Teacher World

I hope everyone had a wonderful and restful Christmas. And I hope you got everything you wished for and more. But, we all know that there are some things that Santa can’t bring us under the Christmas tree or in a beautiful stocking. These are the things we have on our teaching wish list. Oh, you know you have one, too. I thought I would share my other wish list with you, and hopefully, you will feel compelled to share some of yours with us. So, with a little drum roll in the background, here is my…

Teacher Christmas Wish List

* A classroom of children who live to learn and learn to better live
* 100% attendance from now until we have completed our state achievement tests
* Parents who place their children’s education and success in school a top priority in their homes
* Parents who make their children accountable rather than making excuses for them
* A school made up of teachers whose desire to excel is so strong that collaboration is the rule not the exception
* 100% proficiency from all students on every state achievement test
* A SPED version of state achievement tests which adequately measures their yearly progress as opposed to making them feel, yet again, that they can never be successful in a “regular ed” world
* A better way to support schools financially than levies which are doomed to fail in our strained economy
* A school system that is monetarily sound and able not only to maintain its current level of instruction, but has the additional revenue to support the constant educational reforms thrust upon it
* Report cards that measure performance not the potential to pass state achievement tests
* A school filled with teachers who can get back to loving teaching instead of trying to learn to love testing
* A school that takes a firm stand against bullying and teasing and provides students with the knowledge, desire, and tools to combat this destructive habit
* Students who leave our classroom better prepared academically, socially, and emotionally than they were when they came to us in the fall

Hey, there’s nothing wrong with wishing! What are you wishing for in this New Year? We would love to hear your wish list, too! In the meantime, I wish you all a great vacation. Enjoy the time with your family and friends, and get energized for the “joys” that lie ahead. Merry Christmas!

Bullying, Educational Reform, Funding Education, Teacher-World's Blog, state achievement tests Add new tag, Bullying, Christmas, collaboration, school funding, state achievement tests

This spring I read the book Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult, and the effect it had on me and on my classroom was powerful. The book is about a high school student who was bullied every day of his school career starting in kindergarten. The chilling fictional story depicts one devastating possible outcome of this kind of constant abuse; the young man finally breaks, takes weapons into his high school, and kills or wounds several fellow classmates. What made this story so frightening is that our news is riddled with stories about the sometimes devastating result of unresolved bullying. We are bombarded with tragic tales of retaliation, suicide, and the affects of the newest form of bullying; cyber bullying.

After reading this book, I felt compelled to do something powerful to take a stand against bullying in my classroom and in our school. My students and I engaged in some heartfelt conversations about bullying; how it makes us feel, why we do it ourselves, and what we could do to take a stand. The students openly discussed the feeling of powerlessness a victim of bullying feels and several got emotional as they told of times they felt this way. Without a doubt, if you were to ask me to share my best memory of this past year it would be those moments of complete honesty we shared and the difference it began to make in my students. 

We made a declaration against bullying and teasing which everyone signed. Some of my students shared personal experiences about how they felt when they were bullied or why they had bullied in the past over the morning announcements and invited anyone who felt as we did to sign our petition, which hangs proudly in the front hall. It was a life-changing moment for all of us, and the proudest I have ever been of a group of students.

I share this with you to ask for your support in your classrooms and in your schools in the upcoming school year. We need to be more tuned in to our students and confront bullying when we hear of it. We need to involve our students in the task of rethinking how they interact with each other, and we need to openly address problems as they occur with the goal of resolution. We need to put our students to work to help stamp out this destructive behavior, too. Give them a sense of ownership in the solution, and they will join in.

In one of our discussions, one of my students said, “How can we make a difference? We are just one class.” I told them, “We are only one class, but each student in our class will have an impact on everyone they know, and those people will impact everyone they know, and over time maybe we will begin to see the difference we made.”

I am asking all of you to make a difference. Read Nineteen Minutes. It will touch you deeply. I am including a link here for you to sign the “Stop Bullying! Pass the Safe Schools Improvement Act”.  Please log-on and sign this important document.

Get involved in this most important fight. It impacts all of us.

Bullying, Teacher-World's Blog Bullying, cyber bullying, Jodi Picoult, Nineteen Minutes