Guidelines To Success - Classroom Organization

I broke my foot in September. For three months I was on the sofa with my foot elevated. I didn't do much of anything but rest. Forced rest usually happens right before a period of change and now it looks like I may move. So, I started purging and while cleaning out my files I found my Resource Book for Training Teachers, compiled by LA Unified Teachers and the University of Southern California in 1982.

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CLASSROOM ORGANIZATION

1. Plan your work carefully - There is no substitute for good planning.
2. Be prompt with clerical work - You expect students to meet their assignments; be careful about meeting your own.
3. Do NOT do clerical work in class - The class period belongs to students; they are your first responsibility.
4. Start slowly - A steady, well-organized pace is far better than a big explosion that fizzles out.
5. Establish routines - Whether it is a form for written work or a procedure for turning in papers, students need to know a way of doing things.
6. Set standards - Partial learnings, careless work, sloppy behavior and poor citizenship result from a teaching situation without standards and objectives.
7. Be firm but fair from the beginning - Control must be gained from the start. It is easier to relax control than it is to impose it after is has been lost.
8. Know your students - Knowledge of the student is important; study all the records and observe.
9. Be Patient - All children will not grasp your words of wisdom the first time.
10. Be calm - Fear, excitement, and frustration are contagious. A calm teacher is the key to a calm classroom.
11. Keep a sense of humor - It will save many a situation.
12. Observe other teachers - You can learn much from your fellow teachers and they are usually willing to share their experiences.
13. Accept and apply suggestions - Observation and suggestion are meant to help, not hinder.

Do they even teach this anymore in teacher training programs? There's even a section on diagramming sentences!

ALS Breeds A Teacher

ALS left me with no parents. For those who don’t know, ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis), also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, is a motor-neuron disorder that is always terminal.

My father was diagnosed in 1971. I was seven. He had noticed weakness in his hands and trembling in his fingers. In spite of my parents’ valiant efforts to keep life normal for their two young daughters, ALS took over our family life. At eleven, my mom in the throes of taking care of a sick husband and my father debilitated by the disease and unable to care for himself, I took over caring for my younger sister and myself.

Fast forward to 1988. I grew up and became a teacher. A sixth grade teacher. A teacher of eleven year olds living in a chaotic, immigrant barrio, forced to grow up way too fast. I vowed to help them and make sure they had their childhoods left intact. A woman who’d grown up without parenting, deciding to parent her students? Yeah. I see it now. Did I know that was what I was doing back then? No. But lately thoughts of my father, his illness and how it changed my life, have swirled in my head. I realize I became a teacher to put some sense of “right” back into my world.

I truly believe teaching is a calling. It has always been my passion. But is a calling something we’re born with or something that develops from our life’s path? A fireman friend of mine years ago said, “Cynthia, We’re the lucky ones. We were born with a calling and we get to fulfill it everyday.”

Now I wonder - a calling or destiny? Or does it matter, as long as I’m feeding the passion?

If you are a daughter of a parent who has/had ALS, please join our new Facebook group:
Daughters of ALS

A Balboa Bar and A Distinguished School

A few weeks ago I wrote about sending letters to my former students upon their High School graduation. One e-mailed me the other day. She's going to Yale! Wow. Yale. Ivy League. Great for her.

In other news, my former Principal and teacher friends from that school are in Orange County at the Disneyland Hotel, picking up Baywood's California Distinguished School award.
Congratulations Baywood Elementary!

Last I heard, the group left Anaheim, lost and wandering around Newport Beach. Hope they find a Balboa Bar!

Funnies

A friend e-mailed these to me with the subject: "Why Teachers Drink"

A Cure For Teacher Complaining

“It’s time for another weekend in the desert,” said Elizabeth. Friday afternoon our group of five teachers piled in the car and drove out the school parking lot to Rancho Mirage near Palm Springs.

As we drove the two hours, we talked and complained about school, students, administrators, school conditions, funding….you get the idea. We needed to vent to people who would understand, but after two hours of griping and complaining we were in a bad mood.

Warm, sunny Rancho Mirage greeted us. At the condo, we drank strawberry daiquiris and sat around the small patio table overlooking the golf course.

“No more talking about school,” Elizabeth declared. “Any time one of us says a word about school, she has to put a dollar in the middle of the table and the money goes to buy us drinks tonight.”

We continued this tradition for all our Palm Desert weekenders. No matter how much money ended up on the table, it cured our bad mood every time.

Here we are years ago (back in the 80’s) in Palm Desert, ready for a night of “Teachers on the Town”.

Teacher Dreams

Last night I dreamt I was teaching again. I welcomed my students into the classroom, took attendance, saluted the flag and talked about an assembly that was happening that day. I could picture the colorful walls filled with student work, the desks and chairs, the backpacks in the cubbies and lunch bags tossed around the room.

I left teaching ten years ago, due to an illness, but teaching is still a part of me. When do these dreams stop? Ever?
Do others who have left teaching still dream of being in the classroom?

A Teacher Remembered

Yesterday, Anita Painter passed away. Mrs. Painter was my Humanities teacher and one of my three favorite teachers, all from Corona Del Mar High School in Newport Beach.

It saddens me to think she’s gone. She was the perfect combination of a kind, yet tough teacher. I found out through Facebook where a classmate of mine wrote, “She enlightened thousands of students during her teaching career and she will be missed.” Yes, she will.

Mrs. Painter expanded my world through history, the arts, philosophy and geography. She expected much of her students and attained it through encouragement and compassion. The final exam in her class was no mere two hour pen and paper exam. No, no, that was the easy half. She expected us to bring to life all she had taught us. For my final, my friend Katrina and I researched and created a 16th century Florentine dinner. We created a menu based on foods of the day. We cooked the entire meal as authentically as possible in Katrina’s mom’s kitchen.

We invited our parents to the meal with Dr. and Mrs. Painter. Once seated our teacher directed conversation to her two students. We spoke only of present day issues in 16th c. Florence; Da Medici’s, Michelangelo, Raphael, irrigation, voting procedures. She graded us through our conversation.


Each summer Mrs. Painter took some of her students on an educational trip through Europe. She convinced me to go.

As we drove on the bus to our first stop, Dachau, the tour guide informed us the road on which we were traveling had been paved with ashes from the concentration camp. Tears fell down my face as we drove along the German countryside.

Then we went to Italy where I stood motionless in front of Raphael’s School of Athens, the painting I had studied and examined and learned to love through Mrs. Painter’s class. The Botticellis, lunch on the Seine, hiking a glacier in Switzerland, there’s so much more, but for now, I’m content to know that even in retirement, Mrs. Painter continued her love of Humanities through community service to the Arts, education foundations and staying in touch with her former students.

Enlightened. I can't think of a better word to describe her.

Students: Letters To Themselves

May 17, 2000
Dear H***,
You have lots of friends like L**, E**, C**, K** and L** of corse.
You have a goal for when you grow up which is an artist and an actriss and of corse a person who helps wild animals. I hope that one day I will have three kids and an understandable husband. I just hope that I'll have a dog (golden retrever).
Also I hope to learn cursive soon. I've had many teachers but I think Miss Christian has tought me the most inportant lessons in my life.
Sincerely,
Myself


The letter above is from a second grader, typed exactly as she wrote it in May, 2000. She's in this year's group of students about to receive a letter from their younger selves.

At the end of each school year I had my students write a letter to their future selves. I saved the letters, then mailed them to my former students the year they graduated from High School along with a letter from me, talking about what I remember of them and what has happened in the past five to ten years.

I love sending these letters each year and reading about forgotten memories from the child's point of view. Most of this group wrote about becoming veterinarians and seeing dancers from all over the world perform at the local theater. There's also a note about coming home from a field trip and one of the parent's racing another back to school with students in the cars! I wish I'd read that back in the day. Wait, on second thought, maybe I don't.


The BEST part of this process is when I receive letters back from students telling me about their lives in the present.

Yes, I miss teaching.