thinkbrit
including, but not limited to:
education, gifted & talented education, teaching, learning, motivation, expeditionary learning, literature, television, movies, art, photos, etc.
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fivecentwisdom asked: YOU GOT THE JOB YOU WILL HAVE A CLASSROOM YOU ARE TEACHING IN THE SOUTH BRONX THAT IS AMAZING YAY
I know! Like. Ohmagod. Excite.
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I love free things:
Just discovered: Brooklyn Public Library has Rosetta Stone. FOR FREE.
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Wow
Just saw photos of my dance department graduating this week. Hard to believe it was 7 years ago that I was walking across that stage. Some days...
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The mini-TARDIS is based on a Lego design found online.
And it’s times like this when you realize Lego doesn’t really make minifigs with the...
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Because we’re still living in our apartment and haven’t moved yet, I keep having these strange moments where I REMEMBER I OWN A HOUSE.
Was laying...
That feeling when you have a lot to do on your to-do list and you wake up ready to take it all on and and then somewhere between 7:45 am when your teacher body wakes up and 5:20 pm which is dangerously close to bedtime (apparently), you lose all that motivation and just sit there staring at the list.
Basically.
Oh, Sunday.
And finally the gif is working. Phew.
ETA: Maybe it’s not. Ugh. Click here, friends.
Sometimes it’s strange and awkward (like having parents in your tiny little Pilates studio that you love and they just… show up… and you’re like… they’re following me! But then it all turns out okay.).
But sometimes it’s great. Like when you’re at the grocery store and you walk down an aisle and two little girls who look vaguely familiar start to giggle and you overhear them telling each other, “Oh my gosh! That’s Ms. Brittany!”
Or when you’re walking out of the grocery store and a student who’s been hard to connect with is standing outside selling Girl Scout cookies. And she grins at you and squeals, “Ms. B! Do you want to buy some cookies?!?” And even though you’re on the phone, you ask your grandfather to hang on so you can tell her to bring her cookie order form to school tomorrow. And she grins again.
Anonymous Asks:
thinkbrit Said:
Thanks, anon, for this kind message. I needed it today; I really do have to begin getting back into the swing of things for school, and this message gave me a much-needed boost.
At least here in the #education community on Tumblr, we really do put a lot of hard work in. I see it every day in the posts my colleagues write. So thanks for recognizing that.
It really is. And coming to the end of a 2-week break where I had time to do the things I wanted and needed to do, and where I actually felt balance and didn’t live and breathe my job… well, it just is hard.
And I know that everyone around me who is not a teacher will look at me with disdain because who gets two weeks off? And who gets summers off? And who gets their health insurance completely covered by their employer?
And those are good points. But I can pretty much guarantee you that most of those people around me don’t live and breathe and dream and obsess and cry over their jobs, either. They can phone it in once in a while. They can take a day off without feeling guilty and doing perhaps more work than it would require to just go in.
I mean, I love teaching. I don’t know what else I’d do if I didn’t teach. But it is a really hard job, and it’s these transition times where I realize that my life is soon to be re-consumed by this job when I wonder what else I might do. You know?
Some moron posted this on facebook. Excuse me while I bash my head into a wall.
I don’t see how anyone who believes in God didn’t see him in those teachers and first responders.
I SAW THIS ON MY FACEBOOK WALL TOO.
I’m seeing this one. It bothers me on a level I can’t explain.
I’d quit my job if I had to be armed at school. My dad was saying something like this last night, and I don’t even understand how THIS could even be a conclusion you arrive at.
But I would. Teaching is part of how I define myself, but I would quit teaching before I would have a gun at school.
And actually, the more I sit here and think about that, the more it bothers me that there are people out there saying I should have to be armed to TEACH CHILDREN.
That is just fundamentally wrong, I think. And I think that this mentality comes from a completely different worldview than I have. But it saddens me that this is a reaction.
I should not have to be worried about immediate physical harm or death during the day in my CLASSROOM. In an elementary school. Where I teach CHILDREN.
And neither should any other teacher. This just speaks volumes about our society right now. It’s a mentality that needs to be changed. The solution is not more guns. That much I know.
Some moron posted this on facebook. Excuse me while I bash my head into a wall.
I don’t see how anyone who believes in God didn’t see him in those teachers and first responders.
I SAW THIS ON MY FACEBOOK WALL TOO.
I’m seeing this one. It bothers me on a level I can’t explain.
I’d quit my job if I had to be armed at school. My dad was saying something like this last night, and I don’t even understand how THIS could even be a conclusion you arrive at.
But I would. Teaching is part of how I define myself, but I would quit teaching before I would have a gun at school.
Students are people, you know, with complex feelings and ideas and lives outside of the classroom and brains that don’t necessarily do their best when faced with four or five multiple choice answers that all look the same after three hours of testing.
Teachers are people too, with lives outside of school that enrich the lives we affect in school. A teacher is an artist, a poet, a conductor, an actor, a thinker, a leader, a surrogate-parent, a scientist, a philosopher, a reader, a writer, and a magician. Most importantly of all, we’re professionals who have chosen a life of service.
Your bureaucratic nonsense and jargon-y slogans and assessment tools are, in fact:
- turning students into a generation of bubble-fillers, not thinkers
- teaching to the bottom of the abilities in the room and holding gifted students hostage
- killing creativity and the art of learning by trying to make teaching into a purely measurable tool that’s full of more bubbles to fill and boxes to check
- driving highly qualified teachers out of the classroom because even though they’re innovative, passionate, and good at their jobs, their spirits are broken, their morale is low, and you constantly demand more more MORE.
You don’t get to treat students like data machines and then talk about how much they’re learning and how bright their futures are going to be.
You don’t get to treat teachers like they’re replaceable wage-drones and then wonder why they flee.
You don’t get to harvest the students’ passion and excitement for learning for the sake of test scores and then cut down the very programs that help kids succeed.
You don’t get to do these things and say you’re in it for the kids.
You don’t get to do these things and say you’re in it to make the lives of teachers better.
You just don’t.
Well said, Tomes. Well said.
- Bartender: What grades do you teach?
- Friend: Middle school.
- Bartender: I'm sorry. If I had known I'd have poured you a double.
- When I was in NY this week, the bartender at a friend's local asked what I do.
- Me: I'm a teacher.
- Him: A cat and you teach? You don't need a shot, you need a hug.
Thanks Ms. Brittany — we greatly appreciate your support and truly appreciate what you do every day. You and your fellow teachers are too often overlooked for the tremendous work you do and for what you contribute to this world. We are very happy to have you as [student]’s teacher and just want to say THANK YOU.
Parents notice and appreciate us. They do. They may not say it all the time, but it is so nice to hear it when they do.
October boost for my fellow teachers: We do tremendous work. We do it to help our kids, whom we love. We do it because we love it. And we are appreciated, even if we aren’t told that every day.
Thursday afternoon:
Student: Ms. B, I’ve been wondering— I have a— I have a question.
Me: Yes?
Student: Are you married? I was wondering.
Me: Nope.
Student: Oh. (Walks away.)
- grade math pre-tests and sort
- grade Words Their Way inventory and sort
- week plan
- make job chart
- laundry
- dishes
- exercise
- grocery store (and clean out fridge and cook things for the week… or at least tomorrow)
There may be other thins. This is the short list (which is amusing, because about half of these things will take an hour or more to complete).
What math pretest do you use?
We just use the end-of-year assessment for the grade level in the EDM (Everyday Math) curriculum, which is what our district uses. In Discovery (gifted & talented program), we pre-test so we can group students appropriately. If a student scores 85% or higher on the end-of-year test for their grade level, they’ll move up to the next grade level.
Here is a shot of my desktop version of Evernote. I have created lesson plan notebooks for each class I’m teaching. Within those notebooks, I’ve created notes for the individual units I have created for the school year. For each unit, I do not place dates, because I want the flexibility to move units around as I need to.
Click through for more info on how to setup Evernote for lesson planning.
(via The Nerdy Teacher: Using @Evernoteschools for Lesson Planning #EdChat)
Ooooooooooooh!
I <3 Evernote.
An awesome list—here are three of my favorites (click through for the rest!):
5. Set Up an Audioboo Radio Station For the Class Audioboo is a mobile app that lets you make up to 3 minute recordings for free. The best part about the app is you can embed a radio station “player” into your website or blog and each recording, or “boo” is fed instantly into your custom radio station, NO uploading required. Have the students sum up the week’s work via podcast and then parents can tune into the radio station or even follow on iTunes and get caught up with class events- and no extra work for the teacher!6. iMovie Trailers about events coming up in class or at school
iMovie trailers almost make themselves- after picking a theme, filling in the template with some quick video shots and then can be quickly edited on just one iPad. The end result is a 2 minute introduction that leaves the audience feeling as if they experienced something dramatic and amazing. What a cool way to get parents wanting more, just like real movie trailers do for the films they promote. Here’s an example of one trailer we made for our science project last year that took twenty minutes to create, but left everyone who watched wanting to watch it again and wanting to know more about our physics project.
7. Coach’s Eye Reflections
Coach’s Eye is a great app made by TechSmith, that allows coaches to tape what an athlete is doing, then take that tape and reverse it, put it in slow motion, focus in on certain areas and commentate over what is actually happening on the film. Well, during some hands on lessons, why not just video what the students are doing. Then, have a few of the students create some “coach reviews” of what they saw happening durning the lesson and share those commentaries with the parents. It’s an extremely cool app I discovered last year that has great applications for the classroom!
LOVE THIS.
