Randomness

If Only I Could Bottle It

/ Dawn Kasal-Finley / Leave a comment

I don’t know where my kids get their energy from.  I get tired just watching them–hell, who am I kidding, I’m tired just thinking about it.  Case in point–Tuesday–Noah woke up at 7 am (which is actually sleeping in for him) went to camp from 9-12, went to Grant’s Farm, came home and played, rode his bike, went to gymnastics to 2 hours, came home rode his bike again, played soccer and wasn’t ready for bed until 9.

Seriously? His sister isn’t any better–seriously, she is worse; she can’t even sit still.  She must hop, jump, shake, etc.  Their bodies just do not stop moving.  They are in perpetual motion–ALL. THE.  TIME.  I just look at them and wish I had a small fraction of their energy and that I could bottle it.  Because I am pretty sure their energy is better than the rush you get from speed or any other stimulant.  I look at them and I wonder how…simply HOW.  And how am I supposed to keep up with them?  Seriously, they are exhausting.

Their energy level baffles me and boy I can only imagine what it would go for on the open market.

Envy

/ Dawn Kasal-Finley / 1 Comment

We just returned from a week of family fun in Orlando.  It was really great and we got to spend a lot of time together as a family–something that we don’t always get to do with how busy we generally tend to be.  It was nice to “unplug” from work (mostly) and just get to relax and hang out.  Our resort was awesome and really kid friendly–which when you have kids becomes really important.  We spent a great deal of time at the pool(s), a marathon day at Universal’s Islands of Adventure, an inspiring day at the Clearwater Marine Aquarium followed by an afternoon at the beach and a rainy, rainy day at Legoland.  Overall, it was an amazing and exhausting trip.

What I liked best about our trip was watching our kids so very effortlessly make friends each and every day we were at the pool.  It was amazing to watch.  It was also very cool.  Some of the kids were their age–but mostly they were slightly older (2-3 years older).  One boy that Noah befriended was so nice that he helped Noah when he couldn’t stand in the pool and listened when Noah said he didn’t want to go any farther.  It is moments like this at gives me hope that we aren’t totally screwed as a society.  It is hard to remember the innocence of childhood and the ability to just get along with others who are so very different from you, when the world seems to be filled with hate and the rhetoric of difference as opposed to the bonding over similarities.

I watched them with envy and wondered when it happens, that switch from open acceptance to quiet judgement.  When does it become more about what someone looks like and does than who someone might be?

I was so proud of my children and not just for being able to make friends so easily but for the choices they made of friends to play with at the pool.  There was certainly no shortage of kids there, but each time they chose kids who were good kids.  They chose kids that were polite, kind and not the kids who were being aggressive or mean to others.  It was so awesome to see.

They just live life and go for it.  I am so envious of them.  I wish we as adults could do the same–just see each other as people and not by our differences.

We can learn so much from our children.

It Is Not The Test’s Fault

/ Dawn Kasal-Finley / Leave a comment

I was reading something yesterday that really struck me.  Education has become just as polarizing as birth control, abortion, and every other partisan issue in this country.  This perplexes me.  Education should be the least divisive issue in our country.  Who could possible be against educating kids?  Kids, you say? In case we have all forgotten, education is about KIDS.  Not adults, not corporations,  not bottom lines, not test scores.  IT IS ABOUT KIDS.

I am also tired of us blaming NCLB (which I think is wrong and doesn’t work) and the test.  The test doesn’t come into our classrooms and dictate what is taught.  The test doesn’t determine what type of curriculum the administration buys for its students.  The test measures what the student knows and in theory has been taught by their teacher(s).  The test does not dictate what is taught.  People do.  People, not the test, make these decisions.  I am just really tired of the test being blamed.  So, often it is the decisions made by administrators and teachers that dictate a students performance on the test.  I am tired of the test being the scape goat.  When I was teaching high school (at the implementation of NCLB), I was responsible for what my students learned.  I was responsible for their learning.  Were there some students who made the decision to not learn?  Yes.  Was I ever tempted to let that be an excuse to make my job easier?  Yes.  Did I?  No.  I was on them constantly.  Ethically it was my job to teach EVERY SINGLE KID IN MY CLASS.  Every. Kids.

If those kids didn’t do well on the test, it was my fault to some degree.  If they didn’t master some skills.  I was accountable.

We also have to remember that many of the teachers who teach the students who need the best teachers are new and inexperienced teachers–TFA or traditionally trained teachers.  I will say from my personal experience  teaching TFA corps members during their first year, that their toolbox of strategies is not nearly as full as it should be or as full as teachers who have gone through the traditional channels.  But most teachers in their first years are only marginally as effective as they could be.  Teaching to the test is much easier if you are a new teacher–as it’s a road map for what to teach and most schools don’t have a good mentoring program in place to help new teachers into the profession.  There is also (most times) not an effective evaluation and feedback protocol in place to help new teachers and support them to develop the skills they need.

I have found that the class I teach for first year TFA corps members becomes a mentoring class where we talk about how to differentiate and how to plan lessons and how to try different ways to teach material and to talk about why we teach certain things and how important they are.  These are the conversations that new teachers need.  It takes approximately 3-5 years for a teacher to become a fully functioning effective teacher (and if they aren’t by the 5 year mark–then maybe they should be encouraged to find a new profession–our kids deserve the best).  The problem education has is that 50% of teachers leave before they hit the 5 year mark.

So we perpetuate low performance with the high amount of new teachers we have to bring in to the profession, especially in our urban schools, and then they leave when they are the cusp of becoming effective teachers, often citing lack of support as one of the reasons for leaving.

Our system is broken on may levels and to say it’s about a test is simplistic.  To say it’s the teacher’s fault is also simplistic.  To say it’s the students fault–is just wrong.  To blame it on poverty or social status is just an excuse to not work twice as hard.

We need to stop making excuses.  We need to come together and realize it’s about the kids.  We don’t have more time to waste with rhetoric.  It’s time for action.

Thanks For Not Making Me A Liar

/ Dawn Kasal-Finley / Leave a comment

It was a conversation that I had at the beginning of the summer with another mom from my kids school.  Our youngests are in class together and our oldests are one year apart (her daughter is one year older than Noah).  We were having an honest conversation about our expectations for our kiddos and the school and results.  She has fully expected that her oldest child would be reading when she left kindergarten.  She wasn’t and she was a bit disappointed and being honest she was also a bit disappointed that she wasn’t reading before kindergarten. I said then, that I was certain Noah would be reading by the time kindergarten was over, but that I wouldn’t  be totally shocked if he wasn’t as his interest was not as high as I would like it.

I wanted to so badly for Noah to be reading before kindergarten–not in that competitive mom way, but in that “I love to read and it will crush me if my kids don’t” mom kind of way.  I was an early reader and reading is a huge part of my life.  I was a bit sad that Noah didn’t really show much interest in reading in pre-school.  Intellectually, I know that there is huge developmental span and that there was really no reason to be worried until he was getting close to the end of 1st grade to be worried about either his interest in reading and/or his emerging literacy.  But I wanted him to read.  I wanted him to unlock that world of words and stories for himself.

Well we are just starting the 3rd trimester of kindergarten and last night Noah was able to read Dr. Seuss’ Hop on Pop pretty much independently.  He needed some help sounding out some new words, but his list of sight words is growing and he was so proud of himself.

While this is just a first step–we have teacher conferences tomorrow and will get a more detailed reading assessment.  But he is progressing and with 3 months of school left–I’m pretty sure that I’ll be able to call him a reader by the time school is out.

 

The Obvious Isn’t Always Helpful

/ Dawn Kasal-Finley / Leave a comment

So, I work in an office with mostly guys.  This is a bit misleading–as there are only 5 of us in the office and 3 of them are guys.  So, “mostly” is a relative term here.

Our office is old row house that has been converted into office space and it’s great.  But our bathrooms are like a traditional house bathroom and so we added a nice (and by nice, I mean plastic) dispenser for hand towels.  It’s great.  I used that last hand towel the other day, so I got another package.  I carried it upstairs to put in our lovely (an by lovely–I mean cheap plastic, woman-hating) dispenser.

I am not idiot by any means.  I can build things and put furniture together.  But this thing here?  Hates me.  You’ll notice there is a little plastic key thing at the top.  I assume (rightly so) that your turn it and then it pops open.  Right?  Simple?  No.  I turn and nothing happens.  I push and turn and nothing happens.  I jump up and down on one foot, turn and say an incantation and NOTHING HAPPENS.

See, I turned the key thing.  So, I just put the towels on the window sill.  I finally admitted my defeat to one of my male co-workers today and after he laughed a little too much, he walked me through the tutorial of how use this woman-hating machine.  Simple enough.  You turn the key and it pops open. Simple.  Easy.  Obvious.

I go upstairs to siege the victory and my other co-worker has stolen my victory.  When he asks “What victory?”  I explain that I couldn’t get the paper towel holder open.

He states “there’s a key”

No shit.  I know that.  So I go in secretly to open this for my own satisfaction.  Guess what?

That fucking thing still won’t open for me.

I will use my pants before I use that last paper towel and make sure I never have to refill that thing.