Using the mirror from my TAGmirror - Part 1 [Reflection]

Someone will be filling my position as 1/2-time TAG teacher next year, so I feel like writing them a letter.

Dear New TAG Teacher,

You get to learn from my mistakes.  Don't worry, I made plenty.  Let's get started.  My first do-over would have been to take more time planning the year in advance, as impossible as that sounds.  We already had pull-out groups going when I started, two days into the school year.  This was ambitious and didn't fail, but it didn't give me time to survey my surroundings, make connections with the teachers, and learn about the curricula of an elementary school.  By the time I caught my breath and could think about what I should have been doing -- instead of just what I found myself doing -- I was into the school year and had come up with non-curriculum based projects: stuff that the kids thought was fun and they learned from, but stuff that was not specifically an extension of their classroom curriculum.

This is not bad, it's just not the best way to do it, looking back.  I should have taken the first couple of weeks off from pull-out groups to give the kids a chance to get to know their classroom teachers and give me a chance to put together a "TAG Curriculum."  I put that in quotes because people might not like it that I just put "TAG" and "curriculum" next to each other.  The quotes make it so I can pretend like I didn't mean it later.  Here's what I mean by TAG Curriculum: My goal for Enrichment pull-out groups is to give them the opportunity to study _________ in depth.  When I started this year, I knew next-to-nothing about K-5 curricula.  I didn't take a single K-5 content class in college.  But, I also didn't take the time to collaborate with my fellow teachers once the school year started.  I just tried to figure out on my own what my kids should know.  Big mistake.  Here's what I would have done if I had a time machine: get together with the teachers from each grade and map out eight concepts/skills that I can challenge my students into learning with more depth.  The reason I chose eight is because that gives me one concept/skill for each month September through April.  This way I would have a foundation to always go back to and build projects upon so my students would be getting the chance to study the core concepts with depth.

How does this idea of a TAG curriculum strike you?


Up next: gauging and engaging student interest.

Leftover Links - Gifted Edition [Leftovers]

I spent some time this past week following as many teachers/advocates involved in gifted education as I could find on Twitter.  This gave me a couple new feeds to add to my Google Reader and some sites to check back for resources.  Nings are user-created social networks.  Think of a Ning as a niche-Facebook.  I've linked one for techy teachers and two for gifted educators.

Blogs:
http://teachagiftedkid.com/
http://rcmsgifted.blogspot.com/
http://mygiftedlife.org/

Static sites:
http://txgifted.org/

Nings (social networks):
http://www.classroom20.com/
http://giftededucation.ning.com/
http://giftededucator.ning.com/

Varied expectations [Teacher-to-teacher]

I spent the day in professional development, mainly discussing collaboration.  One aspect we discussed was collaboration between TAG teachers and classroom teachers.  We brainstormed the expectations each type of teachers has for the other.  This is the list my colleague and I came up with:

G/T expectations for classroom teachers

• Open-minded, positive attitude
  
• Flexible
• Share resources, in and out
• Preparation time devoted to a collaborative lesson
• Trust -- grading and evaluation and management

Classroom teacher expectations for us

• Have all the answers and resources
• "Get the gifted kids out of hair/room" or serve "my" kids
• Highly creative, "fun/play"

The accompanying article for this activity was "Building Bridges Between General Practitioners and Educators of the Gifted: A Study of Collaboration" by Jeanne Purcell, et al.

What have you found the expecations for your gifted teachers are?  What are your expectations for classroom teachers?  Have you done any collaboration in your classroom either as a gifted teacher or as a general ed. teacher with gifted teachers?

Are you a reader? [Hmm]

Every once in a while, when the time is right, I like to ask adults one seemingly simple question: are you a reader?  I love it because of its innocence.  It's a subjective question that can be taken different ways by different people.  The person I ask gets to define "reader" for themselves, then decide whether or not they fit in their own definition (yes, that's singular "they.")

Last night I was moving outdoor chaise loungers from the back to the front of the store.  The last one was tied to the cart so I started to untie the knot.  The woman I was working with said, "I'll go get some scissors."
I responded, "Don't worry I can untie any knot.  I'm like Maniac Magee." (Which is true.)  She gave me a puzzled look, so I asked, "Are you a reader?"
"Oh, definitely," she said.  "I'm a nerd."
"Well, Maniac Magee is a kid who can untie any knot.  I was just being silly..." I started.
"I read all the time." she continued, undeterred.

- - - - -

A couple months ago, I was going to the Post Office almost every day with Book Mooch and SwapDVD going steadily, to the point that I was on a first name basis with Nadine, our postal carrier.  One day she asked, "Where are you sending all these books?"  I told her about Book Mooch, and when she didn't seem very interested, I asked, "Are you a reader?"  She thought for a second then said no.  I said, "Well, it's like riding a bike if you ever want to get back into it."

Sure, that may have been forward of me.  I could also easily have just untied that knot without bringing up Maniac.  But that would have been boring.  And lame.  I don't want to be boring and lame.

So...are you a reader?

Videos on Vodspot [site]

I added a new feature to the site today.  Vodpod is a site that allows anyone to create a repository to organize videos from all over the web.  The way I will be using my Vodspot for TAGmirror is to keep the talented and gifted videos I find around the Internet in one spot.


Here's a classroom example: Let's say I have three short videos I want my students to view.  Instead of giving students three different links, they can go to my Vodspot where they know the videos will be ready.  It's really an organizational tool more than anything else. 

Anytime you want to check out videos I've found, you can go to the link up top or the widget on the left.

Leftover Links [Leftovers]

Like chicken tacos in the crockpot, these links have been simmering all weekend. Or something witty like that.

• I tried out and found that Pandora works beautifully on the PS3. Seeing as we only own one game for our PS3, I'm pumped that a working Pandora adds another component to the PS3-as-media-center. We already stream TV shows from my wife's Macbook to it and watch Blu-ray on it, and now we can listen to Pandora. Yes!
• Lisa Thumann retweeted Samantha Moorra's tweet on Fair Use guidelines. I bookmarked the chart from her link for future reference.
• I've been reading Marlene Armstrong's blog An Open Discussion for Gifted Education. Marlene has been posing some great questions and getting some interesting discussions started.
• I'm going to start reading Habitudes by Angela Maiers for my new job next fall. I thought I had a great analogy about how I've been following Angela Maiers on Twitter for a while now, long before I had this new job, and how it's such a "small world" thing that she conducts professional development at my new school. Then I was going to link a YouTube video of George's monologue about Two Georges Colliding from Seinfeld to wrap it all up, but I don't think it works. Oh well, here's the clip anyway.

I start my new part-time job at Bed, Bath, & Beyond this afternoon. I'm trying to be optimistic about it.

Have a great week!

Unpacking the label [TAG]

Partway through a Slosson IQ test yesterday, Student broke down. I could see the breakdown coming. Student's eyes began welling, lip started to curl, etc. I said, "Student, what's going on? Why are you crying?" Student sobbed. Awkward story short: after a few minutes I called Student's mother, who came to pick up and take Student home. Student had begun complaining of a stomach ache.

I talked to Student's mother this morning and she said around 9 o'clock last night, Student gave it up that Student was afraid that the IQ test would determine whether or not Student could remain "in TAG." (Side note: I thought about writing out "quote" instead of putting the quotation marks for added effect, but I didn't. Read it again and see if it has more oomph when you say "quote" where the marks are. Let me know the results.)

Turns out, Student's teacher had told Student, in front of the entire class, quote (I'm trying it here) if you can't figure out these math problems, you shouldn't be in TAG." (Relevant note: Student is subject-accelerated for Reading only, not math.)

Seriously.

Student and I had a good discussion about this, and I'm pretty impressed with what I came up with on the spot. I asked Student what TAG means. Student didn't know. That's on me. The label gives me the willies, so I just avoid it, to the detriment of my students, no less. Learn something every day. We talked about how TAG = Talented and Gifted. I explained to Student that Student can't be in TAG anymore than Student can be in curly hair. Student is Talented and Gifted in the same way that Student has curly hair.

Whatever the acronym of your location is -- TAG, G/T, PEACH, GATE -- it's not the name of a club. Even if you/parents/kids/administration wants it to be, it's not. It's just a label for identification purposes. One of my mentors (can she be my mentor if she doesn't know it?) Mary Schmidt tells this story of when she was a TAG teacher (I'm sorry for butchering it, Mary): It was school picture day. The photographers called the TAG students to the gym to get a group picture taken. Mary went right down there and explained that the TAG students would get their picture taken as some sort of club right after the photographers did the same with the Special Ed students.

How do you address the label in your school? What do your students think of being talented and gifted?

Hey! Over here! Look at me! [Update]

Last week, I accepted a new position for next fall. I won't be teaching TAG anymore, but I will always have talented and gifted students in my classroom. (That goes for your classroom, too.) Next fall, I will be teaching 6th grade Language Arts, as well as a section of Social Studies.

The point: if I start blogging about Language Arts, you'll know why -- same for Social Studies. I contemplated changing TAGmirror's title, but I decided to keep it. It will serve as a reminder that there are TAG students all around us, all the time. They're not just talented and gifted for the half-hour pull-out session they get each week. They don't stop being talented and gifted when they're in the regular ed. classroom. I'm not going to stop reflecting on the world of Talented and Gifted now that I'm not labeled a "TAG teacher." I've learned so much from my experience this year. I figure the least I can do is continue to remember who has influenced me.

Leftover Links [Leftovers]

I had a busy week (<-- excuse). I was offered and accepted two new jobs over the course of two days, including my new teaching position for next fall. I bought a new softball glove. I finalized a few pickups and began the negotiations on a few trades in fantasy baseball. We're also in the process of trying to buy our first house. Which brings me to the leftover links:

• Google Sketchup has been put to use this week designing our dream home. We've found it, now we're just trying to buy it. What's great about Sketchup is the 3D Warehouse of items that people have built and shared with the community. I see some fun educational uses of Sketchup, such as community improvement plans.
  
• A study says that short leisure browsing is a helpful distraction. I can get on board with this. If I get even just 2-3 minutes of surfing time every half hour, I feel much more productive.
• NCTE's report on youth attitudes toward writing and 21st-century literacy.
• Is your computer infected by the Conficker virus? If you're on a Mac, the answer is a resounding "no." If you're on a Windows machine, just look at this chart. If all the pictures show up, you're good to go. If not...there are some links on the site to help you out.
  

"Where's Johnny?" "He quit." [Hmm]

I had a student "quit" this morning. (No, his name's not Johnny.)

As you may know from this post, I meet with my 5th grade Math students on Mondays for a half-hour and the rest of the week for 15 minutes per day. This adds up to an hour more than I see my other groups during the week. (I'm already getting defensive.) We've been working on our Green Projects for a few weeks now. I don't blame him for "quitting" (Yes, putting "quit" in quotes is therapeutic for me). We get 15 minutes each morning to work on these projects, and with the speed of our Internet and computers, it really equates to about 10 minutes of productive work time. Not much. (Still defensive.) So, this project has taken a while. He -- in contrast to the other students -- has used all 10 minutes each day to work on his project. He was the first one ready to practice his presentation. He was the only one who used the project outline I gave them instead of asking questions like, "What goes on the third slide?" From the outline: Third slide should have a picture of your invention (use the Green Search Engine).

I think (hope) that when he says he "quit" it really just means that's he done with the project. I went to ask him about it, truly because I'm a firm believer in getting feedback from anywhere I can get it. He told me he's bored. I told him I would find some stuff for him to actually learn over the weekend. I told him if he thinks of anything he wants to learn about to write it down and we can explore it together. It dawned on me that he was bored with doing and wants to get back to learning. Sounds like I have some (more) homework to do this weekend.

Happy Friday!