Growing Stuff

In science Tuesday, my fourth graders planted beans in little milk cartons they'd decorated to look like turkeys -- typically a kindergarten project, but still enjoyed by the older crowd, judging from their enthusiasm as they left school with their little charges.

What if they had a real garden to work in? How much plant science would they learn by actually digging in soil, burying seeds, weeding, harvesting, and finally preparing and eating their own school-grown food? What if every public school in America had an edible schoolyard?

Since no TAKS objective deals with real-life vegetable gardening, the pessimist in me says such pleasures will be experienced by only the most privileged Texas children, those with a gardener in the family.

Taking a Cue From the Dog Whisperer (Really)

Continuing the theme of dog training as it applies to children, from Friday's New York Times: Becoming the Alpha Dog in Your Own Home. I wonder how Casar Millan's shhht corrective noise would work in the classroom.

Wild Geese and Other Animals

My meanest boy recited a poem for me today. Sure, it was for the 10 reward tickets I'd offered for memorization of "Something Told the Wild Geese," by Rachel Field. But I couldn't help but be hopeful for him, this boy who has earned my distrust with his sneaky snipes and jabs at other students. I couldn't help but to see more potential for good in him today, his voice so soft and tentative, then stronger at the end, and proud.

I made him promise -- promise -- he'd recite it for his mom when he got home. And that he'd keep it memorized, so that a long time from now, on some crisp fall day, those words will find him, and he'll remember.

Unexcused Absence: Art Education

Help! My fourth-graders only get 40 minutes of art "instruction" (usually a craft project) every four weeks. No wonder I catch many of them drawing and paper-folding during my language-arts classes: they are art-deprived.

Research shows that doing art makes people smarter. No surprise there. The good news is, I have my homeroom class at the end of the every day for 25 minutes. This would be the perfect time for a mini art lesson, and I am sensing that they really need this. If you have any resources or ideas for very brief art lessons and projects (though they can certainly stretch over multiple days), please share.

Counting Beans

I am, by nature, a negative person. Parenting has taught me to be more positive: I've seen how a strong negative reaction from me can turn a mother-daughter discussion into shouting match that ends with my daughter squeezed under her bed, simultaneously crying and saying mean things about me to herself (loudly enough for me to hear).

There's no room for negativity in the classroom. My worst days this year have been the ones when I've found it nearly impossible to notice anything that's going well.

My remedy: beans in my pocket. Every morning now I put 10
beans in my left pocket. Each time I give a student a compliment, I move a bean to my right pocket. I've been doing this for two days. I hope to get better at it. Today at lunchtime, I still had nine beans in my left pocket. By the end of the day, three beans remained. Sad, sad, sad.

I have many beans to go before I become the kind of teacher I want to be, the kind who can look away from one seriously annoying student's antics and find those students who are doing things right, or who are doing better than they did yesterday -- or whose new bangs look really nice.

so much depends

upon

the bent 

paper clip

veiled in white

sheets

beneath the grade

book