Today is National Love Our Children Day

According to www.holidays.net today is National Love Our Children Day. I just love holidays and this is a great idea.

Ten ideas to honor this holiday today and everyday:

1. Hug our kids and tell them we love them.
2. Read to them.
3. Have them read to us.
4. Ask them what their dreams are and then really listen.
5. Ask them what they would like to do today and then if feasible, make it happen.
6. Laugh with them.
7. Enjoy nature together. According to www.holidays.net this is also National Birding Day. Spring is a wonderful time to explore the outdoors together. Our kids love it when we get out together. We live close to the intracoastal here in Northern Florida where swampy trails are the thing. We have seen some wonderful wildlife including eagles and owls and many other tropical looking Florida birds. A wonderful site that I found to learn about bird watching with your kids is www.birdwatchin.com . This site has all things birding and it is very family oriented. There is even a newsletter you can sign up for called David's Wildbird Club. David is one of the site owner's parrots and is the host of this club. Note the site's address is "birdwatchin.com". There is a site called www.birdwatching.com which is good as well although I really like the kid friendliness of birdwatchin. Here in Florida we are blessed with so much wildlife and nature trails. A good starting place if you live in our state is www.floridabirdingtrail.com. This is a wonderful site produced by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. There is all kinds of information about our trail system and our local wildlife. It is not to be missed! If you do not live in Florida perhaps your home state has a similar kind of a resource.
8. Be patient with our kids. This is sometimes a challenging one for me. Kids make noise. They can be demanding of our time and energy. Sometimes every ounce of our adult nervous systems cry out "enough"! Today, in honor of this holiday, let's take deep breaths and be centered. We can model peace for our kids.
   
9. Mentor kids. I am blessed by being a mother and school teacher. I have ample opportunity every day of my life to make a difference in the life of children. If you do not have kids of your own perhaps you have a niece or nephew who means a lot to you. There are some wonderful organizations out there that support the mentoring of kids. I will just mention two for now. One non profit group is Big Brothers Big Sisters. The national site is www.bbbs.org. The site for our local Big Brothers Big Sisters here in North Eastern Florida is www.bbbsjax.org. My bachelor brother was a Big Brother for a number of years. An organization that I have personally been involved in is Girl Scouts. The national site is www.girlscouts.org and our local site is www.girlscouts-gateway.org. I was a girl scout leader for my daughter Aimee's troop for three years in Washington state. It was an enormously rewarding experience for me and is what inspired me to go back to school later in my life to become a teacher. If you have some time to give I highly recommend being a girl scout leader.
10. Practice forgiveness. We can show our children we love them by showing them what it means to forgive. If they get in trouble at home or at school they need to know that we love them no matter what. We may not always love the behavior, but we always love the child. The same goes for forgiving our spouses, ourselves, our bosses, our coworkers, our politicians, and anyone else we have grievances with. If our children see us practicing forgiveness, they will more likely follow suit. Peace and forgiveness are two very important life skills for a successful life that will be explored in much deeper detail in future posts.
    

I am going to stop here because I have a family and want to show my kids I love them by getting off of the computer and giving them my full attention.

Happy National Love Our Children Day!
Debra

What do we want for our public schools?

Good morning. I was reading today's newspaper and one of the headlines is "17 of 50 biggest cities flunk in graduation rates". These statistics come from a study issued by America's Promise Alliance. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell and founding chair of the alliance said: "When more than 1 million students a year drop out of high school, it's more than a problem, it's a catastrophe". His wife, Alma Powell, is the Alliance's current chair. She said that students need to graduate with skills that will help them in higher education and beyond. "We must invest in the whole child, and that means finding solutions that involve the family, the school and the community", Ms. Powell states.

What are the solutions? What do our kids need that they are not getting in their current school experiences? That, in essence, is what this blog is all about. "What do we want for our kids?"

For pretty much my whole life I have heard about what a disaster America's public schools are. For a few years my parents put me and my little brother in private schools (this was the late 70s in the State of Hawaii) because they had been told by their friends that they don't dare put their kids in public school beyond the 6th grade year.

Politicians and concerned members of the community are always giving us the message that our schools are failing our kids. I can remember a couple of years ago when I was living in the Seattle area when Bill Gates proclaimed that our High Schools are dysfunctional and failing.

It is easy to grumble and complain about what is wrong with our schools. I am a public school teacher. If I chose to there is a lot I could say about what is wrong. Morale is low among many staff members. Nobody I know is very happy about NCLB, high stakes testing, crowded classrooms, lack of funding, and low teacher pay. I read recently in the current issue of NEA magazine yet another article about the high teacher turnover rate; especially among new teachers.

Hear is what I propose we do. Let's move our energy away from all the complaining and focus on what are we for. What do want for our kids? What do we want for our schools?

I Invite all of you to please post your ideas. Let's center. Let's think about what we want for our kids. What could our public schools be like? I will begin with a few ideas...

1. Give teachers respect and let us teach. We are professionals. We are the ones that work with our students seven hours a day. We know what the kids need. Let us do the good work we want to do with them. That is why we went into the teaching profession.
2. Pay teachers a professional salary. How do our kids benefit when wonderful intelligent and loving people who want to work with kids don't enter our profession or leave for economic reasons? What message does this give our kids when they know their teachers are broke?
3. Make learning fun. This seems like an obvious one to me but there is a lot going on in today's public school classroom that is not fun. I do not mean that school should be all fun and games. Obviously school needs to be a place where children do their best work and learn how to become responsible citizens. How do we get them there though if they hate coming to school? Last year I taught fifth grade. What I saw in many of my students was apathy and disgust. They were just so sick of school. They are only in fifth grade! This year I am working with second graders. They are still young and enthusiastic about school for the most part. I want them to keep that enthusiasm! I think I could post a separate article on ways we can make learning fun for kids (note to myself to do just that!).
   
4. Make school and class size smaller. There have been many studies that show kids learn better in a small class size setting. As a teacher I see it first hand. There is so much more I can do with them when we have less students. So many of these kids are just so needy and I want to give them what they need. It is difficult when there are almost thirty of them and just one of me! There are also so many wonderful hands on and cooperative lessons I can set up much more easier when I have less kids to manage. This, again, could be a future post for I have much more to say on this...
5. Fund our schools. Pay the teachers (yes, I know I have mentioned teacher pay already but it bears repeating!). Here where I live in Florida a property tax measure was recently passed in my community. So now each property owner may save a few extra hundred dollars while our school district is considering: doing away with bus school routes, athletics for middle schools, a freeze on teacher pay and benefits, reduction in support staff members, and much more. Again, what message are we giving our kids?
6. Support and nurture families. This is another idea that I think is so important and I could write a lot more about. For now, I will just say that a lot of my students do not come from the best home life situations. As a community, we need to come up with ways to support these families who are struggling.
   
7. Have our public schools more connected to the greater community. One thing that has always struck me about our schools is their isolation. They physically look like institutions separate from the rest of the community (especially the larger schools). Students spend their entire school days in an artificial environment separate from the real world. My vision: smaller schools in neighborhoods, programs where students go out in the real world more during their school day for apprenticeships, and business people visiting more often and are a regular presence in the schools. If we want to prepare our kids for real life why are we keeping them isolated from real life? Again, I think we'll go into this further in a future post...
8. Promote a culture of kindness and gentle civility in our schools. This is another one that sounds kind of obvious. But believe it or not the culture in some of our public schools is anything but kind and civil. We lecture to our kids the importance of treating each other nicely and yet some schools find it perfectly acceptable to permit adult staff members to yell at the kids and treat them disrespectfully. This is something our society really needs to look at. Certainly, discipline and a well run and safe school is important. It only becomes a problem when order and "discipline" occur at the expense of young people's spirits, self esteem, and dignity. Would you want to go to a place where you were humiliated and shamed your entire day? How we choose to interact with children makes such a profound difference. We can choose to engage with them in a positive and caring way or we can go the other route. I will stop here for now but I am sure will have more to say about this at some future time...
9. Bring curriculum alive. There are so many ways that all members of a school community can do this. I have seen so many wonderful things that teachers do with their students. It is very inspirational to see a group of students truly engaged in what they are learning. A lot of this goes back to one of my earlier points. Just let us teachers teach. What I mean by that is if we see our students interested in something, give us the time to really let the students explore and learn at a more deeper level. If we are tied to strict and shallow learning schedules, textbook curriculum with lots of worksheets, and pressure to teach to the high stakes tests, exciting and active learning are hard to come by.
   
10. Think out of the box. There are a lot of great things people are doing in our communities with kids that do not fall into the traditional public school settling. We need to open our minds and see some of the good work and learning that is going on in the non-traditional settings such as: online learning, magnet and charter schools, homeschooling, Waldorf schools, Montesorri schools, and Sudbury schools. Not every parent can afford to send their child to an alternative private school or home school them. I very much do support public schools. I think they could be wonderful places for kids to learn and teachers to teach. Perhaps we can learn from some of these alternative educational methods and bring them into our public classrooms. I think it is an idea worth exploring!

Any other ideas? My ten ideas are meant to be just a starting point to get us thinking. Please post your ideas. Let's get the conversation started. The kids are our future. The time is now to figure out what we really want for them.

Listening to our children

This morning I asked my children what they thought being a "successful kid" meant. My ten year old daughter said that being successful meant being happy. I asked her what does it mean to be happy? She said that being fulfilled and doing what you want is being happy. The last question I asked her was what would help a child succeed in life? She said having good parents and "choosing the right choices".

Aimee's thirteen year old brother, Stephen, had his ideas as well. He stated that being successful meant not being homeless, having fun, and making a difference in the world. He thought that having a positive attitude would help (something he admits he is working on). The last question I asked him is if there is anything in school he feels like he is not learning but would help him succeed in life. He said he would like to learn how to write great literature and to better understand how math ties in with life.

I love asking kids questions (my own kids and my second grade students). You never know what you will get. Most of the time kids come up with very thoughtful and honest answers. Asking kids questions tells them that we care about what they think. Often we adults do most of the talking. At home or in the classroom we are lecturing to them, telling them the rules, and telling them what to do. Rather than telling them what to do or think, why not encourage them to think for themselves? Do we want our kids to grow up to be independent and self confident adults? One way we can do this is by listening to them. Just listen.

Listening to our children results in many benefits:

• We get to know them better: what is important to them , how their minds work, what are their fears, what are their dreams, etc.
• We show that we care and that will result in a closer relationship.
• We model what good listening is: what it looks like, sounds like, and feels like.
• Listening is an important life skill. People who know how to listen will more likely enjoy successful relationships with family, friends, business associates, and anyone else they may encounter.

How can we better listen to our children and teach them valuable listening skills as well?

• Ask them questions. Like I did with my own kids this morning, get in the habit of asking them what they think about things. What we ask them about is not as important as simply getting their opinions and then really listening to them. It is amazing what we can learn if we take the time to do this.
• Have dinner together. Sitting down at the table for a family meal is a wonderful way to connect with our kids and get them talking. To break out of the rut of asking them the usual questions such as "How was your day?" or "How was school?" you can think of other things to ask your family members. A few years ago I purchased a wonderful little gem called "Food for Talk". What it is is a box full of index cards with quotations, questions, and other prompts to get your family thinking and sharing. I have the box with me right now. I just randomly pulled out two cards. One simply says: " Tell about your most embarassing moment". The second one gives us a quote from Proverbs 4:5. "Learn to be wise," he said, "and develop good judgement and common sense! I cannot overemphasize this point." Then the card asks this question for your family to discuss: "How can you develop wisdom, good judgement and common sense?". My family has really had some delightful conversations at the dinner table thanks to this little box of cards. My daughter, who was six when I purchased these, took (and still does) great delight in bringing the box to the table and pulling out a card. I purchased Food for Talk from a delightful company named Chinaberry . They are a website and catalog that promote themselves as "Books and other treasures for the whole family". I have been a Chinaberry customer for years and I can not say enough good things about them. Their reviews on children's books are particularly good. The Food for Talk box can also be purchased directly from the company's site: www.foodfortalk.net . It promotes itself as "Bringing families together one conversation at a time". It does do that! :.)
• Special dinner plate: another fun dinner conversation idea is for a family member to get the "special plate". In our family, this plate was one our son made at his preschool at age four. Whoever has the special plate gets to listen to the other family members say something nice about them. For instance, let's say it is my daughter Aimee's turn to have the plate. The rest of us would then go around and take turns saying something nice about Aimee. It could be a compliment or something we appreciate about her. This gets the family talking and listening. It makes the person with the special plate feel special, loved, and appreciated. It brings our family closer because we become mindful of the things we appreciate about each other.
  
• Family meetings. These can be structured anyway your family wants. They can take place on a weekly basis at a certain day and time. You can come up with an agenda. Families can talk about all kinds of things: catching up with each other, household chores, challenges family members are experiencing, plans for the weekend , an upcoming family vacation, family budgeting, service projects to do as a family etc. The important thing is all family members have a voice and feel listened to. Children learn that their input is valuable in helping run a happy family, household, and life.
  
• Have a dyad with your kid. The Websters dictionary I own defines a dyad as "Having a combining power of two". How you do a dyad with someone else is sit very close to them, face to face. It is also good to have physical contact with them such as holding hands or having your knees touch. Then one person asks their partner a question. It could be anything you want. For example, you could say, "partner (or the person's name), what are your dreams?". Then, say, for two minutes, you just listen to whatever they say. You maintain eye contact with them the entire time. It is important to know that this is not a dialogue. You just listen to your partner. If they stop talking just look at them and chances are they will resume. You can always simply restate the same question "partner, what are your dreams?" and then wait for them to respond. When time is up you switch roles. This is an extremely powerful technique. There is something almost magical when you look into someone's eyes and open up and share and receive your innermost thoughts with them. Try it! It is a great thing to try with your spouse as well. I got this listening idea from participating in programs offered by a wonderful organization here in Jacksonville, Florida called LIFEWORKS Jacksonville, inc.
  

Lifeworks is a 501(c)(3)non-profit Professional Education & Service Organization. A tag they use is "we make good people even better". I can not say enough about what Lifeworks has done for me and so many others. Good interpersonal communication skills is just one thing they teach. They have programs for adults and youth.

• Reflective listening: reflective listening is a simple technique to use and teach. After someone talks, say something like: "Debra, I heard you say_______". They will either feel you understood them or they will now have the opportunity to clarify what they said. I use this technique all the time in my second grade classroom. During class discussions I will use it. A student name Ellen will share. I will then say "Ellen, I heard you say_____. Is that right?" or to the class "What I heard Ellen say______". I have noticed that the student who spoke really feels they were heard and often then what happens is another young student will add to the conversation by saying something like: "I would like to add to what Ellen said about____". It is quite wonderful to experience these kids engaged in thoughtful discussion.
• To help with our active listening skills we have started to do another reflective listening technique in our classroom. As a morning warm up right after announcements I will think of a topic. Say the topic is " talk about a kind act that someone else has done for you". I usually begin. So I will say "Something nice someone did for me is when James brought out a chair for me to sit on during recess time without my even asking him". The student that follows me will then have to reflect what I said and then share his own idea. For instance, Jason follows me by saying "Mrs. Techentien told us about James being kind to her by bringing a chair for her to sit on during recess. My next door neighbor was kind when he helped us look for our last cat, Ginger". We do this until everyone has had a chance to participate. You can hear a pin drop in our classroom when we are doing this because the students need to be really listening carefully in order to reflect back the prior person's sharing when it is their turn to talk. The students also know that after a classmate shares something orally with the class anybody could be called on to give feedback to that person or restate what the person said.
• We adults need to model good listening behavior. Children learn from what we do. We can show them what good listening looks, sounds, and feels like. Our body language is very important. When our kids are talking to us we need to stop what we are doing and really give them our full attention. This means facing them, looking them directly in the eye, and not looking distracted. Kids are smart and they know when we are really listening or not. We can use the reflecting techniques previously talked about and ask clarifying questions. Don't interrupt. We may also want to refrain from giving advice. So often we want to jump in and "fix' our kids' problems. Perhaps we would be wise to work on just listening to them and gently guiding them to their own solutions. As their parent, teacher, or adult mentors, their is certainly a place to share with the children in our lives our opinions. All I am suggesting is that perhaps we wait for them to ask us and be more focused on what they have to say and what they think about things. One of my favorite authors, Stephen R. Covey, talks about this in his wonderful book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. In his chapter about Habit 5 : Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood, he talks about the principles of empathic communication. I read this book about a year ago and this one chapter has really stuck with me. Empathic listening is simply listening with the intent to understand rather than listening with the intent to reply. Mr. Covey makes the point that so often when we are "listening" to someone what we are really doing is speaking or preparing to speak.
  

Steve Covey has a lot of wonderful ideas that I won't go into right now. Perhaps in future posts...

Until the next post,
Debra

Reflections on our children's self esteem this Easter Sunday

Happy Easter! As I have spent the day with my family and enjoying the beautiful Florida sunshine we are blessed with today- I have been thinking about what really makes our children joyful and happy. Is it the Russell Stover chocolate bunnies in their baskets and eggs they found around the backyard earlier this morning? Granted, chocolate can't hurt- but there is more to it.

We have heard it before and it is true: happiness comes from within us. We can attempt to seek it out there somewhere and play the "I will be happy when....(I get a pay raise, that new car, I lose that last ten pounds etc.)". If we are always waiting for something outside of us to make us happy, it will not be true lasting happiness.

Children in their natural state come into this world happy. Everything is new and wonderful. They take delight in little things and spend very little or no time regretting the past or fretting about the future. As parents and teachers and other caring adults in their world we have the opportunity to nurture their wonderful natural state they were born with. This is a goal worth striving for many reasons.

Children with high self esteem love themselves and are secure. They will grow up and be able to engage in healthy relationships. They will believe in themselves enough and create the lives they want.

In the classrooms and around the schools that I have worked at I really see a difference in how the children behave and feel about themselves depending on how adult staff members interact and treat them. If a student is frequently scolded, told not to talk throughout his day, and is frequently punished for misbehavior that student is likely going to: internalize this treatment and feel there is something wrong with him, feel angry, learn that what he thinks and what he has to say does not matter, learn to not trust adults, and more than likely become apathetic to learning and school.

On the other hand, if students are consistently "caught being good", given specific praise, asked questions and are listened to, and are trusted to be responsible and make good choices, the behavior in students is dramatically different. They come to school eager to learn because they know they are valued and respected members of our learning community.

For some of my students it does not matter how positive a learning environment I create in our classroom. These kids have it tough at home for a variety of reasons. So much of what children learn about the world and how people relate to each other is in the home.

Children watch and internalize what we do (more so than what we say). Conscious parenting takes a lot of effort because we must work on being the best people we can be so we can teach by good modeling. We adults are not perfect. The most gentle, loving, and centered people may lose their tempers from time to time. We may tell little white lies or complain about our finances, our spouses, or our overweight bodies. Little eyes and ears are watching and listening!

I am reminded of the classic poem "Children Learn What They Live" written in 1954 by Dorothy Law Nolte:

If children live with criticism, they learn to condemn.
If children live with hostility, they learn to fight.
If children live with fear, they learn to be apprehensive.
If children live with pity, they learn to feel sorry for themselves.
If children live with ridicule, they learn to feel guilty.
If children live with encouragement, they learn confidence.
If children live with tolerance, they learn patience.
If children live with praise, they learn appreciation.
If children live with acceptance, they learn to love.
If children live with approval, they learn to like themselves.
If children live with recognition, they learn it is good to have a goal.
If children live with sharing, they learn generosity.
If children live with honesty, they learn truthfulness.
If children live with fairness, they learn justice.
If children with kindness and consideration, they learn respect.
if children live with security, they learn to have faith in themselves and in those about them.
If children live with friendliness, they learn the world is a nice place in which to live.

Welcome!

Dear readers,
If you are here you are probably a parent, teacher, or someone who cares about children. The basic question that this site aims to answer is simply this: "What do we want for our kids?" Many of us would perhaps say that we want them to be a success or have successful lives.

There are many definitions of success. Many parents of course want their kids to "do well" in school. Good grades, high scores on state tests, and getting into a certain college are common success benchmarks for many of us. Learning how to make straight A's, ace tests, and earning a college degree are all well and good. Do they, however, guarantee a successful life?

So, what do we want for our kids? How about a healthy body, mind, and spirit? Loving relationships? Prosperity? A sense of purpose? I teach in a public classroom and none of these things are explicitly taught.

I would like this blog to become a resource and forum for like minded people who want more for their children. The four life skill components to a successful life we will focus on are:

1. A healthy body, mind, and spirit
2. Loving relationships
3. Prosperity
4. Purpose

I am new to blogging so please bear with me as I learn this medium. As a parent and teacher I have spent many years researching these areas and in time I intend for this to develop into something very useful. I welcome your input.

I reside in the Jacksonville, Florida area. Some resources I include may be local. Please feel free to post resources available where you live. Thank you.