Positively Persistent Teach

positivelypt at gmail dot com

I am a teacher. I moved to Florida to teach 2nd grade and was recently moved to Pre-K. At my last school, I taught in the resource room for grades K-8 in both reading and math (and many times other content areas as well) in a public school district. I have also taught K-2 special education in a charter school. I student taught in England, have had field placements in Montessori schools, and worked with a private Christian school.

The most important things I have learned about teaching are:
1. Don't ever give up on a kid, or yourself.
2. The attitude you have, regardless of the situation, is your choice. Choosing a negative one does not improve anything, it only makes you and others around you miserable.

Also, be sure to check out the education section on tumblr! Education Tag I'm thrilled to be one of the editors!

Posts tagged "quotes"

To save man from the morass of propaganda, in my opinion, is one of the chief aims of education. Education must enable one to sift and weigh evidence, to discern the true from the false, the real from the unreal, and the facts from the fiction.

Martin Luther King, Jr., The Purpose of Education

Nothing you do for children is ever wasted.

Garrison Keillor (Leaving Home)

(via myquotelibrary)

palestarsrising:

omg omggoogmogmkjdlashjdak

this quote

every single time

How can I not re-blog this?

(via iamlittlei)

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. This is, I repeat, the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron. […] Is there no other way the world may live?

–Dwight David Eisenhower, “The Chance for Peace,” speech given to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, Apr. 16, 1953.

…in any given year, more than half of all poor children deal with evictions, utility disconnections, overcrowding, or a lack of a stove or refrigerator, compared with only 13% of well-off children.

Teaching with Poverty in Mind by Eric Jensen, pg 24.

Although childhood is generally considered to be a time of joyful, carefree exploration, children living in poverty tend to spend less time finding out about the world around them and more time struggling to survive within it.

Teaching with Poverty in Mind by Eric Jensen, pg 8.

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When I taught in a low SES urban area, I quickly learned two things. Our school required home visits by the teachers within the first few weeks of school. Those visits were the number one thing that influenced my understanding of my students. Some didn’t have beds. Some had to fight for food between their siblings and parents (one boy hid food in his closet). Their neighborhoods were not safe. Playing outside wasn’t a good idea in many cases.

I also learned that because my students had not been able to explore their world like their more affluent peers — the building prior knowledge part of my lessons needed more time and more in depth.

Our real problem is - What is the goal of education? Are we forming children who are only capable of learning what is already known? Or should we try to develop creative and innovative minds, capable of discovery from the preschool age on, throughout life?

Jean Piaget (via neonblueagogo)

In vain have I struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.

Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

(Darcy to Elizabeth)

Children who enter school with small vocabularies tend to add fewer words each year than children who enter with larger vocabularies. Since vocabulary size is so closely related to children’s comprehension as they move through school, there is a sense of urgency about intensifying efforts to build more and deeper word meaning stores for all children.

Classrooms that Work: They Can All Read and Write By Patricia M. Cunningham and Richard L. Allington, 2007. Page 90.

Be who God meant you to be and you will set the world on fire.

St. Catherine of Siena, quoted by the minister during the Royal Wedding.

My advice for young female writers would be to shoot high and not cower.

Jennifer Egan from this WSJ piece: http://on.wsj.com/ginb6r

HEAR HEAR!

(via booksijustread)

‘The proper stimulants to study,’ Haven added, ‘are not medals, or position in class, or prizes, but the gratification produced by an enlarged acquaintance with truth, and by the greater influence for good thereby produced.’

From “Before the G.P.A” by James Tobin in University of Michigan’s online magazine, Michigan Today. Before 1912, U-M did not give letter grades—it only passed students or failed them. The article examines the reasoning behind this philosophy and its ramifications.

(via tolivecontent)

Interesting. I’ve heard a lot of arguments for grade-less schools. Not sure how that would work and still monitor progress though. However, I do hope my students grow to love learning for the sake of learning and discovering things… and not just to get an A. I hope they are also proud of the process in going from the unknown to the known.

(via tolivecontent)

Because teachers are often therapists, friends, mentors, coaches, sometimes providers of food and school supplies or holders of secrets. And in that way, they are some of the most important people in children’s lives.

Susan Straight, “A Noble Profession” (Los Angeles Times Opinion, April 3, 2011)

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PositivelyPersistentTeach: concise, but pointing to the elements of teaching that many people do not seem to understand.

Education’s purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one.
-Malcolm S. Forbes

(via toseealambatschool)

100 best first lines from novels →

What would you add?