Adjusting to a New Teacher

Flickr Creative Commons Photo by Freefotouk

Our beloved Sunday water aerobics instructor was replaced recently. The class is having a hard time adjusting to the new instructor. She uses a different set of moves and it's hard to hear her instructions. She has dismissed one of my favorite moves, saying that it goes against the guidelines of <insert unknown acronym>.

I've been thinking a lot these past few weeks about what it's like for our students every fall as they adjust to new teachers and what we can do help them start thinking about what to expect and how to deal with the changes. Things we can do this spring while our students are still a part of our close-knit, safe and predictable classroom communities include:

• Talk about changes they've undergone in the past. List the positives of change along with the negatives. 

• Think about what they've learned from favorite teachers. Remind them that when you move from teacher to teacher, you carry them all with you -- you never really leave a favorite teacher behind.

We can encourage our students to

• Be patient. Give the new teacher a chance. 

• Be an independent learner. (For our children, this might mean reinforcing the importance of the learning they do on their own at home after school and on weekends and holidays. For me, it has meant abandoning the water aerobics class in favor of my own self-styled hour of water exercise. It feels good to swim laps again, and to decide for myself what arm, leg, and core exercises I'll do and for how long.)

In the fall...(I can't believe I just wrote that! We have only 6 days of school left before the much-needed summer break, and I'm thinking about next fall!!!)...In the fall, when I greet a new group of students, I'll try to be even more aware of the adjustments they are going through as we figure each other out. I'll try to remember to

• Ask for their input as we establish routines and norms and make the classroom ours. 

• Have them tell me the things they loved about teachers in the past...not that I could make any promises that I would be just like them, but so that we can explore my similarities and differences to their former teachers. 

• Be gentle as I guide them in their learning so that I don't completely contradict or disregard what another teacher taught them, but rather show them how learning is layered, and how the new learning they do with me will be added to, but will not replace their previous learning.

Poetry Friday -- Time Does Not Stand Still

TIME DOES NOT STAND STILL

It's been said before
(a million-million times)
but it bears repeating:
time is a river that does not
(cannot)
stand still and wait for me.

--I remember the exact moment I learned to float on my back in the cold blue water of the swimming pool. I lay there looking up at the cloudless sky, sun on my face, roar of water in my ears. Floating. I floated until someone came and stood me up and told me that swimming lessons were over.--

Today I will try floating
on the river of time
instead of thrashing my arms and legs against the never ending current,
instead of racing to beat it to some place where no finish line exists.


© Mary Lee Hahn, 2011




It's good to be back, after two weeks in Belgium. Simultaneously, it's hard to be back, after two weeks in Belgium.

It's impossible not to think about time when you're in a place where the 1800's are recent history. The image above is the remaining fragment of the original city wall of Brussels. The river of time has clearly moved on and stranded it there in the midst of modern life.

It's impossible not to think about time when the new school year wakes you up and leaves you sleepless in the cricket-dark of the early morning.

Karen is hosting today's Poetry Friday round up at Karen Edmisten: The Blog With The Shockingly Clever Title. (I love writing that!) Many thanks to Kate and Libby for rounding up my scheduled PF posts the past two weeks while I was away!

Poetry Friday -- Swimming

photo by gabyu

SWIMMING

First it's about the shock of the cold

and the strength of the first five laps.

Then, for the next howevermany laps,

it's about the rhythm

and the breathing

and the black line below me.

It's the rhythm

and the breathing

and the black line below me.

It's the cardinal outside my window this morning

and the things I need to do this weekend

and the things that didn't get done today.

It's the rhythm

and the breathing

and the black line below me.

It's the girl in the purple bikini in the lane next to me.

She swims so fast it seems like she's on top of the water

instead of in it,

like I am.

It's the rhythm

and the breathing

and the black line below me.

It's the smell of the chlorine

and the push off the wall.

And the rhythm

and the breathing

and the black line below me.

Finally it's about the deliciously hot water of the shower

and the sting of the cold air on my damp head.

It's about

the drive home and

the late dinner and

the falling asleep.

©Mary Lee Hahn, 2010

This is a poem about what it's like to swim laps. While it might look tedious from the deck (back and forth, back and forth), there's actually a lot going on inside my head while I swim. Besides working to keep track of my lap count, I think about my day, plan what needs to get done tomorrow, and make up stories about the swimmers around me. The counting keeps me focused, though, and makes my swim a 30 or 40 minute meditation. And no matter what else my mind is doing, the swim is always about the rhythm and the breathing and the black line below me.

Anastasia has the Poetry Friday round up today at Picture Book of the Day.

As you can see in the sidebar, we only have a month of hosts left for the Poetry Friday round up. If you'd like to host, pick a Friday in March, April, May, June or July (except July 16 -- I'm taking that one) and leave a message in the comments or send an email to me at mlhahn AT earthlink DOT net.

Open Water Swimming

GRAYSON
by Lynne Cox, author of SWIMMING TO ANTARCTICA

There will be no competitive open water swim for me this summer. Reading GRAYSON will have to do. And it will do just fine.

In this slim book, Cox tells the story of an early morning (before sunrise) training swim in the ocean off Seal Beach, California in March (55 degree water) of the year she was 17. She had already swum the English Channel twice, and the Catalina Channel once.

As the sun rose during this swim, Cox suddenly became aware of a huge presence swimming near her. She was afraid it was a shark, but it turned out to be an 18-foot baby grey whale. Because it was swimming with her, she could not swim to shore -- it would beach itself and die. So, in spite of the voices inside her head that doubted the choice, and following the voices inside her heart that felt a compassionate connection to the baby whale, Cox stayed in the water for several more hours, swimming from a pier to an oil rig and back to the pier LOOKING FOR THE MOTHER WHALE! She had the help of a lifeguard boat, several fishing boats, and a small crowd on the pier, but she was the one who stayed in the water with the baby until he was reunited with his mother.

The book is a lyrical description of the intimate connection of a swimmer to the ocean, the tides, the currents, and all of the living creatures of the ocean, both beautiful (dolphins) and frighteningly beautiful (rays and purple jellyfish). It's also the story of the power of positive thinking, and mind over matter. Everything you ever needed to know about taking risks, pursuing goals, and overcoming doubts, you can learn from Lynne Cox in this book. Here is my favorite passage:

"The answer came to me. Wait as long as you need to. The waiting is as important as the doing: its the time you spend training and the rest in between; it's painting the subject and the space in between; it's the reading and the thinking about what you've read; it's the written words, what is said, what is left unsaid, the space between the thoughts on the page, that makes the story, and it's the space between the notes, the intervals between fast and slow, that makes the music. It's the love of being together, the spacing, the tension of being apart, that brings you back together. Just wait, just be patient, he will return."