Welcome to Teachers At Risk
An honour
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Edublog AwardsOct
13
What metaphor would you use to describe your teaching practice?
Filed Under "At-risk" students, motivating students, positive climate, The way I see it | 2 Comments
Teaching is gardening. When I’m gardening, I’m doing all I can to help the various plants in my garden flourish. If an fern or a rose bush isn’t flourishing, I don’t blame the fern or the rose bush. There’s no point. What I do is try to determine why the plants aren’t flourishing. What is it that I can change so these plants will flourish- less sunshine, more water, etc. Not all plants like the same conditions. In order for my plants to flourish, I need to differentiate the care I give them; in order for my students to flourish, I need to differentiate the care I give them, too. Plants or students, it’s all the same to me. Blaming doesn’t help them flourish. Differentiating the care I give them does.
OK, I just had this thought. If you’re good at gardening, you have a green thumb. What do you have if you are good at teaching?
I was poking around on line, wondering what other metaphors could be used for teaching. I came across the slideshare below that gives wonderful suggestions for metaphors for teachers and teaching and illustrates them beautifully. I really enjoyed watching the slideshare. I hope you do too.
Oct
11
No question in math class is a stupid question
Filed Under "At-risk" students, Engaging Assignments and Activities for Students, maintaining a safe, motivating students, underachieving students | 3 Comments
I tell my students that no question in my math class is a stupid question. I tell them I love answering questions. I tell them there are more ways than one way to get the answer to a math question. I want to make my students feel comfortable and safe so they will can take the risk necessary for learning. I think I succeeded this semester. Students are asking relevant questions and taking risks by asking questions and volunteering to put their answers on the board. I love it!
I also love it when last Thursday on Parents Night, one of the parents told me that their son came home and told them the teacher said there were no stupid questions in class and that she loved answering questions. These parents told me their son who used to hate math now is starting to like it. I love it!
Oct
2
How teachers can help students achieve true success
Filed Under "At-risk" students, motivating students, positive climate, underachieving students | 4 Comments
One of the things I try to do in all my classes is make students aware of what they can do to help themselves be more successful in and out of school. If truth be told, making students aware of what qualities they need to develop and what strategies they need to employ in order to be successful has become an obsession with me- just ask my husband, Kurt.
When I ask my students to define success, their definition of success invariably includes being rich and famous like rock stars, movie stars or elite athletes.They believe success is all about money and fame. I can remember when I was a teenager I defined success as not living on the family farm. Making it to the big city was my idea of success 
. I could hardly wait to finish school and move to Toronto and be part of that exciting city life that waited for me there. On summer nights I used to sit and watch the fire flies flitting about and imagine they were city lights and dream about what I would do when I lived in the big city.
Of course, success can be defined in many different ways. Recently, I had the opportunity to listen to John Wooden share his notion of true success as part of the TED talk series. (You can listen to him too. I’ve put the video at the end of this post.) Wooden defines true success as knowing you did the best that you were capable of doing to improve your situation. His definition of true success has nothing to do with money or fame. It has nothing to do with being better than anyone else, either. True success is all about being the best that you can be given what you know and what you can do can do at a given time in your life to improve your life.
I was particularly interested to hear what Wooden had to say about how teachers can help their students succeed.
no written words
no spoken plea
can teach our children
what to be
nor all the books on all the shelves
it’s what the teachers are themselves
For Wooden, true success for teachers boils down to being good role models and letting students see that we have the peace of mind that comes from knowing we are doing the best we are capable of doing to improve the situation at hand. I will definitely keep Wooden’s notion of true success in mind as I deal with the frustrations of having to teach students for whom the education system is not adequately meeting their needs. I need to remind myself that I’m usually (I’m not perfect- yet) doing my best to improve the situation in the classroom for my students. The public education system, on the other hand, is not being the best it can be given what is known and what it could do at this time to improve the situation in schools. The public education system is a long way from achieving true success, but I along with others are going do our best to help it achieve true success. What are some of the things you are thinking of doing to help the education system achieve true success?
photo thanks to photodawg
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