On parents communicating their joy
Parents are heard by the school administration... I would like to encourage parents to communicate their joy, not just their frustration.
Teacher stories, interviews, and videos related to elementary school.
Parents are heard by the school administration... I would like to encourage parents to communicate their joy, not just their frustration.
If our boys are in trouble, our society is in trouble. It's hard to be what you can't see.
I've been told, “this student can't read” or “they're a non-reader.” But in my class, in my play, they've learned their lines. So I believe strongly: the arts enhance every part of education.
I went to school to be a journalist. My financial aid package required that I take on a work-study job. So during my first year of school, I worked with Jumpstart, an AmeriCorps program where they put college kids in Title I preschools.
I was pretty close with my brother. He ended up going to jail when I was in fourth grade. We were having morning meeting at school, and the question that day was, ‘How are you feeling?’
I was working at The Bridge Home at St. Mary's Women and Children's Center. It’s a shelter for infants to 12-year-olds. If the Department of Child and Family Services pulled a kid from their home, we housed and counseled them.
The bulk of my fifth graders are just excited to see me. They want to talk to you in their downtime. They want to sit by you at lunch, and they want you to come to recess with them. That feeling is the driving force that made me become a teacher.
I was full-on ready to be a full-time artist. And then I was invited to be a teacher at a summer institute in Denver, through the Native American Youth Outreach Program. I think it was seeing those kids connect to our traditional arts — part of our cultural inheritance that they had little exposure to before. It was seeing kids connect to our indigenous ways that changed me.