Memories in hindsight

This weekend I spent a lot of time thinking about memories and go through my old memories. Last week my students were asking me about the friends that I have in my life that have played an important role in my life. I talked to them about people from Erika, Doug, and Elizabeth from high school to my college roommates and friends. They then asked me how I met the different people. It made me laugh to remember all the different ways I met these important people in my life. I even contacted a bunch of them to see if they remembered because for me they brought up so many fond and good memories. One of my friends told a different story then I remember for when we first met, this made me want to see if I could find the truth. So I started to go through my old journals to try and find the answer and I received a HUGE SHOCK!!! This meeting was never in my journals. In fact, I enjoyed going through my journals and reliving things so much I read pretty much all my journals from 2004 to present and I continued to be shocked by the things I spent pages talking about and detailing and the things I neglected to record. I guess it is all about hindsight but I feel like some of the most important moments in my life were the ones that I skipped whereas I covered some of the most boring and stupid things.

It isn't amazing that at the time we are going through something it seems like the biggest deal in the world. I also found it hysterical how many boys I have been in love with and stated, I have never felt like this before and all of them are nothing to me now. I thought I had grown up by the time I was 23 but those statements and entries show a whole different story. I think about how time and perspective have taught me a lot of important lessons and though I still can get caught up in some of the mundane things I also realize what I want in my journal. More about the important people that forever changed my life, for example I have already rectified one of my friends and added the how we met story and I plan on doing that for more, also adding how I felt when Erika died and how I still feel about that (it needs to be recorded), and I also realize that the biggest thing missing from my journals is stories of my students. Every day they make me laugh and I am honored to be able to associate with them but they are also missing from most of the journals. I need to take more time to remember the reasons I love teaching and to relate the stories of being a modern day school marm (I love that word, it was used in the 1800s for the school teacher in the one room schoolhouse) and enjoy the laughs they bring to me.

SOAP BOX!!!

This week I have become very frustrated with my fellow teachers!! Don't get me wrong. I love my colleagues and even the colleague in particular who is the reason I am on my soap box is also AMAZING in so so so many ways. But I cannot believe some of the bais that she expressed this week. She is dumbing down the material because she assumes that they cannot use the textbook. I find it professionally insulting that she is dumbing down material and I find it personally insulting because she is teaching 8th grade, which means she is teaching my students from last year. Those are my students whom I love and adore. I think they are amazing but I also know that they can read a teacher and know how to get easy work.

First let me say that I teach at a very very unique school. Half of our population come from all over the district for our gifted program. By the time these students are in ninth grade we are teaching them 10th grade English and they are taking AP Science and Social Studies. They are amazing and so much fun in every way. The other half of my school is low socio-economic (they are POOR, lots of free and reduced lunch) and a lot of ESL students and Special Ed students. They are the two extremes in every district and they are in the same school. I am blessed because I get to teach them all and I love them all. The gifted kids are fun because we get to go so much deeper into things and they love to discuss. The boundary kids are so wonderful because once you win them over you can push them to achieve and see so much growth, plus they will ALWAYS love LOVE YOU. You can yell at them and chew them out and 5 minutes later they are talking about how you are their favorite teacher. It is amazing. As a teacher at my school says, the Gifted kids keep you sane but the boundary kids make it worth it. I love my boundary kids and I have the hardest time letting them go because they can be AMAZING!!!! I also know how capable they are and how they are the ones that are used to people going easy on them or thinking that are not as capable, they lose respect for you when you fall for it so it becomes harder to win them over.

So getting to my rant of the week: The most disrespectful thing a teacher can do for the boundary kids is to dumb things down. WE ARE THE TEACHERS!!! It is our job to give them HIGH EXPECTATIONS and HELP them REACH IT!!! Don't just say they cannot read and then give them an easier textbook. They can find context clues, they know how to use the index and when you give them easier material you are not helping them achieve more, you are treating them like they are DUMB!!! They lose respect for you and themselves. THEY CAN DO IT!!!! Yes, they probably cannot just read a chapter from the textbook, but I teach the gifted kids and they cannot even do that. Reading a chapter is boring, don't do it. But they can get important information from the chapters with a worksheet, they can read parts of the textbooks, they can use pictures to find even more information. It also shouldn't be the ONLY thing you use to give them information, because that is just bad teaching to only use the textbook or a worksheet to teach something for the high and low level kids both. You hold their feet to the fire and you make them do it. The worst thing you can do as a teacher is to dumb things down. Also the stuff they will love and make them excited is often the hard stuff but it is what will get them excited. SO SUPPORT THEM and they can do it!!!! I feel really strongly about it. For example, Primary sources are hard but if they like what it is talking about they will do the hard work to understand it. In fact so strongly about it I have been thinking about telling one teacher that I will come teach their class and show them how capable the students are. Stop looking at a test score that most of the teachers don't agree with ( it is a reading level test called the SRI) and start pushing and challenging the students. They will meet the challenge and they will respect you more for them. After all our job is not to survive the year or to make our lives easier our job is to help them be the most successful they can possibly be and to prepare them for the world. They need to be treated like they are capable. Especially our population is so used to the world makes a judgment that they are not capable and will be stuck in the poverty cycle. We, as teachers, need to know that the way to break the cycle is through education and that only works is if we push them to meet higher expectations. I don't know if there is anything else I feel stronger about when it comes to teaching then we need to set the standards high and then help the students reach it.