I was not familiar with the practice of Continuous - or Continual - Improvement until this year, but it is something I have always believed in.  I have attempted to conduct myself in the classroom by using the tenets of this method.  In fact, that's why the past years have been, at times, difficult:  methods that empower teachers, who then empower students, are at odds with the structures that have been put into place by politicians and sycophants.  Professionalism is at odds with micromanagement and mandates.

Now, however, our superintendent is loosening restraints on teachers and students.  Dr. Ridder wants to empower, not control, understanding the common sense ideas that teachers are supposedly educated in the methods and content that they teach, that teachers are the "tip of the spear" in the war against ignorance and complacency.

It's refreshing to see common sense overcoming all of the emphasis over Common Core and all of its accouterments.

The more I get up to speed with Continuous Improvement, the more I see myself in it.  In fact, this is part of how I would lead a team of teachers to create lessons and special events for students.  After everything we try, I would conduct a debriefing to change or get rid of the things that went wrong, and evaluate all of the things that went right to see if they could be improved.  There's even a possibility that our lesson or event should be wholly replaced.

Through the years I have tried and retried some tried and true methods (things that work for some teachers).  I quickly discovered that I have to recreate most things to make them fit into my eclectic classroom.  I've been known to scrap some lessons altogether, never to approach them in the same way again.  I've also been known to stick with the things that work, tweaking them every time to enhance the experiment.  Often former students don't understand why the next year's class gets to do something that they didn't; what they fail to understand is that they got to do things their predecessors didn't.  In the 21 years I have taught fourth graders, every year is different, apparently because I've subscribed to a common sense methodology that I didn't even know existed until this year.

I don't pretend to know everything about this profession - it would be a lot easier if I did - but it's nice to receive some confirmation that I understand what I've been saying.  Of course, understanding doesn't always mean it's easy to implement, but alas, we continue to try to improve.  I'm sure we'll be hearing more about Continuous Improvement in the coming months.

Our class will join the other fourth grades in a trip to Joplin High School for their December play.  The thespians at the high school will perform a version of the Wizard of Oz for us at 9:00, on December 10.

The permission slip below will be sent home this week.  One dollar is being requested from each student for cover the transportation expenses for this excursion.  Please send the dollar and the signed permission to school as soon as you can.

Could you learn this mental math trick?

See our entire Music Appreciation collection.

You could astound people by learning and practicing this shortcut:

Students recreated and enlarged Christmas card art for a colorful bulletin board in the hallway.
Some of these kids have a real talent in the visual arts.

We know one thing:  that culture and community, behavior and manners, relationships and collaboration, are followed by achievement and success.  We know that good citizenship and the joy of learning results in improvement and the desire to do even more.

With that in mind, should schools focus solely on academic success and interventions, or should teachers be freed to build community and creativity in their classrooms?  Without the thrill of learning and without the appreciation for details, will our students ever push themselves to learn throughout their lifetimes?

We know that people who treat others with respect, people who successfully communicate with other people - whether peers, authority figures, or strangers - will be well-liked, well-received, and possibly well off.  Hey, who couldn't use more friends, more respect, and more fun?

While the test scores may not currently reflect success, perhaps that's because we've focused solely on test scores and academic interventions for so long, and we have failed to consider the idea that character education and basic manners are what make the man (or in our case, the students).  If more emphasis is placed on these area, test scores will definitely follow (as long as we don't entirely ignore academics).  We know this is true.

I am ready for my school's students to be known in the community, not for high test scores, but for being the kindest, most communicative students in Joplin, Missouri.  When our students transfer to other schools, I want the teachers at those schools to know, from the students' behavior that they came from Cecil Floyd.  I want teachers to wonder what we do that's different.  I want cashiers to recognize their respectful demeanor in the stores.  I want parents to marvel at the positive behaviors as they transfer into the home.

We spoke to this during yesterday's Cecil Floyd Leadership meeting, and hopefully some greater emphasis will be placed on this area in the near future.

We often hear how the home life for many of our patrons is less than desirable.  Kids live in poverty.  Kids are shuffled from parent to parent in divorce situations.  Parents struggle to make ends meet.  Time wanes, and before we know it kids become adults, and cycles perpetuate.

We often hear that we can't do anything about the home situation.  Teachers often wring their hands trying to find a way to get parents interested, a way to get parents involved, a way to get parents to support the school, a way to get parents to help.  Teachers inherently want to do everything they can for their students, and when they don't get the support from moms and dads, they are frustrated.  We throw our hands up in the air in helplessness.

But I don't always accept that premise.  I don't always believe that we can't positively affect home life.  I believe that we can help those families by overcoming the patterns.  We absolutely affect the home life of the future.  Our present students will be the heads of their own families sooner than we'd like to imagine.  They will be the parents...and they will continue to cycle through the hunger, the poverty, and the neglect that can plague the educational setting.

We can no longer allow current home lives to dictate the future of the children in those families.  Students must be made to understand that they can overcome, of you will, the struggles experienced by their own parents.  These situations do not have to be heredity.  They do not show up in the patterns of a DNA strand.  These situations can be pieced through, and our students can emerge on the other side as stronger, brighter, and more charismatic.

That can happen when we explicitly teach simple manners.  And that means more than just telling each other thank you and excuse me.  It means we need to role play and practice reacting to situations that may or may not be favorable to us.  Is there a better way to react when a person bumps you in the line at WalMart?  How do we respond to disagreeable political messages on Facebook?  Should you hold the door open for the person behind you?  What do you say when someone passes you on the sidewalk?

Traditionally, these may not be the focus in a public school.  But we must never allow 21st Century skills to exclude behaviors that can get us the jobs in the first place, the skills that keep us in the favor of our employers, and the skills that cause people around us smile.

Our society can focus on computers and robotics, and we'll certainly be interested in involving ourselves in the development and changes in those areas, but a socially inept engineer is

We know this:  that our efforts in this area will not be in vain when we are determined to make a difference in our world.

I was relieved by the quick wit and humor in the beginning of this book. It was fun to read, and it made me continue to want to find out about this strange sofa three kids found on the side of the road.  The plot thickens - and becomes weirder - as the sofa is revealed to be the disembodied soul of another character's sister (or something like that).

It turns out that most of the adult characters in this novel are aliens, one defending earth against the other's attempt to take it over.  The only solution?  Three quirky kids that reside alongside a dangerous underground fire are recruited (by the sofa) and lured into missions that put them in harm's way of chemical weapons, personality-sucking alien technology, and a giant alien transport that emerges rather quickly through a portal connecting earth with the alien world.

Just when you think it can't get any weirder, it does.  I found myself wanting the book to end much sooner, and I wished the story had stay more in the real world.  Author Henry Clark has a great knack for turning a phrase and putting words together that most of us would not think of.