hdhstory.net

Quiet Time

In this day of electronic devices, how often do you see people walking with earbuds on listening to some sort of mp3 player or smart phone. I tend to be guilty of that too.

What is missed is hearing all of the sounds that exist in our natural world. When it comes to writing, that is where a lot of our creativity comes from.

When I was teaching 6th grade, I used to take my class out on day trips or overnight trips to stay at nature preserves. The one activity that I liked the most, as did the kids, was Quiet Time.

Here were the rules:

• Each student had to find a spot anywhere on the grounds within visual and hearing distance of me and be prepared to stay there for at least a half an hour in total silence. They could bring writing materials and/or drawing materials with them.
• Once they found their spot they had to sit there absolutely quiet for the full time.
• As the leader, I would ask the students to close their eyes for at least the first 5 minutes and just listen and feel. I might give them some prompts based on what I was hearing or feeling. (Can you hear the wind, the birds? Can you feel the sun, air? What do you smell? )
• After the 5 minutes were up I let them open their eyes and create whatever they wanted with the materials that they had brought with them having them continue to listen, but now they could add sight to what they observed.
• After the half hour, we would share.

We did Quiet time once a day while we were on those overnights. Quiet time brought out the best writing and illustrations that my students ever did. What was great about Quiet time, was that once I had taught the concepts to my students and they got to experience it outside in a quiet natural environment, I could now choose to have them do it at other types of environments, such as the school playground, in the classroom (which worked great on rainy days) and even out on the playground. It was amazing how the students internalized the idea of being quiet and listening to sounds around them even in a noisy atmosphere and then create.

There’s a folktale about listening that fits Quiet time, which had I known it way back then, I probably would have shared it with my class, before introducing Quiet time to them. You can read a version of it here: Wisdom Stories – The Cricket – Sacinandana Swami

Here are some of the writings and pictures that some of my students created during Quiet time (You might have to zoom in to make the writing more readable:

So if you want to be creative take out those earbuds, find a quiet spot, close your eyes and become one with your environment. Then write, draw, play music, sing or do anything you want that expresses what you’re doing. And share. Have fun.

Positive, Perseverance, Progress

One thing that I’ve learned throughout my years of teaching is that one must keep positive thoughts. There is plenty research out there that states that being positive, smiling, optimistic and enjoying what you are doing has a great influence on your health and stress levels. Here’s one such article: http://goo.gl/Iw1b27 if you are interested.

I’ve always tried to look on the bright side of things. Sometimes that is hard, when everything seems dismal, like when my computer is trying to prevent me from printing something (like now). But I look on the bright side, it hasn’t deleted anything I’ve written so far yet. I have had difficult classes in the past as did other teachers I worked with. You know who you are! What I tried to do with those teachers was to meet briefly, even if it was just passing in the hall, just to say one positive thing that had happened that day to each other. The day might have been rough, but that one positive moment would temper how the rest of the day went.

The second thing I learned was to persevere like I’m doing right now trying to get this article to print. If one way doesn’t work, try another. And yes, re-booting the computer sometimes works. This is really important in teaching. If I’m teaching a math concept to a class and a student just doesn’t get it, teaching them the same thing over and over again, doesn’t make it any easier for the student. I am going to keep trying, however, I need to find a different route to get to the same end. I’m not sure who came up with this quote, “If you always do what you always do, you’ll always get what you always get,” but it is true. You need to change what you are doing at times but don’t give up.

The last piece of the puzzle is to progress. Being stagnant in what you do can lead you to complacency and boredom; all of which affects the work you do. This can be hard when you’re a teacher and have to teach the same subjects and curriculum year after year. I’ve written before about the reflective journals that I kept as a teacher, http://www.hdhstory.net/Storyblog/?p=511. What I didn’t mention was as I wrote down and set goals for each upcoming year, I made it a point to do something different. Each year I chose to move forward by either trying a new way to teach or a new subject to introduce. Not all of those ideas were successful, but a lot of them were. Towards the end of my career I kept applying for different curriculum and technology grants to try new things. I received most of them. Who knew that in 1987, with just one Apple //e in my class, I could get a grant to purchase a modem (whatever that was) and connect my class to another class in California to share family stories.

As a teacher I was lucky, for I was able to change the groups I was teaching periodically. I was a sixth-grade middle school teacher, an elementary interage 4th and 5th grade teacher, a computer support teacher, and the teacher of the gifted and talented, in addition to a 4th and a 5th grade teacher (not interage). I had to progress because I kept changing who I was working with.

It is important to note, though, that to progress in what you do, it is a lot harder to do it by yourself.  I got to work with some excellent people that helped me. Thank you Barry Luna, for helping me look at issues from other people’s perspectives,  Dennis Littky for mentoring me, Bill Silver, Liala Strotman, Nancy Westover, Carol Davis-Wiebelt and Rob Verbeck for teaming with me and sharing all that you did to make me a better teacher. To my wife, Christina, who has helped guide me for the last 30 plus years so that I can progress and become a better person. I’m sure there are lots of others that I’ve failed to recognize and apologize if I’ve left you out.

Note – that your positive attitude and your perseverance will not only help you to progress but will impact the people around you. That can only help. Think about it.

My Journals – the reflective practitioner

I worked in a Middle School with sixth graders and their teachers from the Spring semester of my junior year in college through my student teaching semester in the Spring of my senior year. My supervising professor required that I keep a journal of my activities and thoughts about what I was learning during the time I worked for him. I enjoyed writing about what was going on. It only seemed natural to continue the concept of keeping journals about teaching when I started working as a real teacher.

The term that described what I was doing is “reflective practitioning”. I was reflecting about what I was doing in the classroom and at times even having dialogues with myself, in writing, to work out feelings and ideas that I pondered.

I discovered after my first year teaching, that I was spending a large chunk of my writing focused on the interactions of teachers. I decided that at that point that I would refocus my writings on kids and curriculum. I started each journal the day before the first day of classes and wrote about my goals, expectations, and anxieties about the upcoming year. There was no regular schedule for me to write. I just wrote when I felt like it. I focussed on my feelings about what I was doing. Occasionally I would name a student or students in the journal as it pertained to what I was doing and feeling. After the last day of classes in June, I would re-read the entire journal before writing down the final entry, evaluating how I thought the year went and giving some thought as to where I wanted to go for the following year.

I digitized all of my handwritten journals once computers became the norm for my writing and have notebooks that cover all of the 33 years that I taught, before retiring.

I keep all of the .pdf versions of the journals on my iDevices so I can read them and share them with others when it seems appropriate. Re-reading the journals I get to see my growth as a teacher. The ideals that I had, the problems I faced and how occasionally I even solved them. My old journals have helped new teachers when I’ve shared with them, showing the new teachers that even us experienced teachers went through the same issues that they are going through now, even though the times and curriculums were different. And we survived.

Even though I still teach as a substitute teacher and as an educational technology consultant, I no longer write my journals focussing on education. I leave all of my reflective practitioning and other writings on my blog. I’ve decided to keep a printed version of all of those writings also. Who knows, maybe someday I’ll take the next step and publish some of them.