playing merrily in the background.

And tonight we found ourselves in the conservatory of the brand new MGM resort at National Harbor. It's becoming a holiday tradition for us and our friend Susan to try a hot new restaurant in the early weeks of December. Arriving a couple of hours before our reservation we explored the property thoroughly-- gawking at the casino and boutiques, restaurants, art work, and amazing holiday decorations.

The meal was disappointing, poor service and mediocre food served under unnecessarily harsh lights, but the evening was still fun. On the drive back across the river we passed lots of holiday lights glittering in the frosty night, and arriving home, we were greeted by the glow of our very own Christmas lights.

Make My Day!

Most mornings you can find me outside my classroom door greeting every student I can by name. As part of our cultural competence training early in the year we read an article that said in large secondary schools kids can for days without ever being personally recognized. As our school grows ever larger each year, that seems like more of a risk for us. A simple solution? Teachers greet each student by name as they enter the class.

I have a student in my homeroom this year who is in our school's life skills program. Such a placement is only made for students with very low cognitive ability, a severe physical disability that impacts learning, or both. This guy is kind of a tough nut to crack. Almost completely non-verbal, he demonstrates aptitude in many areas, but inconsistently. Except technology. The kid literally loves pushing buttons, and he knows what he is doing, so it has become his job to turn the smartboard on and off each morning for and following the broadcast announcements.

He is often the first to arrive, unaccompanied, although a personal assistant follows not far behind him. I always wish him a good morning, but he rarely shows any indication that he has heard me. Early in the year I learned to enlist the other kids; he is much more likely to respond to them. His speech is mostly parroting things he has recently heard, so I was really impressed a month or so ago when he greeted his assistant by name.

But not nearly as impressed as when I saw him coming down the hall this morning. "Good morning!" I called to each student as they approached.

"Good morning, Miss Sheh-har-son!" he answered.

I'll take it!

Bundle Up, Buttercup

"What's the weather like?" a colleague asked this afternoon peering across my room to a pair of the rare windows in our school building.

"Gray and blustery," I answered, and we exchanged unimpressed looks.

"Did you hear that next week..." she started.

"we're going to get a polar vortex!" we finished together and laughed.

"Polar vortex?" she shrugged. "It's like the new thing. We're always getting them lately, and they sound so... dire."

I nodded in agreement.

"What did we used to say?" she asked.

"Cold snap?" I suggested.

"Cold snap!" she agreed. "Much less dire." She paused. "Have you seen the latest cabinet picks?"

Risky Business

An integral part of the International Baccalaureate Middle Years Programme is its focus on 10 learner profile traits. IB students and their teachers are encouraged to foster inquiry, being knowledgeable, thinking, communication, being principled, open-mindedness, caring, healthy risk-taking, balance, and reflection in ourselves.

To reinforce these concepts, we explore one per month and then students are asked to nominate a member of the team who exemplifies that trait. It is the 21st century, and so we conduct these nominations by way of Google form survey and then we teachers get a spreadsheet with all the responses.

There is something about the process though, that gives some students a sense of anonymity, and so sometimes the data we get is either clearly self-serving or fit for a gripe box.

For example today we had a student nominate himself as a healthy risk-taker because he sticked up for what he believed in

And in response to the question How do the adults in the building demonstrate this behavior?

He wrote, I see how they use bad behavior

The In Crowd

One of the challenges of teaching is actually co-teaching. Because students are identified by so many labels-- some of them academic, some of them federal, some of them self-chosen, but all of them significant in high-stakes testing data which impacts schools and districts, there are often several educators in a single classroom. Finding the time to coordinate with such a team is a challenge in itself, and so there are definitely times when the teacher of record is put in the awkward position of directing and redirecting a person who is technically a peer.

My friend Mary and I were laughing about just such a situation today. It was around 5 PM, and we had just finished planning the week ahead and were commiserating about how much we had left to do when the subject of one of our colleagues (who was long gone for the day) came up. This teacher is assigned to Mary's class for one period a day and sometimes becomes so involved in completing the assignments herself that she forgets to interact with the students she is there to support.

"It's because our lessons are so awesome," I joked. "If only the kids felt the same way!"

"I know," Mary answered. "I think she just wants to be one of us."

"And why wouldn't she?" I said. "We're living the dream!"