Nov

11

A Most Delightful Epiphany

Filed Under Goals, The Way I See It | Leave a Comment

The Happiness Project. I find the notion of happiness as a project rather intriguing. I’m a project person myself and have many projects on the go. My projects are goals. I like having goals. They give my life purpose and direction. I’m the happiest when I am working towards a goal. I could say Projects R Me- just check out my textile studio, my garden shed, my bookcases or my “to be developed” file at work and you’d know what I mean. When I came across Gretchen’s blog The Happiness Project the other day , I had an epiphany. I realized that all my projects are really a subset (sub-project?) of my major project, my happiness project . I hadn’t realized that and that realization makes me smile. I really like Gretchen’s blog it has much food for thought. Check it out when you have a moment. You won’t be disappointed. I intend on sitting down with a nice cup of hot tea and spending some time exploring it oops- I’ve set another goal and started another project. :)

Nov

9

Working Hard In The Present Moment

Filed Under Behaviour Management, Dealing With Stress | 5 Comments

Neon made a comment about what a relief it was to realize “that I shape my feelings and life by choosing what I want to think about.” It is quite a relief, in fact it’s empowering. Whenever ( well almost whenever) I start to have negative thoughts about a situation or a person, myself included, I encourage myself to let those negative thoughts fall away and choose to see things in a more positive light. I can feel angry, crummy, disappointed etc about something or I can let it go and not bring it into the present moment. Whatever happened, has happened. It’s over. Done. I can’t change the past. I can only affect the present moment. I can choose to be negative in the present moment, or I can choose to be positive in the present moment. It is a choice. Yes, it’s a choice. But it’s not always an easy choice. Sometimes it takes me more “present moments” than I would like it to. Why is it the case I have to work hard at being positive while I never seem to have to work hard at being negative? If anyone has any ideas about this, I sure would appreciate hearing them.

Nov

7

It’s All In The Timing

Filed Under "At-risk" students, Behaviour Management, Goals, Special Education | Leave a Comment

In class today, I was watching him as he sat there staring off into space instead of working on his assignment. How can he just sit there staring off into space for all this time? Where has he “gone”? What is he thinking about? Now, I don’t know the answer to these questions because whenever I ask, my students won’t tell me. I do know, however, that it’s my job to get them back on track, and over the years I have found a couple of really useful strategies.

One of the strategies I use to keep kids on task is to use a simple timer. Using a timer eliminates the problem of kids asking is the activity over yet. For example, my students usually hate to read and try to avoid reading and before I used the timer they took forever to start to read and were always asking if they could stop reading. For some reason that I’m not sure of, when I use the timer the kids start to read right away because I make a big deal of saying with much enthusiasm ” get set, ready, go”. They also don’t ask me if the time is up. I guess I’ve “trained” them to not to ask but wait for the ring of the timer. Sometimes students want to set the timer and they get to keep it on their desk. Usually it’s a kid who really hates reading. I guess he likes to have a sense of control. I don’t really know, and frankly I don’t care. It works and that’s all I care about. I use the timer for writing activities, for little breaks during our 75 minute class. I use it all the time( sorry about that) The kids love the timer. If I happen to forget to set the timer, someone will remind me to set it. Go figure.

The other strategy I use is to walk around and write the time at the bottom of the student’s work. Let’s say it’s 10:15. I’ll walk around and check their progress and discuss their work and write 10:15 at the bottom of their work. At 10:25 I might come by again and write that time at the bottom of the student’s work and we might discuss better time management. Some kids honestly don’t have a good sense of time. I tell them the time helps them develop a better sense of time. It does. It really does. I don’t get too many complaints about this, for some reason. I guess because I tell them it helps them pace themselves so that they don’t work too fast or too slow. They like not working too fast. Really, some days I feel like I’m still in sales and selling whatever I want them to do so that it seems to be to their advantage- like the times I tell them I’m looking to give them marks so could they please hand in their work because if they don’t I can’t give them marks. I don’t tell them they will fail if they don’t hand the work in. What’s the point of that? They’re used to failing-no big deal. But, getting marks. That’s a whole new thing. Some days I almost feel guilty! Almost.

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