Time Flies When You're...Teaching!

Every time somebody asks me how I arrived at teaching English as a foreign language in China, I think back to the interview I was privileged to have at a teacher recruitment fair. It does not seem that long ago really. In reality, it was around five years ago. What that means is that I am approaching my sixth year of teaching. What that also means is that I have passed the peak times I could have left the teaching profession.

Am I proud of this? Sure! What I know now is that the minutes, days, and years go by quickly. It doesn't feel like it's been that long. Meanwhile, those of you who have been in the game ten years or more shake your head with a "You have no idea" look on your face. I know. This all connects to something Sir Ken Robinson says. If time seems to go by fast when you're doing something and you hardly check the time, you must enjoy it. If time drags and you find yourself looking at the clock every few minutes, there is probably a lack of passion or motivation. Now that was a paraphrase, but you get the idea. I rarely catch myself looking at my watch (or phone) during the day. So many times I wish I had more than forty minutes for a class, more than four times a week, with my students.

I want to spend quality time with the students.

Learning. Together. Pushing. Encouraging. Challenging. Growing. Molding. Loving.

One of the best ways to do this has been etched in my mind even deeper upon seeing a quote from Don Wettrick, author of Pure Genius. It was a quote from his dad that says...

https://twitter.com/DonWettrick/status/614189067312451585/photo/1

Think about that for a minute. It makes perfect sense. Teaching is fun because of the innovative ways we can guide students to go beyond the standards.

I leave in less than two weeks to return to China, and I am excited!! To be honest, I've actually been counting down the days until the first day of school for the upcoming year. My students have shared the same sentiment with me several times this summer.

Our Life at Baishan

Recently, I asked a student to write what life is like while attending our school. This idea came from Pernille Ripp who held a #studentlife challenge back on February 5th. At that time, our school was on break for Chinese New Year. Therefore it was only a matter of time after being back this semester before I could ask a student to describe life from his perspective, from which I would have to post it because most blog sites are blocked here in China. I have left the student anonymous in order to respect his privacy.

This is his story.

Baishan School is a private school in Shazikou, Laoshan District in Qingdao, China. The school shares it’s campus with another school - ISQ, which stands for International School of Qingdao.

Life at Baishan is hard work. My daily routine is to get up at 6:45, and after fussing about, I get down to catch the bus at 7:25.

Our homeroom teacher is one of the most strict teachers in the whole school, and is known to rip entire homework notebooks for lousy writing and make that student re-copy the whole thing again. Yes, the whole thing.

Each class usually takes 40 minutes, unless if the teacher decides that they don’t want to end the class. Usually, this doesn’t happen. But the student scores in Baishan are overall pretty high, and our English is some of the best for Chinese schools in Qingdao. I guess that’s the result of doing 4 ~ 5 hours of homework each day.

Our school also has an excellent Foreign teacher team, they are very professional and teach excellently.

At Baishan, lunch usually consists of homemade style Chinese food. (Which is pretty awful to me.) If you want to eat something else, you have to pay an extra 2000 RMB (Which I think is too much.) to have the option to have Korean food from food window #3.

Life at Baishan may be hard, but an old Chinese saying states “Good students come from strict teachers.”

Beyond History and Politics

Where I'm teaching, on the east coast in the city of Qingdao, China, most nationals hold grudges and hatred toward the Japanese because of events that took place in history. In 2012, there were riots in cities protesting anti-Japan messages related to disagreements over who owns the islands nearby. An English teacher at our school from Japan stayed in the teacher dorm for weeks during that time. Her heart was broken because she came to China for that exact reason: to show that Japanese can forgive and love Chinese.

Fast forward to now, neither country has taken ownership of what happened. Punches are continually thrown back and forth in media and politics. Truthfully, I still don't see much of a difference between the two (thank you, Neil Postman).

These past two weeks, my 5th graders have been learning about camping, itineraries, and how to plan trips. Upon completion of their understanding and analyzing of the content, the students had to group up, plan their own trips, and write a 3-day itinerary. They did phenomenal on working out the details together in the process and then creating brochures for their trips.

What made me stop in my tracks was what is pictured below.

https://instagram.com/p/2ms1unqvgk/?taken-by=dmscott05

Inside the classroom of a private Chinese school, there was a group of girls from (L to R) Korea, China, and Japan. 

Recent events have been cast aside. 

These girls laughed, joked, and planned a fun trip to Korea. Originally, their destination was to Japan! I wish the news would show stories like this. You know: the stories that make you freeze, stop thinking about everything in life, and run chills up your arms. The collaboration was just beautiful.

This is exactly what I hope every one of my students learns. No matter what culture or people say, we can still love, respect, and learn from those whom our country has had trouble with in the past. 

Forgiveness brings freedom. When we move beyond history and politics, who knows what is possible?

https://amritamaat.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/forgiveness.jpg

Why Our BYOD Club Didn't Work And It's OK

Earlier this school year, I was eager to be in the process of preparing a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) Club for our upper elementary. I was reading article after article and processing what to do during it. What I failed to consider were the steps to set it all up beforehand. I was extremely focused on the school acquiring Wifi, since it still doesn't have that, and simply moving on from there. (Sadly enough, our elementary office has more hot spots than the 3 buildings of our private K-12 school has routers combined.)

For some reason, in the meetings I held with administrators at the school, the solutions never came for how the school operates on ethernet providing kilobytes per second, the internet itself turned off in every classroom, and our school of 700+ students and 80+ teachers having one IT guy (who doesn't know Apple products while Google would be useless too since it's blocked by the Great Firewall.)

A couple of the previous issues were mentioned by the elementary principal to me, but we never took time to work out how these and other problems were going to be handled. This was all late last winter toward the end of the first semester. The break in between semesters, Chinese New Year, was when I took serious time to reflect on a culture where digital learning prospers by Eric Sheninger. It was at this time that there wasn't any communication from the admin to me about what was being worked out or what was going to happen when the next semester came. Therefore, I decided not to follow through with the idea before chaos or any constant, unconsidered situations would arise.

Upon our first workday of this spring semester back, I went to the elementary principal and informed her of my decision. She was surprised, and her surprise surprised me. To me, it was obvious how this club was not near the possibility of succeeding. How could it? It moved all too fast for it to do more good than harm. I rushed it.

http://www.iheartliteracy.com/2014/06/technology-in-classroom.html

One of the many lessons I have learned is this: Have a team of professionals dedicated to working out solutions (along with plans B & C) take the necessary time to prepare an action plan, follow it through, and reach a point where outcomes and positive collaboration can happen between students, teachers, administration, and the school's stakeholders.

Through it all, I felt the worst for the result I gave my students. They had been a part of this, so much so that they helped me make a video asking earnestly for wifi and resources other than books on their desks. I really wanted this to happen, obviously since I had rushed it. I went to each of the students I originally had planned to be part of the club, apologized, and reminded them how we can still work together via Minecraft and other media. Thankfully, every single one of them understood, while a couple asked questions about why. I explained the technicalities of it and how it couldn't work for now and not even for some time here. For the students and me though, moving forward isn't going to stop.

It's OK. I've been doing what I can this year with my 5th graders outside of the box. I now look forward to where I will move on to next, and I'm preparing for that adventure.

Making 100 Minutes a Habit

Recently, I read a blogpost by Brad Currie titled 100 Minutes a Week. In it Mr. Currie succinctly discussed how 100 minutes a week, or 20 minutes a day, would be greatly beneficial for educators in their professional development. Time is a tricky thing to bring up with any educator probably, but making PD a priority is the utmost importance for the sake of the students and forward progress. There are certainly other priorities that should take precedence such as faith, family, or whatever floats your boat.

What caught my eyes over and over were the specific examples Mr. Currie provided in order that readers could gain insight into the endless opportunities we educators have and the variety of input possible when developing. 

I now consider how these ideas could be driven and lived out as habits since reading The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg. The habit loop below presents the science. 

http://tinyurl.com/pau64t6

There is a cue before every habit. If you want the routine of PD to start without much thought, let there be a cue you create beforehand. My first thought is the Twitter chat that many of us take part in. For example, when the 5:30am alarm goes off, the #BFC530 crew hops onto Twitter for 15 minutes. Others such as #sunchat know that the beautiful habit of collaboration happens every Sunday from 9-10am ET. I do not think only these chats but other resources have extraordinary impacts within the habits as well. Look into what helps you best as an educator, and tailor it to your best capability. PD doesn't need to look the same every time or for every person.

The rewards for such habits are worthwhile.

growth, more resources, creativity, ideas, information, reflection, encouragement, challenges, ______________...

http://tinyurl.com/kb66oet

What good habits do you have as an educator set for improvement? 

What cues do you have before the habits happen? 

What rewards do you feel or receive afterwards (and during)?

Joining #read15in15

Seeing #read15in15 trend on Twitter the other day had me Bing it. Turns out there is a plethora of people* who have set the goal to read 15 books in 2015. Lorinda Kline from Warsaw Community Schools is who I've seen lead the way in my feed. Kudos to her and the influence she's having on others in her community!

I really like this idea because of the reading, continuous learning, and collaboration possible. There are educators and others from around the world who have joined. I'm not sure how most are counting, up or down, so I'll go with UP since my unwritten goal is somewhere above 15. :)

It's extremely helpful to create a scroll on TweetDeck with the hashtag #read15in15 so as to see what others are reading and saying.

The following are several books I have already read this year with their authors and personal ratings. The order is by the dates I finished reading them.

1. Bringing Up Boys, James C. Dobson, 3/5

2. The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything, Sir Ken Robinson, 4/5

3. Finding Your Element: How to Discover Your Talents and Passions and Transform Your Life, Sir Ken Robinson, 5/5

4. Assessment 3.0: Throw Out Your Grade Book and Inspire Learning, Mark Barnes, 5/5

5. Our Greatest Gift, Henri J.M. Nouwen, 5/5

6. What Great Teachers Do Differently: 17 Things That Matter Most, Todd Whitaker, 3/5

7. The Good Fight: How Conflict Can Bring You Closer, Drs. Les & Leslie Parrott, 5/5

I have four books on my plate right now, and three of them are parenting books since our six-month-old recently started crawling and standing up on his own. I plan to start another ed book or fiction in the near future. Until 2016...read, read, read!!!


*Check out Goodreads for more in-depth reviews or stroll Twitter for readers' comments.

I understand.

Last week, I walked in to what seemed to be another normal day with a fifth grade class. Within the ten-minute passing period, one of the students (we'll call him Thomas) approached me to ask if I had researched the next question he and I had encountered in reading up on the International Space Station, space, and other related topics. This one dealt with the English name of a specific part of the ISS. And I failed.

How? Because I didn't do what I told him I would do.

Usually a student might be let down, walk away with a sigh, not feel appreciated, or (D) all of the above. What did Thomas say? "It's okay, Mr. Scott. I understand." Before I could apologize again, remind him that I have a baby son and blah blah blah, he continued, "I have a baby brother. I know how you feel." He then smiled, walked away, and went back to reading his space book and creating a puzzle about the information he was compiling.

Wait. What? Did he just empathize with me? Whoa.

I was touched. This 11-year-old boy softened my heart in one of the best ways I've felt in my five years of teaching.

This experience connects very much with two books I'm currently reading, Unconditional Parenting by Alfie Kohn and The Whole-Brained Child by Daniel Siegel and Tina Bryson.

Unconditional Parenting: Thomas didn't get upset with me, raise his voice, pout, or even look the slightest bit unappreciated. He was patient, spoke in a normal voice, and expressed a desire to grow together (as he has every time we've talked). He empathized with me by telling me he understands, giving a non-verbal with a smile, and moving on to what he was doing. He treated me with love instead of a force to comply, and he let me feel in my own heart in lieu of focusing mainly on the behavior and telling me how to act.

The Whole-Brained Child: Thomas connected this situation right-brain to right-brain. He didn't say anything that logically had me move on and forget about it. No! He expressed his experiences and emotions with my feeling at that time. He didn't have to say anything to redirect me following his compassionate words because I knew what I had to do. And I did it the next moment I could research ISS. ;)

Sometimes, we as parents/teachers may try to redirect children without the connection needed beforehand. We also could have tendencies to coerce them to obey rather than to guide them in their thinking. What this boy did last week made an impression on me and proved how applications from these two books can travel both ways in a relationship.

This event echoed one of many things I enjoy about teaching: The students help me become a better person.