Better Together

Over the past three weeks, I have found myself sitting down to write, and nothing happens. It is like my mind is just not communicating with my fingertips and keyboard. It has been frustrating. Or I have started to write, and then I have hated every single word I type, and I delete the whole thing.

I recently took my frustrations to Twitter. What I found was a community of educators wanting to hear what I had to say regardless of my fears and writing hang-ups. That has lead me to this idea I have said time and time again but have never articulated in writing: "We are better together." I have heard this statement countless times at my church, but I never really thought of it regarding education. The truth behind this statement is so far reaching.

In Our Classrooms:

We are better together in our classrooms when we partner with the families of our students to provide the best educational opportunities possible. In my classroom, my students and I are better together when we build a community of trust. We are better together when they know me, and I have taken the time to understand them.

In Our Buildings:

We are better together when we as educators collaborate to seek the best possible outcomes for all students in our buildings. When we work together to do what is best for students, we are taking into consideration not all students learn the same or work at the same pace, but we work together to find common ground and resources to make every single child successful. When we partner together with administration, support staff, and parents, we develop a positive culture and learning environment where all students feel safe to grow and to learn.

In Our Communities:

We are better together when we take what we are doing in school sites with our communities. When we do this, they can see what we are doing, and we invite them to be part of the educational process.

In Our Profession:

We are better together when we stand as one and advocate for the betterment of our students, our schools, and our state. Together we can join forces to do what we do best: educate others about the issues that matter to our profession. We can inform lawmakers and others of the importance of what we do and how the decisions they make affect us all.

We cannot go at this on our own. We need each other. We need each other for support, love, encouragement, guidance, a swift kick in the rear end, and accountability. As an elective teacher, I am the only choir teacher in my building, and it is so easy for me to end up in lonely island club. However, I need the help and support of others to be successful in my classroom and beyond.

We have uphill battles we are facing. We need each other. Lean in, listen to one another, and love each other fiercely. When we love each other fiercely then we cannot be afraid to call some out when they are doing harm to themselves or the community--but this also means we respect what they have to say.

We are better together, and when we are better together, our students will reap the benefits of the community we have sown together.

Classroom MEMEagent

Alright, ladies and gentlemen get ready because Adrienne Fore, follow her on Twitter why don't you, and I are co-moderating the #oklaed Twitter chat on June 26th!

Our topic is all about Classroom Management and we have titled our chat Classroom MEMEagent because we are both fun loving people who like to live on the edge.

#oklaed we are giving you heads up and a week to prepare! We are so nice, you know you love us. So below are our questions, you will have to wait to see what memes we have selected to go with each question. That is okay you will survive. I promise.

Q1: What do you wish you had known about CR Management your first year teaching?
Q2: What is your go-to classroom management strategy?
Q3: What is your biggest behavior pet peeve and how do you address it?
Q4: We have all been there, what was your biggest classroom fail? What did you learn from it?
Q5: What do you still struggle with?
Q6: What do you wish your admin knew about CR Management and admin what do you wish your teachers knew?
Q7: What are some action steps that you take when students don’t follow expectations?
Q8: What is a strategy you plan on implementing this upcoming school year?
BQ: How do you handle difficult parent communication?
BQ: How can you help a colleague that is struggling with classroom management?
BQ: How do you prepare your classes for subs?

You have homework!!!!!!!!

Find your favorite education meme (Google and Pinterest are your friends here) and be prepared to share with us on Sunday night!!!

We love you and are looking forward to chatting with you!!!

Time

During this week's #oklaed Twitter chat, Dr. Rick Cobb, @grendelrick, Superintendent of Mid-Del Public Schools moderated this week's chat. The subject he chose was over Time. Over on his blog, Okeducationtruths, he gave us a preview of the questions. 100 points to Hufflepuff for the use of the Donut Clock.

I love this weekly Twitter chat anyways but I was super pumped about this topic. Time is something that we want more of, but we cannot seem to get enough of. This had me thinking about time and how we use it our classrooms and how time affects our relationships with our students.

What do we deem worthy of our time? What do we deem worthy of our students time? What do we deem worthy of their parents time? These are questions that we as educators should be thinking about when we are planning lessons and planning for our classrooms.

Now I know that we have other things we have to consider, and I know that we have other things that are required of us. There is one thing that we must carve out time for, it is so important but we often push it aside because other things seem to overshadow it. We must make time to build relationships with our students and their families. When we build those relationships with students it creates a community of trust. Just as important as it is to build those relationships with our students we should reach out and build those relationships with their parents. Their parents will always have more time with them than we do. I know that not all of our students have the best home lives and the relationship that we build with them might be the most relationship that they have.

Taking the time early on and often during the school year to get to know and build relationships with your students can save you a lot of headaches later on in the school year. Knowing and loving my students makes planning lessons and activities so much easier!

Thank you, Dr. Cobb, for providing such a thought-provoking Twitter Chat!

The True Tradition of Excellence

I love Oklahoma, but I'm not from here. I am from Fort Smith, Arkansas where I graduated from Southside High School where our mascot was a Rebel and our fight song was Dixie. What I'm about to write won't make me popular back home and it might even cause divisions within my own family, but I can't remain silent anymore.

Last summer after the deadly church shootings in Charleston, SC the Fort Smith Public Schools Board of Education in closed session voted to discontinue the use of the Rebel mascot starting with the 2016-2017 school year and discontinuing the use of Dixie as the fight song for the 2015-2016 school year. It was a decision that sparked controversy. Some have argued that the mascot needs to stay the Rebel out of school pride and southern pride. Some have argued that the issue they have is that school board did the vote in closed session without public input. I have stayed away from this issue mainly because I don't live in Fort Smith anymore and I wanted to focus my time and writing towards issues that have been facing Oklahoma educators. However this impacts all educators. While I personally don't find the Rebel mascot offensive nor the fight song offensive, I know those that do, when I was a student there I knew students that did. What I find to be truly offensive is how others have chosen to address the issue and their use of tactics to do so.

I have heard arguments both for and against the decision, and I have witnessed most of them being civil. However the hatred and egocentric, and might I say childish attacks need to stop. They need to stop right now. For the love and this is big, when it comes to educating children there is no room for hatred and egocentrism.

You can get your point across without resorting to slander and name calling. What lessons do these teach children? How do we as educators tell child not to act this way when they see adults in authority and position of influence in their community using this kind of behavior? This teaches kids nothing.

I am all about school pride. I am all about building a climate and culture where students are engaged and excited to learn. I am not dumb and I know that the school mascot is central in building that community. One argument that I have heard is that changing a mascot will take away the school's tradition of excellence, and for the love that can't be far from the truth. Southside High School will continue to have a tradition of excellence. Why is that? Because they have educators of excellence, the true tradition of excellence. They have educators that day in and day out do what is best for kids. What makes a school excellent is not the mascot that it holds, but it is the real people inside the building. It is the educators, administrators, cooks, food service workers, custodians, secretaries, volunteers, and of course the students that make a school excellent. Southside graduates have become educators, doctors, lawyers, businessmen and businesswomen, stay at moms and dads, workforce laborers, members of the armed forces, and so much more. Those that educated myself, my mother, my brothers, my friends, and countless others did not do so because we were Rebels, but they did so because they cared. I don't teach my students because they are Tigers, I teach them because I love them and because I care. Regardless of a change in mascot, children will still be educated and more importantly children will still be loved.

We must never forget our history and we must never forget how we got to where we are now, but the best is yet to come. Great teachers will continue to teach and will continue to impact lives, students will continue to excel in academic, fine arts, and athletics, and the world will keep on turning. It is time for this community to move forward, it is time for relationships to be restored. Great things will still happen, because great people, not a cartoon character, are in that building everyday.

A Year in Review

It is a Monday morning at 11:30, I'm still in my pajamas and bathrobe. I only have 250 steps on my FitBit, and I had cake for breakfast. It must be summer.

This school year has brought laughter, tears, joy, heartbreak, success, and failure not only in my classroom but for teachers across the state of Oklahoma.

I started this school year by changing my focus. The Vocal Music world can be cut throat. We are pulled in nine million different directions, we are tasked with the responsibility to prepare students for contests, concerts, and musicals that we many times find that to be our only focus. Over the the past two years I found myself in a dangerous trap of it being about me. It isn't about me. It was never about me and it never should have been about me. It should always be about my students and their successes not my recognition. This year I made the intentional choice to focus on building community in my classroom. We didn't sing a note written on a page of music that would have been used for a performance, audition, or contest for the first two weeks of school. Instead we spent that time getting to know each other, building a community of trust, and building friendships. Because I spent that time with my students it made the year so much smoother. During the school year I would try to have one day about every two weeks for at least thirty minutes of rehearsal going back to those community building activities. Some might question why would spend precious rehearsal time focusing on this, and my response why would you not? We are not only building musicians but we are building young adults that need skills to function in society. I don't regret it at all. This year I learned more about my students and I loved them.

This year wasn't without some failures as well. As any middle school choir teacher in Oklahoma will tell you that OSSAA District Contest Sight Reading was a beast. A raging, hairy, slobbery beast. I have always done well at Sight Reading Contest. My students start sight reading in September. They are fabulous sight readers, but this year there were changes. We were thrown for a loop and my students felt defeated. I felt defeated. However, we picked ourselves up and we made more music. We had some fun. We sang Taylor Swift and Justin Timberlake. We found ourselves again, and we had fun making music.

For me I became more involved in the #oklaed community and meet some of the most passionate and amazing educators. We are passionate about students in Oklahoma and we are outraged by the decisions that our legislatures are making that are negatively affected our children. This year with our budget crisis students have lost programs, educators lost their jobs, and horrible decisions had to be made in order to keep schools open. All the while money is being wasted on trying to impeach the President and building a reflecting pool at the Capital. We didn't stand for it. We made our voices heard. This year dozens of pro-education candidates filed to run for office. People are more informed of what is happening because we refused to stay silent.

I'm proud of this school year. I'm proud of what I, my students, my school, and my fellow teachers in my district and across the state accomplished. I would say that I can't wait to see what the 2016-2017 and I really can't but for right now, I'm going to enjoy my summer!

Educators what are you proud of? What did you do this year that you loved? What did you do this year that you won't be doing next year? I would love to know!

My Concert Is Over...Now What?

So I'm a Choral Music Educator and my concert was last Friday. By the way it was fabulous and amazing.

So I find myself trying to figure something out to do with the middle school monsters...students, I mean students. Well...five minutes ago I came up with a plan and I feel like it is a brilliant idea.

My kids do my job. It was the best. My kids had to plan the lesson and teach their class.

I divided the class into five different groups, and some of my larger classes had more classes. In these groups they had create their lessons. Their lessons need to have objectives, worked on three of our essential skills that we work on in class, they needed to include all of the normal things that I do when I'm teaching and leading rehearsal, and some sort of reflection or assessment. Below I have included all of the handouts I used and gave to kids.

They have knocked it out of the park! They have been prepared, they have thought out their lessons, and they have been outstanding. I saw future teachers in the making. It was wonderful.

What I never thought would happen would be how it would affect my students. One young man said, "It gave me greater respect for everything that my teachers do for me. I never really understood all of the stuff that you do to make sure we learn." They loved this project and they loved planning and getting it all together. It will be a part of my curriculum for years to come!

Project Rubric

Project Guide

Sample Lesson Plan

Dear Educator...Again

Dear Educator,

I'm writing to you again because it is May. While there is a light at the end of the tunnel and summer is coming, somehow May just might be more heartbreaking than April.

We have watched our students grow all year long, and we have to say good bye. We wonder if we were enough, what we taught them was enough, and we wonder if they will be happy and successful. At least I do. I talk a lot about loving kids, and that we can't really teach them to fullest extent without loving them fully and truly knowing them. For me after teaching some of my students for three years, I wonder if I have prepared them and I wonder if they will remember anything that I taught them or really anything that I have done. If you are anything like me, you ready for this school year to be over, but at the same time you are still hurting and processing what all has gone on this school year. Lean in close, if you changed one life. You changed the world.

To the first year teacher, you made it. Congratulations! I promise you that the tears you have shed have been worth it.

To the teacher that is retiring, you made it. Congratulations! Thank you for your years of service and for your dedication to your students and schools. Thank you for leaving a legacy.

To the teacher that is leaving the profession, I get it. Times are hard and being a teacher is hard. Thank you for all that you did while you taught in your classroom. And always remember that you can come back. Good luck in your future endeavors!

To the teacher lost their job because of budget cuts, I'm sorry. It isn't fair. I don't know what to say to make it better. Don't lose hope and don't lose your passion.

To the graduating college student, Oklahoma kids need good teachers. I hope that you choose to stay.

To the administrator that had to make the hard decisions, thank you for what you do. Thank you for doing the impossible. Thank you for what you have done.

To the students that we have taught, I hope you learned something. But more than anything I hope you know that you are loved.

Educators it will be okay. It will be better. I admire you all and I admire what you do! For the love just keep doing what you are doing and when it gets hard keep going and always eat a donut.