Tag: education

I am That teacher!

Posted on by Sweat to Inspire

I am that teacher who cares if you come in tired.

I will let you lay your head down for a bit.

I am that teacher who cares if you come in hungry.

I will help you find food and allow you to eat in my classroom

I am that teacher who care that you learn.

I will ask you about your work, extend deadline, while offering help.

I am that teacher who wants you to feel safe.

I try to make my classroom to excepting to all my deverse students

I am that teacher that is concerned when I see you in the hallway when you should be in class.

I will ask if you need help and why you are there.

I am that teacher that recognizes your need to go to the bathroom

I have an open bathroom policy that gives you permission to go as needed.

I am that teacher that wants to best out of you,

I spend time to talk to you about what I see instead of handing out discipline.

I am that teacher who worries about your choices

I encourage you to think them out carefully and reflect on them after.

I am that teacher that wants you to have a life outside of school

I don’t give homework and try to attend extra curricular activities at the school.

I am that teacher that wants to reward the awesome my students achieve

I buy rewards to hand out in the classroom.

Because I am this teacher,

I add extra duties to my day, working beyond the contract

my hair is slowly graying. My wallet is lighter

I am a teacher who loves the profession and my students

I seek support from our community, our society, our world.

All I see is blame, accountablity and ridicule.

I am that teacher that is tired,

the one who asks is it sustainable?

Dear Press Balanced Coverage Please

Posted on by Sweat to Inspire

Dear Michigan Press:

Could you please cover education like you cover all other news sectors? Please have a more balanced focus. The stories that always make the news seem to be negative. “A teacher … ” “Bomb threat at ….” “Students behaved ….” The headlines sensationalize rare events in our educational world. Sure negative events happen in all sectors of our lives: Government, Business, Education and Entertainment. It seems these other areas get more well rounded coverage. For every negative story about GM’s recall there is a positive about their fund raising or the car show. The Entertainment sector seems to be loaded with positive stories to offset the occasional blunder by a star. Why is it that a single educator blunder makes the top of the news cycle while all the thousands of positive stories garner little or no coverage?

I always see live coverage of the great positive stories around metro Detroit: Auto Show, Woodward Dream Cruise, Winter Blast, Boat Show, Autorama, etc. Did you know there are two great event coming up about education? MACUL (Michigan Association for Computer Users in Learning) will bring over 5,000 educators to COBO center in Detroit March 18-20. This would be an ideal time to do a live broadcast. The news teams could talk to educators from all over the state to hear about the latest and greatest practices going on in the classrooms. Ideas from Flipped learning, I-Books for education, to Twitter Chats for connecting teachers all will be discussed. The public needs to hear about what educators do to grow professionally. It might be more entertaining than the standard live remotes to cover March Madness that occur around this time of year.

If an educational convention is not deemed news worthy enough, check out ShiftMich Idea Slam March 19 7:30-11:00 pm at the Detroit Beer Company.  The Idea Slam is a fast paced “pitch fest” and networking event for educators. Selected projects will be presented and attendees will vote on their favorite ideas. Winning projects will receive up to $1,000 towards their innovative educational idea. The rest of the evening is an informal meet-up with fun conversations and delicious offerings from the Detroit Beer Company. The concept of the Idea Slam was inspired by the Detroit Soup and TED Conference formats.

Be balanced in your coverage! Hope to see your coverage of these up coming events!

Why Do I Teach?

Posted on by Sweat to Inspire

I was pursuing twitter this morning, following all the wonderful Michigan conferences that I am missing, when I ran across a tweet from my friend, Michael Medvinsky. Michael was at home following the #zetacon hashtag, when he was inspired to act by writing a blog post and recording a video. Kevin Honeycutt was delivering the Keynote at Zetacon and asked “Why do you teach?” This is a very important questions for educators. Most of the time we share ideas about how we teach. Most conference focus on Pedagogy and “best practices”. Rarely do we hear teachers share their WHYS for teaching. Often without knowing why people do what they do we have a disconnect and fail to appreciate their work.

I know the why is often a long complex story. It is never the public assumption as to why teachers teach. “Teachers teach for the summers off, the benefits and 9-3 jobs.” Teachers need to share their WHYS so we get past the assumptions and focus on the reality. As schools across the country kick off the 2014-2015 school year teachers need to reflect on why we teach. I would like to say want to inspire and change the world, but there is so much more to why I teach. Here is a short video I made:

I know I missed some of my great inspirational teachers especially Jack Ridl from Hope College.

Please reflect on WHY you teach. I hope you can share your story with me by either posting a comment on the blog or creating your own video on using the hashtag #iTeach on twitter.

Have a great 2014-2015 school year. Always remember WHY you are doing what you do. Thanks Kevin and Michael for the inspirational reminder.

Is hitting a ball harder than educating a student?

Posted on by Sweat to Inspire

This time of year has me thinking about baseball! The weather is slowly warming, plans begin to grow, and opening day is upon us in the Major Leagues. I have many fond memories of baseball growing up, playing with friends in open fields. Never fielding a full team but just the pleasure of pitching, hitting and throwing. Growing up my father put more emphasis on individual sports, “You want to play a sport that you can do by yourself” he would often share. Reminding us that we never had 18 kids to play a “proper” game in the neighbors yard. As I grew up, I did focus on other sports enjoying basketball, tennis and golf because playing them did not require a full squad of players. My father also place a greater value on knowledge than physical sports skills. Should I have spent more time learning to swing a bat?

This week Miguel Cabrera signed a record deal to play baseball, $292 million dollars for the next ten years. I am happy for him. He is probably the best baseball player of our time and in the discussion as being one of the best of all time. Miguel Cabrera is going to make roughly $50,000 per at bat for the next ten years with the Tigers. (If he averages 600 at bats per year.) That is about the average yearly salary for teachers in Michigan! WOW!! Over the course of this 10 year contract he will make enough to pay for 6000 teachers for a year. Well he is the best player in baseball right now, right!

Cabrera has a .321 career batting average, which is great for baseball (50th all time). This means he makes an out .679 of the time he makes an out! If a teacher in the classroom had .321 success average and .679 failure average, most school districts would find them ineffective. Yet in baseball this is one of the best ALL time? Is hitting a ball harder than educating a student? Education and teaching is undervalued in today’s society. Fans flock to “average” teams. Every school child aspires to be a professional  athlete at some point growing up. How can we make this happen for education and teaching?

If the current trends in education continue, our best students will not want to be educators.

A Christmas Wish for Education

Posted on by Sweat to Inspire

Dear Santa-

I know this time of year you are filled with requests from children, asking for a variety of toys, trips and goodies. Some wishes are self-serving and others are filled with generosity. An example comes from my 9 year old son Griffin who wishes for a sled to enjoy the winter weather in Michigan and wants to adopt an pet from the Michigan Humane society to give an animal a home.  This year I have one Christmas wish that tops the rest:

I wish our society valued education!

Over the past few years, education has gotten plenty of lip-service from politicians and education reform groups. Teachers have been attacked, deemed the enemy and left out of reform process. Education has been viewed as an untapped cash cow, that corporations deem ready to take over. Instead of listening to educational experts, the voices of corporate reformers have taken center stage. World rankings of standardized test scores are often featured as prime evidence of need for reform. Poverty is often overlooked as a hindrance to the education process. Don’t reformers realize that our education system is just a reflection of our society!

What does our society value?

How does a society show value towards something? When we are willing to pay a price for it! Our society values sports and entertainment. We pack stadiums every weekend for college and professional sports, paying more than $30 per ticket (yes low estimate). The “Big House” in Ann Arbor has been selling out since the 1970’s, with over 100,000 attending each contest. Communities pass tax breaks and spend millions to fund new stadiums. Even Bankrupt Detroit wants to spend money it doesn’t have to fund a new home for the Red Wings.   Atlanta is replacing Turner Field which was built in 1996 for the Olympics with a new stadium in 2017. This sports infrastructure projects are happening while our educational infrastructure mostly built in the 1940’s t0 1960’s is crumbing and in major need of upgrades. Film companies spend millions to produce a few hours of entertainment, just think what schools could do with these budgets? Society accepts paying sports figures and actors millions per season or film, but to pay a teacher $70,000 for a year of teaching brings public outrage! Don’t these actions alone send the wrong message to our children about education?

How many books are going to be on your sleigh?

Did many children wish for books? Mine always get some, but do the majority of children receive them? Many parents give presents with education in mind. Giving a computer, tablet, or smartphone seems popular these days, often with the idea that it is an educational present (at least many advertisers want us to believe this). Do parents monitor the use? Do students know how to use them for education? Frequently the answers to these questions is NO. Often the presents are given with great intentions but when students are left to their own choices they use the tools for entertainment (not that there is anything wrong with entertainment). Society needs to model the importance of education. Instead it seems it mocks education every chance it gets. Ever notice that every mention of Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates includes that they both dropped out of College? Yet, it is rarely mentioned where other CEOs/ Celebrities graduated from college!

Santa, please make our society realize the importance of education as an individual journey and process, not one dictated by teachers or a common core. Have our society value EDUCATION and show respect for those that foster the process.

Sincerely,

An educator…

Give yourself permission to do nothing!

Posted on by Sweat to Inspire

As I sit here up at my family’s lakeside cottage I ask myself, Is doing nothing, something? When my 3 children woke up this morning I asked them what they wanted to do today? My wife response was quicker than the kids, “Nothing!!” Since we spent yesterday cleaning up our property, chipping wood, this was an appropriate answer.

But can you really ever do nothing? If you are sitting on the couch you are still doing something! In fact as I am writing this post, my wife and kids are enjoying the lake. As I reflect back to the school year, my students often responded to the question, What did you do over the weekend? “Nothing”  Is nothing just the quick response by someone who doesn’t want to be held down by plans or just the quick response that requires no thinking?

For me nothing is reflection, unplanned learning and freedom. Nothing allows us to fill our minds and use imagination to do what ever we want! If we set out to do something: say build a dog house or read a book. Well then we have to complete that task or we feel we did not accomplish our “goal” for the day. Nothing gives us permission to do anything or not. No feeling of missing out or lack of accomplishment.

Just remember that when you are done doing “nothing!” to reflect on what you actually did accomplish doing IT!