Soreness and the Unmotivated

Sitting here watching the USC / Stanford game. All I have is over-the-air tv and I'm a little upset that I have to watch two teams from Cali instead of the Big Ten game of Wisconsin and Ohio State. One, because I really like watching the Wisconsin offensive line do their thing. Two, because I live in Big Ten territory (Indiana). Finally, three, because my Hoosiers are not doing too swell and at lease one team will win the Wisky/OSU game will have a winner wearing the color red. :) Come to think of it though, I am a little interested in this game because my beloved Indianapolis Colts are .........well.........not like my normal beloved Colts this year and Andrew Luck is the projected number one pick next year in the draft. Normally, the number one pick wouldn't have any business being drafted by the Colts, but this year, like I said, it's a not been a typical year for the Colts. Anyway, this past week has really worn me down. Every night this past week, I had something in the evening that wasn't there last week. I am an assistant basketball coach for the 8th grade team in my building and practice started this week. So that's another two hours after school that I have that's new. Side note - I love basketball. I have been an assistant coach for the varsity/jv team in some fashion at the school where I graduated high school from the past 9 years. I am pretty excited about the guys that have made the team. They seem really receptive to instruction and they work hard. I'm trying to get a feel for how the head coach is going to run things in practice and when I can insert my voice in to the conversations. I'm looking forward to a good, productive season based on daily improvement. On Wednesday, I went to a David Crowder Band concert with a good friend. John Mark McMillan, Chris August, and the band Gungor also performed. It was totally amazing and I'm so glad I went. The only problem for me was that it started at 7:30 and ended at 11:30. I got home around 12:45. It made for a late night, but that wasn't the worst part. The worst part was that there weren't any chairs for the fans of the concert. So, yes. 4 hours of standing at the concert + 2 hours of basketball practice on my feet + a full school day as well made for some pretty sore feet, legs, and knees. I was tired, so I decided to go into school on Saturday and get caught up. Plus, I have a sub on Monday, because I have a reading/language arts curriculum meeting. I had to get all of that stuff ready as well. I despise getting sub plans ready. I feel it's necessary, but so time consuming. Plus, our schedule is kind of out of whack on Monday due to Halloween and the kids dressing up like Eerie Illnesses. Other than being really tired and my feet really sore, it was a pretty good week.
I'm still in amazed wonderment of the staff that I get to work with. They make me want to come to school  everyday. Also, my kids are really good and them make the school day go so fast because of their eagerness to learn and do get better. On Monday, my kids will be taking their Acuity diagnostic tests for SS. I'm a little nervous about this, because I feel that some of the questions are too specific about some things. I think in SS, kids need to see the big pictures and not necessarily the small dinky things that mainly just come back to memorization about key things. Anyway, it is what it is, so it be what it be.
Something I'm struggling with is one student who honestly could care less about anything in school. He doesn't want to do anything. Asks questions like "Why do we have to do this?" "Why do we have homework." "Why this?" "Why that?" He really has zero motivation to do anything school related. He really likes skateboarding, so I try to incorporate some of that type of stuff into our conversations. He did do some great work the other day when some of his lit circle group was helping him. I emailed his mom and told him that he had did awesome that day! I figured he would maybe start putting forth a little more effort. Alas, he didn't. Gotta figure out another strategy.......

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We're all Connected

 In band class this week, my students had some trouble focusing on whatever the band teacher had planned for them to do that day. It has been a common recurrence so far this year on Friday when they have that special.  This Friday, before they went, I reminded them about making a change for the better. I went to pick them up from band and when I got there I found out that not much had changed. Apparently, some of them crossed the line from being funny into being more of a distraction to others and because of the distractions they didn't, as a class, get to play their trumpets. When they returned to our classroom we had a good discussion about how our actions always have some sort of reaction. Whether positive or negative there is a reaction to it. The reaction that my class had was that they didn't get to play the trumpets. They were upset about it. Also, the discussion in the band room went over their time in band by 10 minutes. So, what did that end up meaning? It meant that when they got back to go to science they were late by 10 minutes. Which in turn, made my teaching partner's students who come to my class for social studies at this time, late as well. We talked about how everyone is connected in one way or another, and how we are all linked as one. During this time, we should have had a Free-Write-Friday in Language Arts while we watch our student led news show production on our projector. But, we couldn't. I think it really opened some of their eyes to have a broader view than just themselves.

I watched this today. I got inspired. You should too. 

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Tagxedo of My Blog

Here's a quick Tagxedo of all the words on my blog. I think it's kind of interesting the words that I type the most. 

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Review Games

I put together a review jeopardy-like game for the Olmec, Mayan, and Aztec over the weekend. I learned something that I need to share. When doing a game, make sure that each table group is also involved in trying to obtain the answer as well. I was really focused on the table that was trying to get the answer, but the other tables were just chit-chatting about nothing while one table was working to get the answer. So, I'm going to let the other tables score points as well if they get it right.

It worked well. The second class I had went a lot smoother.

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Drive Motivation

Interested in motivation? A whole book on what motivates you, Drive by Daniel Pink, summed up in a 10 minute "sketch." Pretty interesting. It all boils down to being a part of something larger than yourself and having a purpose that extends far beyond yourself, more of a giving back to help further mankind. Humans have this thing people want autonomy, or the ability to do what you want. I think this is true. I want control over my life and I imagine you do too. No one really likes being told what to do. People also want to continually get better, AKA, mastery. The way I think is that I always want to get better than the day before. Do I succeed in this every day? Of course not, but I still try.  I have a student who has a "man crush" on the Oregon Ducks football team. Yesterday, he had traced/drew the Win The Day logo that they have incorporated into their football culture. Here it is for you to see.

Oregon's Win The Day

I asked him what it meant and he gave me a pretty good answer to the real deal and I talked to him about it to see how could apply it to his own life. He said it was basically, just doing your best and trying to "win the day" and not let the day beat you. This is mastery in action.  Finally the third thing that motivates individuals is that people want to be a part of something larger than their self and to have a purpose that extends far beyond yourself, more of a giving back to help further mankind. Really interesting. I suggest watching it.

Here's the embedded video for you to watch.

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Progress Reports

It's Friday night. I'm sitting on the couch. I have graded some papers while watching some high school football and Blue Bloods tonight. I've also planned most of my week besides language arts. I know I'm going to teach simple and compound sentences next week, but I'm just not sure about how to do it yet. On Mo.nday, we're going to review for a social studies unit test over the Olmec, Mayan, and Aztec civilizations. I need to make some sort of review game. I'm thinking I need some sort of jeopardy game to review. We had a map test today over the countries of Central America. A couple of students bombed these 7 countries. It really behooves me how they did this. They had about 5 minutes 4 straight days to basically memorize the 7 countries while studying. We went over some sort of an acronym that they could use to help them remember the first letter of every country. We went in order from West to East. Goats (Guatemala) Bowl (Beliz) Every (El Salvador) Hour (Honduras) Near (Nicaragua) Crazy (Costa Rica) People (Panama). This saddens me that some of the students didn't do too well. What happened? I don't know.

In reading, we finally finished Tuck Everlasting. To demonstrate their learning and understanding of the book, the students had the opportunity to choose things off a menu. The menu was an idea from a fellow teacher. (Side note - Seriously, I can't tell you enough how awesome my team is.) The students seemed to really get involved into these projects. The only problem I ran into was that I would have to grade each of my students' projects. They each had to do 3 projects. 3 projects x 30 kids in a class x 2 classes = around 180 projects to grade. I didn't really think that though :) So, I let the students decide which one they think they did the best effort. I still need to grade these, along with their similarities and differences paper that they wrote comparing the book to the movie.

Other things I need to do is finish grading their biographies that they presented to the classes earlier this year, get my progress reports, data binders, and students' goals finished. I also need to have my S2S meetings with my students as we discuss their individual goals with me.

I'm so thankful for the people that I work with.

Till next time.

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Zoom Focus

Zoom Focus

This is a great, great read from Jon Gordon.

Zoom Focus

September 25th, 2011 Posted in General

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“Vision without Execution is hallucination” – Einstein

I believe every one of us has a desire to accomplish great things, to do something meaningful, to have an impact. Yet, so many of us don’t take the actions necessary to create the success we desire. Then there are others who are very busy taking actions but the actions have nothing to do with their vision and goals. They’ve become lost in the busyness of life.

In my work with sports teams, businesses and organizations I have found that the key to individual and team success is to Zoom Focus. Zoom Focus helps you turn ideas and goals into reality and results. Zoom Focus helps you focus on your priorities, execute, and create success. Zoom Focus helps you take daily steps towards your big picture vision.

Now more than ever it is a time for action. It is a time for getting things done. It is a time to tune out the distractions and the noise from the doomsdayers and the naysayers and focus on what truly matters and what truly will help us create success. In this spirit here are a few ways to put Zoom Focus to work for you and your team.

Create your Big Picture Vision – This might be a goal or a dream. It might be a project that needs to be completed or a sale you are trying to close. It might be a company objective or a team mission. It might be a book you want to write, an initiative to improve your community, or a championship you want to win. Identify your vision and then you’ll be ready to Zoom Focus and take the necessary actions to get you there.

Ask One Question – Each day when you wake up in the morning ask the question, “What are the three most important things I need to do today that will help me create the success I desire?” Then each day take action on those three things.

Tune out the Distractions – Turn off the television. Stop answering the phone. Don’t answer the email right now. Talk to your friend later. First, get things done. Execute, accomplish and then feel free to embrace the distractions.

Say No and Yes – My friend once told me, “If the devil can’t make you bad, he’ll make you busy.” He reminded me that we need to stop scattering our energy and wasting our time on trivial things that have nothing to do with our vision and goals and start saying yes to our priorities and to what truly matters. Each day we must make choices and those choices including saying “no” to people and opportunities so we can say “yes” to the work we are meant to do and the success we are meant to create.

Focus on Daily Improvement – I see it in sports all the time. Teams focus too much on winning the championship and forget to Zoom Focus each day in practice. They are outcome focused not process focused. The key is to focus on improving each day and take the necessary action steps. If you incrementally improve each day, each week, each month, each quarter by the end of the year you’ll see remarkable results and growth. When you Zoom Focus on the process the outcome takes care of itself.

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40 Alternative Assessments for Learning | TeachHUB

40 Alternative Assessments for Learning | TeachHUB

I thought this was really cool!

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Update

I'm sitting here on a Sunday night on the couch watching TV with my wife as she is eating ramen noodles. I'm prepared for tomorrow besides running some copies in the morning before school. It feels good. I spent some time with my family this weekend, which was nice also. It's starting to feel like fall, which is my favorite part of the year. Mainly because of the cool weather, but also because of the colors. I don't like hot weather at all. I sweat a lot. I get miserable. I like sitting around a fire on a chilled night. 

Anyway, moving on to things educationally related. I feel that I am settling into my role this year and it's feeling nice. A lot of the people that know me ask how I like my job and the only thing that I can say is "Great!" and that I am really enjoying my students and working with the other 6th grade team teachers. I feel very comfortable with them and it feels like we have known each other for a long time. The best part is that they share these amazing projects/menus/resources with me just because they want to and they want our team to be successful. I use a lot of their stuff and tweak it a little to my liking. I try to share when I think I have something good to share, but their giving is a lot more than my giving right now. I hope that one day I can give back to others as much as they have helped me. 

In reading, we're finishing up Tuck Everlasting. I'm excited to see what my students have come up with to share about their understanding of characters, theme, and setting. They were given a menu to pick projects from. (Side note-another amazing thing I got from my team.) I have seen some of them so far and they are looking really great and are showing good evidence of understanding. I think we'll do a gallery walk of all the projects to showcase all the work. I need to make sure I bring my camera that day. We're then going to do some things on understanding context clues and some Scope Magazine activities to finish out the week as we take a break from novels.

In social studies, we just finished a little unit on culture. It's something that we'll refer back to constantly throughout the year. The students did well on their vocab test over the terms. We did a "Write It, Draw It, Define It" activity and vocabulary dominoes on the vocabulary words. We're going to be starting a unit on Mexico and Central America...the Mayas, the Incas, the Olmecs, etc. 

In ending this week, I had something told to me that has really lifted my spirits. One of the students in my class has a relative that lives next door to her that I see pretty occasionally because she works with my wife. I was asking her how the student in my class is liking/enjoying school. She says that she is really enjoying it and she says that she is learning a lot. The best thing that she said is that even though we are having a lot of fun, we are learning too. This makes me feel great!!! It's not the fact that she is enjoying school, but the fact that she knows that she is learning things, while at the same time having fun. She seems to enjoy all the projects and learning activities that we do, but I'm more impressed that she understands that she is learning through the activities that we are doing and that school and learning can be fun and not just boring. 

I'm leaving you (I'm acting like someone actually reads this, hehe) this week with a quote I found - 

‎"The object of teaching a child is to enable him to get along without his teacher." Elbert Hubbard - I feel that this is something that I strive to do. If a student can be taught how to learn on his own then the possibility of gaining knowledge is infinite. 

Have a good week! 

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Week 3 Down

We finished up this week talking about literary devices and making posters that will be displayed in the room. I feel there needs to be a little more teaching about them for the students to show mastery of them.
In Social Studies we took a quiz/test over latitude and latitude. I feel most of the students did very well on this and can now find things on a map. I had a lot of students absent of Friday so I'll have them make up their tests on Tuesday.

If felt good to have a day off on Monday since it was Labor Day. I took some time to relax this weekend. Did some grading and got caught up for the most part.
I have a meeting with the principal this week to talk about my quality in the classroom and to set some goals for this year. I need to take some time to do this anyway because without goals, I have no direction and I'll end up spinning in circles.
On Saturday, I was able to see my Hoosiers play Ball State in Lucas Oil Stadium. I was pretty disappointed in the execution of a lot of things. I think they'll get better, but I was hoping for a better bright spot.
Here's to a good week of learning and excitement of a 4-Day week.

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