Ringing in the New Year with My All-Time Top 10 Favorite Confessions and the Lessons I've Learned

I have posted my top 10 favorite posts and the lessons I've learned. If you want to access the post, simply click the title.

10. Secrets from the Crypt

Henry (not his real name) was obsessed with Egyptian history. So when he purchased a Gregg Shorthand manual at Half-Priced books, I assumed Henry thought it was an instructional manual on how to read and write using hiergriphics. Needless to say, Henry got the last laugh!

I learned the importance of letting go of outdated methods of teaching and embracing new literacies.

9. The Butterfly Effect 

The Butterfly Effect was inspired by Stephen King's novel 11/22/63. I was brainstorming a story for my blog when I remembered the events of what was (at the time) the worst day in my teaching career.

I truly believe had it not been for a mommy mouse and a bag of Cheeze Its, I would not have grown as a leader and become a transitional coach and curriculum writer. The hilarious chain of events that resulted in mayhem breaking out in my social skills classroom, keep me laughing to this day.


I learned to fail forward.

 8. Lost in Translation 

What happens with a lesson plan goes very, very wrong? A jolly rancher, lesson plans gone awry and a tenacious student turned a literacy project on its head.

I learned the value of letting go of my perceived "perfect lesson", the crème de la crème literacy project, and focus on matters of the heart.

 

7. SpongeBob SquarePants to the Rescue!

The blogposts begins..."I'm standing outside the Pearly Gates confronted by parents of a student I once taught and I thought to myself, SpongeBob, you ruined me." To this day, this post evokes so many emotions inside of me.

I learned to guard my tongue until I've learned all the facts.

6. Alien Matters: Keychains, Bobble Heads, and Refrigerator Magnets

My creativity unleashed on this post. Sometimes I read this one and think, where on Earth did I get that idea from? It's fun to read and highlights the amazingness of Edcamps!

I learned....I'm not sure what I learned. I already knew Edcamps are out of this world!

5. The Future is Calling: Are We Listening?

A personality test inspired this post. It seems
 that "futuristic" is my top leadership attribute. While writing this post I explored my beliefs.

I learned the importance of advocating for today's generation of students.

4.  What's a Lugnut? (And of other Pertinent Questions)

What is a lugnut?

A. A powerful fictional character known as a Decepticon
B. A large, rounded nut that fits over a heavy bolt.
C. An object of scorn and ridicule
D. All of the above

The correct answer is all of the above.  It depends on your perspective!

I learned the importance of teaching vocabulary IN context and knowing our students.

3. To My Principal...I Must Confess 

Before posting, I called my principal and confessed to my lie thinking she would be mad. Instead, she started laughing!  I later republished with pictures April 2012. The orginal post was my first and I wasn't sure if anyone would even read it.  Boy, was I wrong!

I learned that I could never work for the CIA. I would break.

 

There is a tie for #2. I like them both equally.

2A. Summer Slide Is No Walk in the Park

This blogpost tugs at my heart like no other. Summer reading loss (or summer slide) is an epidemic in America. I had spent the summer working alongside a university professor conducting research to help a community center secure donations to keep their program alive.

I learned that there are children in my community who go to bed hungry. Until poverty is addressed in schools, the literacy gap will continue to widen.

2B. The Ghost Plant and other Potentially Fateful Tales

I fear we have created a generation of writers who believe a exemplary rating on a state assessment or perfect score on a rubric define good writing. As a result, creativity is stifled for fear of being wrong. This post exemplifies my experience as a writing teacher.

I learned to look at what a child does right.




And my favorite post of ALL TIME is.....

1. The Importance of Classroom Environment: Lessons from a Colt Named Carl

Carl (the colt) was a stuffed animal I purchased at a Goodwill for a whopping $3.50. But did you know it was a million dollar purchase? More than any pricey curriculum, technology gizmo or gadget, this purchase changed the learning environment of my classroom.

I learned that students learn and thrive when the classroom environment is safe.


Join me as we enter another year of growing and learning from reflection.


Happy New Year!

Tamra Dollar

Confession Reflection:

• What are the benefits of teacher blogging?

• Why is it important to reflect on lessons?

• How can school districts validate the important of teacher blogging? (Credit for PD; documentation on teacher evaluation forms; make time for teachers to blog).

 

The Future is Calling: Are We Listening?

I confess that I think about the future probably more than most people. It may have been predestined. 

I was born the same year the future-themed, Seattle World's Fair opened and I was a member of the Race to Space generation.

Growing up in Renton, Washington, also had its benefits. I can vividly remember looking up at the Space Needle and wondering if the top part could fly into space. (Afterall, it was called the "Space" Needle). I stepped into an elevator that beamed me and my family up to the top of the Space Needle at unimaginable speed. Standing on the outer balcony, the floor below me rotated too slowly for me to feel, and yet the Seattle skyline changed every few minutes. 

I entered kindergarten in 1967 at the height of the Race to Space years. The school I attended was an experimental school funded by Science. Unlike traditional schools that had desks in rows and subjects segregated by topic, my school was round and had walls between “classes” that open in the day to allow my class to move to different stations to be taught by different teachers. 

Reading, math and writing revolved around science. Since Renton, Washington was the hub of aerospace engineering, we frequently had visits from astrophysicist and engineers from the nearby Boeing Plant.

I remember learning by experience rather than text books. I learned how heat molecules were light in weight and density by pouring hot water dyed with red food coloring into a tank filled with ice-cold water and watching the red dye rise to the top. I remember watching cold water with blue ink drop to the bottom of the tank. Instead of reading and writing about Dick and Jane, I read and wrote about famous scientist like Ben Franklin. 

Learning was meaningful and relevant to our school mission: Land a man on the moon before the Russians.  


Sadly, the funding for my school went away after the moon landing and I experienced a different type of learning where the end goal was to find the correct answer. 

Correctness was privileged over wonderment. 

The mysteries of space were replaced with over-priced text books, end of chapter questions that required me to define ambiguous vocabulary terms detached from meaningful experience.

I demonstrated my understanding by using a number two pencil to correctly “bubble” an option of a, b, c, or d, or all of the above. 

I spent hours upon hours tracing letters of the alphabet on ditto pages (now called worksheets). In middle school, English Language Arts required me to progress through "SRA" reading passages.

I learned how to be good at school. I lost my joy of learning.

Today, I fear that our students are being groomed as early as Kindergarten to privilege assessment over learning. Reading and writing are associated with levels, lexiles, preciseness, and scores. 

Our learners are immersed in acronyms that have flooded our education system and have become a language of its own: IEP, RtI, STAAR, CBS, CAS, ELPS, and so on.

I believe it is our moral obligation to move beyond prescriptive methods of teaching that have held our learners (and teachers) hostage. Classrooms should no longer resemble the classroom of the twentieth century. It's time to move beyond the known, and free our learners to explore the unknown!

The future is calling, but are we listening?

Confession Reflection:

• What are some ways we can equip students with future-ready skills in order to be successful in the workforce of tomorrow? 

• Does your curriculum make room for 22nd-century skills to be taught and practiced? i.e. entrepreneurship, experience with digital tools, second language acquisition.

• How can instructional coaches and administrators support resistant teachers to embrace a growth mindset without shaming or blaming?

Lost in Translation: When Lesson Plans Go Wrong

As with most adventures in life, things don't always go as planned. It was 2007, light years away from Angry Birds, Iphones, and instagram. Class projects relied on the good ol' #2 pencil, glue stick, colored pencils, crayons, scissors, and a trusty ruler.

I was a week away from spending a romantic springbreak get-a-way with my husband touring the city of love and lights; Paris, France. But as with all teachers, it is in our DNA to carry our students in our hearts, even on vacation.

I was walking the aisles of Hobby Lobby when a miniature passport with the Eiffel Tower on the cover caught my eye. Wa-La! The Flat Stanley project was scheduled to launch. It would be the crème de la crème of literacy ventures. I would take a class-made Flat Stanley to Paris, snap photos, and return ready to translate the photos into a journal starring our very own Flat Stanley.

Before internet gizmos and gadgets, hashtags, and Avatars, Flat Stanley was a simple paper cut-out, shaped like a boy with reddish-brown hair, fair skin, and rosy cheeks. He was an ordinary boy until a bulletin board fell on him during the night flattening him. The 1964 book series, by Jeff Brown, has Stanley capturing burglars and retrieving keys from storm drains; feats of heroism attainable because of his flatness.

As fate would have it, the day my literacy class was scheduled to discuss our global project, I bit down on a cherry jolly rancher and cracked my back molar. I went to the dentist and was told I needed a root canal. I scrambled sub plans and wrote detailed notes on Flat Stanley literacy circles, mapping out his adventures to famous landmarks, and of course, using paper templates of Flat Stanley.

When I returned on Thursday, teachers would vote anonymously on which Stanley would go. It was a lot to ask from a substitute, but visions of the project trumped any common sense.

Dreams of French pastries and desserts kept me strong through the ordeal, and I was confident the Flat Stanley project would prevail. I would not...could not...let a jolly rancher take me and our class project down.

The swelling was worse than expected and  a dry socket would keep me out until Friday...the last day before spring break. I emailed my substitute who assured me the students were "highly engaged" and the students' characters were "coming along nicely."

I returned to school to find a plethora of paper creations lining the walls, only none of them looked like Flat Stanley.  I opened my book bag and a lump formed in my throat.

The crispy white sheets of Flat Stanley templates, were tucked neatly inside my school tote bag, along with my project plans. 

I looked around the room. There was a Harry Potter look-alike (scar and all), a transformer, a Justin Bieber, and even a Pegasus. I wanted to cry. What have they done? I cursed the jolly rancher. In the absence of templates and lesson plans, the students didn't know that they were creating a Flat Stanley replica that would actually go to France.


My substitute wasn't to blame either. I had forgotten to take the templates out and half of the plans were paper clipped to the copies. She only knew to read books and have students create a character using their imagination. It was the best I could've expected, really, given the circumstances.

I confess that I blamed the jolly rancher for years for the project gone bust. But there was a bright spot in the Flat Stanley Fiasco, as I called it for years. His character was unmistakable. With the exception of Flat Stanley's hair and white complexion, it was Kenny to a tee.

He had also designed a passport with a hand-drawn Eagle on the cover with black marker.

I pulled him aside, "You did a wonderful job drawing your character. What is his name?" (I excepted for him to say his name).

"Mrs. Dollar! He already has a name...Flat Stanley!"

After class, I quietly asked Kenny if he'd like for me to take his Flat Stanley and he answered, "Duh! That's why I made a passport!"

I confess that I wanted to create an authentic Flat Stanley, the one Mr. Brown would be proud of (or so I thought), but my teacher inner voice screamed no! I guess you could say it's one of the moments when, as a teacher, I had to let go of preconceived notions, my ideal lesson, the crème de la crème project.. and go with the heart.

To learn more about the Flat Stanley Literacy project: http://www.flatstanley.com/

Confession Reflection:

• Has there ever been a project/lesson that didn't go the way you planned? What did you learn from the experience?

• Can you think of a teacher who affirmed you in some way? Did the experience shape how you relate to your students?

• How can administrators nurture a climate that affirms risk-taking and celebrates "jolly rancher" moments?

I originally published this blog in 2013, but decided to republish this year. This is one of my all-time favorite blogs. I also found more pictures to post.