What's zup?

Like it's bad when a "tattoo is undulating" (as opposed to... "drawn in a wave like pattern on the skin"?), or when hair is "wet wheat from a late Summer field" (as opposed to "sort of brownish light yellow that dries lighter, but is not actual wheat stalks growing on someone's head but kind of reminiscent of the color and texture"?), or when when ice cream tastes like midnight at the fair" (as opposed to "ice cream flavour bringing back memories of undefined ice cream flavours that are individually popular but always tied to a memory of late evening at the fair ground and probably smelling vaguely like popcorn and sugar"?).

Meanwhile Ariel with legs;

Ariel already loved the human world long before meeting Eric (you don’t get a collection like hers overnight) and when she finally got a chance to explore it, she took it.

Ursula made it about Eric. She didn’t have to. Ariel had to get out from under Triton’s thumb, it could have been literally anything. Ursula took advantage of a desperate victim for her own agenda. Realistic predatory behavior toward a vulnerable person.

And also

There’s always the ‘Eric didn’t want her until she was silent and meek’ criticism - FIRST OF ALL he started out looking for a woman who wasn’t silent, and second of all what part of the carriage driving bit (or any of her other actions on land) is meek, exactly?

ooh, what a fun ask!! I’ve been teaching for about 10 years now. I do teach kids that are a bit older (middle school), but I imagine the stuff in this post goes for most people that work with kids of all ages!!

There’s this quote that informs SO much of my practice—

It’s so very important to be conscious of the classroom environment and tone you’re setting. Maybe this comes more naturally to early childhood educators because they usually spend the whole day with the same group of kiddos, but I teach ELA to ~120 kids over the course of a day and it can be very easy to get so caught up in WHAT you’re teaching that you lose sight of the bigger—and more important!—picture. I think when teachers are just starting out there’s a tendency to look outside of themselves for who/what to blame when there are problems but…we really have SO much power in simple things like our tone, our energy, our attitude. These things don’t SEEMS monumental but once you realize the power they have, it makes a HUGE difference.

Modeling is also so super important to do, especially for littles! Sure, I model academic skills as I teach them, but modeling social-emotional skills is also SUPER effective. For example, my first go-to if I hear an unkind exchange that doesn’t really need to be escalated to discipline (especially if a kid has demonstrated some SEL needs in the past) is to rephrase parts of the conversation in a more appropriate way. I don’t make a big deal out of it—sometimes it can even seem like I’m kidding around. My aim is two fold: show a better way to interact (kinder) AND demonstrating to other kids listening that, hey, we don’t say unkind things here but we also get easy chances to correct our behavior. I used to tend as a younger teacher to not correct kids publicly at ALL for fear of embarrassing them, but it is possible to correct without embarrassment if you have good relationships and avoid power struggle.

Last thing I’ll explain fully, because I think most else I have to say is probably more academic/content-area specific to ELA: It really is all about relationships. I get on SWIMMINGLY with kids who have discipline records because I go out of my way to make sure those kids know I’m on their side. If I’m correcting their behavior—in the subtle and I PROMISE kind way I do—the first time I see them upset about it or sometimes even if they’re NOT upset about it, I have a quiet conversation AFTER the fact (stop by their lunch table or casually in the hall…once everyone is cool-headed and de-escalated) explaining WHY—and usually that WHY is that I want to stop this now before it gets to a point where it has a negative impact on the student or others. I’m on their side. That’s the point of the conversation. (I teach with some realllllly grumpy teachers so there are lots of these conversations where I’m helping them manage other teachers expectations too… 🙃 but that’s a rant for another time.)

A few more little blurbs:

All behavior is communication.

Let upset kids de-escalate before talking through a situation—power struggles don’t help anyone.

Kids can’t learn (or can’t learn as effectively) if they are dysregulated (which can include physical and emotional things—hunger, sleep, fear, stress)

Kids need to be pushed just outside their comfort zone (zone of proximal development) to learn and grow. Push too far, and that’ll be cognitive overload and frustration.

The younger the kid, the more help with executive functioning skills they’ll need, so learning activities will be broken down into smaller chunks. Note, this is about breaking down the steps to get there, not about making the end goal easier. Students with different learning needs often have tasks broken down differently but are still held to grade-level skill mastery…they just had more scaffolds and support to get there! (Sometimes this is not true, of course. Modified courses do exist as well.)

Executive functioning must be taught like any other skillset. (My 6th graders have to be taught how to use a planner, for example.)

Has a fic ever absolutely devastated you to the point you can’t form a coherent thought? That’s okay! That’s where picture comments come in! Here’s how!

#Witchtober Day 3! See below for the speedpaint for this 🎃

Stay spooky!