I'm not lost- I'm on an adventure!: November 2015

If you are a teacher or have children you know that report cards have changed A LOT since we went to school. My report cards looked like this: B,B, A, C, B. Robyn talks too much. My sister has a copy of my mom's 4th grade report card and it's very similar- check marks in the grade boxes and something like "Pam has nice handwriting."

Nowadays, and especially at our school, report cards are a NIGHTMARE! They literally take an hour or more per student to do. All the teachers are cranky and sleep deprived when they are due. Then we have to peer edit them, make changes, send to leadership to edit, and then make final changes. It's a process. Here's a sample (not a real student but a Frankenstein bogus report card that looks just like the real thing): FYI, our grading scale is E: exemplifies C: competent D: developing B: beginning

Sally Super Student
Literacy Read: C Writ: C Com: C	Sally has been working on using the writing process to complete her writing assignments this term. She consistently uses an appropriate writing structure to develop a personal narrative, and is working on developing her sentences from simple sentences to compound sentences. Looking through her journal, Sally demonstrates a good understanding of the concepts we have been learning, however does not consistently apply these concepts to her writing. I encourage her to work on reviewing her sentences during the revising process specifically to add detail and changes in order to apply some of the skills she has learned. Sally is using her comprehension skills to ask questions and make connections about the world around her to complete her research reports. Sally is able to read information independently to find answers from a text, and present the information she has found from her reading. Sally frequently participates in constructive communication. Good effort Sally!
Math DH: C N: C	Sally shows a competent understanding of the concepts covered thus far. She frequently shows understanding of place value up to 100 as evidenced by her math journal work and through conversations where I have asked her to explain her thinking. Sally is capable of telling time to the hour and half hour and can match the analog time with the digital time. She enjoys completing hands on activities to show her understanding. Sally has shown good, steady progress this term and I hope that the excited mathematician inside her continues her hard work.
Unit of Inquiry 1 C	During the unit, Who We Are, Sally learned how citizens build communities. She has a firm understanding of how citizens build communities. She is able to explain the characteristics of a strong community and the impact of choices on a community. She shows appropriate responsibilities as a citizen of our community. Sally completed an excellent family community iMovie project which highlighted her responsibilities in her family community. I encourage Sally to model her understanding of how choices affect a community by consistently setting a good example for her peers.
Unit of Inquiry 2 C	In our current unit, Where We Are in Place and Time, Sally is learning that change over time impacts relationships. She is able to explain how our world is interconnected and completed an interesting research project on trade and how it connects our world. She is able to explain that Kuwait needs products from other countries in exchange for resources that Kuwait has. Sally is able to explain how different things around us change, and demonstrated this knowledge through her personal timeline project, which highlighted the ways in which she has changed since she was born. I encourage Sally to work on applying her literacy skills to her unit of inquiry to help her communicate her ideas clearly and concisely.
Learner Profile	Sally is exhibiting the traits of a PYP learner. She is caring, empathetic, compassionate, and shows respect towards the needs and feelings of people around her. She is open-minded, understanding and appreciative of everyone’s culture and perspective. She shows cooperation and being respectful while working together. She has a very positive attitude and usually excited about the projects we are working on and is eager to participate. Sally is often knowledgeable and understands things in the world. She reliably listens to the instructions and understands the directions for projects. She asks basic questions and is able to use research skills to find answers to her own questions. She demonstrates self-management skills and completes work in an organized and timely manner. I am so glad to have Sally in our class!

There are additional comments from the music, P.E., Arabic, and religion teachers. x 22 students. Also, this document is just what we use to write and edit it. It goes into a different formate for the parents.

After we FINALLY finish reports they are sent to the parents and we have three way conferences for two nights (5:30-8:30) but then we get Thursday off (yea!) which also happens to be Thanksgiving so that's nice. Three way conferences are also not like the conferences we had growing up, and I'm pretty sure they're not like what most conferences look like in most schools today either. Three way conferences involve the student, the parents, and the teacher.

Last year we had three way conferences but they weren't really explained to us, or at least not to me. It ended up being that the students came, sometimes, and they would just sit there while the parents and I talked about everything I already said in the report card. With the exception of the last conference of the year. That one is totally student led and I didn't have to do anything.

This year we had a professional development on what an IB three way conference SHOULD look like. This was met the way I meet a lot of new things. A few minutes of "You want us to do what?! That's not what I did last year!" Followed by a slow acceptance and ok, how do we do this? Ending with, "I'm so glad we did it that way- that was AWESOME!"

With an IB school the students are supposed to be more involved in their learning process. Three way conferences are meant to be more collaborative between the students, parents, and teachers. We spent the days leading up to the conferences reflecting on our work and class behavior. Kira, our amazing team lead, found these awesome reflection papers that I used. They did an awesome job reflecting. Here is what one of the final pages looked like:

At conferences I had the students read what they wrote to their parents and then we made a three way goal sheet. My students know all about goals because we talk about them in class. The three way goal sheet has goals for the student from the student, parents, and teacher.

I started with the student and let them say what goals they thought they should work on. Then I let the parents talk about the goals they thought their child should work on. Then I added mine. BTW- I put play as one of the goals for ALL my students. The goal sheet looks like this:

I LOVED having conferences this way. The students are more invested in their learning. They had great insight and were very thoughtful and honest about what they need to work on. They didn't just sit there and listen to adults talk about them, the adults talked TO them the whole time.

One last interesting thing from conferences. One of my students had been out of school for a couple of days because his sister has H1N1 (we have a few cases going around school-- but that's another story that I'm not getting into) He was basically quarantined so he and his mom couldn't really come to conferences. His mom emailed me and asked if I could call her and we could do it over the phone so we did. She put me on speaker and we did it exactly the same way. The student was very much involved even when it was a conference call. I thought that was pretty awesome too. :)

Now.... to get ready for some turkey and stuffing!!

Last weekend I went to the UAE (United Arab Emirates) for a singles conference with my church. I'm a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and we do this kind of thing all the time.

I know, I know, it SOUNDS awesome but..... I have mixed feelings about these conferences. To be honest, I do usually enjoy them. There are usually pretty fun activities, you meet new people who are having very similar experiences to you, and it's pretty much always a spiritually uplifting event. The downside is I am pretty much always reminded how A) old I am to still be single in this church, B) just how very few active LDS guys there are, and C) there are SO many beautiful and amazing single LDS women out there I don't stand a chance. I mean-- have you met Filipino women??! and this conference was about 50% Filipino women.

Meeting a guy to date is always a hope- let's be honest- but it certainly wasn't an expectation on this trip. I've been to too many of these. I went so I could actually visit the UAE, see just who are the single LDS people in the region, and to be spiritually uplifted. The conference was great and it did just that. The timing was good too. I really needed a spiritual boost and distraction last weekend for several reasons. With other announcements and things going on... it was a good place to be I think.

I arrived late because I had to work on Thursday. I missed all the dancing and socializing that happened Thursday evening. I stayed with this really nice family from Rexburg, Idaho- which is just down the road from where I grew up. They have triplet daughters who are seniors in high school and the husband works for Exxon. They were all very nice. A very lovely girl from England also stayed there with me. She teaches in Oman. We totally hung out together for the whole conference. It was very nice to have a friend to go to in a crowd of people you don't know.

There were about 130 singles that attended from all over the region. It was so cool to see so many different people from so many places come together. We are all so different and yet all so much the same. One speaker asked people to stand up for the continent they are from when he called them. We had people from EVERY continent (excluding Antartica for obvious reasons). There was as guy from Iraq- not an expat, but an Iraqi- a Syrian man, a few people from Jordan, and literally people from Europe, Asia, Australia/Oceania, Africa, North America and South America. It was really neat.

We had some great talks and workshops at the church in Abu Dhabi and then we went into the desert to have a literal fireside. For those of you that don't know, fireside chats is the term used to describe a series of 30 evening radio addresses given by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt between 1933 and 1944. Our church still uses the term for basically an evening spiritual talk. It was really nice out there and Elder Price gave a great talk about burying our own weapons of rebellion like the Anti-Nephi-Lehies did.

The next day we headed to Dubai to the UN warehouse... or something like that... where we assembled 8,495 hygiene kits. The kits were handed out with food at Gurunanak Darbar Jebel Ali Gardens as part of the Diwali celebrations this weekend. It was organized by the Gurunanak Darbar Sikh Temple and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in memory of Dr. Robert Bateman, President of the Abu Dhabi Stake of the church. It was something Pres. Bateman was working on before he passed away suddenly a few weeks ago. It was a really nice weekend. Here's a link to an article about it.

I didn't take a lot of pictures and I may have stolen one from someone on Facebook... but here is what I've got.