One: What has been your one biggest struggle this year?
1. Communicating to students to accept responsibility for their actions and that there are consequences to others or themselves even for things they may think don’t matter, not a big deal, or jokes. Additionally, it has become a struggle for students that are unwilling to listen to their peers when they are doing something they don’t like, yet complain of students being snitches when they try and get an adult involved to help with the situation.
Two: Share two accomplishments you are proud of from this year.
1. An easy answer would be completing a teacher portfolio including observations and panel, but I would rather discuss things that are more student centric. A fun enterprise was a makeshift snow day with our second grade buddies from Mrs. Evan’s class in which we set up white sheet and chair mounds to hide behind and lots of crumpled recycled paper balls to use as ammunition and had small groups of students play against each other while the others use a white sheet as a parachute to toss balls up and down.
2. I also am proud of the expansion of an activity from last year involving Minecraft. Students worked in groups to create a mission, presidio, pueblo, and rancho in any design they wished based upon what details would set it apart from other structures and sites. This year we added a fifth site, a Spanish galleon. After the success of those five locations, I decided to charge pairs of students to try and recreate 14 of the 21 California missions based on layouts available online as well as create a visitor’s center in game with facts about each mission. I am proud because I knew it would garner a lot of enthusiasm, necessitate research, and the two projects together provided opportunities to scaffold one another in the larger groups and then demonstrate individual proficiency in the second.
Three: What are three things you wish to accomplish by the end of the school year?
1. Student book reviews on instagram/twitter which I’m hoping to accomplish as a part of group lit circles to end the year.
2. Student year in review presentation which most students have begun as an ongoing project called “What We’ve Done.”
3. Student writing: informational and opinion. Although students had completed an animal report and opinion piece earlier, students also completed an alphabet report on a famous person as well as writing a fake eulogy on their behalf so this is a goal that I was able to reach by the time I revisited this blog post from the time I had started it.
Four: Give four reasons why you remain in education in today’s rough culture.
1. Learner myself
2. Growth of students
3. Fun and challenging
4. Fresh starts: yearly and daily
Five: Which five people do you hope will take the challenge of answering these questions?
1. Denise Pica
2. Elaine Fowler Trull etrull
3. Bryan Coffey bcoffey5
4. Melissa Carr mmcarr7
5. Melissa Anroj melanroj
