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<\/a><\/p>\nIt was March 15, 2001 and all students were off from school for Curriculum Development Conference Day for teachers. We all gathered in the auditorium of the high school for the keynote speaker, Dr. Steven Sobel, \u00a0a motivational speaker, educator, and humorist. During his speech he said, \u201cA lot of kids won\u2019t tell you, this is the day that you can reach me.\u201d I was into writing down quotes back then, so I wrote it down. I don\u2019t remember what Dr. Sobel talked about on that day, but the quote has stuck with me for all of my teaching since then. <\/span><\/p>\n Every day teachers, parents, and even children go into the world with the hopes that we will be able to learn something new and share some of our knowledge with others so they can learn also. Just ask my son how many different types of video games and anim\u00e9 he has tried to teach me about throughout his pre-adolescence through young adulthood. It\u2019s not an easy task.<\/span><\/p>\n As a teacher when you have a class of students that are all over the place – socially, cognitively, and behaviorally, in addition to whatever baggage they are bringing to the day from home, you try to find a middle ground that you hope teaches the skills that you have in your plans to everyone. With Common Core and testing that push to accomplish so much in so little time, it becomes an even bigger task. There\u2019s not as much time to find those teachable moments with individuals as you are trying to push everyone along. <\/span><\/p>\n In my early years of teaching, I teamed with another teacher and we both taught 4th and 5th grade interage classrooms. That meant we kept most students for 2 years (our 4th grades to 5th graders) As fifth graders left our classes a new set of 4th graders entered. It allowed us a lot of flexibility. We could split the classes such that one of us taught all the 4th graders social studies or science and the other taught all the 5th graders. We could combine both classes and then divide the students into more homogeneous groups based on skill level. We did that with reading also. This allowed us to not be restricted by grade level, but deal with the students on their cognitive level. You can\u2019t do that today. Each year we decided who would teach which groups so that we didn\u2019t stagnate teaching the same thing all of the time. What was nice about this system was when one of us would come across a 4th grader who was struggling with a particular concept such as in math, we realized that that wasn\u2019t the time to teach them, so we could say, \u201cDon\u2019t worry about it, you\u2019ll learn this concept next year\u201d. <\/span><\/p>\n Finding a teachable moment and method sometimes gave us small victories. I\u2019ve written about a few of those small victories in older blogs. You can read them by first going to: <\/span>http:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/?p=271<\/span><\/a> and following the links to the other two when you\u2019re done reading. <\/span><\/p>\n We all must be keenly aware of our audience as we try to teach and share experiences. Our children don\u2019t always see the wisdom of what we are trying to teach them when they are young, but slowly as they grow older they discover we\u2019re not stupid anymore. We as adults follow the same pattern as we learn from our children. Being able to recognize \u201cthis is the day you can teach me\u201d is a crucial skill to being an effective teacher. So keep a look out for it. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Teachable Moments It was March 15, 2001 and all students were off from school for Curriculum Development Conference Day for teachers. We all gathered in the auditorium of the high school for the keynote speaker, Dr. Steven Sobel, \u00a0a motivational … Continue reading <\/a><\/p>\n