Category: Life Long Learning

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Bringing Real Life to the Classroom

As teachers, we have the honor and privilege of helping our students develop critical thinking skills as well as other skills that will help prepare them for their futures. We can create meaningful and lasting impacts on our students by being intentional about what we teach. The 7 Cs of Education provide teachers with seven important areas to teach to help our students be good thinkers, good students, and good humans. We’ve covered six of the seven so far: Critical Thinking, Creativity, Collaboration, Communication, Computer Literacy, and Cross-Cultural Understanding. The final “C” is kind of a culmination of the previous six, and encompasses a lot of aspects of each previous “C”. The seventh and final “C” of education is Career and Life Skills.

So much of what we do and teach in the classroom can be classified as a career and/or life skill. Thinking critically, learning to collaborate, and learning to effectively communicate are all great skills for students to learn, as they are skills they will use as they become adults and enter the workforce. Becoming computer literate is also an essential skill to have in today’s digital world. While these skills are often easy to naturally integrate into our curriculum as we teach other information, others must be a bit more intentionally taught. Skills like how to write a resume, create a budget, and how to sew on a button typically aren’t seamlessly blended in with group projects or essays. 

Learning life skills can be something new and fun for students. It’s out of the norm, and is a fun change of pace. It’s easy to see real world application of these kinds of skills, which makes them more motivating to learn. Below are some fun ways to incorporate life and career skills into our teaching:

  • Have students fill out a job application.
  • Students can learn and practice the basics of resume writing.
  • Let students design their “ideal” life– house, car, job, etc. Then have them research how much money their job would bring in, and have them calculate if it would be enough to support the lifestyle they want. Be sure they include the cost of utilities, cell phone, groceries, and any other “extras”. This is an eye opening activity, especially for high schoolers. 
  • If you’re a sewing teacher, teach students the basics of sewing on a button, mending a tear, or hemming pants.
  • Have students do mock interviews– ask other teachers and school employees to come conduct the interviews.
  • Let students practice making a phone call to make an appointment. This is something that scares a lot of people, but is a great skill to practice!
  • Ensure students know how to properly address an envelope.
  • Help students plan and make simple meals or snacks.
  • Assign students some questions to ask to another classmate. No texting, no emailing. Just good old face to face communication. You’d be surprised at how difficult this is for some kids who are used to doing all communication through their devices.
  • Help students learn how to place an online order.
  • In science class, teach students what chemicals can and cannot go together– some chemicals are very toxic when mixed.

When students can see real life application for what they are learning, they become so much more invested in their education. It’s important that we help our students become the best learners they can be. To do this, we must expose them to a variety of subjects, skills, ideas, and processes. The 7 Cs of Education provide a great outline of skills to teach to our students– skills that will not only help them succeed in school, but in the “real world” as well.

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What I Wish I Would Have Said…

The end of the school year always has me feeling all sorts of sentimental and reminiscent. I think about all the growth and learning that has happened over the course of the school year, both by students and by teachers. The people walking out of the school doors on the last day of school are not the same people that walked in on the first day of school. I think back to my own students, and remember the happiness that came as I thought about how far they’d come over the year. It truly was one of those “pay day” moments as a teacher! Now, as a parent, I get to see the growth and change in my own children. It’s incredible to see, and it makes me even more grateful for their amazing teachers who put so much time into planning and carrying out lessons and activities to foster that growth. 

I think of the seniors graduating this year, getting ready to step out into the “real world” and be contributing members of society. No doubt some of them are ready to tackle this new chapter of their lives, while some are a little less ready. It’s a big change, going from high school to adulthood. There are a lot of lessons to be learned, a lot of life to be lived, and a lot of choices to be made. I remember my own graduation day, and the mixed emotions of excitement, relief, uncertainty, and nervousness as I officially left high school behind. 

I never taught seniors, so I was fortunate enough to have my students return to the school the next year, which meant I could still see them and say hi in the halls. Even though my students weren’t graduating, they were still leaving my classroom and moving on to a new chapter of their lives, and it was always a bittersweet moment. I wish I would have taken the chance to tell them a few things before they left my room for the last time. Of course I’d wish them a good, fun summer and remind them to stop by next year and say hi. But what I wish I would have done was to remind them of how amazing they are. Since I didn’t do a great job at it while I was teaching, I thought I’d say it now, because somewhere out there is a student who needs to hear this, and if it inspires even just one teacher to remind students of their greatness, then it’s worth it to me!

To my students as they leave my classroom:

There are a few things I want to make sure you know about yourself, in case no one’s ever told you. But you need to hear it, because what I’m about to say is the truth!

I hope you know how smart you are, and that you are smart in your own way. Your mind is capable of thinking, imagining, creating, and analyzing, and there are no limits to how far those abilities will take you!

I hope you know that you matter. That you weren’t just a warm body in my classroom or a name on my attendance sheet. You are an individual, with unique talents and gifts. Your voice matters. Learn to use it wisely.

I hope you know that you are not the mistakes you have made, nor are you the mistakes that you are yet to make. A mistake is just that– a mistake. It’s a bump in the road, but if used correctly, can teach you and change you. We all make mistakes, but those mistakes do not define us. 

I want you to know that you are filled with so much potential. I see it in you every time you step foot in my room. You’re going to do great things, I just know it. 

It’s important that you know that you have the power and right to choose for yourself. You get to choose what you want to be, the kind of person and friend that you are, and who you allow into your circle of people. Choose wisely.

I hope you know what a difference you have made in my life, and in the lives of those around you. Your influence reaches farther than you think.

I hope you know that my classroom is always a safe place, and you are always welcome here. If you need help, reach out. If I can’t help solve the problem, I will help you find someone who can, and will make sure you are okay.

I want you to know that I will always be your cheerleader, and that I will always encourage you and push you to be your best. I will celebrate your wins with you, and mourn your losses with you. 

I want you to know that you have so much to offer. Someone needs you– your talents, your opinion, your advice, or your brilliant mind.

And lastly, but certainly not least, I want you to know that you are loved. That you have filled a space in my heart that will forever be changed because of you. So if you don’t hear it from anyone else in your life, know that I care about you and love you– you are amazing and I can’t wait to see the incredible things you will do in your life!

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Start Low to Grow

Recently, my seven year old has started (loudly) expressing his disgust with me every time I remind him to do his assigned chore, pick up his room, help fold his laundry, etc. He is not interested in anything other than having fun, and honestly, sometimes I don’t blame him. In the midst of one of his defiant moments, he (again, loudly) said, “Mom! Why do you always have to boss me around and tell me to do things like clean my room?!” 

What I saw as a simple request for him to pick up his toys, he saw as me being mean and bossy. He saw it as a threat to his ability to choose for himself. And while that couldn’t be father from the truth, I can see why he might have thought that. As the adult, I can see the bigger picture at play here, and can see that teaching him basic skills when he is young will help him greatly as he gets older. As the kid, he only sees play time being taken away.

As his mom, part of my job is to teach foundational skills that will be built upon and that are necessary for successful adulthood. I wouldn’t expect him to plan, prepare, serve, and clean up an entire meal by himself– it would be a recipe for disaster! But, I can involve him in and teach him step by step. I can have him set the table, get ingredients out, or have him unload the dishwasher. Those are all skills he is capable of and can safely do. Learning a little here and a little there paves the way for bigger tasks later.

Teachers have a similar role with their students. We start at the bottom and work our way up. No one would expect a kindergartner to solve a three digit multiplication problem, nor would you expect a fifth grader to solve a complex equation designed for a high school senior. Doing so would just lead to frustration on all sides. Similarly, one wouldn’t expect a first grader to be able to write a detailed multi-paragraph research paper with properly cited sources, simply because they lack the necessary skills to do so. 

Providing students with the skills and knowledge they need to successfully move forward is a crucial part of being a teacher. In order for teachers to know where to start, they need to know where their students are. This is why assessments are so important in the classroom. Teachers don’t have to give a big, formal test to see where their students are, though those do have their place. Informal assessments that are done along the way can be absolutely crucial to how a teacher moves forward with what they are teaching. 

As teachers gather formal and informal data, they are able to pivot and make any needed changes to how or what they are teaching so that they are able to help students succeed. It’s similar to when you are driving a car. Your mind is constantly making observations about surroundings, then telling you to make any needed corrections to keep your car where it needs to be. Paying attention early on and throughout the process can save you from going the totally wrong direction or worse, crashing.

It’s also important that we help students see why we are teaching the things that we are teaching. Like my son not fully seeing why I was asking him to clean up his room and do his chore, students also often miss the why behind what they are being taught. As we teach them and guide them into new material, we can remind them of what they’ve already learned that will make this new content more accessible, and we can also help them see that what they are going to learn will help them in the future as they build upon their knowledge.

Teaching can be overwhelming at times, sure. But so can learning, and it’s important that we keep that in mind as we prepare lessons and teach our students. We must meet them where they are, sometimes even back tracking a little if needed, to make the progress that we know they can make. When we do this, magic happens, and things begin to click in students’ minds. And that, my friends, is when the real progress is made.

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Cooking With Kids– Chaos or Learning Opportunity?

Cooking with kids— you either love it or you don’t. The spilled ingredients, eggshells in the bowl, and general chaos in the kitchen mixed with family bonding time and making memories can make for a grand adventure. Memorable, yes. Potentially stressful, also yes. But mixed in with all the heartwarming memory making and chaos, there are teaching and learning opportunities a plenty. 

How can cooking with kids provide learning moments, you might ask? Well, first, there’s math involved with all the measuring, and if you are sizing up or down a recipe, there’s the math needed to recalculate how much of each ingredient you will need. This is when you’ll need to pull up the “fractions” file that’s been stored in your mind since 8th grade algebra— you know, the one you didn’t think you’d have to use much? Cooking and baking provide ample opportunities to dust off your fraction knowledge and put it to work!

Second, cooking and baking can teach real life, hard skills. Everyone is going to need to know how to cook and bake at some point in their lives, so why not start as a child? Keeping tasks within your child’s capabilities and keeping things age appropriate is always a good idea to keep the experience safe for everyone. I’ll be forever thankful for parents who let me help in the kitchen from a young age. Now as a mom with my own children, I can do the same for my kids in hopes that they will have at least a fundamental understanding of basic cooking skills by the time they are living on their own. 

As kids get older, they also become able to read and follow a recipe. This skill can transfer over to many other areas, as a recipe is basically an “instruction manual” of sorts. Learning how to read and follow step by step instructions will help them as they grow up and become adults. They will learn the importance of following the order of instructions to achieve a desired result. 

Cooking and baking also open the door for discussions of what to do if something doesn’t go as planned. Was the gravy too runny or too lumpy? Talk about why and what can cause those problems to happen. Were your cookies flat as a pancake and crispy rather than soft and fluffy? Together, research and talk about the circumstances that might create flat cookies. Beyond that, it becomes an excellent problem solving opportunity as you work together to figure out how to solve the issue and create the desired result. 

Lastly, but certainly not least, cooking and baking together provides parents and children opportunities to bond by working together and making memories together. This helps create a sense of love and support that gives children confidence. Children also feel a sense of accomplishment and pride as they see (and taste!) the result of their hard work. This confidence and sense of pride can carry over into other areas of their life, such as school, sports, music, and even social interactions. 

So while baking and cooking together might not seem like an opportunity filled with moments of learning, it really is. This helps to confirm what I already believe to be true— there are opportunities for learning and growth in everything we do, no matter how mundane and simple the task. Learning doesn’t just happen in the classroom; it happens all around us, often in the most unexpected places.

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Handwriting vs. Typing: Is One Better Than the Other?

Learning to write— like the actual formation of letters— is a fundamental skill when learning to read and write in any language. If you don’t know how to form the letters, writing legibly and making sense of what is written becomes nearly impossible. You simply must know how to form each letter before you can start putting letters together to form words, sentences, paragraphs, or entire pages of writing. 

I don’t have much memory of learning to write in standard penmanship, but I do vividly remember learning to write cursive. I recall working so hard and practicing a lot to be able to write cursive neatly and efficiently, and that’s about all I wrote in for a long time. Fast forward lots of years, and my handwriting now has become a hybrid of standard and cursive. My kids are now learning cursive at school, and I am so glad they are. It’s becoming a “lost art” the more we turn to digital forms of communication. 

I read an article the other day on NPR by Jonathan Lambert that discussed the benefits of taking a pencil to paper and writing rather than typing something out. In the article, Lambert points out that taking the time to actually handwrite things has big benefits to children and adults alike. He said, “In kids, studies show that tracing out ABCs, as opposed to typing them, leads to better and longer-lasting recognition and understanding of letters. Writing by hand also improves memory and recall of words, laying down the foundations of literacy and learning. In adults, taking notes by hand during a lecture, instead of typing, can lead to better conceptual understanding of material.”

Sure, typing is much quicker and more efficient. Oftentimes, it’s also more convenient— like when you remember something to add to your “to do” list while you’re out and about; it’s so easy to quickly pull out your phone and type it into your Notes app. But… consider how many times you have been typing and have been on autopilot to the point that you can’t even remember what you typed. I know it has happened to me several times. The brain to hand connection isn’t nearly as strong when typing as it is when actually taking a pen to paper. 

Think for a minute about what has to happen when you type. You locate the letter on the keyboard and click it. Once you have memorized the keyboard, muscle memory kind of kicks in and your fingers almost just know what to do. It’s really pretty cool— you think of a word you want to type out, and as you’re typing, your brain tells your fingers where to move to click each letter. 

Now, take a minute and think about what happens when you pick up a pencil and put it to a piece of paper to write. First, your brain must tell your hand to pick up the pencil and and correctly hold it. Then, you must think about where on the page you are going to start writing (usually the left side). Your brain must then decide which word you are going to spell, then break the word apart and make sense of which letters to write and in which order they go. Next, your brain must communicate to your hand how to form each letter, and on top of that, it is telling your hand to make micro-adjustments as you write out each letter, such as needing to close the circle on your “d” a bit more before you start to make the line on the side of the letter. The amount of brain to hand then back to brain communication is much more involved with handwriting than it is with typing. It’s really quite remarkable. 

Not only does handwriting something take more “brain power” so to speak, it also helps to solidify material and create a stronger memory for recalling information later. Because you often paraphrase what you hear, your brain must process what you are writing, therefore creating a tighter link between the paper and your mind. Whereas with typing, you can often type verbatim what you are hearing, all while not even fully registering what you are typing. 

Obviously, there are definitely times when typing is much more efficient— can you even imagine hand writing that 100 page dissertation for your doctorate degree?! No thank you! But the art of writing by hand has its place as well. Receiving a hand written note from someone you love is so much more meaningful than having them send a text or an email. It also becomes a treasure years down the road to be able to see your grandparents’ handwriting or your kindergartener’s first sentence written out. Handwriting also goes a long way when teaching kids the early foundations of literacy. 

So even though we are becoming more and more digital today, let’s make sure we don’t lost the art of handwriting, for it seems that if we do, it could be detrimental to the way we process written text. Literacy quite literally depends on it!

If you’d like to read the article referenced above, you can find it here.

Lambert, J. (2024, May 11). Why writing by hand beats typing for thinking and learning. NPR. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2024/05/11/1250529661/handwriting-cursive-typing-schools-learning-brain 

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Kindness Matters

We had Parent-Teacher Conferences for my kids last night, and I was so excited to go. I love hearing updates from teachers, and my kids love to show me where their desk is, their cubby, and take me to see their work that is hanging in the hall. With five kids all at the same school, those nights can get pretty long, but they are worth it.

I enjoy hearing how they are doing academically; it’s fun to see beginning of year test scores compared to present scores— there is almost always improvement. It’s encouraging to see the forward leaps they make as they learn. I also really enjoy hearing how my children can improve. If there is an area (or multiple) that need attention, I like to know so that I can give my full support to my child as well as to their teacher. 

Though I do enjoy hearing about the academic progress that is being made, I love it even more when I get a report from a teacher telling me that my child is helpful, kind, friendly, and respectful to everyone, adults and kids alike. Knowing that my child is being a good human means so much to me. We try so hard at home to teach our children to be kind, to include, and to respect others. We do our best to teach them good manners and what a good friend looks like. When I send them to school each morning, I just hope that what they have been taught sticks with them, and it is so reassuring to hear that they indeed did hear us and remembered! 

I think so often parents worry about their children getting good grades, especially in upper grades. There seems to be so much pressure on kids today to be the best in their class, get the highest score on the test, or that any grade below a B is unacceptable. Obviously, parents aren’t out there wanting their kids to fail, but I think there could be more flexibility when it comes to expectations. That’s not to say for parents to just let go and stop encouraging their kids, because there is definitely value in pushing your kids to do and be their best. But when it becomes all about grades, I think we’ve missed the mark. 

I was always a good student, and my grades were usually pretty good. But I can tell you that not a single person in my adult life has cared what grade I got in my high school math class. No one has asked if I scored 100% on the AP US History test I took as a junior. It simply doesn’t matter anymore. But what does matter is that I am a kind person, who includes others, is friendly, and listens to people. 

When it comes down to it, the way we treat others says a whole lot more about who we are as people than the grades we pulled in school. Sure, good grades can indicate that someone is a hard, determined worker, and good grades can get you into a college where you can earn a degree and work toward making a career for yourself. Having a job allows you to have money to pay your bills and put food on the table. But it’s important to remember that being kind is good, too. 

So as your children (and your students) grow and learn, be sure to teach them more than just academics; teach them to be kind, patient, respectful, and inclusive. Because one day, it’s the way they are that will truly take them places in this life. 

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Make it Make Sense!

A few nights ago, I was sitting with my son while he read out loud to me. He is in first grade, so he is still trying to figure out words, sounds, and rules of the English language. He really is a great reader, and he’s catching on quickly, but with so many rules and exceptions to those rules, he’s had some frustrating moments. 

On this night in particular, he was reading a sentence that had the word ‘clean’ in it. His initial pronunciation was something along the lines of “clihaahn”. When he couldn’t figure it out on his own, I stepped in to help him. I told him how to correctly pronounce the word, then explained that when there is an ‘e’ and an ‘a’ next to each other, it will make an ‘eee’ sound. … and then we got to the next page, where there was the word ‘great’ waiting for us, and the little lesson I’d just given him was no longer valid for this new word. Imagine his confusion when I had to explain that sometimes the ‘e’ and the ‘a’ make a different sound together. 

Take, for instance, the following words: clean, great, heart, early, and head. All contain the ‘ea’ digraph… and none of them sound the same! Or take into consideration through, though, tough, cough, and bough. Again, same letter combination, but all pronounced differently. Make it make sense!! 

Not only do we have digraphs that make different sounds, we also have homophones— words that sound the same, but are spelled differently and have different meanings! Sheesh! As if it wasn’t complicated enough already. Trying to keep it all straight is enough to drive a grown person crazy. Thinking about this is flashing me back to my teaching days when the core curriculum required me to teach a certain set of homophones to each grade level. Let me tell you: teaching seventh graders to understand the difference between capitol and capital, principle and principal, there, they’re, and their, and allowed and aloud was quite the task! I found myself coming up with all sorts of creative ways to help them remember the difference between words. 

As someone who has been speaking and reading the English language for a while now, I feel like I have a pretty good grasp on how to pronounce most words. My brain has been programmed and wired to be able to read a word, determine which sound(s) the letter combinations will make, and pronounce the word, all in a matter of fractions of a second. It’s really quite remarkable that our brains can do what they do! Honestly, it’s so automatic that I really don’t even think about the process of figuring out how to pronounce a word anymore. That is, until I’m sitting with my kids while they read, and then I am reminded of just how complex our language is. 

I’m reminded that I, too, was once in the position of not knowing which ‘ea’ words made a long ‘e’ sound, which made a long ‘a’ sound, and which made a ‘eh’ sound. I once struggled to make sense of the letters and words on the pages in front of me, too, and that’s okay. It’s in the struggle of learning that we make sense of things and train our minds to remember the rules and parameters of our language. 

Every time I’m in a position of helping someone learn how to read, I am reminded just how tricky it can be. These reminders have prompted me to be a little more patient and kind. So when I want to loudly exclaim, “Gahhh! Don’t you know that read and great don’t sound the same and don’t rhyme, but phony and bologna do?!”, I tell myself that learning this language is hard, and it’s going to take practice and time for new learners to figure it all out. It’s a slow process, but one that is undeniably worth every single bit of effort, time, and mistake along the way, for teaching someone to read is setting them up for a lifetime of success.