By Mark
One teacher in Portland, Oregon, is making the news for all the wrong reasons. She recently plead not guilty to possession and delivering of methamphetamine.
While that's been splashed all over the news in the pacific northwest and other parts of the country, I wanted to take a moment to acknowledge the other news about teachers. You know, the good news. Not the one teacher out of the 6.8 million teachers presently working in the United States (according to the U.S. Census) recently indicted of meth possession. Not the one who did this in Texas or that in Arizona or the ones being threatened with irrational jail time over failing test scores in Detroit, but the other millions upon millions.
I thought, how hard could it be to find stories about all the great and wonderful things that teachers do every day? What a great idea for a post, I thought, find all this news from the last year about teachers doing great things, and post links to the stories on the blog! How hard could that be?
Pretty dern hard, it turns out. And that is a problem I'd like your help with.
I did find a few pleasant articles about how "important" teachers are, but nothing with real specifics about what teachers do to warrant that distinction.
We need find ways to remind the public of the 6.8 million other teachers…the ones working hard and sacrificing for the schools and communities. So please, call them out! Name names! Post links if you can…who do you know or who have you read about that is doing something above, beyond, and amazing for America's schoolchildren?
Who out there is making the most with not enough and still changing kids' lives?
Who out there is toiling, with no press coverage and no internet banners heralding their achievements?
In the comments below, post your "Best Story from the Other 6.8 Million of Us" for 2009…if there's no link to a story, be the reporter yourself!
Thanks everyone for sharing… keep the stories coming as we wrap up the year!!
Tooting my own horn is difficult…I feel I’m being “pious” or something. But, I do things that build up my community. And in light of your article…here are just a few:
*a former student of two years…her mother died. I was called to the hospital on a Sunday afternoon and embraced my former student who had tears in her eyes. I got the house key, cleaned the house, stocked the refrigerator with groceries, and took meals for the incoming family. I had a few of the flowers from her grave preserved for she and her sister, too. I still pray for her every chance I get.
*one of my students didn’t have a winter coat and temperatures were dropping. I bought her one.
*new to my classroom, she entered with no self-confidence. Her previous teacher made her feel poorly for her inability to retain information. She began this year on Tier 2 of RTI and reading in the 10th percentile. At Christmas, she has jumped to the 50th percentile, is now on Tier 1 of RTI, and exceeded the mid-year benchmark for DIBELS. I believed in her…she SOARED!!
*I built a “rainforest” in the lobby of my school with plants on loan from a local nursery. I placed a humidifier inside so the students could understand how humid the rainforest is. This was for a study on habitats for first grade, but ALL grades were invited to tour the rainforest.
*a student’s parent was jailed for selling drugs. The family was ripped apart just as the holiday season began. I bought presents for the entire family…they never knew who gave them. (and still don’t)
*I received a grant for over $500 of learning games. I knew I didn’t have a lot of time during my day to teach these wonderful games to my students, so I hosted a “Saturday School” and the opportunity to learn these games. My entire class attended! Learning was optimized in our classroom – during class time, recess time, free time!
Teaching is my CALLING…my PASSION. I don’t like to toot my own horn…I like for others to see the merit of my work and be moved in some small way to do something for others that will touch their lives. But, I do see the need for educators to be able to share their accomplishments and acts of kindness with the community at large. We need to help open their eyes to our investment in America’s future.
My teaching philosophy is all about going the extra mile and making memories with my students, so they will remember our year together as one of their best. Yes, it does mean money out of my own pocket, but I am getting more creative in that area 🙂 I currently teach 5th.
1. There are tons of photographs taken and made into a memory DVD or could be uploaded to one of many online services and downloaded by parent’s at home.
2. Kids don’t get enough hand’s on projects – so we build string art, graham cracker candy houses, paint on real canvas in Van Gogh or Mondrian’s style just to name a few.
3. Every 5th grader does a science fair project by the inquiry method, not just a demonstration, like build a volcano. We have built catapults and alka-seltzer rockets, too.
4. This year I’m utilizing http://www.in2books.com and my students are reading books and writing to an approved adult pen pal 5+ times this year. You should see the excitement!!!
5. I have an elaborate classroom economy system where students save their “cash” and get to spend it at 3 class stores during the year.
6. The students get to do claymation and create an animation about a book they read or some math concepts they will teach others.
(I must give credit to Rafe Esquith and Judy Ellis for inspiration for some of these seed ideas.)
So you get the idea – make memories with your students and the learning will naturally occur.
Fantastic post and comments. Keep these kinds of stories coming. Congratulations, Teachers!
We’re starting a science fair at our school this year. It’s the first time we’ve had one in the 22 years I’ve been there. I think it’s a wonderful way to enrich and encourage young scientists.
One of the science teachers at my high school started a rocket club. They are amazing, and are currently under contract with NASA to work on some things.
More than that, though, they reach out and work with younger kids.
http://www.rocketryplanet.com/content/view/2742/30/
That url (I think you’ll have to cut and past it)will take you to an article and slide show that tells how for one day, the rocket team taught young Latino boys how to build rockets.
Here’s the lead so you’ll get the gist: “SEATTLE, Washington USA — Members of the Ingraham Aerospace Sciences Academy from Ingraham High School in Seattle, Washington, hosted 25 young members of the Latino Achievers Club for a workshop designed and presented by Ingraham TARC Team Project Managers Nat Mote and Patrick Ma to pass on what they have learned about their exciting hobby.”
These little things are not so little.
One of my colleagues coordinates a poem recitation contest (poetryoutloud) which I have found to be awesome for my kids. All students participate for a grade, then the class votes on the top two in the room to, if they choose, move onto competition. One of the winners this past week in my class was a young man with nearly crippling dyslexia and some huge confidence problems in the language arts. He performed masterfully and is beyond excited to be moving on. His mother is a special education paraprofessional in our building and approached me several times yesterday with a tremendous grin–“this is so big for him to be able to do this!” she communicated to me. He worked so hard and overcame serious frustration and confusion to truly achieve victory…and he’s got a great shot in the next level of competition.
As I write this I realize that the posts from Teresa and Sarah and me have one clear common thread…
I’m not a horn tooter either, I work with so many other good teachers I always find myself looking up to them for ways to improve my classroom and find myself thinking my classroom practices are often lacking. BUT I feel like I can do a little tooting because I was just able to motivate one my lowest performing students (without the bribe of methamphetamines) to bring his grade up from a 37% to a passing grade in the last month. Not only did this student make up missed work but I was able to get him to see his abilities and produce consistently quality work. This particular student has chosen to not take any ADD medication this school year and has really struggled with this choice. I teach English and have the student the last period of the day, so he really struggles to maintain focus in my class. I’m really proud of him for continually trying and proud of myself for actually continuing to believe in such a tough kid to relate to and teach.
See, this is newsworthy. This is the kind of thing that great teachers do! Enough of the other junk in the news. Great work Teresa, we should toot our own horns more, since no one else is tooting them for us!
I’m not usually good about tooting my own horn. Maybe that is indicative of our profession and why we quietly toil without recognition. But here I go…
This year I began working at an alternative middle/high school. When I arrived as the English teacher, there were a small collection of books, but not many titles that would appeal to the mostly male population of the school. So I set out to build a school library and create a literate culture. Four months later, through the generosity of donors on DonorsChoose.org and from our local community, we have several hundred books! Kids are reading everyday. And daily, it gets more difficult to get them to put their books away when reading time is over.
Most of these kids were nonreaders when they arrived and they fought the daily ritual of reading. But through persistance, high expectations and the willingness to keep working to match a kid with the right book, they are reading. No matter what else I accomplish this year, this will be the brightest spot for me. There is no greater joy for me as a teacher than to watch kids become avid readers who build their confidence daily and to watch that confidence spill over into so many other things that they do.