Holidays in the Classrooms

The holidays are fast approaching us and before we know it, the new year will be here.  When I first started teaching nine years ago, I taught the importance of Christmas and the meaning behind it.  I was told by a few teachers that year that I could not talk about Christmas in the classroom. 

I was brought up Catholic and went to Catholic schools until high school, so the meaning of Christmas was always taught to me in school.  This made it hard for me to understand why I could not teach the meaning of Christmas in my own classroom, but having to teach about different holidays made me understand the importance of other religions and traditions during the holiday seasons.

Now in my classroom, I touch upon all holidays and their importance.  I think this gives my students a better understanding of where we come from and what they do during the holidays. 

Here are some helpful links that might help you teach the different holidays during this time of year:


December Holidays


List of Holidays by country


Winter Holidays Around the World








Merry Christmas!!

What is Thanksgiving???

For the past few days I have been doing some small activities with my 4th grade class and I was amazed with how many of them do not know any stories about the first Thanksgiving or even about the pilgrims coming over from Europe.  Some of the responses I received for the question "Why do we celebrate Thanksgiving?" were mind boggling.  Some said, "to eat lots of food," and "so we can have a day off from school."  I know times are changing, but I still believe it is important to know why we have Thanksgiving and what the first Thanksgiving was all about.  Here are some good sites to look at for teaching:

Pilmouth Plantation 

History of Thanksgiving

Definition of Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving

Top Ten Thanksgiving Movies   



  

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!!! Take time to give thanks and spend time with love ones!
           

Exploring Bullying!!

Last week I mentioned how I see bullying as a way that some students show they are unruly.  Bullying has become an increasing issue in our schools.  When I was a kid, bullying was when someone who picked on me or physically abused me, but today many students experience all kinds of bullying.  The three main types of bullying are verbal, physical, and relational.  These are explained in the previous link.  One most up and coming type of bullying is happening on the internet.  Since I am elementary teacher I do not see a lot of this, but I am sure in middle school and high school that there is some.  I would like to hear some of the policies that some schools have on "cyber bullying." 

In my school we have gone to great lengths to discuss bullying in today's schools.  Most of it has been in discussion with our students, but we have also had the TIGER program from Plymouth State University come talk to our students.  I hope all of this intervention helps our students, but I am not always with my students to monitor what they are doing and if they are making good choices.  Here are some websites that might help you discuss bullying with your students:

Helping Kids Deal with Bullies

Bullies: Life Lessons from the Sandbox

Kids Stories about bullying

The Dustus Blog

Here are some books about bullying:

       

The Unruly Students!!

   Last week I talked about  dealing with difficult parents.  As that might be challenging in itself, that is not our main job.  Either you are a first year teacher or a 30 year veteran, we have all experienced the difficult student.  When I am talking about difficult students, I am not just talking about behaviors, but also the students who:

~sit at their seats and do nothing.
~do not complete any of their homework assignments, and
~do not speak a word to you.

But of course we cannot the forget the student(s) who distrupt the class because of the their behaviors.  In the past two years I have seen students in my own school building do the following behaviors:

~yell
~bite
~kick
~swear
~ be deviant
~physically abuse other students
~bully other students, (a whole other blog all together)
~run from the classroom and even worse run from the school building.

To top that off, most of these behaviors are coming from our 1st graders!

So, how do we as trained professionals deal with these issues.  Most of us might say "go run and hide", but we cannot, because for most of these students they need the caring and compassionate people called, teachers.


Here are some articles/blogs that might be helpful to you for dealing with the unruly student:

Difficult Behaviors in the Classroom

Dealing with Disruptive Student Behavior  - University of Houston

Strategies for Dealing with Troublesome Behaviors in the Classroom -

Rosalind Reed, Ph.D.
Department of Health and Community Services
College of Behaviorial and Social Sciences
California State University, Chico

Here are some books that can get through those tough times:





   









Let me know if you have any thoughts about my blog, or any stories to tell.

Do you have difficult Parents?

As educators we will always have those students that wish sometimes were not in our classrooms, but we deal with it, because we know they were put in a classroom for a reason.  For many of us we are able to help those students and have them learn something, but the one issue that I have is dealing with the difficult parents.  You know that ones I am talking about, the ones that......

~e-mail or call everyday, to see how their child is doing.
~criticise your every educational move.
~says that, "my child is a genius", but he/she can't even spell their name right on a worksheet.
~or even the ones you can never contact because you need to speak to them.

All of us have seen parents like this.  I have always said, that the toughest part about my job is not the students, but the parents.  Here are some articles/blogs that are worth looking at to help cope with difficult parents.

Tips Dealing with Difficult Parents

The Red Apple

Dealing with Difficult Parents

Books worth reading: