Category: Learning and Leading

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Learning and Leading

Seeing Again with a New Purpose

By Julie Riggs
Lakehill Preparatory School, English Department Chair, K-7

I had so become discouraged with our tiny apartment that my husband agreed to visit some other rentals in the area. They were lovely and spacious, but moving would mean less privacy, higher rent and other expenses, and the enormous disruption of packing and unpacking.  Back at home, taking a newly appreciative look around, we discovered that rearranging a few pieces of furniture and tidying up clutter made our little home feel almost as spacious and charming as the others we had seen.

That’s a tangible example of revision, a skill I try to teach in English classes. To “see again” with a new purpose, to rearrange and tidy up cluttered writing, makes dysfunctional communication work. Even so, students are often reluctant to revise because writers are not only emotionally attached to our first drafts, we can become terribly stuck, believing we have no options.  But we do— all we have to do is take another look.

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Learning and Leading

Birthday Reflections

By Julie Riggs
English Chair K-7, Lakehill Preparatory School

Six decades. Sixty years. Somehow my birthday this year seems full of import. More than ever before, I find myself reflecting – and anticipating. My mother lived to be 82, and her younger sister turns 91 the day before I hit my comparatively youthful milestone.

Almost a third of that life has been here at Lakehill, and that’s a rather defining experience. When I began, I was nervous, a bit overwhelmed, and full of resolution to make my classes as meaningful as possible. I’m still overwhelmed sometimes, but nerves have evolved into a reserve of confidence and patience that serves me well.

I am even more eager than I was eighteen years ago to build memories and confidence in my students and to make them feel that time in this classroom– newly remodeled with accents in my signature colors of lime and teal—is well spent.

I hope, as before, that they walk away with some new vocabulary, an awareness of what makes writing effective, the memory of at least one book that touches their hearts or stirs their imaginations, and most of all, the knowledge that they are loved.

Here’s to the next decade!

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Learning and Leading

Growing Together

By India Miles
Middle School Teacher, Lakehill Preparatory School

Originally, this piece was supposed to be about the growth of my students. I was prepared to wax philosophical about the maturity of my students and how much more of their “peopleness” I saw and liked, this, their sixth grade year. However true, I wonder if it is really our relationship and my understanding of their struggles that I better appreciate this year.

As their fifth grade teacher, it was largely my duty to not only provide engaging content, but to facilitate the transition to middle school. Students spent the first half of the year triumphing in the exhilaration of being with the “big kids” while navigating lockers, acclimating to different teachers for each subject, and figuring out how to take care of their business within a five-minute passing period. The second semester dawned cold and bright, and though this would be their last January as the newbies of middle school, they still showed signs that they were not quite ready for independence. I’ll never forget one sweet student asking me if she should use a second sheet of paper to finish her work, since she’d filled up the first. Looking back, I realize that it was not a lack of problem-solving ability, but merely the need for assurance: “am I doing this right?

At the time, I was fairly stupefied by this question. With time and understanding, and by seeing a new fifth grade class exhibit those same assurance-seeking behaviors, I’ve come to the realization that so much of what I do in the middle school classroom goes beyond instruction, curriculum, and content. Though I’ve known for a while how we educators do much more than teach, it is in this, my fifth year of teaching, that I have a better understanding of my students’ minds, how they work, and the soon-coming but not yet achieved “light bulb” moments that every teacher longs to see. In short, it is not just my students who have grown; I believe I have as well.

India Miles

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Learning and Leading

Remembering the Important Things

By Julie Riggs
English Department Chair, K-7, Lakehill Preparatory School
Teacher Voices Columnist, The Dallas Morning News

Published in The Dallas Morning News: 05 September 2014

While I have been successful in retaining many moments I vowed to hold in memory, the brain with which I am equipped has sometimes cheated me. Poems and song lyrics once memorized now seem full of holes, and sometimes the name of a former student brings no face to mind.

I have learned to spare myself the anguish of searching for my car keys by clipping them to my purse strap with a carabiner the minute I exit the car. During this past summer, I completed the same project twice, once in early June and again in late July because by then I had completely forgotten I had done it. Last week I found myself opening a box from a recent purchase to experience the déjà vu of looking at a book I had already received a few months earlier.

I ask a great deal out of my memory, and I take it for granted that it will do everything I ask, even though I have several times come home from the grocery store without an item for which I had invented a little mnemonic jingle. So what gives?

Sidestepping any discussion about age, I wonder whether I am asking the equipment to do something it is not designed for. Yes, a brain is wired for memory and lots of it, but back when I was memorizing poems and song lyrics, usually for pleasure, I could not access a bazillion of them.

Today, on my way to find an oldie on YouTube, I find myself as distracted as can be by the menu of other options my search has turned up. If I do not leave a proverbial trail of breadcrumbs, I can arrive at a completely different song, not really knowing how I got there and having forgotten why I was searching in the first place.

We are all awash in information, options and access. There is too much to remember, and much of it is unimportant. But somehow, perversely, I can remember many useless bits of trivia and forget that I need to pick up paper towels or a can of chili at the grocery store.

Though I pretend no expertise on the subject, I enjoy reading and listening to pop-neuroscience, and the consensus seems to be that we need to clean out our memories to make room for new information. We also need to stop asking our memories to do Herculean tasks.

I recently heard Daniel J. Levitin, author of a book about thinking, advocate making a list when one needs to purchase more than four items or accomplish four tasks. He explained that when we attempt to hold more in mind, we are actually detracting from other work our brains might need to handle, such as paying attention while driving a car. Four? What a relief! I can stop imagining that not using a list is some kind of mental heroism.

Even more important, I can understand that my students are neither uncooperative nor deficient when they do not remember all my words of wisdom (or even the page number that I just asked them to turn to). They have grown up with the kinds of computers that can listen to their questions and repeat answers with infinite patience. They have explored thousands of ever-branching paths without a thought for breadcrumbs, and they have been awash in information, options, and access from infancy. So, lest I forget what is most important in all the hoopla and distraction, here’s my ongoing to-do list of four for the school year: Love them. Listen to them. Lead them. Learn from them.

 

Julie Riggs of Dallas teaches English and theater at Lakehill Preparatory and is a Teacher Voices volunteer columnist. Her email address is jriggs@lakehillprep.org.

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Learning and Leading

The Garden Of Life

By Patti Brooks
Lower School Coordinator, Lakehill Preparatory School

I recently had an eye opening experience…I planted my first vegetable garden!  Many of you probably are thinking, “What? Your first garden at 68 years old?” Well, this old dog has proved she can learn some “new tricks” (or maybe just figure out some obvious analogies.)
The whole experience has showed me that gardening and teaching have a lot in common:
  • The soil has to be ready in the garden, just like the atmosphere in the classroom has to be conducive to growth.
  • The seed that is planted must be nurtured daily, just like a child’s family and teacher nurture and encourage daily.
  • The little sprout that pokes through the ground causes so much excitement, just like that first successful Spelling Test!
  • The chance of bad weather and hungry bugs threaten the safety,  but can successfully be dealt with just like the occasional recess disputes are settled.
  • The mature plant is so proud to display its edible root, leaf, or stalk, just as the proud child beams on Awards Day each Spring.
In planting my first round of vegetables, I learned that growing a successful garden is very similar to nurturing and helping a class of second graders achieve success. And much to my own delight, both of these experiences are extremely rewarding!
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Learning and Leading

The Game’s Afoot

By Julie Riggs
English Department Chair (K-7), Lakehill Preparatory School

I have been reading and absorbing information about a new trend in education called “gamification,” and I find it very exciting.

Unlike the vague notion of “making learning fun,” there is solid brain science behind this trend. When we play games – video games, sports, cards, and all kinds of puzzles– we often learn precisely because we fail repeatedly. But far from stigmatizing or discouraging us, failure in the context of a game drives us to try harder.

Games have objectives and rules, and scorekeeping in all its forms gives the players immediate feedback about their status. The best games enable us to compete, not with others as much as with ourselves.

Recently, I yielded to curiosity about the Angry Birds Star Wars game. I thought I was the only person in modern civilization who hadn’t played an Angry Birds game, but if there are any more of you out there, it is all about aiming projectile cartoon birds at maddeningly complex structures of scaffolding in order to destroy taunting little green pigs perched in and on the framework.

I have fought through cumulative hours of exasperation to figure out tricky puzzles and execute hair-breadth adjustments, and I have probably failed hundreds of times, but I have also pushed through to victory with the same stubborn determination that drives me to keep modifying my curriculum and teaching methods to better serve my students.

If “gamifying” a lesson can create that level of engagement, I’m in.

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Learning and Leading

In Praise of Latin

By Victoria John
Latin Teacher, Lakehill Preparatory School 

Friends, Romans, Metroplex, lend me your ears;

I come to praise Latin, not to bury it.

The good that Latin does lives after it…

For Latin is an honorable language.

Teaching Latin allows me to fulfill the goal of the ancient philosopher Plato, “Do not train a child to learn by force or harshness; but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each.” For the past 13 years, by making Latin relevant and fun at Lakehill Preparatory School, I have been rewarded by the gift of perceiving the “peculiar bent of the genius of each” and every student and class.

People ask me, “Why teach Latin? It’s a dead language.” I respond, “Why not? Why label it ‘dead’ just because it’s not spoken? It’s the basis of over 60 percent of English words.” If you pay attention, you will see Latin’s ubiquitous heritage.

Latin is the basis of the modern Romance languages including French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, and Romanian. Over the years I’ve taught students who speak one or more of these languages.

Students feel empowered when their vocabulary suddenly becomes an integral connection to learning a new language. It is this empowerment that ignites their curiosity, nurtures their motivation, and develops leadership skills.

It’s also interesting that those students who don’t excel in other academics shine in Latin. After a week, they are amazed at what they’ve learned. At the end of the first semester, they are translating entire pages of Latin into English. Students discover Latin outside of class and are excited to bring their finds to share with classmates and display on a bulletin board, located centrally in the Middle School hallway.

Students find Latin in restaurants with the advertisement inviting the public to, “seize the burrito” with the words, carpe burrito. They find Latin on street signs, in scientific names for plants and animals, history, geography and legal terminology. A student learned that the Romans called the Mediterranean Sea, mare nostrum, translated as “our sea.” Another figured out Mediterranean derives from two Latin words: media, in the middle, and terra, land.

Latin has made a comeback in the last 20 years, as seen in the growing number of classes taught in American public and private schools. The number of students taking the National Latin Exam has increased to more than 150,000 worldwide. Latin is a required academic course in seventh and eighth grades at Lakehill, with about 40 percent of Lakehill students earning awards on the annual National Latin Exam over the last 10 years.

Every time my students use the words export, import, and report they are using Latin. Every time they sing or play the piano and note the Italian words fortissimo and crescendo, they are seeing the Italian version of Latin. When students study tessellation in math, they are using Latin.

Old is not bad. A classical education is exemplary. In history, we study the past to understand and explain the present. In art, we examine frescoes of Giotto to rediscover the classics and study humanism. In geography and philosophy, we review ancient explorers and philosophers to understand our roots as well as ourselves.

It makes perfect sense that we study Latin for its own virtue and as a basis for other languages. By teaching Latin, I am able to discover “the peculiar bent of the genius of each” student.

And for the record, I’ve been told that some of the people in San Marino, Italy, still speak a form of Latin.

Latin is an honorable language.

Mirabile dictu!

 

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Learning and Leading

Dramatic Moments

By Julie Riggs
English Chair K-7, Lakehill Preparatory School 

The first time I ever directed a play with eleven and twelve year-old stars, I was sure it would be my last. The children seemed so unruly and unprepared that I was envisioning total humiliation when the audience arrived. An hour before show-time in a last minute rehearsal, I was losing my voice and my patience as the actors broke character, missed cues, and horsed around. Then something magical happened. The parents took their seats, and the cast became a unified machine, staying in character, responding to cues, and making the audience love them.

On my next attempt, one of my actors was so severely dyslexic that he could not read the script, which was a cutting from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, but he burned with passion to perform. I recorded the whole scene on a cassette and gave him a part with few lines. He became that elven spirit, putting every cell of his body into the role, and his joy was palpable.

I long ago shifted my idea of success from a flawless performance to a fun one, and I have often modified or created a part to suit an actor rather than saying ‘no’ to an eager child. My scripts are unwieldy, my plots improbable, and rehearsals often chaotic. What we do is definitely not theater with a capital T. But the excitement and happiness of a drama club performance, could it be contained, could power the lights on Broadway.

I can’t think of a better reason for doing anything.

 

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Learning and Leading

Meaningful Moments

By Katie Becker
Lakehill Preparatory School, Social Studies Chair 

As with most anything in life, in teaching (shockingly) there exist moments of frustration, heartache, and sorrow. However, this is overpowered by the small slices of a teacher’s day that provide pure joy, pride, and – at least for me – a happy tear or two.

I must admit, sometimes my “glass-half-empty” self does surface and I focus on the wrong things. But this week I was thrown back into the positive realm when I was surprised with a handwritten birthday card delivered to the school from a former student. I was floored. As a student at Lakehill, she always made birthday cards for her teachers, but now as a sophomore in college she was taking the time to continue that tradition with me! It was in that moment that I was reminded of the unexpected, rewarding moments of not just teaching, but teaching at Lakehill. When I look, I can find these moments everywhere.

I find a special moment it in the excited questions from my seventh graders about their Tomb Designer’s Challenge–building “Pharaoh Becker” an ancient Egyptian style tomb during our study of ancient civilizations. I see it in the student who brought a relevant newspaper article to class and his recommendation to watch Downton Abbey because he knows I would enjoy it. It’s found in my AP students’ eagerness to indulge my enthusiasm for historical movies when they came with me to see the movie premiere of Spielberg’s Lincoln last week. (I highly recommend it, by the way!) I see it in a senior that self-admittedly struggled to enjoy my history class as an eighth grader as he thrives in AP History this year.

Without a doubt, it is the small, simple moments like these that make it all worthwhile.

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Learning and Leading

The Five Senses To The Rescue

By Patti Brooks
Lower School Coordinator, Lakehill Preparatory School

Remember when you first learned about the Five Senses? Was it in your kindergarten, first, or second grade class?  Well, it doesn’t matter, really. You know them and probably take them for granted if they are working correctly!

Here is a different slant on those five senses. In my 40+ years in the classroom, the five senses had a crucial part in the success of my day, and they were never even mentioned.  I realized early in my teaching career that I had to “win kids over” and make learning fun for them. When I was able to accomplish that, they enjoyed the class more, learned more, remembered more, and were happier, thus, they were more successful.

Most of everything we know enters our brains through our senses. Most adults know whether they are auditory learners, visual learners, etc. Children don’t know this, though, so I had to keep trying all methods to teach them in the way they learned best. In so doing, I hit on a plan that made us all happy, and it was…..”The Five Senses to the Rescue”!

Here is how it worked:

Sound – A pleasant, calm, but energetic voice captured their attention. (Whispering directions is actually the best….try whispering at the dinner table and everyone will freeze and listen intently). Also, playing soft piano music during quiet work time is very relaxing and covers up the rustling sounds of a busy classroom almost like white noise.

Taste – Yes, I figured a little cereal snack in a small Dixie cup about mid-morning would be welcome. Sure enough, several said, “I was really hungry; we didn’t have time for breakfast.”  Sorry to say, I had to quit this after a few years as the ants kept finding our cereal box!

Smell – Well, everyone who REALLY knows me has heard of “Puppy Spray”.  Puppy Spray is a fragrance that smells sort of like cotton candy at the Fair!  After recess, most children have a sweaty puppy smell about them. The spray wafted out in the hall and even high school seniors would walk by on their way to Spanish or PE with a big grin saying, “We smell Puppy Spray!”  My students asked me two or three times a day to spray it in our room because it just made us happy.

Sight – Too obvious, but here goes. Lots of stickers on papers, charts with stars, silly Garfield posters, interesting Human Body posters…..one with the inside sinus cavities showing a sinus headache, ouch!  Sight is HUGE in a classroom and the room has to be welcoming and friendly looking. After all, we were in our classroom more hours during the day than we were in our homes.

Touch – An important component in learning. Many people learn by touch. Often, I let my kids stretch out on the cool tile (and take off their shoes) after recess while I read our novel aloud to them.  We learned all about characterization, plot, setting, voice inflection, and cause and effect during these casual, relaxed times. Several students would sit in our “soft spots” to just curl up and listen. I taught them that if you had trouble learning 7×9, just take off your shoes and socks and write 7×9=63 on the sole of your foot. (It tickles so much, you just remember it!)

So, the Five Senses don’t necessarily have to be a Science Lesson. They can be part of a happy classroom environment or “The Five Senses to the Rescue.”