Good Work and Living: Don't Waste Time or Money

More than anything I hate to waste time or money as I see both as the currency of potential. Using time and money well means meeting the potential results of more positive and promising lives.

This is one reason why President Trump's revolving door of leadership, persistent put-downs, and slick marketing manipulation angers me so--all of these tactics are clearly a waste of time, time that could be spent with intelligent analysis, good collaboration, and worthwhile purpose.

I take time and money seriously. As a busy mom for the past 27 years, I know how precious time is, and as someone who has worked for almost fifty years, I know how precious hard-earned money is. I'm also someone who likes to maximize time and money for life events and pursuits that are meaningful to me. I like to use my time well at work in an effort to reach worthy individual and collective goals. I also like to use my money well to optimize meaningful goals. I hate to waste either time or money.

What can we do to maximize time and money?

First know your goals and values well. Know what means the most to you, and then pursue your truth and values by using time and money well.

When wise use of time and money relates to family life, it means saving up for what matters most--time and money for family togetherness, time and money for individual family member's health, education, and welfare, and time and money for long term goals and dreams.

At work, it means carefully spending time and money for the general welfare for each and every student, a great education for each and every student, and positive efforts for the teaching/learning community today and into the future.

In government, this means carefully prioritizing what's most important with formal and informal facts and figures. Instead of wasting money on self-serving policies and priorities, good government uses money and time with great care so that dollars spent and time used is well directed to the most important priorities and concerns that contribute to a strong, positive government for all citizens.

Obviously it's impossible to never waste time or money. We waste both money and time by lack of knowledge, lack of planning, lack of reflection, lack of good process with regard to goals and priorities, lack of accurate information, and poor decision making. It's impossible to be so perfect that you never waste time or money, but if you're truly invested in doing the best you can, you will be mindful of not wasting time or money in the spheres where you live and work.

Student-Friendly Learning Environment

One perennial question and pursuit I have as an education is how can I make the learning/teaching environment a student-friendly environment.

I've been reaching for this goal for a long time and getting closer all the time. What exists now and what are the next steps in this pursuit?

Thanks to the generous support of the WPSF I have great tables and supply drawers that support this environment. The tables alone are sturdy, attractive, and positive when it comes to fostering an atmosphere of teamwork and student-friendly learning and teaching. Each table includes a map, supply caddies, paper container, and lots of useful supplies such as colored pencils, pencils, rulers, staplers, pencil sharpeners, tape, glue, and more.

I also have a number of supply drawers that allow students to store their work and also allow me to supply a large number of learning supplies. Further I have a couple of shelving units and cabinets to further supply the many materials we use throughout the year for our many active learning experiences.

The next step it to inventory and organize all the materials I have. I need to get rid of materials and books I no longer use and better store the many, many materials I use all the time.

Since my teaching career is near its end, I want to organize the materials so that another teacher can easily come into my room and have what they need to teach the curriculum well.

I'll begin with the purge--if I haven't used the material in a year, I'll get rid of it. I'll likely offer those materials to colleagues and/or students.

Then I'll organize the many drawers and shelves I have with the needed materials for the great investigations that we do in math and science. After that I'll update the purchasing list so that I can purchase the materials I'll need for next year's teaching year.

Ultimately I want the room to be completely student-friendly, the kind of learning environment where students can access what they need when they need it in easy-to-find and easy-to-use ways. This creates a great shared learning environment. Onward.

All Day School?

As I try to squeeze a large number of great teaching/learning standards, investigations, and explorations into each day, I'm wondering if it's time for all-day school. I've never been a fan of all-day school because I saw it as a giant add-on for teachers, but now I'm a fan of all-day school that includes a number of differing components. Essentially all-day school means the synthesis of multiple programs in meaningful days. This is what it would look like:

Academic Program
8-12 would be the academic program. During this time students would invest in traditional academic learning in multiple ways.

Lunch and Play
12-1 would include a nutritious lunch and lots of play.

Arts and Science
1-3 would be a two hour block for arts and science--creative, hands-on, team projects and learning.

Sports and Physical Education
3-5 would be time for sports and physical education. There would be a wide variety of sports activities and contests available.

Teachers would work a schedule of about 3-4 hours with students, 2-3 hours of prep and planning, and one hour of lunch.

I think that this could truly create programs for young children that match families' work schedules as well as the need for healthy, positive holistic learning programs. What do you think?

Math Ahead

Students took midyear assessments which gave me a good picture of who is getting the instruction they need and who I need to think differently about. Now the key is to make the needed program changes happen to help students who are falling a bit back--what's a teacher to do?

First, it's important to lay out the path for the rest of the math year which includes the following:

• completion of the division unit including a problem solving creation exploration activity
• fraction unit with a focus on the behavior of fractions
• measurement unit with a map making project and science connections
• geometry unit with a tangram start, origami, and "wanted" posters
• review
• systemwide fifth grade test
• state tests
• science/math exploration

Next, I have to look at how I'm teaching math--what do the math lessons, learning experiences, groups, format look like.

I'm adding a couple of early morning help sessions for a few targeted students--that will help. The established early morning help sessions will continue, but they are so popular that I don't have a lot of time with any one child--it's typically me and about twenty eager students so I added the more targeted times.

During class, I plan to employ the teaching assistants more strategically. For teaching assistants that are well prepared for math teaching, I'll likely ask them to work with students who need more in quieter areas so those students can focus and work at a good pace, and for less experienced teaching assistants, I'll likely ask them to work with some of my energetic, quick math students so that I have more time for those who need a more tailored pace and approach. 

I also plan to teach students a few more online venues that will help them to learn the math at their own pace. That will free up time for me to zero in on students who may be quieter, less participatory, and less engaged in the math class because others will be working on their learning with online learning that's engaging. 

Of course I want to continue to include Boaler's games and explorations as much as possible. My greatest challenge with this is the sheer depth and breadth of concepts I'm charged with teaching--there's so much vocabulary, skills, and specific concepts that it's sometimes difficult to branch out into greater floor-to-ceiling exploration, but I know that it's a good idea to do this. Recently I included a floor-to-ceiling volume exploration--the engagement was awesome as was the learning. I will do more of this in the days ahead. 

And of course, I continue to revise the room set up to accommodate student learning better. The next iteration is to label and organize all my math tool drawers so students can easily access the materials they need, materials such as rulers, multiplication charts, blocks, tangrams, and more. I need to do the same for science too. 

Day after day my room becomes more and more of an active learning center--the kind of center that invites student exploration, deep learning, and teamwork too. There's lots to do to better this effort. This is a positively challenging point on the learning/teaching path. 

A Teacher's Day is a Super Busy Day

Today is a super busy day of teaching and learning, and the key is to just keep going. The day begins with a stop at a local store or bakery to pick up goodies for an important meeting. Following that I'll be running lots of science supplies to the school kitchen to wash them up and prepare them for today's science explorations (I don't have a sink in my room so prepping the materials requires an extra step). After that I'll set up the science supplies and ready the room for today's learning.

The day officially starts with a meeting to review scheduling potential for next year. Our team continues to develop our shared teaching model to effectively teach about 75 fifth graders. Each year we assess what's working and what could be better. Then we advocate for betterment typically beginning in January as administrators begin to think about next year's staffing and schedules.

Today we'll use the colleague circle model for problem solving as we move step-by-step through a collaborative discussion about a potential revised schedule for next year, a schedule that we feel will be more effective overall for our goals to teach students well as we meet expected standards, curriculum, and student priorities.

After that we'll move on to our Response to Intervention groups in math which are all focused on different areas of math operation and problem solving skill, concept, and knowledge. Then students wills set up science stations and explore states of matter, conservation of matter, and physical/chemical changes with hands-on explorations, note taking, video watching, and discussion. Following that is another science block where students rotate to another teacher's room to learn more science. I'll repeat the matter lab with a new group.

Lunch will be a welcome reprieve after that very busy morning, then in the afternoon I'll have time to complete the science clean-up, work with colleagues to send out our newsletter, clean up the room with students, and lead buddy-time with the kindergarten teachers. Fifth graders will read and complete small Martin Luther King, Jr. books with the kindergartners, then either read more books or make posters for the system-wide annual MLK celebration.

Teachers' days are typically very busy--we move from activity to activity as we work to coach every student ahead with positivity, kindness, skill, and care. I write a detailed post like this to acknowledge the busyness of our days. Onward.