The Year of the Dog.......

Isn't it interesting that in some cultures they name the new year after an animal? I never understood this, but I bet people from that culture don't understand why we do things the way we do.

I'm not even sure that this is the year of the dog, but after what I witnessed during intersession today I thought it was the perfect fit. Today was our final day of intersession, and yes we all looked forward to it, not because it was the last day, but because it was the opportunity for our students to show us what they learned all week. Let's hope this is a sign of things to come in the year of the dog.

Our theme this week was animals and their intelligence. We secretly disguised the wonderful world of Non-Fiction. Knowing that our EOG is 40% Non - Fiction our intersession team decided that this approach would be a great way to show our students that reading is fun beyond the titles of Captain Underpants and Junie B. Don't get me wrong these books have a place in our curriculum, but we have to find the balance to prepare our students for what is to come.

I watched our students make connections to what they have learned all week to the presentations that were shared from Discovery Place, The Riverbanks Zoo, The Dog Wizards, and the Monroe Police Department K - 9 unit.

Our students got to circulate the habitats of different animals, hold live snakes, see how K - 9 dogs are trained and learn of compassion pets, they got to touch the skull of a black bear, pet a Great Dane and guess what fur came from what animal. At one point today this place looked like a zoo, and no animals even wanted to escape.

One of our teachers told me that this was one of the greatest weeks she has had teaching. She wanted to know why we couldn't teach like this all the time. We get so caught up in assessment that sometimes we forget about how learning happens. The most profound thing she told me was that she had this anticipatory set of the students she was serving as the lowest students and that learning would be difficult for them, yet at the end of this week full of integration and hands on experiences she saw students demonstrate learning in profound ways. To say that assessment drives learning is backwards, our assessment is evidence of our learning. We forget that learning goes beyond the multiple choice, while very important, summative assessment has very little to do with success.

Every January we make resolutions, we say we are going to eat better, exercise more, go to church more often, quit this or start doing more of that etc. etc. Well in the year of the dog, let's remember that learning happens in a variety of ways. We have to erase our anticipatory sets and remember that every child can learn. Figuring out how they learn is what is most important. Remember, that your IQ only accounts for about 20% of your success in life. The same is true of school, your IQ can only account for about 20% of your success on an EOG.

In the year of the dog we have the opportunity to make the best resolution of all, "Each day I will do whatever it takes to make my students successful, I will find a way to maximize their learning through understanding their learning style"

Woof Woof,

Mike