The Hoggatteer Experience - THE HOGGATTEER REVOLUTION

First Quarter Data: Core Behaviors

10/16/2017

At Cecil Floyd, we have embraced our school district's four Core Behaviors. We recognize the importance of these behaviors in society, so we want to do our part to prepare our students to face the future by emphasizing them.

Last year, we began tracking our successes with these behaviors. In the interest of transparency, I figured I could publish the results for our classroom for the first quarter here.

In the area of Greets Others, we do well with 94%.

With Following Instructions, 83% of students in our room were successful.

For Getting Along, 72% of my students scored as meeting or exceeding expectations. Tolerance and reacting to the movements and words of others have become a focus to help us with this.

Seventy-eight percent of students were adequate of above average for Participating.

Report cards will be distributed at this Wednesday's and Thursday's parent conferences.

Loss of a Mentor: Gary Blevins

10/15/2017

I just discovered that the last principal I had in Oklahoma City passed from life, last spring. Gary Blevins was the principal at Buchanan Elementary School in Oklahoma City, when I was there, ending in 1995 - the year of the Oklahoma City bombing.

Gary is the person who gave me more responsibility at the school, even naming me as lead teacher for my last two years there. He gave me decision-making authority, resulting in me being the person in charge of the school on April 19, 1995 - the person responsible for locking down the school when Timothy McVeigh detonated the bomb that killed 168 people.

Gary Lee Blevins, 70, of Tuttle, died Wednesday, May 3, 2017, at his home. The son of Carl Frank Blevins and Ramona (McNeil) Blevins, he was born July 18, 1946 in Hollis, Oklahoma.

Gary married Rebecca Sue Gammon on January 8, 1966 in Sayre, Oklahoma. He was an Elementary School Principal for the Oklahoma City Public School District for nearly 30 years and was a member of Woodland Hills Baptist Church in Newcastle. In his spare time, Gary enjoyed the outdoors, hunting, fishing, and spending time at Lake Texoma. He was a collector of many things, including watches, frogs, and ducks. Gary enjoyed going to garage sales to find his latest treasure. He will be greatly missed by all who knew him.

The first thing Gary did when coming to our school was to repaint one wall of his office - John Deere green - and put pictures of tractors up. The office looked terrific. We had long, candid conversations in there and elsewhere about the school.

He was preceded in death by his parents; his infant twin sister, Sharon Gwen Blevins; and a grandson, Logan Hodge.

Gary is survived by his wife, Becky Blevins, of Tuttle; one daughter, Michelle Kemery and her husband, Mike, of Norman; one granddaughter, Carly Hodge, of Blanchard; and many other loved ones and friends.

1995

Gary was not only an educator, but also a farmer, a deputy sheriff, and an auctioneer. It was his family that made him the most proud. I certainly came to appreciate Gary's worth ethic and his dedication to his wife. He frequently told me that he could not live without her. I hope that Mrs. Blevins is able overcome such a concept as she is now without her long-time husband.

In 1995, my wife and I moved to Joplin, Missouri, and I had to say goodbye to Mr. Blevins. The last time I saw the man, the school had just received an irregularly-shaped piece of marble from the Murrah Building. Gary used the heal of his cowboy boot to knock off a small piece of the marble to give me. "You were the one who protected the school that day," he said. "You deserve a part of this."

I've missed Gary for a long time, but his passing makes me miss him in an entirely different way.

Classroom wall: Reaching for Personalization

10/14/2017

There is a silent call for teachers to create Individualized Educational Plans for every student in the classroom - whether a student has learning disabilities, gifted inclinations, or neither. This will be entirely too cumbersome from a record-keeping standpoint, and will gum up the system so teachers have no more time for creative ventures (like lesson and project planning, for example).

Yes, teachers must know the needs of their students, and yes, teachers should fashion lessons and classroom design to address those needs, but there is no need to get so bogged down in the swamp of data collection and individualized plans in order to get that done.

I would call for a more balanced, "common sense" approach to empower our teachers (and students). I enjoyed reading these observations from Mr. Wyborney in his book, The Writing on the Classroom Wall:

Adequately personalizing a lesson for each and every student is nearly impossible when I try to contain the personalization within my own abilities. However, what is possible is empowering students to seek connections between the content and their lives.

A notable irony is that the more I try to control the personalization of the lessons, the more uniformity I create. I may even come to believe that if I rest the lesson on a topic to which I believe the students can relate, I have succeeded in personalizing the lesson. Yet if I empower the students to look for pathways, to hunt for connections, to seek how the learning intersects with their lives, they are much more likely to create meaningful personalization.

Exactly! Wyborney hits the nail squarely once again. Teachers and students are not programmable in a strictly scientific sense, and yet, this is the result. The discrepancy between these ideas - humanity and programming - becomes a fault line that eventually shakes the spirit of the school.

The challenge remains. How do we still strike a personal chord with each student without creating even more uniformity? How do we foster personal relationships?

Uninterrupted Classwide Conversations

10/13/2017

This year, we want to work on uninterrupted classwide conversations. This is something new that I've implemented as a part of our regular schedule. I've also asked our administrators to observe us when we conduct some of these conversations.

Students will be expected to follow the guidelines of our uninterrupted classwide conversations. They will:

take and give attention.
stand to speak during the conversation (Students do not raise their hands for permission to speak.)
yield the floor to another when they both stand to say something at the same time.
recognize others positively and building on previous comments.
disagree in an agreeable manner if applicable.
apply the school district's Core Behaviors when appropriate to the moment.

The teacher will initiate a conversation. This will involve one of the following:

a thoughtful quotation,
a spontaneous situation,
or an thought-provoking video.

This process, if explicitly taught and practiced, should support other areas (i.e., academic, social, emotional). I would like to increase stamina and decrease interruptions in these conversations as the year progresses. I also need to get more students involved in the conversations (as there are some who like to dominate).

As I have read the last chapters of Steve Wyborney's book, Writing on the Classroom Wall, I've also realized that I can apply some of his thoughts to student conversations. Wyborney finds value in giving the class the answer to a problem, removing that part of our expectations and placing more emphasis on process. In addition, Wyborney suggests offering problems with multiple solutions, broadening the conversation.

I hadn't designed our uninterrupted classwide conversations with Steve Wyborney's words in mind, but it has been nice to see that his book supports many of the things we do.

For more commentary about Writing on the Classroom Wall,
see my Professional Publications Commentary page.

Program Solos

10/12/2017

The Veterans Day program is less than a month away (Tuesday, November 7).

We will perform this program twice -
once in the daytime and once in the evening.

Eight students will have solo singing parts,
including these incredible Hoggatteers:
JOSIAH, CADENCE, and MACIE.

Classroom Wall: Thinking In View

10/11/2017

Writing is extraordinarily powerful!

Thank you, Mr. Wyborney. As a writer, I have long believed that the Writing Process is a bunch of made-up mess. Unlike math and science, there is no set process to writing. Writing is very much an art, and as such, it should be acceptable for writers to select their own processes.

I, too, believe there are some fundamental standards in writing as far as sentence construction and plot development are concerns, for example, but I would discourage efforts by instructors to provide too much guidance in the writing process. Wyborney describes the process by which he came to the conclusion that prewriting is overrated - or at least misapplied.

Unfortunately, as I guided my students through a detailed writing process, I often found that the funnel of creativity seemed to narrow. The open-ended power of prewriting seemed to cultivate curiosity and creativity, and then the rest of the writing process seemed to mow it down to an unwanted uniformity.

That phrase - "funnel of creativity" - resonates with me. Indeed, funneling creativity through smaller holes stifles it at exactly a time when it should be flourishing. As some point the prewriting must end. In fact, there are many times when I pass over any form of formal prewriting just to get something started.

"Prewriting," I realized, did not take place before writing. Prewriting was not preparing to write. Prewriting was actually writing. Initially, I thought the different forms of prewriting...all shared a common feature: the recording of thoughts...

Prewriting is something that I blend, in my own writing, into writing itself. Mr. Wyborney is quite eloquent in the presentation of his thoughts on the matter. Personally, I have never followed any three- or five-step process in my writing, choosing instead to blend the steps - somethings stopping to return to the beginning for editing and revising - made all the easier with the invention of the computer - sometimes stopping to think of options for the next portion of a story or the next chapter of a nonfiction manuscript.

As I continued to write and to work with students, I eventually realized that the act of writing involves a massive intrapersonal exchange of thinking. The refinement of thinking is spurred on by recording thoughts (in any form), and those recorded thoughts, which may come in micro-moments, continually fuel and inform the thinking.

Writing does not happen after thinking. Writing fuels thinking, accelerates thinking, generates thinking, is thinking, and leads to more and deeper thinking.

You said it!

Some of my best thinking occurs as I write, not before I write.

The next statement is true, as well:

No wonder I felt such a sense of dissatisfaction as I guided students toward mowed-down creativity that yielded highly similar products. I was failing to acknowledge an extraordinary process.

How many times have I advocated for just about anything besides viewing our students and teachers as products on an assembly line? Too many to count. Rather, I wish for my pupils to produce high-quality, creative, and one-of-a-kind products. Why must they all write the same three-point paragraph about a particular subject? Why can't they use their independent voices to present their latest tale?

For every student I squeeze (figuratively speaking), a different juice should drip out (Mayhaps that's not a great metaphor after all.). Actually, I don't have to change anything that Mr. Wyborney has already written when he says the following:

As a teacher, I find that there is an unusually strong temptation to try to "make meaning for the students" by talking. Yet when I compare any attempt to "make meaning for the students" to the power of student writing, I have a difficult time making sense of any approach in which I spend a majority of the lesson talking.

Once again, we tend to forget. In writing, I've struggled to develop what I know about other school subjects. In math, science, history, and reading, I keep asking my class to report about what they notice. I quickly also ask the class to identify what they wonder.

But when it comes to writing, we often have a different approach. We forget to ask students to notice and wonder, and we fail to engage and empower them to blaze their own trails.

I am learning to resist the temptation to make meaning for the students. I am learning to remove my voice from the conversation and to provide space for the students to be the makers of meaning.

Wyborney goes on to observe that writing can come in shorter bursts of reflection throughout the education process. While there's usually not enough time in the day to write about every little thing, we have tried to address some of those thoughts through our daily (ish) blogging. We take notes throughout the day to support students' blogging, and they always have something on their minds to share with the world.

May we continue to see the steps of the writing process, but may we also understand that writers must apply their own quirks, eccentricities, and idiosyncrasies, and habits to their art!

Professional Pet Peeve: Stop the Nonsense

10/10/2017

Even when I taught first grade, I never talked down to my students.

No fake voice.

No baby talk.

And no begging.

It wasn't something I learned how to do. I just did it. And I think it makes a difference for students who find respectful responses less intuitive.

Say what you mean and mean what you say. The video above addresses this concept.

It's a bit of a no nonsense approach.

I must admit, I still say please, but my voice indicates that my request for action from my students comes with a different tone. No lilt at the end. My please comes with more of a command than question.

I never ask someone, "Would you mind doing this?" A question like that makes it sound like the activity is optional. Keep it simple, I say. If what I want students to do is not optional, I need to make that clear. If what I want them to do is a required activity, I should not be using the word please. Again, please implies a choice.

While we endorse good manners and respect, there is definitely a difference between a request and a command. I often hear teachers deliver instructions as if they are begging for compliance. They speak to children is soft, lilting voices, pleading with them to please do the work. Please. And soon they find themselves in negotiations with backtalking students. They respond to a child who backtalks, rather than address the disrespectful backtalk.

They lower themselves to the level of backtalking the backtalker.

What kind of citizens are we producing?

I believe we do a disservice to children when we do not clearly communicate our expectations - with urgency when necessary, and with choices when possible.

Bluff Dwellers Cave: Into the Darkness

10/9/2017

Our last pictures were taken inside the cave at Bluff Dwellers.

Our group was on the look for the Cave Duck which has been sitting at the edge of his own duck pond for over 75 years.

More importantly, students were able to observe a couple of real, live cave salamanders lurking in the area. We were amazed at these colorful cave dwellers while other classes spotted bats.

Tour guides through the year have given many of the formations creative names based on what they look like - a fork, a cob of corn, okra, etc. Still more formations are known by their real speleological designations - cave bacon, drapery, popcorn, flowstone, coral, soda straws, rimstone, and of course, stalactites, stalagmites, and columns. Hoggatteers were looking for many of these, armed with the knowledge of what we have learned so far in our classroom about the formation of caverns.

At one point, we had to experience the cave with the lights turned off, and students got to see what pure darkness is really like. There's just something about darkness like this that shuts mouths, heightens auditory awareness, and feels heavy.

Our young tour guide did a wonderful job of presenting the cave to our class. Her voice was commanding, and her knowledge of Bluff Dwellers Cave was solid. We certainly appreciated her approach and her personality. In return, she candidly mentioned to me that our class was one of the best she has ever toured with. She acknowledged the students' manners, especially noting their respectful addressing her as ma'am and shaking her hand.

Bluff Dwellers Cave: Browning Museum

10/8/2017

The Browning Museum boasts an extensive mineral and rock collection that our students were able to enjoy and appreciate in Friday's field trip to Bluff Dwellers Cave. Kathleen Browning, daughter of the cave's discoverer Arthur Browning, purchased and collected the items in the museum (which is free to the public).

There are some large and beautiful specimens in the cases here, mostly locally mined. Students appeared to appreciate the collection, even taking the time to listen as one of the employees cranked up the Edison phonograph, hold a heavy cannon ball, and marvel at the old toilet seat. One student stood oh-faced in front of an antique device. "Oh, wow!" he exclaimed. "I always wanted to see a real typewriter!"

The arrow- and spearheads on the walls here were collected mostly from the property on the other side of the highway from the cave. Later, we would discover that our cave was visited often by the ancient, indigenous people in the area. These people left their calling cards in the cave in the form of a couple of grinding bowls (on display inside the cave).

Stay tuned for our cave interior photos (coming soon).

Bluff Dwellers Cave Field Trip: The Great Outdoors

10/7/2017

Friday brought the first off-campus experience for this year's Hoggatteers. We loaded the buses shortly after 8:30, bound for Bluff Dwellers Cave in Noel, Missouri. Students were very well behaved on the bus ride, remaining quiet and staying seated.

Once we arrived, everyone was extremely excited to get started. We had a short wait for our turn in the Browning Museum. The wait gave us the opportunity to spot all kinds of wildlife and evidence of wildlife on the property. Walking sticks, glow worms, frogs, lizards, snake skins, crinoid fossils, butterflies, ants, and chipmunks were among our findings.

After our museum visit, we also had some time to wait for our tour of the cave. Hoggatteers enjoyed their time in the outdoors.

After the tour, our group was more than a little bit hungry. We marched ourselves down the steep, rocky steps to find our lunches and drinks waiting for us. The other three classes were already finishing, and we had just a short time to swallow our food before loading the buses for our return trip.

Watch for more photos from our trip in the next few days.

Teacher Observers

10/6/2017

We saw some visitors in our classroom yesterday. Miss Wilson and Mr. Trueblood, our newest teachers in the fifth grade, came to our room to observe classroom management. Afterward, they stuck around to interact with students.

What did they see?

Room Arrangement: with the classroom computers in the fifth grade, arranging furniture can be a bit of a challenge. It will take some creative problem solving to make their rooms more flexible. Doing so will allow more movement to occur within the school day and can make student work and collaboration more visible.
Call-Backs: in our room, callbacks are a part of the lesson, they are positive, and they maintain student attention. We don't just have callbacks to get the class' attention when they become unruly. I address this (and other matters) in my book, There's No Busyness Like School Busyness.
Peer Support: when children get stuck during a lesson and struggle with a process, their peers genuinely encourage them to keep trying. Students, not the teacher, initiate the applause. Our visitors picked up on this right away.
Classroom Management: while I'm happy everything ran smoothly when Miss Wilson and Mr. Trueblood visited, that doesn't give them an example for dealing with more difficult situations. The truth is, most of my own management style is proactive. Our visitors recognized that the positive behaviors and procedures we demonstrated have been taught and practiced.
Uninterrupted Conversations: this is something I trying to implement and master, this year - a classwide conversation conducted completely by students (without the teacher inserting opinions or questions to drive things forward).

I need to follow up with these teachers to find out if they saw anything that disappointed them, if they saw something I can improve, or if they didn't see something they expected.

100 in 5

10/5/2017

As we progress through multiplication and prepare for working more complicated, multi-digit problems, we continue to test multiplication fluency. Our students are pressed to work 100 one-digit multiplication problems in 5 minutes. We wish for them to overlearn the facts in preparation of other Math applications that will also require the skill.

CADENCE is the first student to successfully complete all 100 problems in 5 minutes, proving her mastery three times to earn the title of Multiplication Master. A couple of others are right on her heals.

Our class still has a deficient average as a whole, but most members made improvements, last week, with some of those being significant gains. I'm not one who continues to push students at the beginning of the year until we move past the skill; instead, I like to move steadily throughout the year. I believe in doing so, the momentum continues and the skill sticks much more effectively. Parents who choose to help at home are certainly encouraged to do so.

Congratulations, CADENCE!

M4+h Le46Ue

10/4/2017

We have finally formed the 2018 Cecil Floyd Math League,
and four Hoggatteers made the team!

We want to congratulate RAHAF, CHRISTIAN, CADENCE, AND JORDAN.

This year's qualifying contest will be held at
Joplin's Thomas Jefferson Independent Day School, on January 20.

Core Behaviors

10/3/2017

Classroom Wall: Making Meaning

10/2/2017

Reading is thinking. Reading is about making meaning.

Sometimes educations tends to compartmentalize or departmentalize learning. For years we have followed a model that moves through periods of time where one subject is taught in isolation from others.

That system is not necessarily the most effective.

In The Writing on the Classroom Wall, Steve Wyborney touches on an idea in reading instruction that teachers would do well to consider - that reading does not always manifest itself during reading class. Reading shouldn't stop with the school bell.

When we read, we are doing so much more than just recognizing letter sounds.

...[Y]ou are the one interacting with the words and ideas, referencing them to your personal context and paradigms, and comparing them with many other factors. You are building layers of agreement (or disagreement), sensing possibilities, wondering what this might look like in your classroom...You are visualizing, interpreting, contemplating, and conducting myriad other acts associated with the wonder of reading.

Whew.

We have to recognize that there is more going on with reading than phonics and fluency. As such, it might just take a while before some of those skills kick in. We've all been there - at a time when we suddenly understand that joke, or we suddenly figure out how to work that equation, or we suddenly remember that dream. Wyborney ably explains:

Sometimes the power of reading is found in between these moments, when the student simply says, "hmmm..." and her eyes drift away from the text in deep thought about the ideas that are churning. Sometimes the power of reading is found the next day, or the next week, or even years later when she actually sees "two roads diverge" and wonders a little more deeply about the choices each one might lead to.

Now there's a connection that means something! It's not just words on the page of a teacher's book.

I have long realized that combining skills is a more efficient method of disseminating information. That's not to say that we sacrifice quality for quantity in our instruction; it is to say that when I can make connections between standards and problem solving, reading and science, history and math, it means something more to my students. When they can see the meaningful connections, they pay better attention and they retain the information better.

Anthem

The Hoggatteer Revolution
is an extensive,
award-winning, inimitable,
digital platform
for Encouraging
and Developing
the Arts and Sciences
in the beautiful, friendly
LAND OF THE FREE
AND THE HOME
OF THE BRAVE

This site is described as
"a fantastic site... chockablock full of interesting ideas,
hilarious anecdotes,
and useful resources."

...to like, bookmark, pin,
tweet, and share
about the site...
and check in regularly
for new material,
posted daily before
DAWN'S EARLY LIGHT!

History in Residence

Elementary Schools:
Bring Mr. Hoggatt
into your classroom
for a week
of engaging
and rigorous
history programming
with your students.

LEARN MORE

BUILDING BETTER
Bible Classes

Churches of Christ:
Plan for weekend sessions to train the congregation to become more engaged
teachers and students.

LEARN MORE

Intercom

GigSalad Member Since 2022

Book Mr. Hoggatt Securely
for Your Event
at GigSalad.com.

Follow @DEdHoggatt

Email Mr. Hoggatt

Trophy Case

Master Teacher, since 2021

Recruited Lincoln Presidential Foundation Curriculum Writer, 2022

Retiree, 32 years serving Joplin and Oklahoma City Schools, 2022

Selected Participant for 2020-2022

Selected Honoree/Celebrant, 2022

Outstanding Achievement, 2022

Ancestry Classroom Grant, 2018-2022

2021 Missouri History Teacher of the Year and National History Teacher of the Year Nominee

Recognized in Joplin Globe, February 2021

Teacher Institute Participant, 2019

Summer Residency Participant, 2018

"The Bus Stops Here" Grant, November 2018

Summer Residency, 2018

Recognized 2017

Since 2017

MSTA Media Award, KOAM-TV's "Manners Matter", Featuring Our Class, May 2017

Third Place, 2016 Film Festival

Recognized 2016

Slide Certified, 2012

2009 Outstanding Class Website

2005 Nominee

2005 Joplin Teacher of the Year and Missouri Teacher of the Year nominee

2004 Recipient

2002 Excellent Education Program

2001 Nominee

1996 Outstanding Classroom Video

Grant Recipient, 1993

Fireside Chats

Choose Your Platform:
Anchor
Apple Podcasts (iTunes)
Breaker
Google Podcasts
Overcast
Pocket Casts
RadioPublic
Spotify
Stitcher

Archives

September 2023
August 2023
July 2023
June 2023
May 2023
April 2023
March 2023
February 2023
January 2023
December 2022
November 2022
October 2022
September 2022
August 2022
July 2022
June 2022
May 2022
April 2022
March 2022
February 2022
January 2022
December 2021
November 2021
October 2021
September 2021
August 2021
July 2021
June 2021
May 2021
April 2021
March 2021
February 2021
January 2021
December 2020
November 2020
October 2020
September 2020
August 2020
July 2020
June 2020
May 2020
April 2020
March 2020
February 2020
January 2020
December 2019
November 2019
October 2019
September 2019
August 2019
July 2019
June 2019
May 2019
April 2019
March 2019
February 2019
January 2019
December 2018
November 2018
October 2018
September 2018
August 2018
July 2018
June 2018
May 2018
April 2018
March 2018
February 2018
January 2018
December 2017
November 2017
October 2017
September 2017
August 2017
July 2017
June 2017
May 2017
April 2017
March 2017
February 2017
January 2017
December 2016
November 2016
October 2016
September 2016
August 2016
July 2016
June 2016
May 2016
April 2016
March 2016
February 2016
January 2016
December 2015
November 2015
October 2015
September 2015
August 2015
July 2015
June 2015
May 2015
April 2015
March 2015
February 2015
January 2015
December 2014
November 2014
October 2014
September 2014
August 2014
July 2014
June 2014
May 2014
April 2014
March 2014
February 2014
January 2014
December 2013
November 2013
October 2013
September 2013
August 2013
July 2013
June 2013
May 2013
April 2013
March 2013
February 2013
January 2013
December 2012
November 2012

Checks & Balances

Links to external sites
on the internet are for convenience only.

No endorsement or approval of any content, products, or services is intended.

Opinions on sites are not necessarily shared
by Mr. Hoggatt
(In fact, sometimes
Mr. Hoggatt doesn't agree with anyone.)

Lobbyist