Lessons learned from a one-room schoolhouse

As a kid, Laura Ingalls Wilder's books always fascinated me. My favorite books in the series were the ones that described being a student and then later teaching in a one-room schoolhouse. If I remember correctly, Laura's first days of teaching were challenging, to say the least. Probably a lot like mine. Like Laura, I wasn't much older than my students when I first walked through the doors of my classroom. It was a crash course in classroom management, but I had one thing going for me that Laura didn't: the teacher down the hall.

Now, with Facebook, Twitter, Nings and other social networking tools, it seems that my first years of teaching were a little like Laura's experience in that one-room schoolhouse, working in a bubble. I'm glad my bubble has burst and that I can collaborate with people across our swiftly shrinking planet.

Case in point: Amy and I found a link to Jim Burke's blog on Facebook. On the blog, he wrote about using Wordles to discuss the big ideas of a text, so we thought we'd try them in our co-taught English I classes. After tweaking a few things (providing marker boards for each team and throwing in a few cooperative learning structures), we found students were engaged in the process. Being able to see the board and hear discussion provided us with immediate feedback on student understanding of theme. Later, we had student teams generate theme statements.

My Writing Process

My writing process explained through text-to-video on Xtranormal.com. I made this video in five minutes, check it out!

Race to the Top in Missouri: Your Thoughts

Just posted on the Missouri Ed Community: A forum on Race to the Top funding. Weigh in with your thoughts.

http://missouried.ning.com/forum/topics/race-to-the-top-in-missouri

Dave Eggers Talks Authentic Learning

I found this video, from TED, through Twitter on a fellow teachers blog. It's a video of Dave Eggers, principal contributor to McSweeney's and author of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius talking about a privately-generated public-service education project that only caught fire when the participants stumbled over real-world authentic tasks for the students. Very exciting.

NCTE Reflection, Part I

As a new teacher, I fancy myself an expert at being overwhelmed. I find myself inundated most days with involuntary illusions of industry (if it's wrong of me to alliterate so copiously, I don't want to be right). In other words, I make a strong effort to become as busy as possible because I feel obligated to do so in order to meet: deadlines, potential, standards, personal goals and professional contacts. I use the word "illusion" merely to imply that not every inch of ink I intend to write is invaluable to or interned by others, but in an introspective state I might consider their worth infinitely. Okay, I promise to stop alliterating now; the wrong person could do a character count and measure my "Is" and conclude I'm a bit selfish.

As incredible and infuriating as the first eleven weeks of my teaching experience have been, this weekend easily measured up. I am fortunate enough to have a district who will pay for teachers to go to local and national professional conferences. I got to fly to Philadelphia for the National Council of Teachers of English 2009 Annual Convention with several staff members. I was excited to see Julie Andrews and Pulitzer Prize winner Junot Diaz more than anything. I ran out and bought The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao and immersed myself in its half-page footnotes. A little kid inside of me sang "Spoonful of Sugar" as I became giddy thinking about the celebrity of the events and people at NCTE.

Sadly, the chaos of the flight computer systems on the coast kept us from leaving Chicago O'Hare until hours after our intended departure. We missed Junot Diaz. I was mildly traumatized. I don't think it's possible to be jet-lagged from a one hour time-zone delay, but I felt a bit crabby about it. I heard through the grape vine that the only way I was meeting Julie Andrews was if I had a ticket (something I wasn't aware of how to obtain). Still, I was overwhelmed by the sheer size of the Philadelphia Convention Center as well as my textbook of a program; I started to think maybe I should've brought a special backpack just to carry it.

The scope of the workshop topics rivaled the venue's square-footage easily. It may have been possible to cover every inch of convention floor with every page from every program. Every session and section offered a dizzying display of dialogue to dig into (maybe I should talk to someone about my alliteration problem, I can't seem to control it). Thankfully, the cooperative learner I've been trained to be brings sticky notes everywhere (I think of them like blog comments or social bookmarks). I cracked open the spiral-bound giant and rappelled down into it, armed with my yellow flags. Anyone who knows semaphore would know I was immediately signaling for help!

In his own post-NCTE reflection, Alan Sitomer (whom I didn't get to see speak) compares the feeling of being overwhelmed by so many "keen minds" like a post-Thanksgiving type of meal. I couldn't put it any better. Being that it was my first convention I felt like a new member in the most welcoming and exciting family on Earth. I was being given so much all the time, that I had a hard time processing it all. I'm still processing in fact (warning: virtual memory full)! Maybe next year for NCTE 100 I'll have a new netbook to cart around and I can do some mobile processing. More posts to follow dealing with more specific aspects of the convention, its topics, and their impact on my instruction and planning.

An introduction to the Missouri Educator Community

I'm glad to report we're approaching 50 members on the Ning and growing each day in membership and content. I encourage you to invite fellow staff members, principals, and directors even if they are clueless about "social media." The MEC should be a welcoming place where you can seek answers, ask questions, and browse for new sources of information.

I encourage everyone to post a blog entry, video, a picture of your classroom, or a question for discussion on the forum. If you have any questions about how to do those things feel free to email me personally (stevemoore.ed@gmail.com) or ask on the chat feature at the bottom of the Ning page.

Go and explore, join a group or start one of your own! See what your Missouri colleagues are up to and make a new connection in the Missouri Educator Community.

MissouriEd.Ning.com

Move the World? Don't Look in the Mirror...

Teachers spend a lot of my time in the minds of others. Maybe you’d call it metacognition, maybe you’d call it reflective curiosity, the title isn’t that important but it’s a habit many of us act out each day. Our students beg it of us and our departments and administrations challenge us to understand what other people are thinking. Have you ever stopped to think about what occupies your own brain?

Teaching requires a great deal of energy, just like any worthwhile task. Consider the image of Archimedes standing on a long board, moving the whole planet on his magical fulcrum. He seems to do an impossible amount of work with almost no effort! Teachers are always searching for the next fulcrum and moving their boards to stand on. We search out the possible motives of every student and their actions constantly, trying to take in and dump out as much information as possible while somehow holding onto a few meaningful motes to process and act upon. Often, we end up jumping up and down on our boards angrily, shouting obscenities at the world when all we need to do is move our focus to the fulcrum.

Motivation can be a tricky thing to track down, but if you can harness and understand what truly moves you, the Earth will move for you. You know there are a myriad other tasks you could be doing at any given time as a teacher, but how do you balance them? How do you find the energy to keep going after five hours of sleep, a twenty-minute lunch break, and screaming children terrorizing your classroom? Hopefully this is not a situation you find yourself in daily, but if it is even close to that you’re most likely wishing someone would drop a magic fulcrum in front of you already and shove you on!

I’ll tell you a secret: the magic fulcrum is in your hand.

All around you there are other teachers, administrators, and most prevalently: students. I hesitate to say, “now go forth and stand on them, they are your fulcrum!” That’s taking the metaphor a bit too far, but you can probably understand where I am taking this. The community of people you engage every day are your motivation. They can move you forward better than anyone else. Have you ever tried shoving yourself? Throwing yourself? Unless you’re Jackie Chan, most likely you’d look pretty silly if you tried. Motivation is the same way; other people hold the most potential energy, they can help you move the world.

If you want to see more great responses on staying motivated, check out the Educator’s PLN forum, the Missouri Educators Ning, my website or the Educators' Royal Treatment