Good fences make good neighbors, not good education.

A couple of months ago, the boyfriend brought home another dog. Though Edison, who we affectionately call "Eddy," was already 7 months old and mostly grown, he was the epitome of a new puppy. He ate everything, eatable or not. He woke me up at the crack of dawn nearly every morning by scratching whatever unfortunate part of me was sticking out of the covers. He wouldn't come in from the yard when it was raining until he was COMPLETELY covered in mud. No manners, no commands, no good.

Perhaps at first I was biased because I had raised Jasper and Helen from puppies. They know how to sit, lay down, and speak on command. They know what I mean when I say "Go to bed!" And they know how serious I am just by the tone of my voice. So needless to say, I had a hard time warming up to Eddy. By the time I did warm up to them though, I think he already knew that he wasn't my favorite. Whenever I was home alone, Eddy wouldn't come out and play in the living room with me and the other dogs. He laid in Michael's room until he got home. When Helen and Jasper cuddled up in bed with me, Eddy laid on the floor. It broke my heart that I had judged him so harshly and hadn't put the effort in but he seemed to have accepted it and just waited for Michael.

Last week, I was sitting at home alone catching up on Dr. Quinn. All of the dogs were in the fenced back yard. Just as Dr. Mike rushed off to rescue passengers injured in a train wreck, someone anxiously knocked on my door. A nervous man who I recognized as one of my neighbors all but shouted before the door was even completely opened: YOUR DOG GOT OUT! I asked him to describe the dog and knew immediately that it was Eddy. It seemed that he had found a way to jump the back fence and had landed in the apartment complex on the other side.

I grabbed the leash and followed the man to where he'd last seen Eddy and there he was: sitting, staring up at the fence, trying to figure out how to get back inside. He saw me and immediately hung his head in shame but I couldn't be angry. He was TRYING to get back to where he was supposed to be, he just needed help. I rubbed his ears, told him he was a good boy, and picked up all 50 pounds of him and carried him home.

Since then, Eddy has learned to sit and he doesn't jump on my head anymore when I bend over to pour food into his bowl. He follows me all over the house and lays at my feet in the bed now (much to Jasper's dismay.) So what made the difference? The only thing I can think of is that when Eddy was stuck on the outside of the fence I went after him. When I came to his rescue, maybe he realized that I do care, that my house is his home, and that he can be a part of what's going on inside the fence.

More than one of my wise professors has told me, "Kids don't care what you know, until they know how much you care." How many of our students today are just like Eddy? Sitting outside the fence, knowing that they need to be inside, they NEED an education, and wanting to be inside but not knowing how to get there? As teachers, it's our job to go after those students outside the fence. They need our guidance to help break down those fences that stand between them and their education: learning disabilities, lack of motivation, family responsibilities, sickness, worry, doubt, fear. They need our encouragement to know they can learn and succeed on the inside. And they need to know that they're not just another test score, IQ, or ID number; that they're cared about and they deserve an education as much as anyone else.

When I was student teaching, I taught a student named *Mark. When I met Mark, he was 15 years, 324 days old. Mark was only in school because the law said he had to be. I didn't know anything about him when I started teaching him, so I taught him the same as the rest of the students. I had the same high expectations and the same amount of respect. Though at first he was reluctant, he became really interested in Horticulture. He did well on his tests, answered questions and participated in class often. Even though it was first period, he rarely missed a day. When he DID miss a day, I always bugged him until he completed the makeup work. Though more than one teacher in the school had said that he was just biding his time until the day he could drop out, I was optimistic. What I didn't realize is that even though I had gone after Mark, everyone else had given up on him. He had been outside the fence for so long that no one else thought it was even remotely possible for him to make it inside the fence... and no one tried to find out.

The day that Mark turned 16, he came to my first period class, then he left the school and never returned. And I can't help but wonder, if more teachers had gone after him and would go after those like him, how might things have been different on both sides of the fence?

Apparently you are not supposed to use allergy eye drops with your contacts.

One of my dearest friends from undergrad is now teaching Ag in Eastern North Carolina. On Friday she sent me an email:

Apparently you are not supposed to use allergy eye drops with your
contacts.

Do you know what will happen?

It will dilate your eyes.

I did not wear my contacts today or yesterday because my eyes were
bothering me. allergies. So I got some allergy eye drops the Visine
kind.

Today before second period I went to put my contacts back in because my
eyes felt better.

My left contact went it good. My right one wanted to be a turd and it
had something on it when I put it in my eye and so it immediately had to
come out. I did not have my solution....but I did have some eye drops!
Same thing right? WRONG!!!!

Then the bell rang for second period and I was getting somethings ready for class when one of the kids was like "what's up with your eyes?!?" I was like "I don't know, what?" He was like "one of your eyes is bigger than the other." I freaked out but tried to play it off.

So needless to say I look like a freak. And I did some Googling and
found out that this has happened to other people who had the same
reaction as me. Freaking out.

When I finished laughing hysterically, I realized that this was a perfect example of a cardinal rule of teaching: ALWAYS BE PREPARED!

You never know when your contact will fall out, your pants will rip, or you'll have an unfortunate incident while mucking stalls out at the barn. So you have to be prepared: spare set of clothes, coveralls, glasses or more contacts, and the right kind of eye drops, just in case.

Walking the walk

I'm not sure what this says about my ability to relax on break but..

Just for fun, I'm reading a text book on classroom management The first chapter talks about identifying the cause of behavior problems and one of the potential causes is demands and prohibitions: your expectations.

One paragraph says:

"Sometimes teachers state one set of expectations verbally but in subtle ways convey a different set of expectation through their non verbal behavior."

Thinking back, I was terrible at this. I would set the expectation that students needed to raise their hands to speak, but then in class discussion, I would respond to students who didn't raise their hands. I would set the expectation that cell phone were NOT allowed but then give students several chances to put them away. During my whole student teaching experience, I saw cell phones every day, but never took a single one away.

Now I see that every time I changed the expectation, I just confused my students. They were never quite sure which rules I was enforcing, which ones I wasn't and which ones I thought were important. And I have no doubt that if I had tried to start enforcing some of those rules mid semester there would have been chaos!

When I set expectations for my students, I have to be sure to enforce them; the same way, every day. Students need consistency. They need to know what to expect. As a teacher, I have to walk the walk when managing my classroom so that my students have the best opportunity to learn.

--Kauffman, J. M., Mostert, M. P., & Trent, S. C. (2002). Identifying behavior problems. In D. P. Hallahan (Ed.), Managing classroom behavior: A reflective case-based approach (pp. 3-20). Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.