Fearless and Fabulous in First Grade

Yet...so much power in one word.  It brings to mind the notion that something is not finished...an action yet to be completed. Teamwork!       A good friend of mine...a mentor, who happens to also be my principal,  Bethany Hill, recently posed the question on Twitter... "What if we viewed  barriers and obstacles as opportunities?"  My mind immediately went to the  amazing obstacle course that our PE teacher currently had set up in our  gymnasium.  I was visualizing my little first graders' eyes as they walked into the  gym and saw this colorful array of obstacles.  Their eyes lit up with excitement,  some of them literally jumped up and down with pure glee at the challenge  before them.       Next, I thought of how they intentionally took the challenge and began to  problem solve how they were going to maneuver through the course.  They  didn't know how they were going to do it yet...

    I recently had the honor of writing for an amazing new website called Kids Deserve it.  Although their website kidsdeserveit.com is new, they have long been a Twitter sensation.  Todd Nesloney and Adam Welcome created the hashtag,  #KidsDeserveIt.  The idea was to create a place where people could share ideas and opinions that would challenge the way we have always done things in education.  That definitely sounded like my kind of place!  If you have not checked out their hashtag or their website, you are really missing out!  It is truly an inspiration and because this place now exists thousands of students, teachers, administrators and families' lives have been impacted in the most wonderful way possible!  The following is my blog,  OneWord, One Mission which was featured on kidsdeserveit.com on January 1st, 2016.  A big thank you to Todd Nesloney for the opportunity! One Word, One Mission      I though...

     The past few weeks have been fast paced and full of family, food, fun, and finally relaxation!  There is nothing like the day after Christmas.  At our house we spend it with a full day in pajamas, rousing games of Clue, eating leftovers, and watching one marathon show after another.  I inevitably end up snuggled up on my couch with a cozy blanket and my laptop, ready to empower myself in the education world one PLN at a time.  The new year is fast approaching and a goal or resolution must be picked!  The pressure is on, but first...I must reflect!      Yes, it's here!  The daunting task of looking back over our year.  We must all sit back and reflect over our accomplishments and failures.  We will sum up the total of our year as either successful or disappointing.  We will make plans to do better in the year to come and set goals to help us attain "the better" we are searching for.  Reflection is a po...

There is a moment that every teacher reaches when working with struggling learners.  It's that moment when you stop and say, "What else can I do?  I've done everything I know to do and yet nothing seems to be helping."  As a teacher, it is one of the most helpless feelings.  Watching a student struggle and become frustrated or even want to give up is a horrible experience, but it is the reality of what happens when a student continuously "doesn't get it."  They eventually do not want to try anymore. I found myself in this place, once again, with some very sweet, precious, and most importantly hard working students.  They were working their little brains to the point of exhaustion every day trying to read.  Again and again we would go over our letters and sounds, reading strategies, and sight words.  Again and again they would struggle to identify the sight words we had just discussed.  We were building our spelling words and breaking them...

     I don't know about you but for me math time was my least favorite part of school.  I hated it with every part of my being!  Literally... I loathed it!  Why you ask?  Because I was not a good math student, or so I thought.  Math was where I felt less than equal to the other kids in my class.  Way less equal, like not even on the same page as the others.  I was that kid in the pictures from way back in the day sitting on the stool with the "Dunce" hat on.         Everyone seemed to be able to answer the questions that the teacher asked and I was still calculating the answer in my head or on my paper.  I know I wasn't the only one feeling that way, but the pressure to be able to respond as quickly as some of the other kids were was frustrating to say the least!  I can remember many times thinking to myself, "How can people like math?"      When I started teaching I was determined to not l...

     Parent teacher conferences are fast approaching and planning for them can be stressful.  With a class full of students a teacher can quickly get overwhelmed by the feeling of needing to push out tons of information within a small window of time.  With conference times usually a mere 15 minutes this really can seem daunting.      There is the traditional parent teacher conference where the teacher sits and discusses the report card, the behavior, the academic concerns and then graciously thanks the parents for coming in and escorts them out the door.  Now, my own experience, as the parent, with this whirlwind traditional conference is this...  I left feeling like it happened so fast it was all a blur and I usually could only remember bits and pieces of the information.  The academic jargon that was relayed to me went in one ear and out the other.  What I really wanted to know was the teacher's personal connection to my ...

PROCEDURES ,  PROCEDURES ,PROCEDURES      School is back in session and it's time to teach procedures.  Every child wants to know the expectation and every teacher wants them to learn the expectation as quickly as possible.  It makes things so much easier when everyone is on the same page.  The first twenty days or so is usually devoted to doing just that.      In these past few weeks we have spent A LOT of time talking about the "How to's" of the basics.  How to... line up, choose a seat, walk in the hallway, put things in our mailboxes,  use our crayons, etc...   This can seem very trivial and be very tedious work, but it's best not to assume that every precious child that enters your classroom understands these basics.  Working on simple things like what our voices should sound like, and standing still with our hands at our sides can be the difference between a calm and efficient classroom and one of chaos. ...