Catherine+Elliott

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June 26 - I have successfully found my page on our wiki! Now, to figure out how this thing works. Looks like fun, but it will take me a while to figure out how to make it work for me. I am half-way through __To Teach:The Journey in Comics__. Chapter Two, //Seeing the Student//, really spoke to me. I just wrote something on The Journey in Comics page, and that was kind of scary. When people post on a wiki, I wonder, do they make the effort to write well, using correct grammar and punctuation? Or, is the wiki world a more relaxed (mellow!) place? As I struggle with this wiki which seems so foreign to me, I am reminded that our students feel like this a lot.

Later the same day. I was able to officially become a member of this wiki. Not sure what this means, but being official somehow feels different. For some reason I am thinking of the first time I saw my name on a student schedule - that was huge!

June 28 - I have been thinking of the big question: What should students learn? I talked about this with a good friend/fellow educator. He answer was: students should learn how to learn. And, to expand on that kids should learn to love to learn. Learning, for me, is one of the most exciting things out there. And, I think this is true of most successful people. CE

That's what got me so interested in all this this summer, was the nature of that very question. From a chapter in Po's book that gets into a program called Tools of the Mind. I'm sold that those tools are essential. In the program itself, it states that teaching kids lessons in using the tools (to learn with) is not as successful as teaching them with the tools embedded so as to become second nature. PM

July 3

Just finished __To Teach: The Journey, In Comics__. This small graphic novel is packed! So many things to ponder. (Too many, perhaps?) I'll write more about this book on "The Journey" page of this Wikispace. After reading the book, I feel charged up about spending time with my students in the fall. I want to take more risks. For example, I want to scrap what I have been doing (trying to do) in Grades 5/6 and try something completely different. For the last few years, I've been in denial about the fact that I don't see my Grade 5 and 6 students enough to help them develop any real proficiency in French/Spanish. I have been basically doing the same type of lessons that work really well in Grades 7 and 8, classes which run all year long, every day. Next year I will see my Grade 5/6 students for a total of 30 days. 15 days French, 15 days Spanish. What can we do, together, in 15 days that is a good use of our precious time? I'll be thinking about this a lot this summer. CE

July 13

What should students learn in school? Some random thoughts in no particular order. - Students should learn that it's OK to take risks. - Students should learn how to use their minds, their INTELLECTS. (Ah, why did intellectual have to become a "bad word" in this country??) - Students should learn that learning does not stop once they leave the school building. - Students should learn that there is not always one right answer, and that is is perfectly OK. - Students should learn how to place themselves in the past, present and future.

I asked my sister the question "What should students learn in school?" (Side note: She and her husband are successful professionals, who put a lot into parenting their three young children to the best of their abilities. They travel, they garden with the children, they talk about feelings, values, morals. They go to museums together, they make an effort to spend time with extended family, they are connected to the natural world even though they live in an urban area. They cook together, they go to school functions together, they try to get to know their kids teachers, etc. etc.) My sister said that she and her husband give them a lot, the stuff that makes them grounded in their humanity. SHE would like to see the SCHOOL teach her kids STUFF! Plant recognition, history, math, astronomy, languages, art history, why things look small when they are far away, why planes can fly, music, poetry, how to write a coherent paragraph......on and on. She is looking to the schools to teach her children what teachers would describe as "content.". That being said, her children have classmates who are NEEDY for all of the things that my sister and husband do for their three children and don't expect the schools to do for them. We are their for all children, not just three. And therein lies the challenge! CE