Valentines Day ~ How to Save a Life ~ Be a Teacher

Valentine's Day 

Love Day

Dedicated to my fellow teachers

Who love their students every day

We are it

We have dedicated our lives to it

We are everything with it

Nothing without it

Because we have become it

Completely vulnerable to it

Love

Is so incredibly wonderful

And the longer we stay in our profession

The more we dive completely into it

~ Adam Stuart

Valentine's Day 2016

*Inspired after receiving an email recently from a parent of a former student (It is not the student pictured below. This was Joadeliz's gift to me this year that she spent her own money on; money she has very little of. It was truly a gift from her heart).

"Dear Mr. Stuart,

________ has mentioned you several times in the past few months. I as her mom am reaching out to you in hopes that you can send her your famous words of encouragement. 

She has been diagnosed with the early onset of ______ 

She has several doctors appointments in the upcoming weeks. She feels down about school, (___A's, ___B's), she needs an uplifting message and trust me I know you're the one that can deliver it and she would openly  receive it.

Once again,  I deeply appreciate it, if you can do that with your busy schedule."

I am a very unassuming person, which means I don't have an ego thinking I'm great, or worried about others seeing me as great or being better than anybody. I simply see the best in others and in the world and often have no idea of any impact I'm having on others. 

Just like any teacher, I do what I do because I am what I am and because it feels real and it feels true.

While moving recently I found a cross a student gave me ten years ago who contacts me now when she feels like cutting herself.

I have worn that cross around my neck every day since finding it.

I also found a letter from another student who told me he had gone through a period of wanting to kill himself, but each time he tried he heard my voice telling him and his classmates to Dream Big, Do Big, and never give up until they Became Big, and if any of them ever did give up they could always come back to me for hope and passion and the strength to fight again because the world needed them and the gifts only they could develop and give to the world.

He is now an incredible poet.

  

More and more of us are feeling so stressed out by stressed out administrators stressed out by their bosses over-stressing their jobs are at stake by the new protocol that we all forget why we do what we do and don't want to do it anymore.

And more and more of use are dropping out of teaching forever, wondering where we went wrong in our lives.

I came within one day from quitting teaching this year. I was still broken-hearted from a relationship that had ended months earlier, having lost my best friend and wondering where everything had gone wrong.

And now I was teaching at a new school with even tougher requirements because it was a failing school. I didn't feel strong. I didn't feel confident. And I felt so stressed out in meetings that all I heard in my head was, "You can't do this anymore." 

And I wondered what a grown man was doing teaching a bunch of kids who didn't do their homework, didn't behave, didn't care. 

I felt like a loser wondering again where I had gone wrong.

Then I reached down, deep down, into the only thing I had. The only thing I was and the only thing I was ever good at. Love. 

And I didn't quit.

I showed up one day at a time and gave all of me for just one more day at a time.  I decided to live again and love again every day I could get myself out of bed again.

I say we don't drop out. Things are tough in teaching. They are overwhelming. They are hard. 

Love is tougher. Love overcomes. Love breaks down all obstacles.

"It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres." (Corinthians)

And the love we have for our students has an effect we often have no idea just how big it is on them, how long it stays with them, and how long it keeps them alive because it has become a part of them.  

Valentine's Day is our day.

It is our day every day.

Happy Valentine's Day teachers!

I love you for what you do.

Potable Drinking Water

This is a problem we need people to solve.


Will you have developed the critical thinking skills to help solve this very critical problem by the time you're out of school?

Humans need clean water to live, yet millions of people in developing countries die every year from diseases associated with unsanitary water. One in five people lacks access to this basic resource, and experts fear that by 2025, a full third of the world’s population will be struggling to find potable water. Widespread pollution has contaminated many safe water sources, transforming them into festering pools of disease, yet water usage has continued to increase to record levels. Experts say that sanitation, purification, and water management initiatives are critical factors in the fight to bring clean water to the world’s poorest regions.


The world needs you.








SOURCE: AFP

What Does this Mean to You?

With every rising of the sun, think of your life as just begun.

- Anonymous

What does this mean to you?

Did You Know? - Great Video!

I told you that the world needs real thinkers, real problems solvers, and real, fully alive people.

You ARE being prepared for that every time I get you to

- stop waiting for me to give you assignments and start telling me what your own data says you need to work on today

- stop trying to memorize answers and start thinking for yourselves,

- stop waiting for me to tell you the answers and start with what you do know about the problem and build from there

- stop asking me if you are right and start telling me why YOU THINK you are right

- stop giving up after a failure and start getting excited about knowing you are another step closer to finding the solution

- stop seeing school as a boring necessary evil to get good grades, get in a good college, and get a good job....

....and start seeing every school day as a decision YOU MAKE to individualize YOUR OWN learning, discover what subjects and concepts BLOW YOUR MIND and THRILL YOUR SOUL, and LEARN TO LIVE FULLY ALIVE and GIVING IT YOUR ALL...

....NOW! THIS DAY...and not wait for some day way off in the future after all this schooling is done.

You HAVE started doing this!

You ARE being well-prepared for the challenges ahead!

YOU ARE the FUTURE!

We Can Be Heroes...Part 1....Little Miggs

I made this music player at MyFlashFetish.com.


He who saves a single life saves the entire world. - The Talmud


On January 30 2007, At around 3:00PM, there was a car accident between 2 cars. It happened on the side walk at our complex.

Miguel was coming off the bus when he heard two car crashing on the side walk. he ran to see what had happened. when a lady was crying hysterical
because a man that was driving in the other car was unconscious and she thought he had died. so my son went to console her.

when the man regain consciousness, he told the lady don't worry he`s alive. the lady was shaken as she was trying to get her purse and Miguel picked up her purse and handed it to her. she had a dog and Miguel told her that if she wanted to he would take care of her dog until she came
out of the hospital, but she said no that someone was going to pick up the dog.

then the lady calmed down. at that moment the police was there and that`s when I came home from work and saw what had happened and checked to see if everyone was ok. I got scared. the first thing I thought was, oh no something happened to Miguel or another child as they were coming off the bus.

The lady was on a stretcher. I told Miguel that everyone was ok & you did a good job but he still wanted to help more. so I asked Miguel if he wanted to say good bye to her and he said yes. so he went and gave her a hug. she told him not to worry, that she was fine.

Miguel stayed with her through the whole ordeal, until the ambulance took her away. He responded and helped when no one else did. (There were many people around.)

R. V.


This letter is from Miguel's mother, detailing Miguel's heroic effort. The last line stood out the most to me:

"He responded and helped when no one else did. (There were many people around)."

We all have a hero inside of us. I truly believe that. I also believe that few of us believe it, and even fewer act on our heroic impulses....thinking, "No, not me. I'm no hero. Who am I to believe I can do anything?"

What we do in our lives is usually a fraction of what we could do, had we not been afraid to take action.

Miguel acted, when so many around him chose not to. He knew what the right thing to do was, and maybe he even doubted his ability to help, but had the courage to try anyway.

And if a child is capable of doing this, aren't we adults also capable? One reason we don't is that our unsuccessful attempts in the past have caused us to think that we can't do certain things. We tried, we failed, maybe even tried again, but failed again, and gave up before too many people found out and could call us a "loser".

If at first you don't succeed, QUIT! No sense being a fool about it.

I had this sign in college, because it was so funny. Sadly, way too many of us adhere to what is meant to be only a joke. And what we do with our lives is indeed a joke compared to everything we were capable of, had we maybe tried one more time, and even one more time after that.

If we never quit, we can never fail.

And as proof that being a hero is nothing more than choosing to act heroically in the challenging moments as they come into our lives, Miguel did not arrive this year as a courageous student. He had many failed attempts in class, and according to his parents, hadn't even tried to read at home for years.

It was so simple, even without knowing about his heroic effort from last January, I only had to look in his eyes and see his heart....see past the failures, and into the possibilities of his biggest self (see how small he is in the photo? - little guy in the middle - orange shirt).

It's not the size of the dog in the fight, or the abilities that are already there....that matter most.....it's the size of the fight in the dog...the size of your bloody heart!

And after a few months of struggle, challenge, and being urged to "hang on just one minute longer" and keep trying, his heroic effort has produced heroic results. If you've been following the writings, he is now a voracious reader at home. And, like "magic", here he's holding up a 100% and a 120% , two A PLUSSES! on this Friday's spelling and vocabulary tests!

How big do you think he feels now??????

If you have ever never given up on something UNTIL you got it, even just once, then you and I are capable of doing it again.

If you have ever never given up twice, then there is no doubt we can do it twice more....like how we never gave up trying to walk and talk UNTIL we got it....but then again, we hadn't learned how to be afraid, and no one around us was calling us losers when we didn't get it right away.....

But then again, life doesn't care about our excuses for not living fully, does it?

Thank you Miguel, and everyone in room 208, for showing me and every single person who reads this, that......

We can be heroes....just for one day (David Bowie)

...and for just one more day after that...

You Are Creating Your Future Today

I received this email today and wanted to share it with you. Every day in class is a chance for you to achieve your greatest dreams later on; be it able to get that big sale or coming up with an idea that changes the world.

Take this day and every day in school as an opportunity to make your biggest dreams come true in your future.

Congratulations to Luis and Chad, who came up with this science and math lesson, involving potential and kinetic energy, and estimation, distance, collecting and graphing data.

Teachers' work far from waste; it's priceless
BY EMMA KREINER

Recently, a friend of mine commented that teaching was "a waste of a life." His argument consisted entirely of the idea that we spend so much time in the educational system, so jumping back into it after college seemed "anticlimactic."
Instead of going out and making major discoveries in math and science, or becoming a diplomat to change the world, I decide to teach kids.

If teaching really is a waste of a life, I would like to know how people expect to get to where they want to go without teachers.

Most of the work teachers do should be labeled "involuntary volunteering." The work teachers accomplish in the classroom is priceless, but they rarely get the money and recognition they deserve.

I would be a completely different person today if it hadn't been for my teachers. They were the inspiration to think for myself, and that's huge.

Every student faces challenges during their school years, and teachers are the ones who support us through that time.

I thought about what we consider to be valuable resources. The most valuable resource, the most productive resource, is people. People are at the start of every new idea, and at the end of every sale. People are the beginning, middle and end of everything.

I choose to educate people for my living. I can't think of anything that would be more important than helping to raise a child that will be the start of a new idea.

Teachers are the confidence, the encouragement and the nourishment behind so many dreams.
If the Tree of Knowledge really does exist, then teachers are the fruit.

Emma Kreiner is a student in the University of Cincinnati's College of Education.

Important Review of Today's Discussion

We’ve done an incredible job of learning so far this year. We deserve to be very proud of that. Now we just need to do it more consistently. This morning we added some new things to our routine:


Every week you need to create a new WEEKLY FOCUS. This needs to include:

CONTENT AREA: A focus for Reading, Math and Science

OBJECTIVE: what skill(s) you need to improve the most in these areas

METHOD: your plan to accomplish this improvement

ASSESSMENT: your measurement of whether or not learning and growth has taken place


METHOD & ASSESSMENT
1. I will provide you with a weekly test (assessment) in each area

i. READING – this will be our weekly story, which includes the spelling and vocab tests (which give you your Language Arts grade)

ii. SCIENCE – this will be your specific chapter

iii. MATH – this will be your specific Unit

2. The goal is for you to come up with your own daily assessments. I will provide you with these until you learn how to do this on your own.

i. For example, today I had everyone read “Katie’s Trunk” and practice your weakest skill (i.e. finding the main idea, context clues, etc) – This should be included in your Daily Assessment.

ii. Homework will be answering the review questions at the end of the story. I’m hoping this helps you take the story more seriously than some of you did on the last test (Paul Revere)

3. Finally, I want you to send your Weekly Focus to your parents in the form of an email. This way they know specifically what you tests you are responsible for, your individual weekly goals, and how you plan on achieving them.

If doing your weekly focus doesn’t come easy at first, keep trying. This is a high-level skill that once learned, will benefit you for the rest of your life. And remember what Winston Churchill said,

“Never, never, never, never, never, never, never……..quit!”

If you never quit, you can never fail! I will never give up on you. Don't you dare give up on me by giving up on yourself!

We have succeeded at an incredible rate. Let’s keep it up.

Fraction Help

We've talked in class about what a fraction "looks like".

I found a great website that shows this.

Click the link, Webmath.com - Get a visual on what a fraction is

Adaptation - by James Wang

Animals and plants will have to adapt to the changing climates, conditions, and challenges of the future.
Birds
Insects
Animals
Insects will have to evolve to survive in deserts as Pangea II dawns. Insects will have to evolve to survive in salt flats as the inland seas evaporate.Some birds will have their eyes on turrets to help them see predators and prey easier.Some birds will evolve four wings to fly in different biomes.Animals will have to have thicker fur to survive the upcoming ice age. Animals will have to have smaller noses to avoid losing heat to the ice age.

Funny Bloopers & Possible Project

Have fun figuring out why these bloopers are funny.......

I have an idea. What if we start collecting our own mistakes and start recording them? If we have enough by the end of the year we can write a mini-book and self-publish it.

We'll need people with varying talents:
- those who are organized enough to collect and record unintentional mistakes,

- some imaginative people to see in their minds what pictures would be funny,

- those with artistic intelligence to draw these pictures and a great cover,

- computer-savvy people who know how or want to learn how to use programs like Paint Shop,

- some willing to learn how to publish a book....etc.

- more computer-savvy Captain Jack Sparrow's to upload documents and images (now do you understand why Captain Jack used "savvy" in the Pirates movies?)

- those with interpersonal intelligence to get everyone working together effectively (which makes you VERY valuable or "marketable" in life after school!)

Oh, and others good enough at spelling to actually realize errors have been made,
and/or a good enough command of our language to see that how words/sentences have been used have taken on an unintentional hilarity.

DREAM BIG! ~ Serena and Summer from last year's class did most of the illustrations for my book, Ten Little Numbers Jumping on the Bed (click on the title to see the book - it's free to download).

These are students who roamed the same room as you are now who are now forever part of a published book. What talents do you have or could have that you can offer to this project?

DO BIG! ~ This is an extra project, meaning you have to be competent enough in the 5th grade benchmarks to free yourself to work on this. Or even better.........be intelligent enough to figure out how to incorporate the benchmarks into the working on this book (intra personal intelligence). Wouldn't that be fun?


What if you could?

Christian Bulletin Bloopers

· Ushers will eat latecomers.

· She sang "I Will Not Pass This Way Again," giving much pleasure to the congregation.

· The patient is having trouble sleeping and requests tapes of Pastor Jack's sermons.

· Smile at someone who is hard to love. Say "hell " to someone who doesn't care much about you.

· A letter to the men’s fellowship reads: "All members are requested to bring their wives and one other covered dish to the annual banquet."

And my personal favorite.......

· Sermon this morning: Jesus Walks on the Water. Sermon tonight: Searching for Jesus.

~ Learning and Laughter should occur at the same time as often as possible ~