Standards, goals, objectives, for some reason they have been rattling around in my head for the last few days... all thanks to Bill Nye the Science Guy. Yes, the adorkable science video guy whom we all just love. This week I had the privilege of hearing him speak live at the STEM Symposium here in San Diego. His speech resonated with every educator in the room as he spoke about opening the minds of our students to the JOD (joy of discovery.) So this got me to thinking. What are MY learning goals for my students? What immediately came to my mind had NOTHING to do with Common Core, NETS, or other standards. It all had to do with the beauty of watching a child learn and discover. You know what I mean, those wonderful moments punctuated by an expletive such as "Ahhh," "Whoa," "Cool," or even better, What?!?" That being said, here is what I really want for the students with whom I work:

1. May you open your mind in order to experience the joy of discovery.
Isn't this why we teach? Of course it is! We want our students to become lifelong learners who continually seek to better themselves through study. But in order for this to happen, discovery has to occur in its natural, awe-inspiring, wonder-producing state. It certainly shouldn't be scripted away by a teacher's manual.

2. May you understand that asking the right question is more important than giving the right  answers.
We've all had those students who can read out loud beautifully, but lack comprehension skills; or the student who has memorized their multiplication facts, but has no idea how to apply mathematical theory to their lives. This is not the point of education. Creating critical thinkers is the point of education. Asking the right question, means that you understand the problem at hand. If you don't ask the right question, then the answer to it is of no use. If my students recognize this, then they can be the Louie Pasteur, Steve Jobs, or Picasso of their field; someone who asked the right question, and found an answer that changed the world.

3. May you attain a sense of accomplishment as you fail forward in order to reach a goal.
There is a lot of talk out there about failure, but failure means giving up. We want students who can persevere through setbacks, tribulations, and mistakes. This is the only way that honest-to-goodness discovery can take place. This is what it will take for one of my students to develop a cure for malaria or develop an inexpensive way to get water to drought stricken farmers.

4. May you discover that learning gives purpose to your life.
I truly hope that same idea, somewhere in my students' educational careers, will inspire them to do something wonderful with their lives. Will they invent a life-saving medical device that stems from their love of origami? Will they become a best-selling novelist, even though they found writing tedious, but still had creative ideas to share? Will they open a shop catering to a niche market of customers that only they had the compassion to understand? I certainly hope so!

5. May you merit the friendship that develops from working as part of a team.
Let's face it, you can be a genius, but if you are a jerk, no one wants to work with you. You have met these people before. They are brilliant, but working with them is so tiresome, that it's not sustainable. I absolutely do not want my students to be "that person." How you play is just as important as what you know, and sometimes even more so. If one of my students is to negotiate peace in the Middle East, then they'd better have well-developed social skills.

6. May you delight in the process of making the world a better place.
And now we get to the real reason I teach. I have admitted it repeatedly, and I remind my students daily. For me personally, the world is an amazing, beautiful, and love-filled place. However, this isn't the case for everyone in our world. I expect my students to make the world better than it is now. And I want to live in, and experience that world. This is their one true assignment, the one by which they, as a person, will be measured. THIS is the assignment where they most need to earn an A+. And darned it if I won't do my damndest to help them do it!

     So last week I had the dreaded four hours of first aid and CPR recertification.  I can hear your commiserating groan now!  Not always what you want to spend four hours on when you have lessons to plan, mystery Skype calls to organize, iPads to update...  But here's the kicker... Not two hours later I was putting much of my teacher training to work OUTSIDE of the classroom.
     On the way to meet a fellow teacher for dinner before seeing the theatre production Potted Potter my daughter and I were witnesses, and luckily not victims, to a pretty nasty traffic accident.  While I had her remain in the car I ran to the scene which was a confusion of drivers, witnesses, and bystanders.  After checking that the windshield of the first driver was broken by a gate and not her head I noticed that everyone was in a state of agitated confusion.
     If you're a teacher this is nothing new for you and you know how to handle it.  Which I did.  Let's face it, we both know I was already in teacher mode.  As soon as I started directing people to call 911, keep watch over the drivers and directing them to stay in their cars until paramedics arrived, I could see that everyone was feeling much more calm and secure.  This was the same for victims, bystanders, and witnesses.  Nothing had changed except that I had assumed control of the situation and started giving directions.
     It's truly amazing what a sense of security that can give to people.  Now, this was a traumatic incident for a bunch of adults, and I was bale to make it quite a bit less so rather quickly.  This is why teachers are so important in the lives of students, we give them the sense of order and control that they need on order to be successful in the classroom.  Whether or not they have the same sense of order and control at home, they still need it at school in order to feel safe.  So teachers everywhere, don't limit the use of your teacher skills to just your classroom, there are others out there waiting for you and your super powers.

Sometimes you just need to get away from it all!  Well then, just go to Fiji and relax on the beach.  That's what our first graders will do.  This past week we started to create Fiji in the back office.  This is a place where the students (and teachers) can go when they need a break or a cooling off period.  We started by painting the water, the sandy beach, and the palm trees.  I even added a plastic coconut "drink." (You can see it on the desk.)  But we aren't finished yet.  I'm going to bring in a beach towel, Ms. Shapp said she had an old beach chair we could add, and we are hoping for a grass skirt donation to put around the desk.  The kicker would be if we could get a small blow-up boat, but we'll have to do some "fishing around" for that.  So far Fiji has been entirely too popular, but that always happens when our get-away spot is new.  Wouldn't you be there all the time?  In a few days in won't be so novel and will be used as intended.  In the past I've had Antarctica as a place to "cool off" with penguins, and a field with a stuffed lamb friend.  But one word of warning, be sure to put it in your sub plans.  A few years ago a sub in my friend's second grade class was not amused when a student disappeared and then informed her he had been to Hawaii.

It is always nice to have some affirmation of what you do, but it is even better to have that affirmation as well as more training.   A few weeks ago I was lucky enough to be sent to San Francisco to be trained in the Responsive Classroom approach to classroom community.  I follow their blog and newsletter because they are always full of ideas I find quite useful.  There is also a host of ideas from teaches using this approach if you just Google the term.  But to actually having the chance to be trained for an entire week was just fantastic, and it made me confront and evaluate some of my classroom practices honestly.

I always have a pretty close knit community in my classes where students, teachers, and parents could say what they felt, give constructive criticism, and most importantly feel a sense of belonging, significance, and fun.  But after having been through the training I realized that our classroom community could be improved in several ways.  Yes!  It could be even better.

However, here I am going to focus on just one aspect... sharing.  Is that a groan I hear from my fellow teachers out there?  I am right there with you.  Those endless bring-n-brag sessions, known as show-and-tell, about the newest toys were just torturous.  I gave that up aeons ago to save everyone from the misery.  Yet the Responsive Classroom version of sharing will be making its debut in my class come fall.  Yes, really!  With this approach, the purpose of sharing is so that each of us can get to know each other for who they are as a human being.  This means that sharing comes with topics such as, my biggest fear is... the personality trait I most like about myself is... etc.  I believe that structured in this way, sharing has the potential to become something wonderful that will make the classroom a more accepting and loving environment.  Who woulda thunk it?