Lubbock, TX Conference

This weekend, I had the pleasure and honor of attending a WBT conference in Lubbock, Texas, taught by Farrah Shipley.  Farrah told us that Marva Collins once said, “I don’t teach at-risk children. I teach future productive members of society.” This inspired me to read a bit more about Ms. Collins. Ms. Collins also said that in teaching impoverished children, she had “discovered few learning disabled students in my three decades of teaching. I have, however, discovered many, many victims of teaching inabilities." This is something I realized about myself as a teacher this weekend.  It’s very difficult to admit to myself that I have not been the effective teacher I dreamed of being. I have worked hard and been dedicated, but I’ve been ignorant of Whole Brain Teaching theories and methods. I’ve been teaching to only a couple parts of the brain at a time and talking too much!  

Farrah did an awesome job of teaching us the five rules, mirrors, mirrors with words, the genius ladder, super improvers wall, class/yes, and teach/ok.  I have implemented these in my classroom, and my students love it! They are smiling, and so am I.
Farrah also taught us the seven levels of the scoreboard. I have a couple of students who will really benefit from the practice cards and the guff counter.  I plan to put the practice cards in place by Tuesday of this week to help my most challenging student remember and respect the rules, especially rule number 5. J

The focus of my reading lesson on Monday will be sequencing events in fiction. For the example portion of the lesson, I plan to project a paragraph and we will identify the sequence of events in the paragraph, first in a guided format, then independently.  I think the critical thinking portion is being able to find strong evidence in the paragraph to support their answers. I’ll go forward with this understanding for now.

Many, many thanks to Farrah Shipley for opening up her school, her classroom, and her heart to instruct us about Whole Brain Teaching.  Thank you, also, to my good friend, Penny, one of my teaching colleagues. Penny enthusiastically joined me on the long drive to Lubbock and has embraced WBT techniques in her classroom, too. Welcome aboard, Penny!