Life In Notes

I was reminded this week about one of my favorite books that I read during my M.A.T. program and that is "Growth Mindset" by Dr. Carol Dweck.  In the book, Dr. Dweck outlines that human beings have a fixed mindset that they can't or won't do something.  The idea of success is instead an idea of being defeated. With a growth mindset, you believe that success is a process.  It takes time.  It takes hard work.  It takes mistakes. Essentially, the journey is more important than the destination. The Milwaukee Bucks were the number one seed in the Eastern Conference NBA Playoffs and they were defeated by the number eight seed, Miami Heat in the first round.  A reporter asked superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo if the season was a failure and this is what he said: Do you get a promotion every year at your job? No, right? So every year, your work is a failure? No. Every year, you work towards something, which is a goal: It's to get a promotion, to be able to take ...

One of my favorite weeks is Reading Week.  Reading Week has been a little different the last few years due to COVID and restrictions on visitors, etc.  This year, the administration did a fantastic job bringing in guest readers, having a Bingo For Books event, having a book fair and creating time to Drop Everything And Read. In Room 207, we had FOUR guest readers.  Everyone from a former sports writer, to an educational leader in Providence Schools, to an on-air DJ to the father of one of our administrators. Each time we had a visitor, the students listened, asked questions about the book...then asked questions about their lives.  To meet these four amazing people and hear their stories (and how they use reading in their lives) was a treat for the class. Una de mis semanas favoritas es la Semana de la Lectura. La Semana de la lectura ha sido un poco diferente en los últimos años debido a COVID y restricciones a los visitantes, etc. Este año, la administración hizo un...

  Resolve - as in to solve; to find an answer for through reasoning As in...one of my favorite parts of teaching is watching the resolve of some of my students.  A few years ago I was fascinated that one of my multilingual learners in my class was writing an entire essay in Spanish, then putting it through Google Translate to get it into English (which is the opposite of what I do with this blog). The photo above is from a student that was having difficulty remembering what his prime and composite numbers were...so he pulled up a list of prime numbers and split his screen so that he would be able to use it as a reference. Is it cheating?  No.  It is finding a reference and leaning on it until you remember it.  There is a good possibility that this student will remember their prime and composite numbers better than most because this reference is staring them in the face. That is resolve.  Resolver - como en resolver; encontrar una respuesta a través del raz...

Those times happen.   When you are just not feeling it. This is one of those times. The end. Esos tiempos pasan. Cuando simplemente no lo sientes. Éste es uno de esos momentos. El fin.

  Why do teachers have so much time off? The answer...  We don't.  It may seem like it as there are breaks and we are off for the summer, holidays, etc.  But, the truth is that teachers are always working.  There is planning.  There is grading.  There is thinking...  SO. MUCH. THINKING.  Thinking about how to solve problems.  Thinking about how to reach a student.  Thinking about getting a student the additional support they need.  Thinking about how to speak to a parent (or fellow teacher or administrator) about an issue.  Thinking about learning targets.  Thinking about classroom management.  Thinking about how to best utilize your time.  The list goes on and on and on. It is brutal. I worked for years at a desk job in an office.  I would come up with ideas, have meetings, send emails, track sales, etc.  I would also sit down all day.  Most of my day felt like a break. Now... I am constantly...

  My favorite shirt of the year on one of my favorite students. Every day should be a "Be Kind Kind Of Day". Wouldn't the world be such a better place if everyone stopped to be kind to others? Mi camiseta favorita del año en uno de mis estudiantes favoritos. Cada día debe ser un "Día de ser amable". ¿No sería el mundo un lugar mejor si todos dejaran de ser amables con los demás?

  This is what I wanted my winter break to look like. Así es como quería que fueran mis vacaciones de invierno. This is what it really looked like. Esto es lo que realmente parecía. And I wonder why I never feel rested... Y me pregunto por qué nunca me siento descansado...

Valentine's Day.  Otherwise known as the day for kids to have an excuse to eat candy and have their hearts broken. There was so much candy around in the class that if I didn't let the students know that they couldn't eat it in school...I would have had to get them down off the walls. I also had a student that spent the whole day sad because they didn't have a Valentine.  I explained to them that at nine and ten years old, all of the students in the class should only have their parents as their Valentines'. Growing up is tough enough.  They don't need to start in the world of romance any earlier than necessary. Día de San Valentín. También conocido como el día en que los niños tienen una excusa para comer dulces y que les rompan el corazón. Había tantos dulces en la clase que si no les hubiera dicho a los estudiantes que no podían comerlos en la escuela... habría tenido que bajarlos de las paredes. También tuve un alumno que se pasó todo el día triste porque no t...

This winter has been a mild one, but it has still been winter.  It gets colder.  It gets darker earlier.  It gets more difficult to be inspired.  It becomes easier to sit around and not put in effort. This happens for students and for teachers too.  That middle of the year seems to feel as though it is dragging. It is important to take time.  Reflect.  And find a way to "recharge" the batteries...because Spring will be right around the corner. Este invierno ha sido suave, pero aún ha sido invierno. Hace más frío. Oscurece antes. Se vuelve más difícil estar inspirado. Se vuelve más fácil sentarse y no esforzarse. Esto sucede para los estudiantes y también para los profesores. Parece que esa mitad de año se está arrastrando. Es importante darse tiempo. Reflejar. Y busca la forma de "recargar" las pilas... porque la primavera estará a la vuelta de la esquina.

  Photos elicit memories.   When you teach, you bring your whole self into the classroom.  By the end of the year, my students have a really good sense of who I am and what I do.  They know a lot about me.  It is impossible to not bring your family into the classroom. Every year my students want to meet my wife, Mrs. Colton to them and my two sons, Jackson and Aidan.  It is a huge thrill when I bring them in and my family always feels like they are celebrities to the students. This photo was taken when my wife came in right before holiday break to work with the students on a holiday craft.  They were so excited to meet her and loved participating in the activity. It is so important as teachers, that we get to know the families of our students.  It is also important that our students get to know our families too. Las fotos evocan recuerdos. Cuando enseñas, traes todo tu ser al salón de clases. Al final del año, mis estudiantes tienen un muy bu...

One of the things that makes teaching so interesting is that every day is different.  There are some things like the routines of the classroom that are the same every day.  But...the responses, the questions, the schedule, almost anything can change daily.  It is important when teaching to make sure that you are providing consistancy and routine to the students,while also making sure you know how to "go with the flow". There is nothing static about teaching.  I could give a lesson one year to one class, then do the same lesson the next year and it could go in a completely different direction. I observe the class and listen to what they have to say.  If you listen, reflect and change...that is how you improve as a teacher. Una de las cosas que hace que la enseñanza sea tan interesante es que cada día es diferente. Hay algunas cosas como las rutinas del salón de clases que son las mismas todos los días. Pero... las respuestas, las preguntas, el horario, casi todo ...

  For the last three years, I have read a series of books about a mixed race family from Harlem named the Vanderbeekers.  The world of the Vanderbeekers is a beautiful one created by Karina Yan Glaser.  The family is filled with children, pets and a lot of love.  The kids regularly get into "good trouble" as I like to call it.  They are constantly on a mission to do the right thing, but the way they go about doing it is sometimes trouble inducing. We have been reading book #2 "The Vanderbeekers and the Hidden Garden" and I came across this quote, "It was amazing how generous people could be without wanting or expecting anything in return."  The quote has always given me pause, but on this particular day, it made me take action. I repeated the line three times and we spoke about what it meant.  In our conversation, we discussed things that you can do for others without expecting anything in return.  Then we spoke about the kindness of others. I bro...

Growing up, I loved music.  I tried a few different things on for size while I was going to school for my bachelor’s degree, but nothing really stuck.  I did some work in radio, which I loved, and I did not stop pushing until I had the opportunity to work in the music industry.  I held a few different specialized positions in marketing while working in the music business.  I enjoyed the work immensely, but in the early 2000’s, the bottom fell out of the industry, and I was left trying to figure out what I wanted to be when I grew up.  After working in music, I had stints in banking, non-profit work and restaurant marketing. By the time I reached my forties, I wondered if restaurant marketing was what I was going to do for the rest of my life.  The thought terrified me.  I could not imagine the next twenty years of my life going to an office, making phone calls, sending emails and working on spreadsheets.  It seemed like a terrible existe...

Encanto is a film that makes me think of the pandemic in that the first time I watched it was with my family as we were huddled together in quarantine.  During quarantine, new releases on streaming services became appointment viewing.  We would wait for new releases to occupy our time as there wasn't much new content being released and no one was going to movie theaters. I would have loved to have gone to the movie screening at Rhode Island College as it would have been nice to see everyone in person and had the opportunity to discuss Encanto in a group setting through different lenses.  It was not meant to be as I had to work that evening. When I originally watched Encanto with my family, it was for entertainment.  It was a fun film with a family of Latino heritage and catchy songs.  It was not a film that I gave much of a second thought to outside of hearing "We Don't Talk About Bruno" on the radio a million times in the months following. After reading Linda ...

I was drawn to the piece, "School Days: Hail, Hail, Rock 'n' Roll!" by Rick Mitchell because the beginning of my non-teaching career was in the music industry.  I worked for Sony Music for eight and a half years at the start of my working life.  It was a fantastic and magical time that ended in 2003 when the music industry bubble "burst" with the explosion of Napster.  I found myself on the outside looking in on something I had hoped would go on forever.  Music was and has always been an important part of who I am, so I incorporate music in my fourth-grade classroom.  Rick Mitchell does the same, in his high school classroom. Rick Mitchell was a professional rock critic for years before he became a teacher.  He explained that he "outgrew the mysterious joy and pride I once had found in telling people that the music they enjoyed actually sucked."  At that point he had a "desperate epiphany cleverly disguised as altruism" in which he made ...

Pixton  is a comic creation tool.  Pixton is thoughtful in design and thorough in its offerings (as long as you upgrade your subscription).  The free version is limited in the offerings of backdrops and avatars, but everything is available with a monthly or yearly subscription (I chose yearly for $99).  Comic-building tools are unbelievably easy to use and simple click-and-drag actions let students create and customize all parts of their comic.  Students can even upload photos to their comic.  Students can also share their comic online, download and print them.  Teachers will  enjoy the platform because it gets students to write and create narratives through the scope of comics and graphic novels.  Teachers can also create specific assignments that are tied into literature that may be read in class (they even have backdrops for "The Diary of Anne Frank"). Pixton has won multiple awards (Webby, People’s Choice, Digital Media and Common Se...

I believe that students learn from people that they like. I believe that connections (or relationships) are the entry point for learning. I believe that classroom management becomes easier when there are connections with home and students feel as though there are consequences for their actions. I believe that students need to feel loved. I believe that students need encouragement and praise .   I believe that students thrive when given safe spaces to work. I believe that each student is different and that we (as educators) need to try to understand these differences and scaffold as much as possible. I believe that learning should be fun. I believe that learning should be challenging. My final project is going to be about using technology to build stronger relationships with families.  I have a website where my personal portfolio sits, so I am going to create a page every year for my class.  I will post student work, videos, photos, Student of the Month, etc., while ...

After viewing "Build A School In The Cloud", the Ted Talk from Sugata Mitra, I had many thoughts rush over me.  Why are teachers even in a classroom?  Is what we do meaningless?  Can a computer teach students?  I had A LOT of questions.  But as I began to think about the questions some more, I inherently knew the answers to all of these questions. Schools were created over three hundred years ago by the British Empire.  The technology back then, as mentioned by Mitra was the bureaucratic machine.  It was technology built by people.  If you were able to read and write, had neat handwriting and were able to add, subtract, multiply and divide...you could be a part of something bigger than yourself. Technology has changed throughout the years as have the ways that we use technology.  My technology growing up in the late 70's and early 80's was vastly different than the technology that is used today.  That said, people find a way to adapt wi...

After spending time listening to the Ted Talk of Sherry Turkle called "Connected, but alone?" and reading the article " Anti-Teaching: Confronting The Crisis Of Significance " by Michael Wesch, my initial thoughts were that there wasn't much of a connection between the two theories.  Turkle discusses how we have an entire society of people that are immersed in whatever is on their phones.  We live our lives on screens.  Wesch meanwhile questions the significance of teaching vs. learning and whether students in college consider anything taught in a huge lecture hall important to actually learn. As I thought about it more, I started to understand how these two pieces were interconnected.  My youngest son Aidan is thirteen years old.  He suffers from ADHD with some anxiety and depression thrown in.  We knew there was something different with the way his brain process things from a very young age, but we weren't able to get a true diagnosis (he was always too ...

I have two children, Jackson and Aidan.  Both boys.  One is 15 (Jackson) and one is 13 (Aidan).  Part of the reason I wanted to start to teach was because I saw the excitement that they had for learning.  When they were younger, " Why? " was one of their favorite questions.  They always wanted to know why the world worked the way that it does.  They also used it as an opportunity to drive me crazy, asking "Why?" at almost every turn. As they continued with their education (Jackson enters his sophomore year of high school, while Aidan enters eighth grade, his last in middle school) the "Why?" questions stopped and the conversations about school turned to answers of, " Fine " and questions about learning in school had answers of, "Nothing."  The two boys began to lose their spark for education at the beginning of middle school. Why?  Why do they not have the same love for learning as they used to.  Why is school something that is boring a...