BulgingButtons

Not bad for a fat girl

Category Archives: Teaching


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I’m Back

cat-in-the-hatOh goodness, I hardly know where to begin. So much has happened in the last several weeks that my mind is mushing it all together and the words aren’t forming themselves the way they’re supposed to.

Instead of a long rambling post, which I don’t think I can manage right now, and which I KNOW you don’t want to read, how about a table of contents of sorts. Here’s what’s been on my mind recently, some or all of which may find its way into blog posts over the next several days.

  1. Airline travel revisited
  2. Turning 50
  3. Being first in line (out of 10,000 or so)
  4. No extra frosting for me
  5. Except on my sweetheart’s caramel cake
  6. A San Antonio Wedding
  7. Writing Around New Orleans
  8. Fiction, non-fiction, or poetry? Or do I have to choose?
  9. Pokemon Go!
  10. My trip to the Emergency room, Ovarian cysts, and the questions I now have
  11. Back to School, or the party’s over
  12. Expanding the Mind, and increasing the value of learning for its own sake

See, there’s a lot rattling around up there. Oh, and the house is a mess and I’ve actually been cooking real food recently and the boy is going to move into the dorms in a frighteningly short amount of time, and he has to take his driver’s test still. OH. MY. GAWD.

It’s just all too much right now. Too much to juggle. Too much to handle. Too much to process. No wonder I just want to run around (run away) chasing imaginary critters with my phone. But this too shall pass, so I’m going to breathe, go take a shower, and eat some lunch. Yeah, it’s almost 2:30 pm, I make no apologies.


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The Power of Yet

As an educator, I have a drive to constantly improve my teaching skills. It is imperative that I never stop learning about HOW people learn, and how I can best help them along that road.

Dr. Carol Dweck’s research into the topic is fascinating and so important for educators, and really everyone to consider. We all have the capacity to learn, but what propels some while others hold back? Her answer is our mindset, whether we have a fixed mindset or a growth mindset.

This video is about ten minutes long, and very informative. I would love to hear your thoughts on it, and on fixed v. growth mindset in general.


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Breathing a Sigh of Relief

It’s over. The end of the year testing is done. D.O.N.E. Thank goodness.

My little kiddos have spent hours and hours testing, and frankly, enough is enough. Some of the tests are very short, like the three minutes that they spend zooming through a text and circling words to complete sentences correctly. Others, like the state test, are administered over the course of days and are comprised of multiple sections and take hours. Then there are the tests that we previously administered to predict success on the state test, except that now we do those (reading and math are separate) AFTER the state test. And those are long too.

I’m not saying that was should eliminate all forms of standardized assessment. I’m just glad it’s over for another year. Well, partial year. After all, there’s a battery of tests at the beginning of the year to determine baseline levels and check for “summer slide.”

As a teacher, I do find some of the test results useful. It’s helpful to be able to pinpoint areas of strength and weakness, not just in individual students, but across the class and grade level. If they’re all weak in geometry, for example, we need to redesign the way we’re teaching geometry. Some of the tests help us identify trends over time, too, which can help to identify students who may need extra support services, no only for remediation, but also for enrichment and extension.

Still, I think that elementary age kids take too many of these standardized tests each year. They’re little kids, and when we give them test after test, the importance of each one becomes minimized in their minds. After all, “it’s just another test.” You can hardly blame them.