4/4/23: What’s Our End Goal?

Here’s to another fantastic week of touching hearts and changing lives!

​But First, A Chuckle!

What do you say when your English teacher is crying?

"There, their, they're."
😂

Helpful Stuff

How many of us have had students that constantly say: "I hate reading".

I’ve always felt that the students are not necessarily lying but that they truly do believe that they hate reading.

It could’ve come from a negative experience with a teacher or a student in English class —either way the result is that these students feel that they don’t enjoy reading.

Thankfully a reliable remedy that I found throughout the years is piquing their interest with first few lines of books.

This is how it goes:

I collect a stack of books from my personal library in my classroom.

This is a wonderfully eclectic collection of books I’ve collected from donations, Goodwill (usually for a dollar!), and yard sales.

I physically gather as many books as there are students and I simply stand in the in front of everyone and get their attention.

I then read the “hook“ that is in the first line of the book in my best movie-trailer-announcer-voice to really draw in the students.

This works fantastically for fiction books, specifically YA novels, because the authors are experts at gripping their attention from the first line.

For non-fiction, it really helps to ask intriguing questions about the book’s subject.

For example, I have non-fiction, biographical and autobiographical books about the inspirational and motivational life of superstar Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.

The following links are affiliate links for Amazon meaning that we may get a % of the sale price but it does not affect the price YOU pay at all :).

Here is a version for younger children: All About Dwayne Johnson: Dwayne Johnson Biography Children's Book for Kids by All About Books that even includes coloring pages!






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And for older kids there are these 2 *fantastic* books:

Dwayne Johnson (Star Biographies) by Abdo Kenny 

and Who Is Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson?
by James Buckley Jr. (Author), Who HQ (Author), Gregory Copeland (Illustrator)

Helpful tip: if you know multiple kiddos will want the same book, I would recommend having a few copies.

Recommendations

Let’s take a moment to ask ourselves what are we really after?

For example, I really wanted the sound of flowing water in my classroom but I wasn’t crazy about the idea of having a desktop water fountain to provide the soothing sounds of flowing and bubbling water.

I soon settled for something that got me my end goal without having all the hassle and responsibility of cleaning and maintaining a water fountain: I simply bought a, album in MP3 format that I play on loop on my classroom computer!

So I get the end result that I was looking for, wonderfully calming sounds of flowing water, without the additional responsibility and hassle of having one more thing on my to-do list which is cleaning and maintaining a desktop water fountain.

I tried the YouTube videos playing in the background, but there is nothing more jarring and jolting than having soothing water sounds at a high volume only to be interrupted by a much louder mid-video ad!

Here is a link to the album that I purchased entitled “Bamboo Water Fountain Sounds” on Amazon Music.

I would like for all of you to join me in asking ourselves:

“What is my end goal and how can I achieve the same result with perhaps a smarter and more efficient plan?”

A Little Inspiration

There’s a great story I’ve heard in many different places and it basically goes like this:

One morning, there’s an old man going for his morning walk along the beach.

Off in the distance, he could see a small boy approaching him.

As the old man gets closer, he notices the young boy is repeatedly picking something up and throwing it into the water.

When the old man is finally able to see what the boy is doing, he discovers the young boy is throwing starfish back into the water.

The man asks him what he’s doing and the young boy says, “I have to throw the starfish back into the water because the tide washes them up to the beach and they can’t return to the sea by themselves. And when the sun gets high, they’ll die and that’s why I’m saving them by putting them back in the water.”

The old man says, “But there must be tens of thousands of starfish on this beach— you won’t really be able to make much of a difference, will you?”

The boy bent down, picked up another starfish and threw it as far as he could into the water.

He then turned around smiling at the old man and replied, “Yes, but it made a difference to that one!“

As always, please forward this to any teacher that could benefit from this message and help spread the love!

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Keep changing the world,

Charlie with Shining Scholar Education

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​And for our more mature teens this realistic biography is great: Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson: The People's Champion - From WWE to Hollywood by James Romero
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