It's more apparent now than ever before.  Our schools are becoming more and more robotic.  And I'm not playing along.

I've never been one to fit a mold, and I've always advocated for creative license in both the content and processes of teaching.  I learned early in my career that I'm less effective if I have to use a textbook.  I never did as well when students had individual desks.  I prefer non-traditional combinations of techniques and cross-curricular lessons to a set schedule.

In short, I strive to be different.  It's something of which I have been aware since an early age.  I remember preferring Dr. Pepper to Pepsi based not only on flavor (Pepsi, really?), but based also on their advertising slogans. Dr. Pepper had it's "One of a Kind" campaign while Pepsi touted itself as "The Choice of a New Generation".  Let's see:  join the crowd or be original?  For me it's a no-brainer.

​So now you know one more reason I drink Diet Dr. Pepper...but this is an educational website, not a blog about soft drinks and ad campaigns.

I've heard way too many teachers who believe that every teacher needs to follow a set pattern.  They yearn for a script to be given to them.  They adopt each generic lesson plans designed to make every teacher present the same things at the same times in the same ways.

Too many fail to see the art of teaching.  Too many see students as if-then statements​.  They don't think for themselves.  They wait for units and assessments to be handed to them.  They have stopped being creative.  They have lost must of the joy of teaching.

When our educational lives become generic, cookie-cutter, robotic, our classes become bland, tasteless, and monotonous.  When our planning and presentation is set, uncreative, and routine, our students become no more than numbers to be tracked, statuary in a government institution, and red tape in a society that's sinking in the sands of boredom.

When did the experts change us?  Why do they not see the effect of their constant calls for uniformity?  Where is the call for independence, a sense of self, and uniqueness instead?  I yearn for a school where teachers are unique, celebrating their special strengths and eclectic personalities.  Dare I say, I want an atmosphere of originality, and to risk a cliche, thinking outside the box.  Unclasp the leashes.  Open the shackles.  Take your nose out of the book.  Get off the tracks.  Take the scenic route and the trail less traveled.  Be one of a kind.  Rediscover the magic, the art, and the joy of teaching!

Through the years, I have repeatedly discovered that many kids do not read books to the end.  Instead, they tend to read a couple of pages and quit to find a new book.  They don't give the book a chance to get started before they abandon the story.  I must try to get them to build their reading stamina!

That's one reason I've been a constant advocate for self-selected reading.  I know that students will not enjoy reading if they are not given the opportunity to choose their own stories and subject matter.

Hoggatteers will soon be reading books with the goal of stamina.  One way we'll do this is through an iPad app called Epic!  It's an app that hosts thousands of ebooks for kids to read. My nine- and ten-year-olds are perfectly centered for the books they can choose on this app.  For those who are reading a level or two below grade level, they may pick books closer to their own reading levels.  This is an app parents may subscribe to for a fee, but for educators, the subscription is free.  With fiction and non-fiction selections, every student should find something of interest.

Some of the coolest features of this simple app include the ability for students for personalize the look of their screens - but only after they have earned those features.  They can change their avatars, the background colors, the frames around their avatars, and more.  Students may also label their favorite books and keep them on a special "shelf" to possibly reread at a later time.  In fact, they may make quick reviews for the benefit of others who might be looking for a book to read.

There are many reasons for adopting this in our classroom, but the possibility of increasing stamina is my primary goal.  The program, also available on a browser, tracks the time spent within a book, the number of "page flips", and books completed.

We've made the bats, blind cave trout, and cave crickets for Hoggatt Cave,
and along the way we discovered using scissors and glue is not as easy as we hoped.

​Thankfully, now that we have them, we can display them for the upcoming tours of the cave.

For example, the levels adopted for our district all sound positive:

• Mastery
• Approaching Mastery
• Developing, and
• Insufficient Evidence

While none of those sound inherently negative, we're always striving for Mastery.  I've broken down the levels as such:

• Mastery = Got it!
• Approaching = Almost there!
• Developing = Little understanding
• Insufficient Evidence = No proof of understanding

Sometimes I feel like my grade as a teacher fluctuates somewhere between Mastery and Developing.  I'm constantly developing materials and methods to coincide with the system, but I - like my students - am a work in progress.  You would think 26 years in the public school classroom, with 21 being in my current position, would qualify me as an expert and educational leader; don't get me wrong, I am pretty confident in the classroom, and I am certainly qualified to do my job, but continual changes in education and the moving targets posed by federal and state governments and administrators can take their toll on a teacher's energy and attitude.

​​One of the things I've developed for our Reading lessons is a series of guided universal worksheets.  During the last few weeks, as we worked on finding the theme of a text, these worksheets were partially in place.  They were:

• Guided:  that is, the worksheets were more than a series of blank spaces waiting to be filled.  These sheets lead students through the process in much of the same way the teacher taught the lesson.
• Universal:  that is, the worksheets may be thrown at students for any text.  These sheets allow the teacher to implement Reading lessons within Science or History texts, as well as with stories and novels.
• Cumulative:  that is, as we graduate through future lessons, we will continue to work on the skills we have already covered.  These sheets will progress through more comprehension skills, but they will ask students to remember past lessons.  As an example, we are about to start identifying the main idea of a text.  When we do, students will begin to see more involved worksheets asking for both the main idea and the theme.
• Progressive:  that is, students will be asked to become more and more independent as the year goes forward.  These sheets slowly make students more responsible for the processes they are using.

In the slideshow above, students are using iPads to access the district's pretest for main idea.  I will assess the pretest with our standards-based grading system and then proceed through some guiding lessons for main idea. Hopefully, by the time our posttest comes around, we will all see our striving has paid off with improvement, getting everybody - including the teacher - closer to Mastery.

With some effort, Hoggatt Cave is finally taking shape.  We're getting started a little earlier, this year, but with changes in Joplin's Science curriculum, next year, we will likely do the cave unit, later in the year.  I've enjoyed doing the cave early in the school year, due to the excitement of the students.  It's a great way to begin the year. That said, it will also be a great unit to do for the last semester, as well.

And now that you know that, it must be understood that the cave is another way we work on reading fluency and public speaking.  With the repeated reading of the tour, students practice their reading skills and a conversational tone.  As for public speaking, students seem less intimidated when they have flashlights in hand and are talking in the darkness.  We will work on volume, rate, and quality of voice during the cave tours, with multiple rehearsals and critiques along the way.

Below are four short (10 seconds or so each) videos of our Hanging Out to Dry activity from earlier in the week.
​
It's always nice to see the class so fully engaged.

Why was Mr. Hoggatt the topic of discussion on the Tuesday morning broadcast of Morning KIX on KIX 102.5?

It all began innocently enough.  Every year I challenge students with a list of "extra" things they may learn or find and turn in.  This year, the young gentleman in this picture took it upon himself to get up early and get his mom to drive him to the radio station.  His goal was to acquire the autograph of a radio personality as a part of the Missouri Hunting Club challenge.

There, he quickly found himself on the air with Randy and Kalee, discussing the task and the teacher behind it.

That's all well and good, but you must understand that I also had the DJ's daughter in my class a few years ago.  Randy knew the teacher in question - yours truly - and proceeded to interview this young man about me while at the same time giving me a glowing review himself.  You can't buy publicity like that (Well, you can, but it's expensive; believe me, I've checked into it.).

The icing on the cake was that the CEO of Empire Electric Company was sitting in the studio at the same time.  He also signed an autograph, and strangely enough, his daughter is also a former student of mine!

In all of our lives there should be passion.

For me it involves my God, my family, and my chosen career.

This week, I had the opportunity, as I do for three out of four Sundays, to preach for churches in Columbus, Kansas, and Nevada, Missouri.

This week, I had the opportunity to watch my daughter perform at Stained Glass Theatre Joplin, in their stage production of The Near-Sighted Knight and the Far-Sided Dragon.  We're always proud of both of our children.

And as for my chosen career, perhaps it's not the highest-paying job, but it's often quite rewarding.

Sometimes passion reveals itself as something else.  Sometimes, when the things we love the most fail to work out the way we envision, passion appears as negativity.  That has happened in recent years in the field of education. With No Child Left Behind, we confronted looming expectations that were impossibly unrealistic.  With Race to the Top, our high standards and higher-order thinking were threatened in the name of equity among schools and states.

Locally, we have faced many issues that have presented concerns, both before and after our EF5 tornado of 2011. Packaged programs and canned presentations became the expectation from administrators with little to no regard for teacher strengths.  Quixotic expectations from a purely scientific approach to teaching became the norm, with no thought of the art and joy of teaching.

Big government's increasing attempt of controlling local classrooms, state politicians who trade Common Core for something that is word-for-word the same as Common Core in hopes of appeasing (read, "fooling") the patrons of our state, and administrators' attempts to micromanage every aspect of every classroom all seek to destroy the professionalism of the teacher.  When teachers become minions to political whims and pet projects, we are no longer respected members of the team.

Teachers must remember that we work for the government, but we must make note that our government is uniquely of the people, by the people, and for the people - including but not limited to politicians and bosses:  we must remember that we serve our students first!

Sometimes passion reveals itself as something else.  It can be perceived as negativity and whining when, in reality, is in frustration that we aren't being allowed to do the things that may serve our students the best.  It may be that we want so badly to achieve that we don't know how to address the things that are out of our control.  We find ourselves jumping through hoops, sorting through red tape, pushing paperwork, and running ourselves out of time and energy to do so - all while trying to retain our passion and joyfully motivate children to improve.

It's hard to motivate through testing, but that's all I'm going to say about that.

It's hard to motivate students with engaging lessons when meetings take up a teacher's time to prepare, but that's all I need to say about that.

It's hard to motivate when a teacher survives in fear of failure and failure is defined by a single student who doesn't significantly improve during a specified time limit, but that that's all I'm going to mention about that.

Don't be fooled by the "positive" rhetoric.  We are often honor-bound to be loyal and present a positive face for our employers.  We often feel like that duck in the pond - peacefully floating above the surface while paddling furiously below just to maintain our position.

I fully believe that Joplin Schools can be a shining beacon in the global educational world where these issues abound, but I'm smart enough to realize that we cannot - and will not ever - do that by using the same materials and methodology as our neighbors, the so-called "experts" in San Francisco, New York City, or the District of Columbia.  We can only shine a beacon when we are let off of our leashes, allowed to think and work outside of "the box", and innovate beyond our wildest dreams.

​Our passions are the keys to unlimited success.

To celebrate positive behavior, our school staged a small celebration, Friday afternoon.  Fourth graders participated in the games with a mustache theme - Find the Mustache and Pin the Mustache on the Principal - They also visited the photo booth and had pictures taken with mustache props (and other things).  Drink mustaches topped off the event before we returned to the classroom.

This is how a cave is born.

​Hoggatteers worked on adding stalactites to our classroom cave, but before they did, we took the opportunity to work on some similes (figurative language) skills, comparing parts of the cave with other, unlikely, items.  Our stalactites have graffiti on them, but it will add character to Hoggatt Cave (Of course, it would be inappropriate to add any artistic or linguistic touches to a natural cave.).

Cecil Floyd's Math League begins its coaching sessions, this upcoming Monday!  Mr. Culbertson and I are excited to see so many students interested in learning some advanced math strategies...and when I say advanced, I really mean advanced.  Students will be expected to be in their chairs and ready to learn at 3:10, and we will work with them until 4:40, every Monday.

This Monday, however, we would like parents to join us during the last few minutes of the session for a short meeting.  We plan on clarifying what Math League is and what all of our responsibilities are.  I have the dates of our prospective contests to give you, as well.