Weighing the Pig

I cannot take credit for this adage, but I love it, and I repeat the moral of the story quite often. In this day and age of tests, tests, and more tests, let us keep this story in mind:

There once was a farmer who wanted to take his pig to the county fair. He was determined that his pig would win a blue ribbon as the largest pig in the entire county.  One day, about a month before the county fair, he took his pig into the barn and weighed it.  "This here pig weighs 45 pounds," he told his wife.  She just shook her head, knowing no matter what she said to her husband, she wouldn't be able to deter his ambition of winning first prize or make a difference in his approach.
The farmer took the pig back to his pen. But the next day, he weighed the pig again, certain that this time he would weigh more. "That's odd," the farmer commented upon seeing the scale. The pig only weighs 44 pounds today." Once again, the wife shook her head, knowing her husband would never take any advice she had to offer.

What are we accomplishing when we weigh the pig so frequently?

For the next few weeks, the farmer weighed the pig every single day. And each time, he grew more and more frustrated because the pig was not gaining any weight.  One day he exclaimed to his wife, "I don't understand! I'm weighing this pig every single day! No one could possibly be paying more attention to how much their pig weighs than I, and yet he simply refuses to gain weight! I've tried weighing him in the morning, in the afternoon, and at night. I've weighed him facing this way and that way, on his front and on his back. I've even tried weighing him with a different scale, but no matter what, he doesn't ever gain weight! In fact, he is losing weight! What is the matter with this pig?" Once again, the wife shook her head and walked away.
The next day, the day before the county fair, the farmer went out to get the pig to bring it to the barn to weigh it. But, alas, the pig was dead.  The farmer was furious.  "How can this pig be dead?" he asked of his wife. "I've weighed it every single day for a month!"
Finally, the wife spoke up and said, "In order to grow a pig, you must do more than weight it. You must feed it! Only then will your pig truly grow!"
The moral of the story is this: if we want to grow our students as readers and thinkers, we must do more than assess them. We must teach them. If we continue to assess our students in the intrusive and overwhelming manner many school districts are currently employing, our students will never reach the goals we set.  Let's stop weighing our students and feed them!

Prove It!

It's that time of year again when we start the slow painful process of passeging our students to death. If you're a new teacher--or not a teacher--you may not know what I'm talking about, so let me explain. This is when teachers give students as many passages as they can find that might possibly have some characteristics in common with the state assessments--which are coming up faster than we can believe or control. Everyone hates passages--students hate them, teachers hate them, administrators hate them, parents hate them. (Maybe the people who get paid to write them like them, but they are the only ones.) But we often feel this is a necessary evil because we want our students to "practice" before the real test....
So, if we insist on making our students stare blindly at mundane passages about topics they have absolutely no interest in, the least we can do is let them have a little fun with the answers.  Today, my fifth grade group played a little game called "Prove It!" and it was a hit. It's pretty simple, too. We read a very short passage from Istation entitled, "Exploring Space." Then, the kids answered the four questions at the end of the story, citing their evidence as they did so. After that, I gave them each an answer choice  for the first question, and they had to come to the board and write whether or not their answer choice was correct and how they knew. This was simple, quick, and the kids had fun--because kids like to write on the board. They all went at the same time, too, so no one was sitting back judging handwriting or word choice. We continued this activity with the other four questions, rotating answer choice letters.

This is actual student work from my group today.

Anyone with a white board and dry erase markers (or butcher paper and markers) can do this, and it reinforced the idea to my students that we don't only have to prove the right answer--we have to show why the other answers are wrong as well.  This is difficult for a lot of our kids, but if we don't get them in the habit of disproving answers, they will end up settling on a mediocre answer choice or using "fake proof" to justify the wrong answer.  This is a quick and easy way to get them practicing proofing their answers.
What activities are you using to keep your students engaged and focused in this season of reading passages?

Why Teachers Need Two Weeks Off at Christmas

This is my fifteenth Christmas as an educator.  Having worked in both retail and corporate before this, I know that everyone deserves a break this time of year--time to spend with family, time to reflect on the events of the year, time to get some things done (like bake cookies with little ones who are growing up too fast or build a snowman with your sister).  That being said, here are five reasons why I believe educators have earned their two weeks off:
1) Christmas is magical--and your kids have been under a spell--for weeks.
I know your children are perfect angels at home, but at school, they've been a little distracted ever since they visited the mall a few weeks ago (who am I kidding--months ago) and noticed the Christmas displays were up.  They seem to have only one thing on their minds: presents--and lots of them.  Not only do we get to listen to sweet little Susie tell us over and over again how her elf on the shelf flushed mommy's favorite perfume down the toilet, after spilling a bag of marshmallows in the dog bowl, we don't have the luxury of telling your kid to stop or Santa won't bring him or her a present.

Your kids are under the spell of Christmas magic.

2) Our brains are like sponges--in that there are holes in them.
Let's face it people, school is hard, much harder than it used to be. If I had to teach third grade math, I think it would take me three or four hours to plan a thirty minute math lesson. Anything above third grade? Forget it. If you're like me, one worksheet of math homework can take up to two hours, and by the end of it, not only is your kid crying, so are you.  This is our day. Most of the time. Now, I'm not saying that we don't have competent teachers, but as the standards continue to get harder and we keep pushing curriculum down the grade levels so that our kindergartners are experimenting with algebra, our teachers have to adjust as well. There's no more pulling out last year's ditto sheet and asking the kids to complete the problems. Planning takes time, and energy, and brain cells. And ours need a break!

Our brains on school.

3) We've been in survival mode for so long, we are longing to be voted off the island.
The honeymoon was over somewhere in September. Since then, that one kid who, while he has some admiral qualities, for the most part is driving us out of our ever-loving minds--is on overdrive these past few weeks. He's learned how to push our buttons, and he's doing a fine job of it.  If I hear the chorus of "The Final Countdown" one more time (complete with guitar solo) I'm going to lose it. Asking him to stop has done no good, sending him out of the room has done no good, asking for help from parents has done no good because they can't make him stop either. What we really need is a vacation (and not in Europe!)

Just send us home already.

4) Early mornings/late nights.
Have you ever driven past a school at 6:30 in the morning? There are cars there. (Notice that was plural. It's not just the custodian.) Have you ever driven past the school at 7:30 at night? Still cars. Some of them are the same.  Teachers work long hours. And even the ones who have to run home as soon as their after school duty is over are still working. We are grading papers while we watch reality TV. We are reading books for lit circles instead of Danielle Steele. We are researching effective ways to teach multiplication to six-year-olds instead of calling our mothers to chat about whether or not we will have a white Christmas. I know people in other professions work hard as well. They put in long hours, too.  Maybe we all deserve a long break!

It's been so long since I've seen a sunrise from anywhere other than my classroom window.

5) The weight of the world is on our shoulders.  
When I worked at Walgreens, I got yelled at for things like running out of blueberry Poptarts. When I worked for corporate America, if I didn't get a certain person or company to pay a bill on time, it meant our company wouldn't have quite as much interest on the money we had in our bank account. The world would go on. If I don't teach little Johnny how to decode CVCe words, it may ruin his life forever. He could end up living on the streets or become completely dependent on the system for the rest of his life. He may turn to a life of crime--all because I failed to arm him with the tools he needed in order to be successful in life.  Obviously, he would need a lot of teachers to fail him for lots of years in a row in order for this to happen--but I see it everyday. I see kids who are slipping through the cracks--the unprepared and the underprivileged. I do what I can to help them, but it takes a village, and it's a lot of responsibility.  Our kids are the future and our teachers are the Jedhi Knights who must teach them how to use the Force. It's not an easy task, and sometimes it can be overwhelming.

This is getting heavy!

This is why--this is why--we need a few weeks off to make some magic of our own, to fill in the holes in our thinking, to learn some survival tips, to get some sleep, and to rest our weary shoulders.  And maybe build a snowman with our sister.