Goal 6 – “Inviting Them In” – but not through the window!

When I began thinking about the topic of Goal no. 6 “Invite them in” last night, the LAST person I imagined I would desperately be trying to get into my classroom this morning was the janitor! And he certainly wasn’t included in the list of people to invite in on this challenge!

As I have posted about previously, getting the janitor at our school to fix something in a classroom is a MAJOR production. This morning an exuberant 19-year-old (whom I say is 19 going on 9 years old…) banged on the window to scare a cat away who was trying to get in. She broke the window!!! We’ll see what happens first – I finish these 30 challenges or the window gets taken care of!!

Anyway, “inviting them in” is a real challenge for me. I enjoy a huge degree of autonomy as a teacher, more than the average Israeli teacher and much more than what I read of the American teachers. I have a department principal and a school principal but they are totally uninterested in any pedagogical decisions, they are all left to my discretion. I have the national finals “to answer to” , general school rules and that’s about it. I’ve had students teachers observe my lessons but have NEVER, in my 25 years of teaching, had any supervisor watch a lesson.

I began the YALP project (posts about that on the blog!) this year in order to enlarge pupils vocabulary. It has actually led to “inviting others in” in a manner I hadn’t experienced before. I began collaborating with the speech therapists for the project. Then I heard that the sign-language teacher had a problem with hours that were cancelled and invited her to join me for the YALP project. That led to adding options for the students working on the poem “The Road Not Taken” – she is teaching some of them to sign it in Israeli Sign Language and others in American Sign Language. The poetry project also led me to talk with the teachers who teach Hebrew lit. for advice about teaching poetry (I was having trouble with the difference between similes and metaphors myself, so I couldn’t explain it well!).

While most teachers do not physically come down to our ground floor classroom, there are more teachers involved in what we are doing this year than ever before!

Now I just hope that nothing will enter the classroom through the big hole in the window…

4 thoughts on “Goal 6 – “Inviting Them In” – but not through the window!”

  1. I don’t know what makes me smile more the puffin? (I think that’s what you call your avatar) or this story. I think the collaboration you talk about is amazing! Had a ground floor class once as well and you’re right nobody visited unless scheduled. I hope nothing scary or ooey enters your room. Keep up the incredible job you are doing!

  2. Thanks for your support!
    Puffins are special, they can fly AND swim and are so colorful! Also, I SAW this one, almost eyeball to eyeball!

  3. That’s where this picture is from! We visited Skellig Michael Island in Ireland this summer. I was terribly seasick on the way over, but was rewarded with seeing these guys up close!

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