The Excellent 11- Chapter 6- Compassion

I think compassion is a really important part of teaching. As teachers, we must keep in mind that we may be the only people some students will ever witness having compassion for them. We must remember to set an example for the students. In this chapter, Ron talks about being picked on in elementary school. As I was reading, I could totally relate. In elementary school, I was pretty overweight. Not only that, but I had crazy, curly hair that was definitely not normal-looking. Looking back, I was actually not teased as much as other students. At least not to my face. But whenever I was teased, it hurt. Bad. However, it did cause me to make some important, helpful decisions when I grew up, and I'm a better person for it. But no child should have to put on a brave face at school, deal with the teasing and the bullying, and run home to his or her room and cry about it after school. Because I dealt with teasing growing up, I'm very compassionate towards others who are bullied or teased. There will be none of it in my classroom if I have anything to say about it. My classroom will be a bully-free zone. I want to instill respect, dignity, self-esteem, and pride in my students. I want them to feel confident in who they are so they don't feel the need to bring someone down. Ron's ideas for controlling and preventing bullying and teasing in the classroom were awesome and very helpful. Not only should the students have respect for one another, but they should learn respect for adults, authority figures, and the elderly. I hope I can instill all of this in my classroom.

Teach Like Your Hair's On Fire- Chapter 9 Art Lover- Chapter 10 Put Me In, Coach

Chapter 9- Art Lover
I really enjoyed this chapter because I really enjoy creative activities. In school, I always loved arts and crafts because there was no limit to what I could create. There were no boundaries. I could express myself however I wanted to. Unfortunately, I can barely draw a stick person with the help of a ruler. That's one reason why I liked this chapter on incorporating art into the classroom. You don't have to be the best artist in the world to open your students' eyes to their own creativity. Using simple activities like the ones Rafe mentioned are wonderful ideas to make your students feel like professional artists. The classroom shouldn't just be about shoving all kinds of information into the students' heads. The classroom should be a place where the students can express themselves, both academically and artistically. Arts and crafts, music, and drama all allow the students to take a break from cramming information into their brains. Activities like these allow them to have fun and show a different side of themselves. Who knows? You may have the next Picasso or Mozart in your class. How else will you know if you don't allow your students to explore their creative side?

Chapter 10- Put Me In, Coach
This was a really interesting chapter. I really liked Rafe's approach to incorporating physical education in his classroom. I especially liked his "World Series Night" idea. It was a really cool way to cross math and physical education. Throughout this book, Rafe has talked about how he marries different subjects together. Physical education and math are no different. If you think about it, they go hand-in-hand. You could really see Rafe's passion behind teaching his students how to score a baseball game correctly, and I could see his frustration when he realized how difficult it would be to take all of those kids to an actual ballgame and help them score the game successfully. But I loved his solution to that problem. "World Series Night" was a wonderful idea. It was an activity the classroom could participate in outside of school, they could work on their scoring skills, and they probably bonded a lot because of it.

The Excellent 11- Chapter 5- Balance

I really enjoyed this chapter on balance. As long as I can remember, I've always wanted people, kids included, to like me. My feelings were always hurt if they didn't. I'm glad Ron addressed the balance between the teacher/student relationship. If the students like you and think of you as a friend, chances are they won't respect you. However, if they fear you and worry about what you're going to say or do next, they won't respect you either. I've always been afraid of disciplining my future students. I don't want them to fear me, but I don't want them to feel like I'm a doormat they can just walk all over. I want them to see me as a friend, a confidant, someone that cares for them and wants them to succeed. But I don't want them to take advantage of that relationship. I want them to see me as their teacher, someone who demands respect from them but will also respect them in return. Children need respect just as much as adults do. I hope, through experience and a better understanding of my future students, I will be able to find that happy balance in the teacher/student relationship. I also really liked how Ron addressed the balance in a teacher's own life. It's very important to take care of yourself and deal with things going on in your life in order to take care of your students and the needs they have in the classroom. If you go into the day stressed with your mind boggled by other distractions, you're not going to have a very productive teaching day. But if you take some time to step back and evaluate what's going on in your life and deal with it accordingly, you can find that balance and be a successful teacher and person in all aspects.

Teach Like Your Hair's On Fire- Chapter 8- Rocket Man

I remember how boring science class was, for the most part, in elementary school. We mostly just read from the text, took notes, studied those notes, and took tests over the text and the notes we took. I remember the only times we would ever get really excited in our science classes were when we occasionally got to use our notes or the book on a test. That was the highlight of our science class. My 7th grade science teacher was probably the most influential science teacher I had growing up. She always tried to make things interesting and understandable. She never really used new technology or expensive kits to help us learn. But you could tell she was interested in the students actually learning and taking something away from the class instead of just memorizing facts out of the book in order to pass a test. That's what this chapter reminded me of. You don't have to spend thousands and thousands of dollars in order to help your students learn. You just have to be creative and interested in helping your students learn. I really liked it when he mentioned letting the students learn on their own. I think too many teachers scold their students for getting things wrong or failing. I don't see wrong answers as failures. I see them as opportunities to learn and discover things. Those "failures" can lead to open class discussions, and the students may learn something through those failures and discussions that they many not have otherwise learned.

The Excellent 11- Chapter 4- Reflection

Reflection is a very important part of teaching, as well as learning. It's exciting at the end of the year to look back and realize how much you've accomplished since you began. My mother is the cheerleading coach for our local high school, and one thing they do is create scrapbooks for all the senior sports players. It's not just a scrapbook of the previous year, but of their entire high school career. That made me think about creating a class scrapbook every year I teach. Creating it through the year, with the students' help of course, will be so much fun for everyone involved. It will help us remember all the fun activities we did, the field trips we took, and the holiday parties we had. It will also help all of us remember how much we've accomplished throughout the year. I will probably also do what Ron did at the beginning of the year. I'll start the year off with an informal assessment, just to get an idea of different things the students may or may not know. Then at the end of the year, after we have covered all the material, I will give them the assessment again. This will allow them to see just how much they have learned over the course of the year. I think it's also a wonderful idea to have your students write letters to the incoming students about what they should expect and learn, just like in Mrs. Jones' class.

Teach Like Your Hair's on Fire- Chapter 6 and 7- We Won't Get Fooled Again and What a Wonderful World

Chapter 6- We Won't Get Fooled Again
This chapter was really interesting since it dealt with standardized testing. Pretty much the only thing students do in school now is take test after test after test. They are being tested on everything. It can be incredibly stressful and exhausting for them. I'm sure many students get so tired and burned out on tests that they just give up and don't even try to do well on them. A lot of them don't really know how to prepare for those tests, either. So, I'm sure that can be very disheartening too. My favorite part of this chapter was when Rafe talked about his conversation with the students at the end of the day before the test. His students knew what they were supposed to do and how they were supposed to study. His activity with the practice multiple choice questions was really interesting. I think it's a great idea to teach students the reasoning behind the right answers and the wrong answers and how to tell the difference between them. I loved that his students would laugh out loud when they recognized a wrong answer on a test and the knew reasoning behind it. I hope I can help my students do that.

Chapter 7- What a Wonderful World
This chapter was very interesting. When I was in elementary school, history and social studies were always kind of boring. The teachers never really did anything to spice it up or make it interesting. Yes, we would watch films about historic events, but they were always during class and were always boring and uninteresting. I really like Rafe's ideas about showing films after school. I think that would be a really great thing to incorporate into my classroom, if I am allowed to. His geography game, Table Points, was really interesting as well. It really made the students think about what they were learning. They weren't just memorizing the positions of the countries on a map. They could do more than just label the countries. They could talk about the individual country and also the surrounding countries. It was really neat. They weren't just memorizing. They were actually attaining a vast knowledge of the countries. That would have been so fun to play in school. I really think activities like these could make social studies and history a lot more fun and interesting for the students.