Meetings, Trainings & More Meetings...

Today marked day 3 of our four day "teacher university", which is really a creative way of saying beginning of the new school year staff meetings and trainings.  It was another long, 7 hours in the school Library listening to various speakers, BUT I will say there was a lot of good information that was covered and elaborated on as well as some interesting ways to look at concepts and challenges through a different lens so to speak.  One of those teacher activities was based around a short story,  from a teaching book, simply titled A Parable.  For those that aren't familiar, you can read it here, but it's about a village of people that found bodies floating down the river day after day.  Some of the bodies were dead, some were very sick and some ended up being just fine.  Ultimately the village set up elaborate measures to help the people who floated down from upstream.

After we read the story our VP (vice principal) asked us what could the people of the village done better, one fellow educator suggested that they could have gone up river to see why people were dying/ending up in the river daily.  This was my first thought... What?! Are you insane?? I wouldn't go up the river, haven't you seen horror movies? Someone hears a weird sound, so what does the person do, goes to check it out and gets killed by an axe murderer… you go up river you'll find a man eating dragon, an army of livestock sized spiders, a serial killer convention, who knows but I sure as hell don't want to find out!

Thankfully my teacher brain kicked in (figures I would be the random teacher they called on to share out how the story applies to the kiddos at our school); but really, the story did have a good point!  If you don't know the root of the problem you can't fix it, change it or otherwise help find a more desirable outcome; which in this case would be less dead bodies, and ultimately no dead bodies floating down the river… just like with my students, if my kiddos can't do something we need to find out, in the most basic form, what it is they don't have in order to do that particular thing.  You might be thinking well duh, if a kid can't do something you need to figure out where the concept falls apart in their brain, BUT it's a good reminder that this applies to social, emotional and behavior skills too; maybe that kid that can't stay in his seat doesn't have the tools in his tool box to deal with anxiety, frustration, nervous energy, etc in a more productive or more desirable way... Lets be honest as you read this a specific kid popped into your head that just couldn't seem to figure out how to keep his bottom in the chair.... Yes, that still happens in Middle School....  

Enough food for thought for one day, classroom decor and bulletin board pictures coming next so stay tuned 

-Karissa