TED Talks--love them!  Was listening to ​Linda Cliatt-Wayman (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe2nlti47kA) and her slogan of "So What...Now What..." has stuck with me.  

So what, now what.  Hummm.  How many times do I make excuses, really ligament excuses, as to why this or that can't be changed, helped, turned around, etc.?  Rhetorical question, but if someone were secretly counting I am sure to be well into the tens of thousands.  Everything from little daily decisions, like my scale says I am a bit too chunky these days but...I am now over 50....I will eat better tomorrow...I look just like my mom...I am sure it is the medicine.... To much more influential decisions like as to why not all children in my classroom were prepared for the next step...cause there are just too many to help... I am doing the best that I can... if they would just come knowing....  Embarrassed, but fully admit that I have said all of these things...and more.

So what...they are coming to me with these needs...Now what am I going to do about it?  Thankfully education is moving from I to we.  I can not meet the needs of 20+ children effectively, but as a team we can.  Together we can fill learning gaps, together we can meet social/emotional needs, together we can be there for each other.  So what...now what.  Together, we can and will.

I need to apologize to many of my students.  I taught them to memorize their multiplications facts, which is not a bad thing.  We sang songs, we chanted them, we took 5 min. timings over them, we even celebrated with a banana split! What I did fail to do was to teach them the whys behind what they were memorizing.  I failed to help them discover the patterns the numbers make.  I failed to help them take a quantity of items and break them into equal groups or how to use equal groups to quickly find the quantity.   Yes, yes, and super yes, I taught them the process.  We made sure each column was perfectly aligned, where to put the number to be carried, how to write the answer and how to skip two lines between each problem.  When we divided, it was the same process.  All lines nice and neat, each number in it's place and a place for each number.  I taught the process well...but I failed to teach them the why, I failed to help them discover how numbers work.  Part of me hates to put this out in public, but oh well, here it goes.  Part of the reason I failed to teach them is because I didn't have a grasp of what was happening either!  I knew the process, retaught the process, but not  the whys.  I didn't understand, I didn't know the importance of the why and so I didn't help students discover them in my classroom.

Yes, they all survived, just like I did.  Most grew up and found gainful employment even without me teaching them the why.  But, now that I know better, I can and will do better. Ensuring that each student at Hawthorne Elementary has a number sense foundation to build on is my new passion.