It is certainly a relief when some thing finally get completed and become a new responsibility for someone else. Such was the case late yesterday when I finally was able to mail off the application materials for the NCTA/TEA seminar in Boulder, Colorado this Summer. I hope to land a place in the "Japan's Olympic Challenges" course which would be very insightful and helpful in the broadening of my perspective on Japan in order to provide a more in-depth treatment of it with my students. I also finally finished all of the writing needed for the Teachers for Global Classrooms initiative, which I hope to be a part of next academic year. It concentrates, as the name suggests, on cultivating a global perspective in our classrooms and with our students, to the benefit of all. This is one of my passions, and the other one is to provide equitable educational opportunities for students of color in poverty, whether they be in urban or rural environments. I am looking again at H. Richard Milner's "Start Where You Are, But Don't Stay There" as a potential source for professional development for district or state teachers. I will pitch a design to some important players locally perhaps later this week (if given the chance in our meetings). It remains to be seen.
These past few days have been a bit difficult for me to muddle through because I have experienced a series of betrayals that I had been trying not to face head on, but they have finally crystallized to a point where they are no longer able to be denied. It is a very sad end to what I had believed to be a familial tie which had grown into a friendship. To add to the betrayals, I have not been quite able to share them with anyone, which has put me out of sorts more than I would like to admit. I am trying to refrain from sharing any of the details of the betrayals, so as not to dampen anyone else's spirits because I am not one who believes that misery loves company...I try to avoid partaking in someone else's misery unless it affects someone that I love. So, I am certain that no one would care to become involved in my own misery at the moment.
Testing for my students has wrapped up completely as well, which is a relief rarely savored as much as this year. Testing was much more time-consuming and tedious than in years past, and I hope this was only due to the new format. I am crossing my fingers that next year will be handled much better (on my own part) and can be done more easily. I am pretty confident that I know where the pitfalls were and can avoid them in the future.
On a cheerier note, vacation from school is coming up from March 25-April 3. I am looking forward to all of the days to catch up on outside projects, although my original plan to take my sons to Korea was not able to be done. I have high hopes for getting it done pretty soon, though. Before we go off to vacation, however, I still have St. Patrick's Day and Easter to deal with, with students who have no earthly idea why Americans celebrate in the ways that we do. Today, I began with a lesson on where the traditions came from, and passed around a globe to my first grade students, who were so fascinated to actually be able to touch it. I guess I take too many things for granted. That six-year-olds would have had a balloon in their home at one time or another, and that everyone is as geography and history-oriented as myself. Unfortunately, I need to stop and pay attention to my own assumptions because they are so basic for me, but are definitely not so for many of my students. I can unpack many of my presuppositions normally, but it still takes me by surprise when a child says that they cannot understand a page in a story where a balloon floats in mid-air after it is a day or two old...because she has never had a balloon. And when we took a poll afterwards, there were several more students who had never had a balloon.
I was euphemistically called a bleeding heart a while ago, which is definitely not the first time I had been referred to by that moniker, but it hit me hard because I strive every single day, in the face of a significant amount of criticism and resistance, to enlighten each of my students to who and what is holding him or her back in school, in society and in life. I talk to them about self-fulfilling negative mindsets and provide them with challenging and interesting work. I believe that teaching skills and material which engages students will lead to the expansion of those skills and knowledge of other material because of that engagement. If I teach a fascinating piece of literature, scaffolding it for my students, they will seek out another piece of literature on their own. I have seen it happen time and time again. But we have to find LITERATURE that is awesome, not fan-fiction or the like which is pandering to their immature selves, rather than raising them up to their best selves. Of course, teaching teen fiction is a lot easier than teaching Shakespeare, but the rewards are also far greater for me, as an educator, and for them, as human beings who see the true level of their own abilities.
Did you know that often it takes one truly invested teacher to change the course of a child's future, that one who sees everything that child can be, even when his or her parents, grandparents, neighbors, friends and pastor cannot or will not? Maybe it is not a teacher, maybe it is you...that one person who can allow that child to see his elevated self. Can you be that to one child? Even when it is difficult, even when he or she is at the bottom rung of the ladder? I challenge myself to do it with each child I teach, but I challenge you to just do it for one child who is having trouble visualizing his or her best self. The true beneficiary of that involvement will be you when you see that child become more than he or she had ever thought possible.
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