Sometimes a Break is Good

Over the first few days of summer vacation (our last day of school here was Wednesday, May 20th), I've been watching a lot of movies with my family and have not done much reading. Let me change that, I have not done any reading. Although I am a voracious reader who can put away a dozen books in a week if I so please, I have found that it's good to take a break sometimes. Part of it is that my eyes start to hurt (I have horrible vision), and part of it is that I start to over-read and have nothing else in the house left to read.

I tend to read by grabbing a stack of things I want to read, sitting them on the shelf, and plucking them off one at a time. I'm sure I will start attacking my stack sometime later this week, but it's good to get a chance to relax and enjoy some movies.

Of course, if you hold a similar definition of literacy as I do, then movies are literacy, but most of you know what I mean when I say that watching a movie is different than reading a book.

This extends into the world of the classroom by knowing that this is magnified in the lives of children, most of whom aren't big time readers the way that we are (I'm assuming that a lot of my readers are big "literacy people"). Kids need a break sometimes, and it's easy to gauge this. Give the child some free time, and if they pick a book, fine, if they don't, let them get away from it for awhile. It is difficult, coming back to a new school year, seeing a little regression in skills, but this is natural. School years are long and hard (for students and for teachers), and everyone needs a break.

There isn't really any greater purpose today other than that, sometimes a break is good.

A Tribute To My Students

So here I sit, in the beginning hours of another summer vacation. This was my last year in my four year tenure as a 5th grade teacher, at least for now. Next year I'll be venturing down the hallway (a journey that started this morning with many hours of boxing, taping, and moving items from one room to the other) into the world of 4th grade. I will be looping my future 4th graders, all 28+ of them, to 5th grade, and couldn't be more excited about the challenge that awaits.

Yesterday I cried. It's hard to believe, but with about 30 minutes left in the day, I gave my traditional end of the year speech to my outgoing 5th graders, and found myself looking in the faces of mature young people who grew up before my very eyes this year, and I lost it. In past years, I've choked up a little, but this year the tears flowed.

Something I've always known about myself is that I form deep attachments to the people I care about. My students become like members of my family, at least for the time that they're with me. Of course they move on, and many of them, most of them actually, get on with their lives and will soon forget the majority of our time together, but many of them come back to visit and seem to look back on our time together with fond memories. After I stopped the water works and finished my speech, they cried as well. We had a fitting last few minutes together, and they went on their way. It was a great year, the best of my career, and now it's time to head home for some rest.

I also said goodbye to my student teacher yesterday. Although he could have left the class at the first of May, he stayed to finish the year out with us. I know that he felt the attachment to the students in our class as deeply as I did. He became a close friend during this semester, and I am deeply saddened by the fact that we will no longer be working together.

Now I sit here, just one day later, looking out into the yard, smelling the rain and feeling the coolness on my face, thinking back on the latest group of young men and women who are ready for the next steps in their lives, and already thinking ahead to what awaits me in August, and I'll tell you, this is why I became a teacher. For those of you who share my passion for teaching and cry on the last day of school when you say goodbye to your students, I stand with you.

Enjoy That Summer, YOU Earned It (So Did I)

A lot of my summer posts have taken on a bit of summer flair. Instead of getting down to business, I've been keeping things pretty level and on the surface as far as issues in the field of literacy goes as well as literature reviews themselves. That will be changing soon, because I finally have felt rejuvenated enough to start reading again. I should have a few new reviews very soon.

But you know, it's ok to "veg out" during the summer months if you're a teacher, don't feel guilty about it. Don't pay attention to those people around you working long hours during the dog days of summer, you earned your vacation, now enjoy it.

I know that a lot of times, I'll go to get together with some family, or friends, or friends of family (which sometimes isn't as fun as it sounds) here in the area that I live, and a lot of times, the conversation goes something like this:

ME: So, how's life?

OTHER PERSON: Oh, you know, just working 60 hours a week. I got caught in a traffic jam yesterday and didn't get home until 8:00. My boss made me work on Saturday, and I need to go to the doctor because of stress, you?

ME: Well I've been on vacation since late May, so I've just been hanging out.

OTHER PERSON: That's really nice (at this point, other person is hiding secret contempt for me, and the conversation is ruined).

So yeah, I get it why a lot of people loathe teachers for the vacations we get. Yes, I do get it, but that doesn't mean we don't deserve it. Our job is more difficult than almost any other job you can imagine, and our job is nearly impossible to do year around without a break in the middle, it's too hard on us and the students. So the next time other person starts problems with you, just remember that your job is harder than theirs, then go home, set up the Slip 'N Slide, and break your arm!

Taking A Break From the Game

My lack of posts lately has coincided directly with the beginning of summer vacation. That's right, 12 straight weeks of no work and no grad school, and it's a nice break, I personally just got back from Southern California with my family, and now we're just trying to get the house clean so we can rest and feel relaxed.

In any case, what I've been going through, the early recovery stages of summer, is common among most teachers. The school year is so long and hard, that the first two or three weeks of summer are just spent gathering yourself, then the rest of summer can be fully enjoyed. I'm just now getting to the 'fully enjoyed' stages of summer vacation.

I do plan on keeping on top of this blog all summer, but I know that the depth may not be there to an extent that it would be in, say, October, when I'm in the middle of the school year, my research, and my own studies. This weekend, I'm going to be looking through boxes of books I brought home to catalog, so some of my posts will be related to that.

Goals Time

As the school year winds down, I'm starting to plan some summer activities and tie up the end of the school year. Our final read for the year in class is The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, which is a timeless classic of juvenile literature. Apart from that, I'm starting to get my classroom collection ready to come home for the summer.

Yes, I get to lug well over 300 books home for the summer, but I do have a goal in mind. I'm shopping around for a good computer program that will serve to catalog my classroom library and also allow students to check out books electronically, to make it easier to track the process. I've narrowed it down a bit, and will definitely post about it when I've chosen the right software. I want something that's not overly complicated, expensive, and I want a program that will give me license to install it on at least three machines, because I have a number of good running computers in my class.

That's just a start, apart from that, I do plan on reading and providing this blog with a good number of book reviews, so don't worry, I won't be running out of steam, there will never be a shortage of books out there that are school appropriate.

My Secret Shame: Ending the School Year

I'll admit it right here in the beginning, I am horrible at ending school years. All year long, my students are highly engaged, happy with the learning that takes place, and comfortable in the classroom... then May comes around.

No, it's not that my kids start hating school, it's that I always seem to flare out early and just coast through the last two or three weeks, and this year, it's tree. OK, it's not totally me, my school is MAJORLY data driven, which isn't a good thing from where I sit, but I digress. Part of being data driven is this big pre/mid/post mentality (I think middle and high school teachers would better know these as "midterms" and "finals"). So, I give these finals, or post-tests, and then just kind of take them out early to recess, let them do interactive computer stuff, give them free time, watch movies, you know, stuff that we don't do a whole lot during the school year.

Now, free time is built in to my weekly routine, it's part of our classroom. We do watch movies as part of instructional units, I think they're great pedagogical practice if done correctly, and I do use computers a lot, but this is different. It's free recess because we're all ready to get some fresh air, movies for the sake of sitting there, and being on computers to play games, not educational games, games games.

My secret shame is that I still haven't figured out how to end the year in a consistent fashion. Don't get me wrong, my students love it to death. We had a fun year, I'm a pretty sarcastic and laid back teacher, so they enjoy it, but now that I'm also burned out, they REALLY enjoy it. It's something that either comes with experience, or I'll always be the "schools out by early May" teacher.

The Attack of Summer Vacation

Summer vacation has been an American tradition for over 100 years now. Students look forward to it, and to an even greater extent, teachers look forward to it. I'm only talking to those of you who are teachers right now, because what I'm going to say is often criticized by those outside the field.

Teaching is a very difficult job, and a very intense one. After going from August to May (or September to June, depending on where you live), that 10-13 week break is well deserved and well taken. Yes, other people don't think it's fair that we get this vacation, but we don't listen to those people, because they just don't understand.

Then the questions start coming. Isn't it true that students don't retain a lot of what they learned the prior year during the summer? Isn't it true that students come back to school and actually have lost reading skill since the end of the prior school year? And isn't it true that parents often complain that they have trouble keeping their kids active with productive things to do during the summer, and that the rates of kids getting in trouble rise?

The answer is yes, to all, but let's analyze:

Student learning retention rates: This one seems pretty obvious. If you're not using it, you're losing it. Many students aren't actively learning during the summer vacation, and they will forget quite a bit of what they were taught. But some of this is the teachers fault. If we're teaching them through traditional methods, lecture and textbook, studies have shown that students can and will forget anywhere between 60-80% of what they were taught. As their learning becomes more engaged, they retain more. In fact, if it's things they learned out of an authentic literary experience (a book, you know, novel or chapter book) that they were actively engaged in, the retention rates can be much higher. I've seen this personally, and studies have shown a variance from anywhere between 70-95% of the material being retained, and not lost as the previous numbers showed.

Reading skill being lost: I've said it to my students a million times, the only way to become a better reader is to read. It's the old 'practice makes perfect' thing, and it's very true, especially as it comes to reading skill. If a student goes the entire summer without reading a book, of course they're going to lose some skill, both fluency and comprehension. If you're in a position like I am where you know your students for next year before the end of the previous year, you can have a summer reading club to keep them going. If you don't know who your students will be, you have to count on parents to keep them reading, and we all know that this isn't going to happen in large numbers. I survey my students at the beginning of the school year, and over the last three years have found that out of 62 students, 11 responded by saying that they read consistently over the summer vacation, that's 18%. This one is obvious to me.

Parents have trouble with their kids over summer: This one isn't really something we should worry about. You mean parents actually will have to spend time with their kids? GASP! This actually becomes more of a problem as it relates to students that have apathetic or uninvolved parents, which, sadly, is too many of them. There are things you can do as a teacher, including giving your parents lists of summer camps and activities, both free and pay, that students can participate in over summer. Also, I tell students and parents that I do have a large library of books that I relocate from my classroom to my home over summer, and they're welcome to drop by and choose some. Teachers can do our part to help, but the real fact is, most of us have our own families to worry about during the summer. This one is really up to the individual parent, if they're going to let their kids run wild or give them some guidelines to follow.