Changing my name?

I wonder when it was that the teacher became the be all and end all voice that matters? What am I doing to the kids in my room that they have to have my opinion. They have to show me their work and know that I think it's okay before they can move on and finish creating whatever they are creating.

I mean, okay, it's flattering. 32 little people who want, or need your stamp of approval. And when one of them raises up the Hopi pot they are making and says, Miss Rivers, is this good? It's hard to not give that nod of approval.

It's not just that I'm exhausted after an hour spent constantly reassuring children that their work is good (or admonishing them to stop trailing flour across the floor) that I'm thinking about this. I would certainly be less tired if their peers opinions meant as much as mine. But I do think that part of being a student centered classroom is realizing that the teacher isn't the only one in the room with the "right" answers.

The same thing happened in math today. I was showing the students how to do something new and many of the students at the group tables understood. I encouraged them to help each other, but when it was time to do some independent work, I asked kids to come to the carpet if they wanted me to show them how to do it again. 10 of them came, despite the fact that they were sitting next to people who wanted to help them.

I need to work on fostering this environment in my room.

Cheating

Today my kids took a science test. I was a little nervous about how they'd do because the last chapter was quite boring, not a lot of good experiments or activities to do and the chapter took longer than I would have liked. We did chapter reviews and the kids studied together a bit, but I knew that it would be tough for kids who don't do well on traditional tests.

When I went to grade the tests, I was pleasantly surprised as my students seemed to do really well on the front page which was vocabulary. They did less well on the next page, and on the writing section they did well enough that I felt like they had learned the necessary skills.

Then I graded the tests of two of my students and noticed that they had the exact same answers. On a multiple choice test, that's one thing, but on the writing sections, again, the answers were exactly the same. I got angry when I first read through them. I sometimes take the misbehavior of my students personally and that's what I did at first.

When I approached the students, both of them began to sob, one protestng her innocence, the other just quietly crying. I don't know exactly what they thought I was going to do to them, but when I said they'd have to take a different test and get a behavior referral, they both calmed down considerably.

I'm smart enough to realize that there is a reason that students cheat at this age, and it's not because they are lazy (at least not for the most part.) The child in question does his homework. He's an English Language Learner and is below grade level in reading. Of course we spend a lot of time talking about the science concepts, so he's not expected to get it all on his own, but clearly something wasn't clicking for him. I'm more sad that he felt like he had to cheat than that he did cheat.

Wii

So I've had a Wii for a week and a half. It seems like a lot longer than that. I love the Wii-- it's a lot of fun and I think it has a lot of educational implications. I've played tennis everyday since I got the game. I set a goal to 1) beat a fellow Wii tennis player and 2) reach pro status. I did very well at first, but as my level gets higher, I'm realizing that I need to play the game a little differently than I was before. Interestingly enough, some of the players in the middle levels seem to be stronger players than the ones at the higher end.

What's interesting to me is that I get frustrated when I lose, go do something else, but keep coming back to it. I think part of the reason is that I have a goal. I wonder if more learning in the classroom could be goal oriented, where the students set their own goals for what they want to learn. Of course, for it to be genuine, students would need to have some choice in their learning. The other reason I think I keep coming back to it is that I want the payoff of seeing myself get better at the game. The results are obvious--if I've done well I win (most of the time.) If I haven't, I need to keep working and learning the skills necessary to win the next time.