Walls

I am certainly no construction expert, but I do know that there are basically two kinds of walls. One is a weight bearing wall; designed to bear the weight of your home, businesses, and yes, this school building. You simply cannot do without bearing walls.  How can you spot a bearing wall?  Look for the windows – those walls hold up your roof.  Bottom line of bearing walls = to be a bearing wall, it must be connected somehow to the foundation.  Interior walls can be moved and the structure will still stand. However, it that wall is a little “boxy”, then it is a load-bearing wall as well and probably supports some main beam above it.. Be careful.  These walls are created dependent upon which design is chosen.  Side note = who designated that big wall in China as the “Great” wall. Really, what is being compared against?  Back to reality. Interior walls can also have doors, such as the ones that lead to bedrooms, closets, and Jim Morrison.  Key words = connection, creating, and doors.

Your “bearing” walls in teaching would be the connection that you make to the foundational concepts.  These can be referred to as your long-term goals.  Each lesson that you teach needs to be purposeful.  If that purpose is not connected to the foundation of goals, then it will not hold up the higher levels of understanding that you should be desiring to teach.  Your “interior” walls are the ways that you uniquely create in your classroom.  Take a good look at your Acuity data – it may be time to move some interior walls!  This is akin to something I had said many times = here are the long-term goals; how you get there is what makes a teacher a teacher.  So the design of your lessons should be that creates the best plan for your students to reach the highest levels.  If that design is not working, change the structure of the walls!  Lastly, your “doors” would be the way out of a out of your plan and a chance to move to another plan.  If the path you are leading is not getting results, close that door and find another to go through. Building walls is not always negative. In fact, in this vein, they can be quite positive as your hopes for these kids will not crumble.  Connect, create, and keep the door open…unless you need to close it.

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Here we go…the Browns open up against our dreaded nemesis = the Pukesburgh Steelers. I do recall  that the Steelers built a new training facility across the street from the Pennsylvania  State Prison allowing their players an easier walk to work.