Long Time Since I Checked In...

This past year has been a crazy year of learning!  As most teachers know, moving schools is stressful.  Every school does things differently, has different routines, and expectations.  And these are the schools within the same district!  Moving across the country and starting a new school is all of this times 10.  Standards of behavior, expectations, and even culture are different.  I will say that it has made me a better teacher.  I better understand when a student comes in class that lived somewhere far different and doesn't act like the other children.  I'm the oddball, now.  I'm too friendly.  I have a strange accent. 

So, here is what I've learned about getting a new student:
1.  Just because s/he doesn't know what you are talking about, doesn't mean that s/he didn't learn the concept before-s/he may have learned it differently.
2.  Expectations of behavior should be seen within the context of where the child lived before.
3.  Moving is stressful and scary!  Remember your student is going through a very traumatic experience.
4.  Try to help your student make friends-over a year in Washington, and I don't have any close friends.  I miss my friends in Oklahoma, terribly.
5.  Students from other places may eat strange foods because it's comforting to eat food from your home.

There are so many things to be said for moving schools, grades, districts, and even states.  I feel I'm more open to the varieties in education.  I now see the validity in NOT having a federal standard on what children should be taught.  Here in Washington, a lot of nautical classes are offered in high school.  In Oklahoma, you can take Cherokee has a second language.  There is a reason for having regional classes.  It doesn't make sense to learn a lot of nautical things in a land locked state, and, conversely, nobody speaks Cherokee in Washington.

Even in elementary, I found it important to teach to the students of my area things that had meaning to them.  Last year, I was teaching about Native Americans, and there was actually a unit about the Five Civilized Tribes (who were brutally driven into Oklahoma).  Though, this is a necessary lesson, second grade seemed like the wrong year to teach it here in Washington.  The students' background knowledge of states is limited and so this had little to do with them.  In Oklahoma, second grade may be the perfect year to teach it, but those kids don't have to have as much understanding of geography because they have the background knowledge of where the Five Civilized Tribes landed.

On the other hand, I discovered some awesome ways that my new school teaches math.  The idea is to make sure that students have a very grounded understanding of number sense and value.  Students don't appear to get as far in how big the numbers are that they are working with, but they are able to explain their reasoning for what operations they are doing.  Students also have an amazing understanding of story problems, which is a very difficult concept for young students.

Overall, what I've discovered through this process is that teaching looks different in different settings, and there is a lot to be said for teaching in different areas, diverse groups, and other settings.