Mercedes Schneider loves to learn. She has an intellectually curious mind, and she seeks opportunities to satisfy her thirst for knowledge.
She describes her quest for a life that would allow her to continue to feed her intellectual curiosity.
“I believe that one of my most important tasks as a teacher is to stimulate intellectual curiosity. Of course, to do so, I must first experience intellectual curiosity myself. Secondly (and as a logical consequence of first experiencing intellectual curiosity), I must reveal my curious intellect to my students.
“They must see me get excited and be obviously interested in a world that includes (but necessarily extends beyond) the classroom. Modeling intellectual curiosity in my classroom can only be done successfully in the context of a respectful and healthy relationship chiefly between student and teacher (and, beyond teacher-students, with the teacher setting and enforcing parameters for healthy, respectful student-to-student interactions).
“And there must be time for conversation, for pursuing topics beyond a textbook entry and including personal experience and encouraging additional inquiry motivated by genuine interest.
“I believe intellectual curiosity is more important that intellectual intelligence in the setting of challenging life goals and promoting lifelong learning. Sure, high intelligence is an advantage; however, if one does not exercise (challenge?) one’s intelligence by living a life marked by the dynamic of intellectual curiosity, that intelligence arguably stagnates; life loses its fullness, and humans snuff their joy of living.”
She is challenged now to teach five classes a day without losing her intellectual curiosity. She remembers with each class that they are learning the topic for the first time.
I am reminded of hearing a teacher say that she was a performer who had five performances every day. She had to be fresh for every new performance.
Every teacher faces the same dilemma. Five performances a day, and the last must be as energetic and dynamic as the first.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
So true. Readers at my site seem incredibly stressed lately about “grade chasing” by students who just want the letter grade and not actual knowledge.
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Diane can’t you get rid of word press since they are sabotaging the site? Why keep these fake news artists
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I am considering switching hosts for the blog given WP inability to protect it.
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Which will remain true as long as students are judged, ranked and admitted to college by letter grades and test scores. You can’t put someone in a situation and then blame them for reacting the only logical way to it.
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Mark E
What is your site?
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http://prosperousteachers.com
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Thanks!
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Duane, I don’t know if it works for you, but, for me, everyone who has a blog/website(?) has their name appear in orange. If I click on your (orange) name, I end up at your wordpress site.
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Thanks for the info! Didn’t know that about the wordpress sites.
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I keep forgetting and rediscovering it. 🙂
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Teachers have no choice. They have to be performers because they are competing with the internet and TV shows and short attention spans. I even planned my lessons to run in 10 to 15-minute segments because if we spent too long on any topic or lesson, those short attention spans activated.
In addition, teachers are competing to keep children engaged that aren’t getting enough sleep. For instance, “School-aged children (1st through 5th grades) get 9.5 hours, but experts recommend 10-11 hours.” …
“Shorter sleep time is associated with more TV watching,” says Mary A. Carskadon, PhD, a member of the Poll Task Force. “It’s impossible to say which is the chicken and which is the egg, but it does raise a red flag about TV sets in bedrooms. The bottom line is that the association with reduced sleep is something parents should consider when furnishing their children’s bedrooms.”
http://www.sleepforkids.org/html/uskids.html
It also doesn’t help that most schools start too early in the morning and don’t allow naps. Studies show that a 20 – 30-minute nap in the early afternoon actually increases performance.
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Sleep is so important. Thanks Lloyd.
I think we all know it but feel powerless to get it to change.
I really applaud you for getting your lessons into 10-15 minute chunks.
Attention spans might have shrunk down to less than a minute though.
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Thank you.
Those performances were exhausting. I was on my feet moving around most of class time modulating my voice from soft to loud.
From the early 1980s until I retired, my weight stayed about 182 pounds. The physical exertion and stress (thanks to the decades-long war against teachers and public education) kept my weight down. That stress probably shortened my lifespan. Since I retired I’ve been working to reverse the damage from that stress.
But I gained 12 pounds the first year I was retired and even my daily exercise routine didn’t stop that. After I left the classroom, staying on my feet and active for an average of five hours a day has not been easy.
When I retired, I planned to write more, but that hasn’t worked out. I still write part time so I can be more active. It’s hard to stay in shape and keep the weight down if all I do is sit and write.
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Thanks, Lloyd.
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And I also want to say that teachers CAN have a massive raise if they want it without costing taxpayers.
There is a series of NYTimes articles on it and it continues to break my heart on how few districts and teachers even know about it. (It’s using Warren Buffett’s recommendations and changing some district paperwork – I’d love to help those interested)
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Wow Lloyd. Sorry to hear.
One of my biggest failures as a teacher was letting the stress of it all consume me and do quit a bit of damage. Sounds like you know what that is like.
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I don’t know how I did it.
When class was in session, I didn’t let the stress affect me. I didn’t let it out. I suppressed it and didn’t let it show.
Once the students poured through the door, the stress took a backseat to teaching as many of them to learn as possible. My master teacher taught me that if my body language and voice signaled to my students that I was angry or stressed, it would set the tone for the class. So I covered the stress up and shoved it deep into my mind so it wasn’t anywhere near the surface.
But once I drove off campus at the end of the day, the stress of it all landed on my shoulders and/or mind like an angry hippo.
For instance, I’d arrive an hour or two before my first class started and walk on campus glowering, but by the time I reached my classroom, I was smiling and getting myself pumped up and ready for those five to six performances a day.
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In hindsight, what advice would you give yourself?
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Many professional teachers are life long learners. It is important to keep reading, thinking and keep an open mind, but be a critical thinker. If we as teachers can convey the joy of learning to our students, it will help them to ignite intellectual curiosity in them.
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Yes! How is retirement treating you?
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“Every teacher faces the same dilemma. Five performances a day, and the last must be as energetic and dynamic as the first.”
Five???
Six out of a seven period day for 21 years. I much preferred having four preps that way I only taught the same class a maximum of three times a day. And that three times a day was enough to drive me crazy wondering if I had mentioned something the third time around as I had in the first and second.
And yes, they are full-fledged performances that take a lot out of you every class. I especially despised having a first or last hour plan period because then all of the classes were in a row with no break other than a 22 minute “lunch”.
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Try doing 6 classes a day with 5 different preps (classes)! Phew!
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Only six classes and six preps? Consider a typical schedule for an art specialist who works at the elementary or middle school level. That would be a piece of cake. Few art teachers have the luxury of meeting the same students every day of a week, or for the length of an entire school year. This “little dab will do you” approach to scheduling is made worse by the treatment of art as a bonus, enrichment, luxury only deserved by a few. One result is the demolition of scheduled class times for many students who are called out for this or that intervention, then sent back during the same class period or returned to art classes after missing one or two sessions. How about a class roster of 1200 students, distributed in A and B week schedules, possibly in a rotation of six to nine weeks of instruction–possible in some elementary and middle schools. Add the complication in some elementary schools of not having a dedicated art room.
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Duane: sound a like me. 140 children per day. 6 classes out of seven periods. Each class it’s own personality, some with questions, some stonily silent. I am with Lloyd, low level stress all day with just a bit of adrenaline needed constantly. When I was teaching math, I often taught 6 different classes. Now, one class all day has its drawbacks, but it is exciting getting to revisit my interest for history in front of the kids. I have not taught history until last year so the kids have a 62 year old rookie. Only Satchel Paige ever did good at that.
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FULL-FLEDGED. Heart and soul.
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7 out of 8 periods most days.
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That’s right. Part of DPE is increasing the number of classes and students we teach (while using those experimental schedules like 7 and 8 period days and weeks to include test score based “intervention” classes which increase segregation within schools). And we’re not just performers nowadays; we’re nurses, custodians, librarians, counselors… all the jobs that were cut to pay for tech and privatization.
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Yes, I think intellectual curiosity is key, for both teachers and students.
Stress tends to dismantle that, in favor of survival strategies, for both teachers and students.
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Succinctly well-stated!
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One of the saddest things for me has been seeing my daughters’ intellectual curiosity stifled by school. Unfortunately, this happens to gifted kids all around the country. For reading and math, they are years ahead of their classmates, yet the school assigns books that are too easy in content and vocabulary and uses inane math tests to keep them back. For science and social studies, they generally score 80-90% on the pretests and find very little new to learn.
My youngest (third grade) joined a gifted program in another district this past year. The change has been dramatic. She now has her intellectual curiosity back and comes home bursting with what she learned today. She is loving math as the teacher bumped her to fifth grade math. She doesn’t always enjoy (but often does) reading the 1000 lexile books that her teacher requires, but goes to the library looking to see which biographies she can find this week. She is a completely different girl and this includes her social and emotional behaviors as well.
We’ve seen directly how intellectual curiosity can be stimulated and how it can be stifled. How can we change education for highly intelligence kids who are being held back where they become intellectually bored?
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Work with the teacher to individualize their programs.
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Sadly, we’ve tried doing that for nine years in our current district and only had one teacher who was willing. The learning consultants, principals, and district administration give lip service at best, but often just say “no”.
According to standardized tests rankings, we are in one of the best districts in Michigan. However, those rate based on proficiency, so there is no incentive to help a student already above grade level.
Data the district collected through iReady shows that students above grade level make the least progress in our district, often less than a full year’s growth. These are kids with the ability to make 1.5x to 5x yearly growth. This is not atypical, as a survey of parents of gifted students would show.
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Changing the subject.
I arrived in Shanghai today.
Staying in an excellent hotel with WiFi and the latest technology.
I am not permitted to post on my Blog though evidently I can comment.
I am not permitted to search certain terms on The NY Times website, like Foxconn
I cannot write on my Twitter account.
Maybe this is a temporary glitch.
I have been trying for hours with no luck.
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The Great Firewall of China blocks both WordPress and Twitter, along with Facebook, YouTube, and others.
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I can understand why she is choosing biographies. Having the ability to read books at a higher level does not mean she is ready socially or emotionally for the subject matter especially when you are dealing with YA fiction. There are even books of a lower lexile level whose content would still be thought provoking. Nonfiction content may be much more accessible. A good children’s librarian in the local public library if you are lucky enough to have one or a good independent bookstore where the people who work there really know books may be able to help. I would hope that the gifted program also has access to a well trained reading teacher as well. They are not just for struggling readers.
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I agree, speduktr. Most books, but not all, have similar levels of content and vocabulary and finding appropriate books can be difficult. The support the entire district has given the gifted students has been amazing, including helping find the right books for them, socially, emotionally, and academically. Most of the advanced fiction books are too intense for an easily scared eight year old.
Thankfully, she really enjoys biographies. They’ve made her top three favorite genres since around age two and she could spend all day at Greenfield Village. (If you are ever up in Michigan, it is a fascinating place to see history.)
“Some of My Best Friends Are Books” is another great resource for choosing the right books and developing readers. It even has lists of books with younger content but higher reading difficulty.
P.S. Like you handle!
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