The Soundtrack of Your Life

97.1 FM out of Chicago fancies itself with the motto of, “The Soundtrack of Your Life”. That is, if you grew up with the rock and roll of the 60’s and 70’s and are in the 50-70 age group. You know, us “AARP” folks.   This music is now referred to as “Classic Rock.”  Makes you feel old.   Did you ever buy the “soundtrack” to a movie? A look at the list of the best-selling soundtracks of all time will tell you that Generation X has some catching up to do. According to an independent survey, the top five movie soundtracks of all time are in ascending order:  (5)  The Wizard of Oz – 1939.  I wonder if the poppy fields were somehow involved in seeing flying monkeys... (4) West Side Story – 1961. Gangs weren’t as scary then; especially with Natalie Wood as Maria.  (3)  Saturday Night Fever- 1977. I hate disco!... Almost as bad as (C)Rap…  (2) The Sound of Music – 1965.  Julie Andrews at her finest.  (1) A Hard Day’s Night – 1964.  The Beatles…nothing else to say.  

What’s the soundtrack of your life?  Each day, you create this soundtrack with the words you speak.  Do you pour into people positive thoughts or do you drain the sink?  Do you fill the buckets of others or are you a bucket dipper?  Choose your words wisely.  They do have an effect.  The old “sticks and stones” philosophy is right off the stable floor!  Words do hurt – if they are the wrong words.  If the students in your classes were to produce a soundtrack of their experiences with you, what would itsound like?  Would it be moving or slower than molasses in January?  Would it have a connection to real-life experiences or would it just be a disconnected set of chords?  Would it be upbeat or would it be as boring as most, okay, all operas (sorry opera lovers)? Would it be something that the kids could take with them or is it just a bunch of fun with no substance?  Is it worth listening to or does it get put back on the shelf like the vegetable that no one wants.  Will it speak to them about how you treated them?  Here’s the big question – will it be something that is worthy for them to listen to?  How is the soundtrack of your teaching life coming along?

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The Browns host the Oakland Raiders on the shores of Lake Erie this Sunday.  Two wins in a row?  I am hoping that Oakland doesn’t “raid” our party!

Producing a Crop

I have a fascination with farm fields; especially those with a full grown crop.  The straight rows of corn seeds planted that one could walk through in April becomes a forest of growth in late summer .  I admire farmers.  They work hard at cultivating the soil, planting, ongoing field maintenance, and of course, harvesting. That latter task is beginning throughout the Midwest at this time and will continue until the last rows of field corn are brought to the elevator. Producing a crop takes more than just an acknowledgement that a field exists.  That vision will leave you hungry.  Producing a crop takes cooperation – the cooperation of the farmer, hard work, and a great deal of time.  The soil has to be worked, seeds need to planted and much care provided along the way.  A good yield does not happen automatically.  Farmers have to work at it every single day.

It’s the same in teaching.  Producing positive results, whatever that looks like, takes more than just acknowledging that there is a class in front of you.  That acknowledgement alone will not produce anything. Like crop farming, teaching that produces positive results takes cultivating, ongoing maintenance, and cooperation.  “Cultivating the soil” in a classroom may involve establishing positive relationships with your students – that is excellent “fertilizer”.  It can also involve engaging your students from the first second they stroll into your classroom. Engaged students produce positive results.  “Ongoing field maintenance” can include using informal and formative data to inform your instruction…that’s the academic side.  Continuing to build and maintain positive relationships is also included as well as making sure that your own ”field” (classroom) has the proper goals, decorations, and information centers.  Finally, “cooperation” in teaching is like a three-legged stool – one leg representing the teacher, a second representing the student and the third representing the parents. Lose one of those legs and that stool wobbles or falls.  Work hard at making the kids see the correlation between daily and long-term goals.  Work hard at talking with parents and making them part of the total team.  All of these things together will yield a tremendous crop that shows outstanding growth prior to the harvest.  Teachers have to work at it every single day.

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The Browns host the Tennessee Titans on Sunday.  After the butt-whipping put on us last week, I am ready for a victory. 

Emergency!

Emergency! was a television series that was on the air from 1972-79 – how it lasted that long is beyond me.  The show revolved generally around the life of the Los Angeles Fire Department, Station 51, and specifically around the lives of its two paramedics – John Gage and Roy De Soto.  The weekly series was pretty typical – a daring rescue, an out of control five- alarm fire, life-saving measures while riding in the back of an ambulance…impossible situations with no hope, BUT, all solved in 46 minutes not including commercial breaks!  A few months ago, I flipped on the television to MeTV, a channel that carries the “Oldies”; one of which is my favorite show, the greatest television series ever – The Andy Griffith Show.  Anyway, John and Roy, along with three doctors, worked on an emergency patient for an extended period with all of the equipment, knowledge, and technology that they could muster.  Unfortunately, the patient perished.  One doctor commented, “We did everything by the book.”  To this, a second doctor replied, “Maybe we need to get a better book.”

It’s not about the book.  The book is just one resource. Heck, some classes do not even have a book.  You are better than the book…aren’t you?  There are more resources than can be counted.  There are textbooks. There are periodicals. There are internet sites.  There is actual conversation with people.  Back in the so called “Old Days” when  kids like me actually had to visit the library (there was no such thing as a Media Center), choose six books about the topic you were researching and catch this – actually read them!  This was needed to write a 10 page paper for English X (the thought was that no one would figure out X as honors, Y was regular, and Z was remedial).  Back to my point.  It is important to utilize every resource that you can in your teaching.  One obvious choice is professional reading and making the most of every professional development opportunity (even the ones that are like watching paint dry). A great resource is to not only converse with your colleagues, but to visit their classrooms and check out their strategies.  Yes, it okay to steal the good ones.  One very important resource that is underutilized is creativity.  Get outside of the box and color outside of the lines.  Dare to make your class the most exciting one in the school. Be the class that the kids are running to get to because they do not want to miss a thing.  Keep them thirsting for more.  Sometimes we don’t need a better book. We need a wider imagination.


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The Browns open the regular season against the New York Jets.  Interesting, the Jets actually play their home games in New Jersey. This would be akin to the Browns playing their home games in Pennsylvania, which would be in violation of the Ohio state constitution.  Regardless, here we go Brownies, here we go!

Standard Time Zones

The band, Chicago, is one of our all-time favorites.  Mary and I have seen them live several times and their mix of keyboards, percussion, electric, brass, and wide range of vocals is unique.  One of their hit songs is, Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is? There was a time when this was a fairly accurate statement.  In 1883, the United States and Canada adopted a system of Standard Time Zones.  Prior to this, 8:00 p.m. in Toronto looked far different than 8:00 p.m. in Seattle. The United States currently uses nine different time zones.  If it is 2:03 p.m. in Northwest Indiana, it is 3:03 p.m. in South Bend, Indiana, and just past one in San Diego.  Of course, it is 9:03 a.m. in Hawaii. Heck, most of Indiana is in the Eastern Time Zone with just a few small sections carved out as Central Times Zones (da Region included).  Go farther out into the Pacific Ocean and you begin to deal with the International Date Line (by the way, it is imaginary). How about this fun in converting – if you are traveling westbound and pass the International Date Line, you will add a day (Friday becomes Saturday) and eastbound travelers subtract a day (Saturday becomes Friday).  Crazy?  Not really, it does help greatly with the expansion of trade throughout the world.  So, this has to do with money?  Come on.

Could you imagine if each classroom in the school had a different “Educational Time Zone”?  You know, every teacher was teaching whatever they felt was important for the kids to learn.  A great big hodgepodge of “Education du jour”.  Take it up a notch – what if common courses had their own “time zones”.  A grade in one teacher’s class had a far different meaning than a grade in another teacher’s class.  There would be no common learning goals, no common objectives, no common desired outcomes, no common assessments, no common anything.  It wasn’t all that long ago when that was exactly what happened in classrooms across the country.  That was long before accountability became the norm and standardized testing really meant something.  Common courses should have all of the common traits that I mentioned.  That is why our biweekly common course articulation/planning time is so vital.  It gives you time to plan with your colleagues as to common goals and common assessments.   A grade in one class should mean the same as in another class.  It gives us standard measures across the map. Couple that with some excellent teaching tips on high-yield strategies and we have a winner winner chicken dinner.   So, does anyone really know what time it is?  We do.