I just wanted to write a quick post to share that I’ve (finally) created a page where one can find all the book recommendations on this website. With how much I enjoy writing book round-ups, I’m surprised I did not do this sooner!
While you’ve stopped by, here are a few more reads we have enjoyed lately. I was surprised to realize when I made the above page how few nonfiction round-ups I’ve written, so here are our recent favorites from that genre:
Round byJoyce Sidman, Taeeun Yoo. Beautiful illustrations that get us thinking about what is round and why. An excellent inquiry text.
Birthdays From Around the World by Margriet Ruurs, Ashley Barron. Great text for helping kids comprehend similarities and differences across the globe.
Where’s the Baby: A Spotting Book by Britta Teckentrup. Really cute rhymes and even cuter illustrations. All of my kids (ages 2-8) delighted over finding the babies.
Living Things & Non-Living Things: A Compare & Contrast Book by Kevin Kurtz. Most accessibly nuanced approach to living vs. non-living that I’ve ever seen. “Not even scientists have a perfect answer.”
Power Up by Seth Fishman & Isabel Greenberg. My 8 year-old can’t stop musing about the power of her pinky ever since reading this illuminating book. Fascinating introduction to energy.
I’ve written several such provocations before. (here, here, here, & here). But I can never get enough of them. Here’s a fresh list to rekindle your shared sense of humanity. With all the demands on our busy classroom schedules, how might we integrate these resources in meaningful ways for our students?
By the way, if you have been following my series of provocations for the Sustainable Development Goals, I’m happy to share that they are now complete! What kind of provocations would you like to see next?
Resource #1: All That We Share by Power of Positivity & V2
Resource #2: The Pinata King by Triopod City
Resource #3: Arno Michaelis & Pardeep Kaleka Find Forgiveness After Hate
This man lost his Sikh father in a racist terror attack in 2012 — but he and a former white supremacist found common ground after hate and formed an inspiring friendship
My precise timeline for returning to the classroom has been unknown for some time. I am pleased to share that a clearer plan has lately emerged: I intend to resume teaching in the fall of 2020. Not only will this coincide nicely for school schedules for all my kids, but it will allow me to spend additional time building momentum for local Safe Routes to School efforts.
This plan has me realizing that this time next year, I will be submitting resumes and interviewing for jobs. After 5 years, I’m feeling a little nervous, but as I’ve learned time and again, the best remedy for that is reflecting and blogging.
What “aha” moments have I had during 5 years of researching, PLN-building, and writing what is now 456 posts? What would I most want a future administrator to understand about what I have learned? How has all of this built on my previous 4 years of teaching fifth grade, and what will this mean for my future classroom approach?
I’m digging through old posts today to try and find answers to these questions.
This was the first time I wrote plainly about my personal learning since I had left the classroom. Until then, I’d often felt like an impostor for writing about teaching, worried I would be “found out” for not being in the classroom. This was when I first began to understand the way my edu-blogging was helping me grow as a professional, and that that mattered more than any other outcome. Interestingly, it turns out that this mindset shift has also been pivotal for my approach to student learning. Personal meaning & growth > appearances.
Key takeaway in this post: the need for students to clearly own and understand what they have mastered, and for them to be given opportunities to convey that to their caregivers. (See also “Inquiry Into Owning My Own Learning“).
I realized that though my classroom career has been on pause, by no means has my professional learning has been stagnant! Particularly helpful in that journey was the epiphany that I could structure my writing schedule so I could really “write what I know.”
Powerful connection happens when we learn to truly put ourselves in the learning arena alongside our students. How can we possibly expect our students to truly be vulnerable and take risks to grow in their learning if they feel like their teachers are sitting on the sidelines? Brene Brown’s emphasis on Theodore Roosevelt’s quote has settled deep into my teacher soul here:
My inspiring former student referenced here has profoundly impacted my resolve to truly make building meaning a priority. “After witnessing the way learning can truly transform & empower & matter, I can never go back.” This particular student will be graduating high school this year, and I had the privilege to watch him perform at the State Poetry Out Loud Competition, and to win a scholarship competition with his piece, Cross Stitch. Once our students find their voice, we have no idea what will come next.
The idea of building self-regulation skills has been eye-opening to me in the way I approach student ownership and classroom management. I am learning to understand how a child’s choices often reflect more than might meet the eye.
I look forward seeing additional learning unfolds during this last year!
Self-determination. We have such good intentions. We all want it for our kids, and I’m sure most of us (including myself until a recent check) think we’ve got it pretty well covered. But then life gets in the way.
We get in a hurry, we run out of supplies, we feel pressure that we then pass on to our kids.
I had two experiences recently to remind me just how fragile the development of our children’s self-determination can be. I’m sharing not because I know better now, but because I know that writing about it helps cement the lessons for me.
Lesson #1: The first happened when my 8 year-old was getting ready for school. Combining her school’s earlier start time with the fact that she’s one of those kids that needs a lot of sleep to function, I had felt justified in lending a hand as she gets ready. Specifically, as she would sleepily make her way down her bunk bed, I would grab her an outfit so she could quickly change and then move on to the next task.
But when she woke up unusually early one morning, I turned everything over to her — only to find that she no longer felt confident about her own outfit-choosing skills. She wanted me to tell her if I thought the clothing went together, and I wanted her to be able to choose without needing anyone else to validate her decision.
I was astonished to realize how my good intentions had gone awry. How I had sent an unintended message that I was not confident in her abilities. How quickly she came to depend on me for a simple decision. How my desire to help solve one problem had created another.
Lesson #2: The second happened with my 4 year-old. The details are less important, but he had started to regularly say something very sweet, and we were quick to tell him how nice that was (you know, positive reinforcement and all that). One day, when he said it again, and I did not offer praise, he looked at me, surprised and unhappy. Again, I was astonished to realize that my own good intentions were actually getting in the way of something good. What was once something for which my son had intrinsic interest was now diminished by the extrinsic strings I’d attached.
Our kids possess natural self-determination. They have interests, talents, and capacities originally driven entirely from within. But it turns out this self-determination is terribly fragile. As enthusiastic and helpful parents and teachers, we jump in with our encouragement and praise and assistance, which props up something that perhaps didn’t need propping up in the first place. Instead, it causes that self-determination muscle to quickly atrophy as we train them to look to the grown-ups, the “experts,” for guidance, instead of looking within to the original source of those capacities.
I feel like I learn more each day about how I need to “get out of the way” of my children’s learning and growth. Hopefully those lessons will stick a little better for next time!
This is a series of provocations designed to provide resources for students to inquire into the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, or SDGs. For more, click here.
Zero Hunger. It’s a bold goal. But if we work together to wisely use the tools and abundance of our world today, it is possible. Share the resources below with students to help them inquire into this important global goal.
Resource #2: Michael Pollan’s Food Rules by Ant House Studio
Resource #3: An Oasis in the Midst of a Food Desert by Great Big Story
https://vimeo.com/282897376
Resource #4: Tweet from the World Food Program
Maria Rita says food has never been a problem for her family before #CycloneIdai. They used to grow tomatoes, cucumber, pumpkin, beans, maize and never ran out.
Having grown up in an area where the change in seasons was not particularly pronounced, I can’t stop geeking out about it where I live now. Every day is like a treasure hunt that never disappoints: a new variety of blossom budding here, a new nest built there.
Spring is a particularly lovely time to observe and celebrate the abundance of our earth & to visit our responsibilities toward it, not least because it includes Earth Day (coming up on April 22). Here are some of my favorite picture books that will be sure to enhance the celebrations.
The Earth Gives More by Sue Fliess & Christiane Engel. This beautiful read shares not only the changing of the seasons, but the abundance of the earth through time. Pleasant rhymes without becoming overly didactic.
Luna & Me by Jenny Sue Kostecki-Shaw. Follow Julia Butterfly Hill’s conservation efforts as she made an ancient Redwood named Luna her home for two years. Our students may not be able to live in a tree for years, but they will be inspired by the action of one.
One Plastic Bag by Miranda Paul & Elizabeth Zunon. Speaking of the impact of one, this is a powerful story of the difference a person can make to their community and the earth. Your students will love the unique collage illustrations as well.
When Spring Comes by Kevin Henkes & Laura Dronzek. Though this book doesn’t come back specifically to conservation efforts, it’s a lovely representation of spring’s unpredictable arrival and nature’s lovely, winding course.
The Curious Garden by Peter Brown. Students who may have a harder time connecting with nature in their urban environments will especially love this story as Liam finds a way to unfurl Nature’s abundance in the middle of the big city (also see High Line greenway).
All the World by Liz Garton Scanlon & Marla Frazee. Lyrical poetry and gorgeous illustrations that will truly get students celebrating the abundance of this beautiful world.
Someone gave us a Google Home mini last fall. I don’t really use it, but we thought the kids might be interested, so we set it up. I recently found out I can view all of its history, which I found fascinating. Here’s how my kids have put it to use, most of the time without my presence. “Hey Google…”
“…can we listen to music?”
“…what are fake flowers made of?”
“…what do you eat for breakfast?”
“…start a timer for 20 minutes.”
“…how do you spell…?”
“…what should I be for Halloween?”
“…where do wolves live?”
“…are tarantulas harmless?”
“…tell me a story.”
“…are you a robot?”
“…what are orangutans?”
“…do you eat donuts?”
“…can you play a game with me?”
“…do you have a sister?”
“…tell me a joke.”
“…what author wrote Amelia Bedelia?”
“…tell me a fairy tale.”
“…when do you unplug cords?”
“…when do you go fishing?”
“…where should me and my dad go for our date?”
“…it is 9:45. How many more hours until lunch?”
“…what kind of claws do jaguars have?”
“…what’s 12 times 12?”
“…are fairies real?”
“…what colors can dogs see?”
“…how do you say bear in Spanish?”
“…what do dragons eat?”
“...how long does it take to walk between home and school?”
“…is there a Santa?”
“…what was the first thing people made with electricity?”
“…how many hours are in the morning?”
“…is the blue whale bigger than any building?”
“…what are very good kid jobs?”
I love the questions almost as much as the fact that they can so readily find answers. What a marvelous gift it is to have a record of the questions my children have been asking over time.
How is technology impacting your children’s sense of inquiry (like their ability to find answers to questions even before they can read), access (like their ability to turn on music and timers), and connection with the world around them (like their ability to feel like the information of this age belongs to them, too)?
