Humility Should Remain in My Bag of Tricks

My son is three and beginning to really push his boundaries. There are moments when I'm not sure his actions are that of a learning child and need to be corrected in a patient way or if he's just being a little pain and choosing to misbehave in which case discipline is necessary. So when days roll around where things are consistently going well, I tend to get too comfortable in my abilities to parent flawlessly.
Today's scheduled started off at a birthday party. I already had the swimming gear packed since the invite said there would be a pool available for the kids. Ten points to me. We were the first family to arrive, so my son was able to hang with the birthday girl for a little bit before being bombarded by six or seven other children. Another ten points since my son tends to act shy if too many kids are around causing a ruckus. No fights with other children. No incidents requiring medical attention. No accidents in the swim trunks. Let's just hand over another 50 points because it was an incredibly successful party experience:

After a rather successful nap (there's another set of points), we headed to the opening of a new, local library. The goal: getting my son his first library card. Again, objective achieved:

And since I'm promoting literacy with my kid, I was feeling like the best mom on the face of the planet. I actually even believed I was being rewarded for all the awesome parenting I was doing when my husband and son were interviewed for the local news station regarding the library. (I'd like to put the link in to the video if I ever find it.) That's right. I was all sorts of patting myself on the back. I had even intended taking pics of my son using his card to check out his books.

It was at this moment of smug satisfaction that I totally nailed down this parenting thing that my son walked up to me with the front of his shorts drenched in pee. Yep, the gods don't like hubris my friends. My child was so excited and distracted with all the festivity at the library that his bladder rebelled and we had our first public accident. That ended our library visit, we were about to leave anyway, and caused a new problem: how NOT to get urine all over my husband's new car's seats in order to get home.

Many people might ask why I didn't keep a change of clothes with me, and up until VERY recently I always had. This time I was convinced I had this parenting thing down, and my instinct told me extra clothes were not necessary for our quick trip to the new library.

Even though I still consider today a large success and tons of fun, lesson learned.

Ever the Optimist

I often respond to "Sounding Off" in our local newspaper regarding the topic of education. This was the most current prompt:

Tell us about something new your school did this year that worked. Where can your school build on some momentum and success from this year? What did your children learn this year that surprised you? What did you see on campus that gives you hope?

At first I wasn't going to respond, but ended up sending this in. It far exceeds the maximum word limit and will probably not be printed. So I decided to post it here, and if it ends up being printed then great!

Many people ask if I enjoy teaching, and my response is always, “I cannot imagine doing anything else and wouldn’t want to.” However, this year truly tested my mettle because I had 10 and 11 graders preparing for TAKS (as usual), 9 graders gearing up for STAAR, and advanced 11 graders taking AP Language at the end of the year. That tripled the normal stress load of standardized testing I normally endure in a school year. Therefore, when asked what my students learned that surprised me or gave me hope I almost cried because it was so difficult to see the silver lining through a rather difficult year. Then I remembered that my own philosophy is not to teach kids how to pass a test but how to become functioning members of society by building critical reading, writing, and thinking skills. That led me to my end of the year exams.

Instead of a cumulative, multiple choice test of 100 questions requiring the students to conjure up names of characters throughout the school year, I simply ask them to choose one thing we read, discussed, thought about or experienced during the year and tell me how it shaped them as an individual. The kids think they’re getting off with an easy exam but fail to realize how much thinking is actually going into their essays especially since I only allow them one sheet of notebook paper to write it. Here are some of my favorite responses:

An on-level student who learned the hard way I do enforce my no late work policy: “One of the things I learned this year was how to respect my grade in this class. Mrs. X didn’t beg us to turn something in, if we didn’t turn it in we got a zero. Knowing this it helped me think about my responsibility as a student to know a deadline and meet it.”

A gifted and talented student regarding Fahrenheit 451 in comparison to The Things They Carried and the many controversies over the Vietnam War: “…I felt an overwhelming and conflicting argument spring up in my head over censorship. I couldn’t fathom the thought of our free nation tainted with absolutism philosophy…”

A monitored English Language Learner discussing To Kill a Mockingbird particularly looking at the courtroom chapters: “…what I learn here was that we should speak with the truth. Because the truth is going to come out in any moment and time.”

A special education student: “My favorite was Machiavelli. I love how it shows you rules about being a leader and who you should trust and shouldn’t.” (We compared “Morals of a Prince” to Julius Caesar in terms of what kind of leader Caesar might have been and whether or not that merited his assassination. This particular student was also one of the few who was able to fly through Shakespeare without difficulty.)

Just like most public school teachers, I simply had to grab a few essays to see this wide range of topics and learning levels. Overall, I see tremendous hope just within these responses. These are the lessons that go with my students when they leave my room, and I much prefer this to be my legacy than having that allusive 100% pass rate on any standardized test.