JUST RUN

This past weekend students, parents and staff ran a 3k marathon in Pacific Grove, California. We ran because we are a JUST RUN school and have been for many years now.

JUST RUN is promotes active lifestyles and healthy eating to keep students healthy and happy. Our students enjoy being outside and participating in many of the JUST RUN activities. This years activities include tracking students' miles, running in the morning and holding a weekly school boot camp. 

JUST RUN is a fun and engaging program and can be implemented easily at your school.  For more information click on the image below. 

Collaborative Conversations

The last class you were probably in was a giant lecture series in college where a professor stood in front of the class and spoke. 

As a twenty something students you were probably bored but able to follow along. 

Now... imagine how hard that same structured class, of a lecture series, for an 8 year old! 

Even fifty years ago, people knew that kids have a hard time listening to giant heads in front of the class!!

Collaborative conversations are a way to change that because students are the ones doing the talking. To see collaborative conversations modeled in the classroom I recommend the video Formative Assessment: Collaborative Discussions. I tried the lesson with my students and it did not go well. Then as a class we watched the lesson, teacher and students. The next day when students worked collaboratively they improved dramatically. Now I am filming my class as a way to focus students on using one collaborative conversation skill. 

Cult of Pedagogy: The Podcast

A great resource for classroom teachers is the website Cult of Pedagogy. Jennifer Gonzalez started the website with great resources, one of which is her podcast. She has a range of topics that she discusses.Topics include technology, supports for English Language Learners, behavioral issues in the classroom and quick tips for teaching. 

I recently listened to episode 31: The Power of

Being a Dork. In it she talks about how teachers need to be silly and first to dismiss the inhibitions of students.  

You can access the podcast on itunes and 

listen it to your commute to work.  

Word Nerds

Everyone should be obsessed with the book Word Nerds. 

The title alone is enough for a passerby to pick it up off the bookshelf. 

I picked up the book due to the needs of students. Many of the students in my class have below grade level vocabularies. I have always known the correlation between vocabulary and reading ability but am trying to be more explicit with my vocabulary instruction to support struggling students. 

This book has turned out to be much more than a book about effective vocabulary instruction. It is a book about great teaching practices! Another reason I am enjoying this text so much is that it is a fun read. Many of the books about education and best practices are dry and boring; not this book. 

It follows the classrooms of two young teachers and how they are supporting vocabulary development in the classroom. Vocabulary development, these two teachers believe, can be found in all parts of the classroom. For organization, to teaching approaching, behavior management, and explicit instruction vocabulary is being supported.

Now, I am not a new teacher. I have been teaching for many years. My sister and husband are teachers. My mother and two aunts are principals. Even my grandmother was a teacher! On breaks I spend time in classrooms observing teachers to refine instruction. With that said, I have learned a lot from this book and would recommend it to teachers of ALL levels, abilities and experiences.

Take this excerpt from the book for example:

Click on the book text above to enlarge.

This excerpt has nothing to do with vocabulary instruction YET has EVERYTHING to do with effective teaching practices and therefore strong vocabulary instruction. This book is amazing!

A few paragraphs is enough to change a stagnant or ineffective teacher's approach as to how they should model their classroom.

As a teacher, many of the practices from this book I can take and use in the classroom. I can read a chapter a night as a quick and enjoyable read. Then I use strategies talked about in the text when planning. This section, for example, put into words how I feel about classrooms.

As an administrator, many of the approaches presented in the text would be a quick fix if presented and discussed with staff (i.e. professional development or staff meeting). You can present this text in a passive and welcoming way to promote self reflection!

Like I said... it's amazing.

For more information on the text check out GoogleBooks where you can read many of the first 147 pages for free. Or if you would like to see other reviews on Word Nerds check out this review from The Electric Journal for English as a Second Language.

Works Cited:

Overturf, B. J., Montgomery, L. H., & Smith, H. M. (2013). Word Nerds. Portland, Maine: Stenhouse.

The Problem We All Live With

This American Life is a wonderful podcast produced by NPR. You can access it for free on the website http://www.thisamericanlife.org/ or through the Podcast App.  

I have enjoyed listening to this hour long podcast from This American Life. It is titled The Problem We All Live With. It discusses integration in schools today and highlights to inequalities students in public education face. I highly recommend it to anyone who works in education.

Here is a video version of the podcast for your listening pleasure. Please share your thoughts!  

Donors Choose

Principals and teachers alike should be sharing DonorsChoose.Org with EVERYONE!

The website is a great resource and I have seen it used countless time to get supplies for classrooms. 

Two years ago I created a DonorsChoose project and was lucky enough to have more than 100 new books donated to my classroom! You can view the project I completed by clicking here. 

Teachers and administrators create projects, post them to social media or share with others, and then people donate to your project. Once the project is completed students send a thank you to those who donated to the project.  

Other successful DonorsChoose projects include Miss Downer's project. She contacted a local newspaper and had the project featured in their blog. Within a day her project was completely funded.

Below is a quick video highlighting DonorsChoose and how easy it is to use.

The Triple Focus: Social Emotional Education

This story excerpt was featured on the HUFFPOST BOOK blog on August 8^th 2014. 

The Triple Focus: A New Approach to Education is a fantastic quick read. I highly recommend this book to anyone working with students. It provides insight to the emotional well being of children.

A New Approach to Education

 

The following is an excerpt from Daniel Goleman's new book with Peter Senge, The Triple Focus: A New Approach to Education.

Empathy and Academic Success

The key to compassion is being predisposed to help -- and that can be learned.

There is an active school movement in character education and teaching ethics. But I don't think it's enough to have children just learn about ethical virtuosity, because we need to embody our ethical beliefs by acting on them. This begins with empathy.

There are three main kinds of empathy, each involving distinct sets of brain circuits. The first is cognitive empathy: understanding how other people see the world and how they think about it, and understanding their perspectives and mental models. This lets us put what we have to say in ways the other person will best understand.

The second is emotional empathy, a brain-to-brain linkage that gives us an instant inner sense of how the other person feels -- sensing their emotions from moment to moment. This allows "chemistry" in our connections with people.

Those two are very important of course; they're key to getting along with other people, but they're not necessarily sufficient for caring. The third is called, technically, empathic concern -- which naturally leads to empathic action.Unlike the other two kinds of empathy, this variety is based in the ancient mammalian circuitry for caring and for parenting, and it nurtures those qualities.

That last type of empathy offers the foundation for what's been called a "caring classroom," where the teacher embodies and models kindness and concern for her students, and encourages the same attitude among the students. Such a classroom culture provides the best atmosphere for learning, both cognitively and emotionally.

Learning in general happens best in a warm, supportive atmosphere, in which there exists a feeling of safety, of being supported and cared about, of closeness and connection. In such a space children's brains more readily reach the state of optimal cognitive efficiency -- and of caring about others.

Such an atmosphere has particular importance for those children at most risk of going off track in their lives because of early experiences of deprivation, abuse, or neglect. Studies of such high-risk kids who have ended up thriving in their lives -- who are resilient -- find that usually the one person who turned their life around was a caring adult.

If you ask them what made the difference, very often they'll tell you it was that teacher who really saw them, who really understood them, who really cared about them and saw their potential. Such caring and genuine concern is important not just in the classroom but also throughout the school.

Administrators need to care about teachers so that the teachers feel they have a secure base. When you have a secure base, your mind operates at its best. You can function optimally. You can take smart risks. You can innovate and be creative, feel enthused, motivated, and tune in to other people. Compassion comes more easily.

The more upset we are, the more self-focused we become. We tune out the people around us, tune out the systems around us, and we just think about ourselves. Being able to manage your inner life lets you tune in to others with genuine care, and function at your best. It's true for teachers, for parents, for administrators, and for kids.

Several research centers have been piloting programs that cultivate an attitude of kindness and concern, Stanford and Emory Universities among them. The Mind and Life Institute has created a network of educators and researchers (from these and other institutions) to distill the active ingredients from this research and adapt it into a curriculum for younger students. They plan to start with the first or second grade, and then roll out developmentally appropriate versions for each successive grade level.

For instance, one of the guided reflections a teacher in such a program might lead students through is all the ways other kids are "just like me." The children would be instructed to consider their common hurts and hopes, their fears and anger, their kindness, and their need to be loved. Such a widened view of how others feel and see the world acts as an antidote to a one-dimensional view of other children that can lead to negative stereotyping or bullying.

One appeal: these are empirically tested methods, and so this program in cultivating compassion should be state of the art. Helping children cultivate their capacity for caring and concern -- for empathic action -- will likely be the next major step for SEL.

From The Triple Focus: A New Approach to Education. Copyright 2014 Daniel Goleman and Peter Senge.