Tag Archives: struggle

Welcome to Rm. 202 (2013)!

Welcome to Rm. 202!

I am so excited you’re here!

Please proceed with caution, and read carefully….

The following letter contains 2125 words that will begin to shape your fifth grade year. Be sure you have time to read them all carefully. You may like to have your parents sit and read with you so you can all be excited about fifth grade together.You should also have dancing shoes on (true story) and a video camera handy (extra credit).

Ready? Of course you are! Because you are about to become…

Fifth Grade and Fearless!

I am excited for the year ahead – but first, I need your help in knowing what next year is going to look like.

 

Yes, your help!

What next year holds, is, in large part up to you. I have my plans, my ideas, my goals….what about you?

I know some of you may have sneaked a peek at the letter I sent your parents, or may already know me, so this next part may be a bit of a review.  Too bad.  Keep reading anyway. 🙂  I have been teaching for 13 years and every one of them has been at Robinson!  I even did my student-teaching there long ago, so Robinson is definitely my home-away-from-home.  In my real home–which is in St. Peters–I have a fabulous family that I love dearly.  My husband, Grant, is a teacher, too, in Wentzville.  He has taught 4th and 5th grade like me, too.  Fun, right?  We have a 6YO, Riley, who will be at Robinson, too (he has Mrs. Appelbaum).  I am sure you’ll get to know him really well as we got through the year together.  We also have a little girl named Allison–we call her Allie–who is 2 1/2.  We LOVE (yep, love) Disney World, and travel there often.  We also just like to hang out together at home (or anywhere, really) and spend time with each other.  So that’s me.  What about you? Can’t wait to learn more about YOUR family!

Like I said, I have been teaching for 13 years, and every year, I begin the school year as a different person. I decide on that first day and then every day thereafter, who I am as a teacher. What is important to me. What I want to accomplish. What I want my students to see when they come to school. I choose that. I don’t let other people tell me who I will be and I don’t just be who I think other people want me to be. I read, I think, I write and then I decide.

Who Will You Be? (This is a big question – take your time to think about this!) Will you be the kid who has brilliant ideas? The kid who loves math? The kid who looks to help other people? The kid who……? Fresh start. Clean slate. We all get one (that includes you!) and we all get to begin fifth grade as the person we want to be.

What is important to you? (This is another big question and one I am really curious about so I will ask it twice.) What is important to you?

There are lots of things that are important to me: my husband and my kids, sharing ideas, reading, writing, being able to have a conversation, making things, discovering things, sharing what I know, sleeping in, staying up late and knowing when to say sorry.

As a teacher, there are a few more things that are important to me:

* YOU!:   You’re the reason I’m there, after all right?  It is important for me to get to know you, and know you well.  Not just as a learner, but as a kid, too.  I want to know what you like, what you don’t like, what makes you tick.  Who you are.  That’s ok, right? 🙂

* Respect: If you’ve been around Robinson for longer than 5 minutes you know that respect is a HUGE part of our culture.  It’s pretty much what we’re all about.  I expect respect to be a huge thing in our classroom.  I will respect you, and I expect you to respect me, as well as everyone else in our community.  This counts when we agree and even when we don’t.  I have a saying that I learned from my good friend Mrs. Ford years ago, that is really important with this whole respect thing.  It’s this: You are not the sun.  In other words, the world does not revolve around you, and there are lots of other people in our classroom that have needs, wants, likes, dislikes, etc., that we need to take into account.  I love you, but I love everyone else, too!

* Mistakes:  I expect you to make them.  Yep, I said it.  I want things to be hard for you.  I want you to struggle.  If you need more than one try or lots more practice with a concept, you’ll get it.  If you need to show me what you know in a different way, then we’ll figure it out.  If  you need me to repeat something or explain it for you in another way, I’ll do.  If you need a big, fat challenge–watch out, you’ll get one! No, I’m not crazy, I just want you to try things that may be tricky at first.  I want you to learn to work through it when it’s hard and figure out what to do.   I want you to feel the joy and success when you learn something new and it’s because you persevered!  Not everything will be easy here. And that’s ok. We’re in it together and I’ll help you all along the way. 🙂

* Collaboration: I love to share ideas and get ideas and try new things and even when those things fail, I know I am just one step closer to finding what does work. I love to work with other teachers to figure things out and find new solutions to old problems.  But just as much as working with adults, I love to collaborate with students.  I love to hear what you’re thinking, how you’re feeling about things, what you think would be the best way to learn something.  Even when you don’t agree with me, or have a plan that is completely different than mine, I want you to share it!  It’s our classroom, and often your ideas are WAY better than mine.  I know I’ll share lots of examples with you about how that’s happened to me over the years.

Aside from collaborating with me, though, you’ll be collaborating with each other!  You will have lots of opportunities to share with your classmates, to give your ideas, ask questions, prove your reasoning and challenge each other.  I expect that we will work together to help EVERYONE in our class be the best they can be.  Together we’ll achieve much more than we would if we tried to do it on our own. 🙂

I like to say that in our room, everyone is a teacher and a learner.

* Questions: I found a quote I love by a guy named Tony who loves learning. “No one cares what you know. What the world cares about is what you do with what you know.” Think about that. Chew it over. We can all Google and find stuff out – but then what? After we know stuff, what we do with it = inquiry. And that is what the world cares about. Me too. You?

* Time is precious: So are you. I don’t like wasting time and I especially don’t like wasting your time. That means I try to come to school ready, fired up, and prepared to make a ruckus (I like to think that a ‘ruckus’ is the sound your brain makes when it is challenged to be creative, thoughtful, inquisitive and world-changing – it is a beautiful sound).  I hope–and expect–that you will come into our classroom every morning ready to learn, ready to work hard, ready to put your very best foot forward.  We only have so many days together, and we need to make the most of every single one of them.  We’ve got so much to do! 🙂

* Technology : I  love technology because it allows me to connect to new ideas. I like to think about what I want to do and look for tools to help me do it. I want to hear your ideas on technology and what works for you. We will be using technology in many new and exciting ways this year, so get ready!  You’ll be blogging, using iPads and laptops (yep, you get your very own iPad Mini VERY SOON!), working on the ActivBoard, making videos of your learning and trying out many new things that we may not even know about yet.  Whatever we do, though, the goal is always learning.  We will use technology in meaningful ways to better create new knowledge.  Excited?  I know I am!

* Community: our class, our families, our school, our neighborhood, our city, our state, our country, our world. There are so many amazing people doing amazing things. I bet you can think of ten amazing people who do amazing things right now. We need to hear those people’s stories. Your mom and dad should be on that list. They are awesome. (Assignment one; email me List of Awesomeness about people in your family* -*family = people you love and are connected to even if they don’t happen to live in your house or share your last name).

* Taking risks: I like to take risks.   I hope you do too. It is scary sometimes and it fails sometimes but sometimes, more often, it is just A-MAZ-ING! Usually when you do something scary you do things you never thought you could.  You surprise yourself.  And then you want to do more! Someone smart once said “Fear and Excitement are shades of the same color”. Cool, huh?

HANG IN THERE….THE END IS NEAR!

OK…if you made it this far and are still with me, congratulations, you are a rockstar. Stop reading right now and do some kind of victory dance.  No really, go ahead.  Dance.  I’ll wait.  Better yet, have someone video tape your dance and send it to me!  I’ll even post it on our blog! (Did you see the posts where I did that from last year’s class?  They didn’t believe that I’d do it, either. 🙂 )

So….what now? How can you best prepare for the extreme awesomeness of fifth grade?

  1. Have a great summer! Be extraordinary.
  2. Read something.  Write something.  Wonder something.  This’ll get your learning muscles warmed up. 🙂
  3. If you have any questions you can always email me. Anytime. No question to big or too small.
  4. Think about what I said about being who you want to be. Most importantly, remember that everyone else in our class is thinking about that too. Be gracious to those who are brave enough to set lofty goals and make the effort to become an even better version of themselves.
  5. Look around your house (or your computer, maybe) for a picture of your family.  I’d love to be able to decorate our room with us–pictures of all the people who help make us who we are and who encourage us to do our best.  I want to be able to fill our window sills, bookshelves, walls–wherever there’s room–so please bring a 3×5 or 4×6 framed picture with you to Open House or on the first day of school.  And if you don’t have one, don’t worry!  We’ll take your picture!

Despite having now used about two thousand words, there are no words to describe how excited I am about working with you next year!

Here’s To Being Fifth Grade and Fearless!

♥ Mrs. Bearden

PS. If you didn’t get up and dance before and are now wishing you did, there is still time to do it. Anytime. Send me that video with your best moves (extra credit).

When you have had a chance to relax, digest this letter (maybe talk about it with your family or friends) and get your fifth grade brain tuned up, I would love for you to write to me to introduce yourself, ask questions, maybe respond to something you read in this letter that made you think.

I look forward to hearing from you before the end of the summer!

Mrs. Bearden: Email–jennifer.bearden@kirkwoodschools.org; Phone–314-213-6100 x4214 (after August 15)

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/MrsBeardens5thGradeClass

Twitter: @jbeardensclass

Blog: feel free to leave me a comment here to let me know what you thought, what you wonder, how your summer has been, etc….this is always a great place to talk to me! 🙂

**Thanks to @terSonya and Mrs. Hong for help with writing this post! Like I said, I love to share ideas!**

Don’t Steal the Struggle

I’m not even sure who said it,  but I know I first heard talk of it this summer when I was working with other teachers in my district.

 
First a little background: In light of the new Common Core State Standards, which are changing the expectations for teachers and students, our school district is reweaving our curriculum to match up with CCSS.  The best part of this whole deal is that teachers are at the heart of the work.  We spent four really intense days this summer learning and writing together, and then all this year a smaller group of us will continue that really great thinking to complete the documents for English/Language Arts (ELA) and Math.

Ok, so during our work this summer, a phrase was floating around that said: “Don’t steal the struggle.”  From the second I heard it, I knew it was something I’d be on board with. It’s actually something I’ve always felt really strongly about as an educator, but now I had better words for how to describe it–both for myself and to my families.

Then I had a situation within my own life happen last week that really highlighted the importance of this phrase for me.  And I’ll warn you ahead of time, that it’s an example I share as the “what not to do in this situation.”  I’m taking a class right now, and had an assignment due on Wednesday for the discussion forum for class.  I, unfortunately, had waited until late to do it, and so was in a little bit of a time crunch.  Last week was nuts at school with lots of meetings and conferences on Thursday night, so I had a lot on my mind (i.e. I was a little stressed out already!).

I sat for close to an hour drafting my answer to the discussion question (which was related to whether or not there is a paradigm shift in education from information acquisition to knowledge creation in American education), and was ready to post it.  And then–yes, you guessed it–when I hit POST, I got a weird ACCESS DENIED error message and everything I had worked on was gone.  Gone.  And no, I had not saved along the way.

So obviously there are probably other lessons to learn here besides the one I’m going to tell you, but this next part was the one I shared with my class related to struggles.   Unfortunately, my first reaction after that little bump in the road was to cry.  It’s kind of how I roll.  When I am dealing with something stressful, first I cry, then I write (usually in my own Writer’s Notebook, so I can figure out my feelings) and then I can figure out a way to deal with said frustration.  So here I cried.  Then I wrote–which was some rambling email to my teacher about what had happened and how I hoped she’d show a little grace when she graded my discussion post this week–and then I was able to think about what I should do next.  Pretty much I had two choices:  1) I could just quit, and not turn in a discussion answer this week (which would have several negative consequences) or 2) I could start over.  Well, needless to say, I chose option #2, and reluctantly started over with my answer.  Luckily, I remembered more of it than I first thought I would, and honestly I think the second version was actually a little better.

Ok, so what’s the connection to my classroom?  Well, go back to the “don’t steal the struggle” phrase from earlier.  The big idea there is that as an educator, I want to focus on not “rescuing” my students when things are hard.  Whether it’s in learning or something social or any other kind of problem they might have, it’s not in my students’ best interest if I swoop in and save the day every time they struggle.  I only teach them that things should always be easy, and that only an adult can solve problems for them.  That struggle is bad and that I’ll make it all better and fix it for them.

But of course that’s not true.  Some struggle is a good thing.  It’s during those feelings of disequilibrium, “pain” so to speak, when students are forced to figure things out for themselves.  To solve problems and use what they know to figure out what to do next.  And my students would tell you that they know that’s a really important thing to know how to do.  We had a discussion about this the other day and they had smart words about the topic.  They agreed that they wanted a chance to figure things out on their own first, knowing that I would support them as needed, but that I wanted them to try something first.  They knew that this was important because I’m not always going to be there.  Some day they’ll grow up will have to be able to know how to do that alone.  And several even mentioned the pride that comes with figuring out an answer for themselves.

My story was a picture of both what I hoped they didn’t do (just cry), but also what I hoped they would learn to do in a hard situation–figure out what to do to solve the problem.  Not quit.  Persevere.

So my new motto is Don’t Steal the Struggle.  It’s going to hang in my room for all to see, and to hold me accountable.  My kids understand it, and I think it’s vastly important as I help grow these learners into confident, capable citizens of tomorrow.  And like I tell them everyday, hard is good.  Hard is when we learn.