Teaching Through The Arts

The basis of what Keith and I teach in our classes is for educators to provide a safe environment for students. This "safe container" includes emotional as well as physical aspects and pays huge dividends in better attitudes towards each other, the teacher, and the school in general. This translates into increased opportunities to learn. Check out this video from Edutopia about Jefferson County, Kentucky's Caring for Kids Initiative which seeks to"build positive, caring, learning communities," and you may learn some interesting concepts around safe classrooms. Security monitor Richard Little says that when kids come in with a smile and leave with a smile his job is done. What a wonderful thought. Principal Alicia Averette says that activities and games around social and emotional learning do not necessarily cut into instructional time (a comment we hear quite a bit), instead they cut down on having to take time to settle conflicts during instructional time, ...

I came across this post on byrdseed.com and thought it might be useful to those of us who are looking for new and interesting ways to get our students to interact with books. Take a look, you never know when you are going to find that gem that hooks a student in and ignites her curiousity and creativity! The following is a guest post written by Erika Saunders. Visit her blog or follow her on Twitter @rozelialives. Interested in writing a guest post? Send me an email at ian@byrdseed.com! I’d love to set something up! I have never been a fan of the “Book Report”, the traditional listing of characters, settings, and plots. Surely there’s a better way to have students relate to the books they read. So, when the powers-that-be requested that our students write book reports, I just had to jump in – or rather, I was volunteered. In any event, there I was convinced that therewas something better, another way that would be interesting to 6ththrough 8th graders. And so I began ...