Tommy Sands is coming to St. Michael's

Tommy Sands is coming to Saint Michael's College in March for the next Concert for Saint Patrick. Probably best known for his incredible antiwar song Roses, Tommy Sands has been a voice for peace and justice for as long as I can remember. I have sung many of his songs with my band, the Highland Weavers, over the years so to meet him in March is something incredible to look forward to through the long, dark winter months.

Here's more about the legendary Tommy Sands. 

The concert will once again be a fund raiser for the Sustic Fund for Families of Children with Cancer.

Clocks Fall Back

I am determined not to miss the clocks "falling backwards" this year.  It's already happened in the UK so I have been warned. It's been so warm and un-fall-like recently that it's easy to miss the event. I completely missed the "Springing forward" because it was such a dark and dismal time of the year this year.

The changing of the clocks in Spring and Fall is one of the most difficult concepts to teach young children. It's such an abstract thing and yet it affects everyone. Time, in hours and minutes, is a man-made construct. It's really the daily rotation of the Earth on its axis that gives us day and night. The two things are related but not "glued" together, so to speak. We can "slide" the hours and minutes construct/scale back and forth on the Earth-related time scale to optimize the daylight time available to us. Here's a neat web-site that shows day and night as it's actually happening as well as the time anywhere in the world. Put a small piece of "post-it" on your monitor screen next to the line that shows night-time and leave the website up for half an hour or so. When you return to the screen you'll see how much it has changed.

Here's another web-site that shows you the time instantly anywhere in the world. It's very difficult for children to grasp the idea that it can actually be tomorrow or yesterday at this very moment somewhere else in the world. In fact, a fourth grade student once asked me if he went to Australia and watched a horse race and flew home could he bet on the winner he had seen win the race and win the bet because he had watched it yesterday which was really now!

The Moment you Know you can Teach

The mid-term of student teaching is a time of great anticipation in the lives of everyone involved in the student teaching experience. There are probably as many definitions of what constitutes a good teacher as there are teachers. In fact, there are probably as many definitions of what a good teacher is as there are teachers, parents and legislators combined. Just about everyone has experienced a teacher of some sort in their life so just about everyone "knows" what a "good" teacher is.

Regardless of what constitutes a good teacher there are signs to look for when you are learning how to teach that let you know that you can actually teach, in the institutional sense, that is. These are not things that other people tell you you are doing but things that come from within. There's something quite unique about teaching; it's the only job where you are face to face, within one room, and in control of up to 30 other people for around 180 days a year. This is what sets teaching, in the institutional sense, apart from all other human endeavors. So knowing, for yourself, that you can do it is a huge milestone on one's life. This "knowing" usually occurs in an instance, in a trice, momentarily; it's not something that creeps up on most people.

I knew I could teach when I was called from my class one day to deal with an urgent issue to find, when I returned, some 7 minutes later, all 34 fourth graders were still happily working on their individual assignments. Last semester I finally saw it happen with Teal, one of my student teachers when she stopped during a class and said quietly  "you're all being so good". Yes, I know that teaching is infinitely more than classroom management but that institutional sense of teaching comes primarily from that threshold of confidence across which all successful teachers step at some point.

Then begins the life  journey of learning how to teach in the pedagogical sense where the learning of each individual student in your class becomes the number one priority and your knowledge and understanding of the subject matter enables you to optimize the learning of each of these  individual students. OK, so this is how I define good teaching!

Outstanding Teacher Recognized

It's not every day that someone you know gets a $25,000 award and incredible recognition  for being the best there is. This is what happened to Matt Hadjun, a St. Mike's grad., current graduate student, cooperating teacher, fifth grade teacher, and all around great person. On the morning of Monday October 15 Matt was presented with a Milken Family Foundation National Educator award. Each year the award is presented to forty teachers nationwide in a surprise ceremony in which only a handful of people are privy to before the event. This creates one of the most exciting momentary situations one can imagine.

In a school assembly at Champlain school where Matt teaches fifth grade, all the students, teachers, a selection of local dignitaries, and past Milken award winners gathered under the pretense of listening to a presentation given by the Vermont Commissioner of Education. Commissioner Vilaseca started to speak but quickly turned the proceedings over to the Milken representative who then skilfully led the audience on a journey of what it means to be a great teacher until she finally identified Matt as the winner of the Milken Family Foundation award in Vermont. Sheer joy and pandemonium broke out as a battery of TV cameras rolled to capture the moment. Some of Matt's fifth grade students even had tears of joy rolling down their cheeks as he stepped forward to receive the giant check.

I have known Matt for several years and had the pleasure of working with him last Spring when he hosted one of our student teachers. His classroom is a remarkable  place of learning. With the subdued lights, intimate places for students to learn, and Matt's ever present gentle demeanor and sincere caring for his students and the subject matter he teaches, it is not difficult to imagine how wonderful it must be to be a student in his class at a time when the wonders of the world are just beginning to raise curiosity and a passion for learning.

Well done, Matt, you are an inspiration to all our students who want to be elementary school teachers.

Place Value and Reader's Theatre

In a previous life and many years ago I taught a language arts and social studies course as part of a teacher education program. My favorite part of the language arts part of the course was Reader's Theatre (and I intentionally put the r before the e). I think I enjoyed it so much because it was an opportunity for students to come to terms with the most incredible teaching tool we all have, our voices. I used to tell them that they had to imagine they were performing a play on the radio so no-one could see any of their actions or facial expressions; everything had to be communicated through the voice.

Yesterday evening I spent half an hour with Stephanie, a graduate education student to help her develop her project which was to teach place value through reader's theatre. Since I believe math should always have an aesthetic component this seemed like a wonderful way of developing the fundamental concepts of place value in an artistic and motivating context.

We talked primarily about place value, how it is groups of tens of tens and how we have ten numerals with which to make every conceivable number possible. We also talked about the misconceptions caused by phrases such as "0 is a place holder" and how 0 really means "none of". For example, in 103 the 0 means there are no tens. We also talked about the reason for putting a comma every three digits to help us read large numbers. Most people remember being taught this but few people ever remember being taught why. If you think about a large number such as 21,487,439 the first 3 digits from the right, 439 refer to ones, the next 3 digits, 487,  refer to thousands while the 21 refers to millions. Between each set of commas, from right to left are ones, tens and hundreds. 439 is ones, tens and hundreds of ones. 487 is ones, tens and hundreds of thousands and 21 is ones and tens of millions. This pattern of ones, tens and hundreds repeats itself between each comma for ever.

Teaching and Learning Abroad

It's advising week this week which means I get to share in my advisees plans and goals for their lives. I spend 15-20 minutes with each student as they share their excitement about their courses, professional goals and their work with children. Every so often a student is really excited about a program they have experienced and they want other students to know about it. So when Elizabeth Watts shared her excitement about her participation in Projects Abroad this past summer I had to add a link to the Education Department  webpage.

We frequently hear negative things in the news about study or work abroad programs so it is really good to hear about one that really works well. Elizabeth went to Ghana through Projects Abroad and was really impressed with both the educational component of the program as well as its administration. It's a volunteer program but everything is really well organized and coordinated. She says she always felt she was well looked after and knew exactly where she was supposed to be.

Another great overseas program is the Advanced Studies in England program which is a more formal educational experience but with a significant field placement in a public school classroom. One of my advisees, Sara Denton is currently studying with ASE in Bath, England. You can read all about her experiences in her SMC blog.  

Inspirational Teacher Voices

In one of the undergraduate courses I took when I was learning to be an elementary school teacher in the late '60s/early 70s the instructor would have us all periodically lie on the floor and project our voices up to the ceiling. Sophie Williams was her name and she taught Theatre courses as well as Education courses. The idea behind this was to help us develop our teacher voices so that we could be heard and understood without shouting. She taught us how to project our voices from our diaphragms as opposed to our chests. She taught us all about voice intonation, pitch and volume. These, she assured us, were the tools of our trade. They would help us use our voices in a survivable and effective way; something we would need for a lifetime of some 45 years of teaching.

Since that time, I have treasured Sophie's words and come to realize the wisdom in what she said as I try to help my student teachers master the infinite qualities of their voices. I have added to Sophie's advice by reassuring my students that they will get much more enjoyment from their teaching if they see it as a "theatrical art" form in which they can play the part by using their voices effectively and enjoyably.

For example, I tell them to sound curious and genuinely interested when they are asking a question; soften the voice or use falling or rising intonation so that is sounds like a genuine stimulus for thought or search for an answer. I tell them when they want student to follow specific directions to say what they mean and mean what they say. It doesn't really work very well if you want to let children know you are not terribly happy with their behavior if you say it with a big smile on your face.

So although I want my students to develop their teacher voices the idea is a long way from what is traditionally known as a "teacher voice". This is something left over from a Dickensian classroom. Effective teacher voices are inspiring, encouraging, enlightening, motivating, sensitive and theatrical. If they are this, they never need to be "teacher voices".