Teacherscribe's Teaching Thoughts
November Teaching Thoughts Newsletter
A little humor
A great illustration
Heal
The World is a Fine Place and Worth Fighting For
Book of the Month -
I have been a huge fan of this author since I saw his iconic TED Talk. The sub title of the book gives you a great reason for reading this: How a Positive Brain Fuels Success in Work and Life.
It's a struggle when most of what we see on social media and TV is all negative. Now that isn't to say that there aren't major problems in the world, but not everything is bad or negative. That is just how politicians and networks and the trolls on social media want it to be depicted.
One of the key points in the book is that we have been duped by a false belief: "If you work hard, you will become successful, and once you become successful, then you'll be happy." This belief is broke, Archor states. And maybe that is why there is just so much unhappiness in the world today.
Why can't we simply be happy - without it being tied to success (whatever that is) or work or whatever. Why can't happiness just being alive?
One of my favorite parts of this book is from Achor's own life where he spent 12 years living in the dorms of Harvard studying and helping students there find happiness. As one of his friends asked, "What does anyone at Harvard have to be sad about?" Well, you would be surprised.
Archor contrasts the students at Harvard and all the stress they feel about living up to the expectations others have on them as Harvard students by recounting a trip he took to South Africa. There students enduring unimaginable poverty and hardships were about to attend a school in a shantytown. When he asked students there how many of them liked school, all the hands went up.
He was shocked. He didn't see that kind of passion for school back at Harvard.
What was the difference? The kids in South Africa saw school as a privilege, not a burden.
What things in our lives are a privilege? How can we use them to find happiness in our lives?
Teaching Thought for November
Incremental Improvement is the Key
Now that we are a quarter of the way through the year, it’s a good time to reflect back on all the worked and all that didn’t. I find that it’s at around this time of the year that I feel like a failure.
The year always starts with a bang. Then about 1/4 of the way in, I begin to doubt myself. Am I teaching these kids anything? I should push them harder? Their writing isn’t good enough! They aren’t reading enough! I’m not getting their work back to them soon enough! Are they even reading any of the comments on their papers? I should just give up.
Seriously. Those thoughts have gone through my mind every year since I began in 1998. If you’re like me, you know what that is like. But remember this - and I have to remind myself of this all the time - incremental improvement is the key.
If something didn’t work previously, that’s okay. It doesn’t mean you have to junk it. If one class isn’t meeting your expectations, it’s okay. There is still time left to work on it. Don’t lose heart. Keep moving forward incrementally. If you keep getting just a little bit better, over the course of the remainder of the year, you’ll make significant improvement!
What I also need to remind myself whenever I go to a training session or listen to a podcast or have a curriculum day, is that I don’t need to overhaul my entire curriculum. Just try one small new thing.
A few years ago, I read Penny Kittle and Kelly Gallagher’s excellent 180 Days. I was set to overhaul how I taught composition. Well, it fell flat after about two weeks. It was too much of a change.
Now, several years later, I try to add one new thing per semester from that book to my comp courses. That incremental improvement is the way to an overhaul of my course, but it might take a few years instead of overnight.
That’s fine.
Why I Love Teaching
The chance to make connections and impact others. I know that sounds corny, but it's true. And it's so easy to lose sight of this.
If I ever get down during my prep - and there are more moments like that than ever before - I just take a stroll down the halls or into the commons. There are usually some students there that I can talk to or answer questions for. And that always picks me up.
I have been blessed with many opportunities to impact young people in addition to teaching English at LHS - head football coach, working with younger flag football players, teaching at the ALC, teaching at UND, co-advising the yearbook, and teaching Wednesday school at St. Bernard's. It's important to know that our work matters and has impact.
That was driven home just the other day as I was walking from my car to football practice. I passed a school bus full of elementary school kids. It was then that someone pulled their window down and yelled, "Hey coach! How's it going?"
The young man didn't know it, but that made my day. Often times in teaching we think it's the overall big breakthrough moments that make it all worth it. I think it is actually these little moments that show us that we did, in fact, make a difference.
Podcast of the Month - Entreleadership
This episode has two excellent parts. The first part is an interview with Daniel Ramsey about the three things that rare telltale signs of bad leadership. The three traps that leaders fall into are -
1. Pride - This is tied to a lack of learning. Too often the bad leader isn't open to listening to others or try to think outside of the box. This leadership trap is best evident in the line - "Well, that's not how we have always done it here." If you've heard that, you've got a bad leader on your hands.
2. Lack of clarity - Bad leadership here is simply a lack of vision. The people here just show up with no real purpose or objective. They are just working a j-o-b sine the "leader" hasn't done a good job showing them what their specific role is and what winning looks like. But if you show up every day inspired because your leader models what it means to have a vision and execute that vision (and best of all, you know your specific rule and duties in helping bring that vision to life), well you are under great leadership. Savor it!
3. Fear - Poor leaders - and this usually seeps in later in the career of a leader - let fear get a vote or play a major role in a decision. This cause poor leaders to slow down too much and make poor decisions based on the wrong thing: fear or looking bad or that the decision might be more work. I think we saw this in the past when several superintendents ago got rid of the homecoming parade. That was a decision made out of fear (in my opinion) - the fear of having to do more work to line it all up, the fear of paying extra to bus kids over to LHS, the fear of having to think outside of the box in terms of how to handle kids who are in several different activities and how do we still get them involved despite maybe having to be in two or three floats. All this fear clouded our decision to get rid of an amazing homecoming tradition and a major component of our culture. You can tell this was a stupid decision because what filled that void? Nothing. We only got worse as a result of that decision made out of fear.
Video of the Month - Family travels the world before their children lose their vision.
Thoughts from Twitter
Give this a try in your classroom . . .
This is a concept I just came across via the always excellent Jennifer Gonzalez. She interviews Melanie Meehan, a teacher who uses seminars in her classes on a regular bases. Basically what this means is that she has her students sign up for a seminar only if they are interested in the topic or need to learn more about it. Just like we sign up for real seminars in our respective fields.
Each seminar is basically a mini-lesson that last around 10 minutes. Meehan conducts the seminars while the rest of the class has work time. She also will post the seminar topics up on the board and allow he students to sign up for the sessions.
Then while everyone else is working, she starts seminar #1 and meets with the students who signed up for it. When that is done she starts seminar #2 and meets with those students and so on. She has anywhere between two to four sessions per period.
I love this idea as it's a great time to meet with students who need to re-learn something or need help understanding a skill, yet they are not going to ask about it during class. I love too that it allows teachers to focus in on just the students who identify that they need help. We don't have to spend time re-teaching something to the entire class.
For our next theme in College Comp 2, which is an analysis of the film Inception, I'm going to employ this strategy. Now, this CIHS class is a bit different due to the structure where we meet M-W-F. But I'm going to organize seminars that students can sign up for an attend on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
The first round of sessions might look like this -
In-text citation
How to craft an effective introduction
Questions about Inception
Paragraph construction
The second round might look like this -
Using quotes effectively in your analysis
Nailing your introduction and conclusion
Having clear topic sentences
Nailing your Works Cited
Of course, just the students who need help with these specific areas would sign up and attend. What a clever way to handle re-teaching content while also allowing students to take some ownership of their education too.
Article of Interest -
Bonus content of the week - KRA's - Key Result Areas
KRAs are simply areas that you identify that allow your students or players or teachers or coaches to know what specific areas they need to excel in in order to 'win.'
For example, I use KRAs with my writing students on their essays. In order to craft an effective narrative - for example - my students need to know that these five things are vital -
1. Structure your narrative as a story. Don't summarize an event that happened to you. Instead, structure it as a story that moves us through the experience right along with you. Use short paragraphs that help move us through the story.
2. Use dialogue and thoughts to fully engage us. Dialogue and thoughts (internal dialogue) helps immerse the reader in your story.
3. Use specific and key details to render the experience authentic. That is, paint a picture of what is going on in the story for. the reader so we can see the events unfold. This too also helps immerse us in your narrative.
4. Revise for basic grammatical and sentence level flaws. Nothing breaks the reader out of a narrative like basic errors in an essay.
This way, before a student submits their essay, they can go back and check off each one of these. If they do so, they know how well they will do ahead of time.
I had KRAs when I was an assistant football coach at NCTC. I knew as a defensive assistant that I was doing well and performing at a satisfactory level each week because I had the areas in which I need to produce (or get results) laid out for me.
My key areas were
1. Prepare game footage (this meant setting up the camera, providing a VHS, making sure the manager was set to record the game, then after the game, ensuring the equipment was packed away, and then I was in charge of making copies of the tapes for the other coaches).
2. Breakdown game film for scout team (I knew that I had to watch the other teams' film and break it down by their favorite offensive formations. I then put them on cards that I would then have the scout team run against our defense in practice that week).
3. Coach the outside linebackers and defensive ends (this meant making sure I worked with the defensive coordinator to align his scheme with what the outside linebackers and defensive ends needed to do as part of that game plan. This almost always meant setting the edge and keeping contain).
4. Sub in and coach during the game (this meant I was in charge of subbing in the outside linebackers and DEs during the game as well as coaching them during the game and also giving feedback to the defensive coaches up in the booth).
Again, each week I could look at those areas and if I completed those responsibilities, I knew I was being successful.
But how often do we ever get these from our leaders? How often do we give these to those people under us or those people who we are leading?
Check out the On the Other Hand columns originally published in the Times.
In case you missed it,
Chief Inspiration Officer of Room 205
I am married to the most amazing person in the world, Kristie. It was love at first sight. At least for me. And it still is.
We have four wonderful children, Casey, Koko, Kenzie, and Cash. And now we have been blessed with six grandchildren!
I also happen to have the greatest job in the world: teaching English to high school students.
I am in my 25th year of teaching at Lincoln High School. I graduated from Lafayette High School in Red Lake Falls in 1992. I decided to enter the field of education because of two amazing teachers, Mr. Mueller, my fourth and sixth grade elementary school teacher and assistant baseball coach, and Mrs. Christianson, my 9th grade English teacher.
I attended Northland Community College, and had my life changed by the amazing Dr. Diane Drake. Then I transferred to Bemidji State University in 1995. There I had amazing professors who further inspired me to teach English (Dr. Helen Bonner, Dr. Mark Christensen, Susan Hauser, and Gerry Schnabel). I graduated with my BS in English Education in 1997.
I student taught with the wonderful Lisa Semanko and then began teaching full-time at LHS in 1998.
I took a year's leave of absence in 2001-02 to return to BSU for my MA in English. There I had the privilege to teach and work closely with my greatest mentor, Dr. Mark Christensen. I earned my MA in English in 2006 and was honored with "Thesis of the Year" for my creative non-fiction, braided, multi-genre memoir, "Meeting Myrtle: A Biography."
In 2013, thanks to my dear friend and mentor, Dr. Jodi Holen, I was offered an adjunct teaching position fall semester at the University of North Dakota. Tuesday nights I teach Intro to Education: Teaching and Learning 250 from 5-8. Those three hours fly by in about ten minutes.
Then in 2016 I was blessed to win a WEM award (thanks to a nomination from a former student (and now an elementary school teacher), Ciera Mooney).
In 2017 I became part of the #pineconepd podcast club along with Brian Loe, Jeff Mumm, Kelsey Johnson, Kelly Weets, Josh Watne, Tevia Strand, Megan Vigen, Mariah Hruby, Laura Brickson, Loren Leake, Katie Hahn, Melora Burgee, and new members all the time. This has been one of the best forms of PD I've ever been a part of. They make me a better teacher every time we meet. Please think about joining us in the summer at the Pine Cone Pub from 6:30 - until we've solved all the world's problems. For that evening anyway.
In 2021, I became head coach of the Powler football team. It is a dream come true. I have an amazing staff and had an excellent mentor in two amazing former head coaches, Jeff Mumm and Bryce Lingen. I couldn't have asked for greater men to learn from.
Finally, thanks to the inspiration of Shane Zutz (our former principal) I devised this as a way to distribute my Teaching Thoughts and add more content to, hopefully, help out and inspire others.
Email: kurt.reynolds@myprowler.org
Website: http://teacherscribe.blogspot.com
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