Blind Side - What Are We Missing?

I was just watching a scene from the movie Blind Side (with Sandra Bullock) and one scene has just grabbed me by the gut and really made me think about what we do as educators. What I am responsible for myself. In the scene, a teacher reads out a discarded piece of writing from Big Mike to  other teachers in the staff room that are frustrated with the lack of effort and ability they see in Big Mike. Here is an excerpt from that essay...

"I look and I see white everywhere: white walls, white floors, and a lot of
white people…. The teachers are not aware that I have no idea of anything they
are talking about. I do not want to listen to anyone, especially the teachers.
They are giving homework and expecting me to do the problems on my own. I’ve
never done homework in my life. I go to the bathroom, look in the mirror, and
say, "This is not Mike Oher. I want to get out of this place."
–Evolution of a Game

Right after that, one of the more skeptical teachers in the room asks, "How's his spelling?"

We have this huge expectation of our students that they should be like little sponges sopping up all the knowledge we impart through lecturing, through getting them to read textbook passages, through worksheets, through reading books, you name it and you know what I am talking about because I have seen it countless times. I am not pointing fingers at anyone but myself because it is not my place to blame or shame anyone but myself. I spout these ideas and theories about what I think a classroom should be like. I have visions and dreams of students "getting it" and creating extraordinary pieces of work that magically appear. The amount of students that can live up to this expectation are far fewer than the norm of students that need more than us just pushing information at them hoping that they will get something out of it and be able to send it back to us in an acceptable fashion.

So I have to ask myself, What do I really believe? What can I really do? and How can I get there?. I start out with good intentions and they all seem to go by the wayside and I get lost in the chaos of my day. Sometimes it's not so great watching those inspiring movies about the difference that teachers make in students' lives. How do you ever live up to that?

What I have to remember is to not lose hope and believe in my ability that I can make a difference. Maybe I'm not going to change the world overnight, but I can make a difference one person and one day at a time.

These are my thought so far and I'm sure there is much more to come. What do you think?

Student Writing: Respecting & Tolerance For Other People's Beliefs

Well I'm now officially teaching High School until the end of the year. I have 2 classes - Humanities 8 (a mix of Social Studies & English with a creative writing focus) and Health & Career Education (HACE 9). For one of my first teaching assignments studying World Religion, I had my Grade 8 Humanities class write about their own beliefs and why they thought it was important to respect other people's beliefs.

The images above are an amalgamation of their thoughts.

Here are some of the statements that I thought were especially poignant...

1. Beliefs are important to all sorts of people in one way or another, but open-mindedness is just as significant.
2. When we can take the time to learn about one another’s beliefs, we get to see another type of thinking.
3. If people could consider other people’s beliefs and walk a mile in their shoes there would be a lot less fighting and prejudice.
4. Religion shouldn’t be seen as a way to judge someone but as a way someone has chosen to live.
5. We all need to understand and accept each other’s beliefs because that is the only way peace in this world will increase.

Deep Thoughts... Books For Boys

In my teaching experience with students aged 9-15 there seems to be a good representation of books geared to both genders. But, if you scan through the teen section at your local bookstore (Chapter/Indigo where I live), you'll notice there is a lack of books directed towards teenage boys. The predominant genre is paranormal romance geared towards teenage girls. One only has to see the craze of Twilight everything to notice the popularity of this genre and of course dozens of other series have popped up related to vampires, werewolves, faeries, ghosts, witches, etc...

To prove my point, I looked up bestselling teen books at a variety of popular bookseller sites and discovered that over 75% of the bestselling books are geared towards teenage girls: Amazon: Top 100 Teen Bestsellers, Chapters/Indigo: Top 50 Teen Bestsellers, Borders: Teens Home Page and Barnes & Noble: Teens Home Page

Good news for boys! I stumbled across a website, Guys Lit Wire that is dedicated to bringing books that appeal to teenage boys to light.

This is a site dedicated to books for boys (Grade 3 to 6). Here is a resource list (from 2006) compiled by the University of Northern British Columbia.

Here's another list compiled by the Barrie (in Ontario) public library.

← Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld
~ a great example of a good book geared towards boys


Another trend is that most stories have caucasian heroines/main characters. Where I teach there is a high East Indian and Asian population. Where are the role models for these demographics that are written in English? How are these girls and boys supposed to identify with characters they can relate to if they are all "white" people? I find a lot of the teens at the school I teach at are reading the Manga graphic novels. Is that the solution? Not sure.

Deep Thoughts ~ Can reading save your life?

I'm not sure if reading saved my life as a child or just made it more bearable. I had a rather difficult childhood and it's tempting to just remember the challenges, but I also have to be thankful for the blessings I received - one of which was a family that loved to read. I'm pretty sure every member of my family as dysfunctional as it was loved to read.

I have so many great memories of great books I read as a child. How many people can relate to having their little night light or flashlight under the covers with their ears listening for footsteps so they could quickly turn out the light before they were caught reading? I'm sure many parents/teachers would love to "catch" their kids/students reading now!

My early successes in school were related to reading and writing. I was in the top reader group in grade 1. I had one of my stories read out to the class in grade 4 (one of my best elementary school memories for sure). I loved loved loved it when my teachers read aloud to us - especially Mrs. English in grade 4 - she was awesome at it. I had three years of correspondence at home (grade 5 to 7) and truly reading made it tolerable. Even later in life when I went back to school for six years to get my teaching degree - I was anxious to read for fun at the end of every semester.

Now I am two years into teaching. Although I don't have a full-time teaching job, I have relished the time I have to read for both professional and pleasure purposes. I see at the myriad of schools that I have been to from kindergarten to grade 12 that overall there is a sad lack of passion or even remote interest in reading. It breaks my heart when I think of what a lifeline reading has been for me. Every now and then I go into a school that sparks a little hope that maybe the art and fun of reading hasn't yet died out for kids today. My hope is to keeping fanning those tiny embers and maybe, just maybe I can help fan the flames into a lovely warm fire that spreads.

My question to you is... How has reading saved or made a big impact on your life? Do tell...