A little bit of the lighter side...

After my first three posts I thought I'd share a bit of the lighter side of my second year of teaching.

I have a boy with autism in my classroom and it has been an amazing experience. He is always keeping me on my toes. One day I was having a chat with my students about something and I must have been getting a little excited or maybe raising my voice as I was really trying to drive the point home. All of a sudden my boy with autism pipes up from the back of the class...."Mr. McEntee.....CALM DOWN!". The look of shock and horror on my other students' faces was priceless. For me....I replied, "Thank you! You're right! I do need to calm down".

About a month ago one of the girls in my class comes up to me as she was getting ready to head out for recess..."Mr. McEntee! I'm going to name my children after you!".

Today as I was walking my class to the swimming pool, it was a little breezy out and we were running a bit late. So I set the pace at the front of the line and explained to my students that we were going to have to walk pretty fast so we can get into the pool on time. One of the girls who was right behind was telling me I was walking pretty quick and I was said, "Yep, you're right...so keep up". She replied, "We can't keep up Mr. McEntee, we are walking into the wind!".

One Monday morning my class was doing our weekly ritual of HALO (High, Acknowledgement, Low, Opportunity) basically a time for each student to share with the class what they did over the weekend. My boy with autism loves this part of the week. He was telling his story about going camping with his family and started talking about his little cousin. He was saying how she was being bad and then goes, "yeah and I had to give her shit!". I calmly asked him to make sure he kept his language school appropriate, to his reply. "What?! I had to give her shit!!"

Those are all the ones I can think of for now.....just a couple of reasons why teaching is so awesome!

Zeros in School

With a lot of talk about the teacher in Edmonton teacher Lyndon Dorval who was suspended after not following the school's "no zero" policy. I've been reading a bit of the reactions through twitter and some of the newspapers. I've only been teaching for two years and I have never assessed using zeros so I don't have a previous comparison to the way I assess now. I do have a couple of thoughts about the whole thing. 

I teach Elementary School and I have other consequences I'm able to give my students if they choose not to do their homework. On the same note, as part of the same system I reward my students who do complete assignments on time and so far this system has been very successful. 

If I do have assignments or projects that a student or students don't hand in, or I am having a hard time getting them handed in, I don't think about how much that student is going to "fail in life" because I'm not giving them a zero. Instead I take a look at my assessment and see how I can change either the way I present the information or the way the students show me what they know to make it meaningful to them and thus encourage them to complete their assignments because they are excited to show me what they have done. 

Again, I understand that life is different in elementary school compared to the life of a high school Physics teacher but I don't think the mindset should be much different. I was at a cohort meeting for second year teacher's in my school division and a high school teacher who teaches at risk students or students who haven't been overly successful in school. He talked about the way he assesses and how he does project based assessments. He talked about he differentiates his assessments so students can show him what they know in the way that makes the most sense to them....not in the way he thought they should give them the information. 

I want my students to be successful, I want them to be excited to come to school every day and I want them to complete every assessment I give them. I want my students to be excited to show me what they know, to explore and learn everyday they come in. In order for this to occur I must reflect and be critical about how I teach and assess in order to make this happen.