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November 07, 2006
Different levels of decoration
It's always interesting to visit another school. As a teacher, you feel a bit like a spy. Today I went to an elementary school to vote after work. At the elementary level, decorations and 'pretty things' dominate. At this school, the Halloween decorations are already gone, replaced by hand turkeys, autumn leaves, and lots of brown, yellow, and orange construction paper.
I used to work at middle schools. You could always tell the teachers who had moved up from elementary. They had all the nice posters, smart groupings of vocabulary (different colors for different topics), carpets on the floor. Those of us who started in middle school are less skilled. We can try to emulate the gifted, yet often mathematically challenged early grade teachers, but never actually match their decorating skills. I always felt silly showing them my students' rather ugly work of quadratic equations. It didn't help that my handwriting is truly awful. Mathematically, my room was always brilliant. Other math teachers would come in and tell me how much they loved my students' work. The elementary teachers would just 'tsk,' as it was never pretty. Damn it, math is often not pretty.
Whenever I moved on to high school, I realized that I'm now the comparative elementary school teacher. As far as high school goes, my room decorations (actually, ANY room decorations) are exciting. As my school had some things on the bulletin board from last year with no plan of replacing them, my work is hailed as wonderful. Student work on the walls? Can that be done? My zod, it's amazing! When I use different colors on the same poster, people are flabbergasted. What? Not black! Sacre bleu! Plants? Crazy!
Now I just have to figure out a way to calculate the areas of hand turkeys, and we've got the next project.
Posted by G at November 7, 2006 08:52 PM
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Comments
The great ed. reformer in NYC, Deborah Meier, once said that our high school classrooms would be better if they were more like middle school classrooms, middle school classrooms better if more like elementary school classrooms and elementary school classrooms better if more like kindergarten. She wrote this back in the day when kindergarten was still kindergarten and not elementary school boot camp. It all comes down to treating kids in their wholeness and not just as mind-vessels to be filled with knowledge.
Posted by: Marty at November 7, 2006 11:33 PM
Calculate the areas of hand turkeys? Pfsh. It's simple physics really....
Posted by: Doug at November 8, 2006 12:49 AM
Marty is right. I know how to make hand turkeys, also, turkeys out of pine cones and hay rolls. WSM
Posted by: WSM at November 8, 2006 01:42 PM
for shame! when math isnt pretty you havent found the right solution yet. tsk.
Posted by: jwc at November 8, 2006 04:41 PM
"the areas of hand turkeys? Pfsh. It's simple physics really...."
Actually, as a 4th grade class I had once discovered, it's simple geometry and measurement!
It's interesting that you're commenting on the "artwork" in an elementary school. We have been fighting and winning the battle with our elementary and middle school teachers to NOT decorate their classrooms but fill them with "authentic" student work. The fight has been around what is authentic. It's not worksheets and tests. Sounds like what you display in your room falls into authentic - what the kids create from their "doing" math rather than "learning" math.
I was in one of my 1st grade classes today and watched the teacher "modeling" subtraction using plastic cups to show "minus" and "less." Transferring the actual with an in-out machine on the whiteboard and finally to a subtraction problem with the minus (-) sign for the first time.
The kids were engaged with the brief whole-group lesson and then went to their seats and, rather than pulling out a worksheet or workbook, they opened their group's plastic baggie and reproduced what the teacher modeled using objects in their bags, each child making up problems for the others. They were all involved. Remember an adult's attention span actually averages 7-10 minutes. These 6 year-olds kept at it longer than that.
I was so proud. I have been working for several years to make this happen and it's finally working. It's been a struggle but well worth it. Most of my staff now thinks the whole thing was their idea to begin with, and those left behind are starting to wonder what all the excitement is. There are only 2 hard-nosed my way is better since I've been doing it for so long teachers. It's going to take me now stepping in and saying, "You now have to make a decision. Make the change before I have to make it for you. Sad, but I can no longer sit back and see kids not given every opportunity to make life better. In my mind, kids always come first.
[As an aside - our discipline problems in just two months have drastically gone down! I attribute this to everything finally starting to come together and the kids now having a stake in what they are doing and they're excited about it.]
Don't give up what you're doing. Sounds to me like you're making math "happen" for your kids. Doesn't that just warm your insides at the end of the day?
just asking...
Posted by: Mike/ at November 9, 2006 10:13 PM
Try framing each quadratic equation on a different color of construction paper...
Red and Green at Xmas?
And... OMG... Just imagine!
Posted by: Mr. HK at November 12, 2006 02:09 PM
I love how the wall looks! Cwazy kids!
Posted by: sue at November 15, 2006 10:29 PM