TBA Book Club--The End Of Molasses Classes by Ron Clark

I am participating in a book club linky party. We are discussing The End of Molasses Classes by Ron Clark. Ok, I am posting on my iPhone, so I will keep this brief tonight. I will add more tomorrow. I just completed Principle 5: Listen. While the whole book has affected me and moved me and motivated me, the section about listening to our students really hit home. Sometimes I think we fail to stop and listen, or we fail to ask the right questions when we have troubled students. Maybe they are just waiting for us to talk to them, to help them. I feel like maybe I have had some "Kenneths" over the years, and I do not want to let any more to slip by without me reaching out to them. I am going to work on my listening skills and try to remember that sometimes, we have to take a risk and ask our students what is going on.

I'm BACK!

I am so horrible at keeping up with this blog! I apologize!  However, I do think my absence can be excused because here is a list of what I have been up to:

1. I am a member of our school's Continuous School Improvement Committee. We are building everything from scratch since we are a brand new school. It is interesting to say the least!
2. I am taking a course on designing computer-based instruction. It is a GREAT learning experience that is adding to what I learned during my studies in my MAEd in Instructional Technology program.
3. I am taking a course on Gaggle through my school system.
4. I went to the N.C. Elementary Educators conference last weekend. I got to see Ron Clark speak, and he is definitely a motivator! I went back into my classroom with a new outlook on how I want to teach my students. This was the second time I had the opportunity to hear him speak, and I think this time around it meant a lot more to me. The first time, I was a brand-new teacher and probably had no clue about the challenges I would face and how to handle them :)

Am I forgiven?? :)


I also saw "The Bag Ladies" at the conference. Oh my gosh, they have some of the greatest project ideas! I am trying to figure out where I want to use some of their ideas. I wish their website had some "freebie" ideas (I think that might encourage people to buy the books if they haven't seen them in person). They offered up some great ideas to make activities that we do in the classroom into FUN, hands-on activities. I know my students love to do "artsy" things, and these are easy enough for a crafty-challenged person like me to do and to teach! Check them out! The Bag Ladies

I created a tutorial for the Three Branches of the U.S. Government that I will share with you once I tweak it a bit. I only got an 88% :( so I need to fix some things before I make it public!