Sharing is caring

I was fortunate enough to land my dream job last year; I moved up and on from middle school science and found myself elbow deep in biology curricula and anatomy. I was like a hog in mud (and still am, actually). I feel so lucky to be teaching the content that I am so incredibly passionate about. I am also working with some phenomenal teachers. Individuals who love what they do and are about taking risks and trying new things and being open to new ideas.

When I knew I wasn't going to be teaching middle school science this year, I packed up my belongings and made the move over into my new digs the last day of school, when it was just a teacher work day. Then, over the summer, I organized my files and lesson plans and activities that I had saved on my external hard drive. It was kind of nostalgic, opening old activities and lessons I had done in the first 5 years of my teaching career. It was like witnessing evolution first hand. There were definitely some activities that I cringed when I opened them (because I thought to myself, "Those poor children!") and there were others that I had kept and stowed away, to maybe use again some day when I was ready.

Since I adhere to becoming the facilitator and not the disseminator of information in the classroom, I would venture to guess that almost 90% of the things saved on my hard drive are my own creations. They are not completely organic as they were seeded from activities I had seen/found online, but they were adapted, edited, toiled over, hour after multiple hour, until they asked the kids just the right questions and they assessed their understanding in just the right format. Don't get me wrong, they were living documents because I would always find some way to refine the activity.

So you could only imagine my conundrum when asked by a former colleague if they could have a huge project that I created. The structure or skeletal frame of this project came from the reality show, Survivor, but the premise was to get students to work on teams to review content for their upcoming state test. I remembered the original idea from a teacher article in NSTA and then I saw a version online (http://sciencespot.net). I created my own directions, my own activities, my own assessments, my own "rules" and my own time frame to get it all done. The end result was AMAZING. My kids were focused and excited because I incorporated competition and I chose their groups using Kagan strategies so that one group was not overly superior to any other. I had literally no discipline problems because the kids were interested in what we were doing (not to mention, my kids did fairly well on those sections of the state standardized test).

Now, it's not that I am a stingy toddler who doesn't know how to share or play nice, I completely understand why it's so difficult for teachers to simply hand over a project that took quite a bit of time and dedication to create. Some people might suggest that the person who asks for the activity actually is lazy or just doesn't want to put in the effort themselves.

And those nay-sayers MIGHT be right. That teacher asking for your lessons is just looking for an easy way out. They aren't creative. They do not have the desire to create such a thing.

Yet, I choose to take a different stance. My job is about children. Plain and simple. And if this activity benefits kids, then I feel obligated to share.

And here's the reality: the teacher who takes my "stuff" may not even use the activity to its fullest capacity and may butcher the crap out of it (which could be a reason for some to not even bother sharing).

But what if they don't butcher it?

What if they are concerned about their student's success and this teacher is reaching out to someone that they feel might help them? Haven't you ever had to ask someone for help? Sometimes asking for help is hard for people to do.

I try to take this perspective: every teacher truly cares about their profession and their student's success. And if there is a young and inexperienced teacher out there who is looking for some solid activities to use with their students, then it is my obligation to help be a supportive colleague. It's my job to help that teacher so they they continue to improve in their craft. It's my job to ensure that they never become comfortable in teaching the same lessons year after year.

I don't care what it looks like. I don't care that it might appear that I am weak and am willing to be taken advantage of. I am fully aware that I have nothing to gain, besides pride, if I do not share.

And in the end, it's the kids that have everything to lose if I don't.

Come Join in the Fun - Be a Teacher!

As our community just failed a school levy, I was puzzled as to how in the heck this happened. I contemplated the why's and the how's: Why would people not support education? How could they do this to children? Why do they feel this resentment towards teachers? How can we (the school system) recover from this?

As I was getting my morning iced tea from a local breakfast restaurant (Before you judge and say something asinine like "How can you afford that everyday but you can't afford whatever else it is that you need", I get them free), the lady behind the counter gave me a tongue lashing about how she was GLAD the school levy had failed. Her reasoning? "Those teachers make enough money. I make $16,000 a year and I support 5 people in my household - a fresh out of college kid can make $37,900 AND they get summers off!"

I was stunned. I was beyond shocked. First off, this lady knows I am a teacher and not once did I ever say "We teachers do not make enough money." The Westerville City School levy was not for teacher raises. It wasn't for teacher's retirement. It wasn't for teacher anything - it was for kids to play sports, for elementary students to keep art, music and physical education. It was to offset our glorious governor's state budget cuts. John Kasich claims he balanced the state budget without raising taxes when in reality, all he did was pass the buck to the city and local governments to fund their education systems. Yeah, I am not a fan of Governor Ka-sucks.

I was fuming at this point. Here was this lady, who I see every morning and get my chocolate chip muffie every now and then from, and she was telling ME that I had it easy! And that she was glad the school levy failed! I thought to myself, "Do you have a college education? Do you have a college loan that was used to obtain a Master's degree that you are currently paying off? No, you probably don't."

What I would have liked to say to that individual was, "Lady, you make bagels for a living. I make a difference."

I realized that the reason why our levy failed was because of the amount of uneducated individuals living in this community. And I don't just mean the people who do not have a college degree - you do not have to go to college to be intelligent. I mean the amount of misinformation that was portrayed throughout this levy campaign. And how the uneducated individuals believed it. Also, look at the population. The majority of the people living in this community are older, do not have kids or their children are grown, and do not feel the need to pay for a school system they do not benefit from. Here's the sad news folks: those kids that you didn't support, those are the people who will be filling your prescriptions at the pharmacy, who will be taking care of you when you are sick and who will protect you when you call 9-1-1. Way to go - those kids should feel abandoned and pissed. It was like the entire community said, "You're just not good enough. The $200 more a year on average that I would be paying for my property tax is just not a good investment. Who cares that the value of my home will now drop? I want my steak dinners!"

Now, after the smoke that was spouting from every pore in my body has settled after the breakfast restaurant run in, I want to say to her, "We are always looking for motivated people who love children to come join us." Please, come jump through the hoops, please pay the money it takes to go to college and get a degree, please pay the money to take the certification tests, please come buy things for your classroom out of your own pocket, please come and give kids lunch money all of the time because their own parents don't, please come and buy kids socks and shoes when their parents can't, please come deal with the clinically insane parents that have nothing better to do but plot out ways to try to have you fired, please come try to break up a fight without touching the kids because you might get sued, please come try to teach what feels like 100 standards to kids who do not want to learn.

Seriously. Please come join us.

You might understand how rewarding this profession is. And you might understand then why summers off is really a time for teachers to reflect on why they love their jobs.