2. Share 3 exact quotes that are meaningful to you, and explain why they matter to you.



"A wise teracher understands that virtually everything in the classroom will work better if it "belongs to us" rather than "belonging to me." This was a concept that is relatively new to me. I remember sitting in classrooms and knowing that it was the teachers class, I had very few classes where I felt I had an input on anything. I excelled in the classes where students were responsible for their work and I believe I came away with much more than just being able to follow directions. I want my classroom to be a place where students can feel they can ask questions, make comments and express themselves. I want them to learn to be responsible, capable young people. I think that if I can relax enought to hand things over to the students that I might not otherwise hand over, and if I can accept their efforts as being good enough, even if it's not how I would do it, then I will help my students succeed in that goal.



"Although teacher's role bears some of the hallmarks of the counselor, parent, coach, social worker, and so on, those are not the teacher's central role. It is the mandate of the teacher to teach." I think that it is sometimes easy to want to extend our role as teacher into more of a parent, or counselor, but our main concern should be teaching. I have the tendency to want to sit down and get to know people. I want to have a strong relationship with that person and feel the need to "fix" their problems. I know this is something I will have to work on as a teacher, because I can't allow myself to focus on fixing students problems.



"Demanding curriculum and instruction also means the teacher ensures that every student develops the habits of mind and attitudes, or metaskills, necessary for success in school and in life." This is how we help students achieve in life! When students learn the value of hard work and perserverence they become strong, independent, thoughtful, problem solving people. They can face a challenge, overcome that challenge and learn to enjoy not only the success, but the challenge itself. My main concern, and therefore goal, is that students can transfer what they learn in "our" classroom into their lives. Students need to know that everything they are learning in our classroom is applicable to their lives outside the class. I plan to do this by helping sdtudents to think critically about what they are learning and how it might be useful in other areas of their schooling or life. One of my favorite ideas is bringing in a guest speaker who will help students see the connection between a content area, such as math or science, into a career choice that they might not otherwise expect a connection to be made.

Reflect on what you learned about creating community in your classroom from our visitor, Sylvia Allan.

Morning Meetings build community by giving students the opportunities to get to know each other and build relationships. They learn things about their peers that might not ever have known and are able to make connections with each other. It creates and builds students that care about themselves and others. They begin to share each others happinesses, sadness, success and failures. They learn to empathize. They learn skills like meeting and greeting new people, sharing, communicating, working together to achieve a common goal and they have Fun together! Loved the class! It was great to learn more about how implementing morning meeting can transform a classroom into a safe and exciting place to be. Thank you for putting so much effort into getting a presenter into the classroom to teach us more about how to implement morning meetings. I learned a lot and had fun.

2a. What does the following phrase mean, and what you think about it? “…emotions trump learning.”

I'm reminded of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. We cannot learn and participate in the classroom until we feel safe and our emotional and physical needs are met first. I love the quote that says "They don't care how much you know, until you show them how much you care." I believe that students need to feel validated and emotionally excepted in your classroom before they can open their minds to learning. It means that we should take care of our students emotional needs before we worry about teaching them the curriculum.