Wisdom from others

"No Old Dogs..Just New Tricks"  This is what my supervisor suggested I post on my door!  

A quotation found in my 2010 Engagement Calendar:    "Journal writing is a voyage to the interior."  (Christina Baldwin)  Apparently Ms. Baldwin has written many books about "journaling."  Why do I not like that word?  I like to write in journals.   And this blog is a good way to reflect on my work and my attitude.

Advice from my sister who retired from teaching 2nd grade four years ago:  It is better to quit while you are still enjoying your work and you have the energy to do it.  It is better to quit on a positive note.  I know she is right.  But I also know it takes far more energy to teach 2nd grade full time than it takes to do what I am doing.  

B (a student from last year) passed the GED exam with a great score of 530--way above the average needed.  She called last weekend.  M is back in class because she did not pass the exam and did particularly poorly in Social Studies.  That is the difference between a student who reads for fun and one who doesn't.  I think I remember that B watched documentaries on TV--she just had more depth of  knowledge.

  I can teach students to use commas correctly and to write a five paragraph essay and to solve problems with percents.  But it is so much harder to fill in gaps in background knowledge.  So many students seem to have no sense of a world much bigger than their neighborhood and their lifetime.  

Maybe our "artwork of the day" will help.  I need to start playing music when they walk in.  And I need to find a way to keep up with the daily news.  

Then there is also the need to teach responsibility.  I stopped at S's house to pick her and her daughter up for class.  She lives right on my way and far out of the path of the bus route.  Her sister said she had overslept and couldn't come.  I said that oversleeping was not an excusable absence.  You can't oversleep and keep a job and the same holds true for a place in our class.  Ah, tough love!