For Phun Phriday this week I want to share with you an artist who is, quite simply, incredible. I love the work she does on both of her blogs – Nicole Smeltzer and The Middlest Sister. She meticulously cuts paper to make amazing scenes and tell stories.
One of her latest projects is to make a book for her daughter’s kindergarten teacher. The picture below is the “setting.”
When I saw the above picture, I couldn’t wait to see how it would look once she added the students. It already looks perfect. Can’t you just smell the crayons and Elmer’s Glue?
However, she blew me away when she posted the completed image. I won’t give it away – you will have to visit her blog to see for yourself. And this is only the first page! What an incredible gift this will be for her daughter’s teacher.
If you need to brighten your day, I strongly urge you to check out the amazing art of Nicole Smeltzer on both of her blogs. You will simultaneously laugh at her family and marvel at her talent.
According to some probably-not-very-reliable-websites, yesterday , April 15th, was “Steal Something from Work Day.” If you are a teacher, this probably amuses you – because educators are far too clever and ethical to steal from work.
Typical conversation in the Eichholz household:
Husband – What happened to the aluminum foil?
Me (innocently) – What do you mean? There’s some in the pantry.
Husband – That’s the wrong kind. We had some non-stick foil. Now it’s gone.
Me – Oh. Oops. I brought it to school so the kids could see if they could play the Makey Makey piano on it.
Husband sighs deeply at the suffering he endures being married to a teacher who views all kitchen supplies as potential science experiments instead of cooking necessities.
Other items that have gone mysteriously missing from our home in the past year:
a hacksaw (to make a foosball table for Global Cardboard Challenge)
our tripod (desks are far too unsteady for stop-motion iPad videos)
various fruits and vegetables (again – for the Makey Makey)
a piece of drywall (great canvas for Sphero painting)
5 lbs. of flour (key ingredient for Squishy Circuit Conductive dough)
electrical tape (vital for robots who need to detect dark lines)
6 rolls of paper towels and 2,000,000 boxes of tissues
half my salary (to buy supplies from non-district-approved vendors and/or cool stuff for my classroom from Kickstarter)
To be fair, I do sometimes enhance our home with items from school such as:
the class tarantula who needed a home over Winter Break
the class snake who needed a home over Spring Break
strep, flu, and cold germs
Things that Completely Disappeared Between Home and School and I am Pretty Sure Will Never Be Found Again:
A flat head screwdriver
9 umbrellas
my sanity
Mathematically, it appears that my workplace has come out ahead so far. I don’t really want a Steal Something from Work Day. What I need is a Find Something at Work that You Stole from Home and Return It So Your Family Can Repair Their Broken Appliances and Eat a Home-cooked Meal Day.
Actually, that might take a bit longer than a day…
Before I start, I want to assure you that this is not a post asking for sympathy or reassurance.
Some people might read my blog and come away with the mistaken impression that I am a very confident person who is an amazingly effective teacher. That is very far from the truth. I try to keep this blog positive so others will be inspired – and there is enough negativity in the world of education without me adding to it. However, I don’t want to give the false impression that I’m a super teacher who somehow manages to transcend all of the real-world problems that teachers face every day.
So, allow me to share some of my not-so-super thoughts from the last 7 days. These were just some of the real moments of doubt that infused my brain last week:
Why can’t those 2 boys just work on their Cardboard Challenge projects instead of wandering around and getting off-task? Why can’t I motivate them enough to stay on-task?
Why did only 4 out of 18 students in my 5th grade class do the assignments they volunteered to do on their own time last week? Now we have no videos or announcements to advertise the Cardboard Challenge and it’s only a week away! What made me think they would actually work on this at home? Just because it’s a priority for me doesn’t mean it’s a priority for them.
Are my students learning anything from doing this project? Or is it just an excuse for them to play around?
I can’t believe I didn’t test all of the laptops before we tried to use them this afternoon. How is it that only 3 out of 8 laptops will even let the students log in – and the ones that do let them log in won’t show Google Classroom because the browser is too old, and our district Software Center won’t let me update them? What a waste of 45 minutes plus the 20 minutes I took to prepare the assignment in the first place!
If a student thinks it’s funny to flick a piece of a cardboard and it makes a direct hit to another student’s eyeball, which he didn’t intend but it happened anyway, what consequence should follow and am I a bad teacher for not preventing it happening in the first place?
Why did I order twenty 6 in. packing tape refills for our six 3 in. dispensers? Am I getting so close to retirement that I’m incapable of doing math now?
If giving my students the freedom to create is such a good thing, then why do I feel grumpy and have a giant headache?
I have to admit that I was feeling pretty glum and and worthless by the end of last week. I loved the ideas my students and our Maker Club came up with for Cardboard Challenge, but I had huge doubts about the actual value of the whole experience.
I would like to say that I had an epiphany or that a student said something that made everything worthwhile. But that’s not generally the case in real life, and it hasn’t happened here. Just like many teachers, I suspect, I have to talk my self down off the ledge several times a week.
My students are not the only ones who need to work on fostering a Growth Mindset. Instead of feeling powerless and worthless, I also need to make an effort to figure out what I’ve been doing wrong and fix it. Instead of “throwing out the baby with the bath water,” (which is kind of a horrible idiom when you think about it!) I need to remember that some things are actually working and make adjustments to the ones that aren’t.
Usually my Phun Phriday posts are silly things with possibly little to no educational value that you may or may not want to share with students. However, probably only teachers would thoroughly appreciate the humor of the Love, Teach blog, so I wouldn’t bother showing it to your students or anyone who actually has a life between September and June. But when you need to lighten up, I would head on over to at least one of the following posts:
“14 Reasons Why I Will Die Alone” – I’m married, which is something that never ceases to amaze me, especially when I can identify with at least 10 of the 14 reasons for potential suitors to avoid me like the plague. #9 pretty much says it all, “Looking cute is time-consuming, expensive, and I give up.”
“My First Day of School Questionnaire” – Forget the standard getting-to-know-you queries like, “What are your hobbies?” Try asking your students #3 instead, “Which do you feel have a better chance of taking over the world: zombies or pirates? Justify your answer.” The last sentence really makes this a higher-order thinking activity…
I originally found Love, Teach when I was reading a post the anonymous author did on We Are Teachers. The post is called, “93 Real-Life Thoughts I Had on Back-to-School Night.” I promise that any teacher who has ever experienced Back-to-School Night will identify with this post – and I dare you not to laugh out loud. Just try not to choke on your Giant, Bad-Decision-Burger while you’re reading it;)
You might wonder when you first start watching this video why I would choose to put it on an education blog. But hang on for the last line, and you will understand. Even though this is a phone commercial obviously aimed at parents, the message definitely applies to teaching as well.
For more inspirational videos for teachers, check out this Pinterest Board.
My daughter, who is 11, has a pretty standard response prepared for people who ask her what she wants to be when she grows up.
“A teacher – or maybe an engineer,” she says.
I smile inside. I smile because I think she says, “teacher” for my sake – which means that she: a.) sees how much I love my job and b.) doesn’t think it’s a bad aspiration.
If I really thought she would like to be a teacher some day, I would not discourage her. Many of my colleagues disagree. They have told me that they would never allow their own children to become teachers. I understand their frustration and disillusionment. It’s not an easy career by a long shot (but, really, what career is easy?) – and it can be taxing both financially and emotionally.
My own teachers in high school registered disappointment, one by one, when I told them I had decided to pursue a career in education. Despite the fact they had inspired me, some of them obviously felt themselves to be personal failures for not convincing me to go to medical or law school – or to become a college professor at the very least.
I was undaunted by their discouragement, and I’m sure my own daughter would be, as well.
No, my daughter will not be a teacher. Not because I will prevent her – but because I suspect she doesn’t really want to be a teacher. Unlike me, she never spent hours teaching her dolls and stuffed animals when she was in pre-school. Her patience with children younger than her has never been exceedingly long. And, she never goes out of her way to explain difficult concepts to others; in fact, she rolled her eyes when I asked her to explain how to play Flappy Bird.
She will not be a teacher because that is not her passion. She may not see that yet, but that’s okay.
Could teaching become her passion one day? Possibly. If it does, I will whole-heartedly support her. But I will also support her if she decides to become an artist, a rock star, an astronaut, or a stay-at-home mom. If she is willing to put in the work and sacrifice to follow her dreams, who am I to stop her?
In my post on The Science of Character, I included this quote, “Instead of asking students what they want to be, we should be asking them who they want to be.”
I asked my daughter to look at the Periodic Table of Strengths on the site, and her goals for the future her are: creativity, enthusiasm, kindness, fairness, appreciation of beauty, and optimism.
If she becomes that person – and, truly, I feel she is already well on her way – then I will feel that we have both been successful.
