By Laural Huber
White’s Tower Elementary
I am one of the lucky ones who’s always known I was meant to be an educator. As the daughter of a teacher, I thought it was completely normal to have a full-size chalkboard, mismatched desks, and a closet full of school supplies in our basement. When neighborhood friends came over, they just knew I got to be the teacher whenever we played school because I needed to practice for my future job.
The ‘farmer’ teaching math.
Fast forward to the fall of 2016. I had literally been teaching for less than a month when the opportunity to attend a training at The Ron Clark Academy fell into my lap. If you’re not already familiar with Ron Clark, he is a true idol in the field of education. He is a bestselling author and opened his own school in inner-city Atlanta where his expectations are high, but the students’ engagement levels are even higher.
While walking through the halls, I noticed many teachers had an obvious theme in their lessons. Seeing teachers dressed up in costumes certainly piqued my interest and the interest of the students. While reflecting on all the different themes and exciting lessons I observed, I reached a déjà vu type feeling. I was reminded of the ways my own mom would transform her classroom into a bakery to teach her students about measurement and fractions. By her example, I realized learning can happen in other ways than using textbooks and worksheets.
Just this morning, I was walking around my classroom passing out “math manipulatives”, also known as Skittles. I was going through my directions spiel, explaining how these Skittles were going to be used to model multiplying fractions when a student blurted out something that grabbed my attention.
“Wow, what a TOTAL Ms. Huber move,” he called out to the class, smiling.
Confused, I asked what he meant by that.
“You always find ways for us to do math with the most random things and trick us into learning!!!”
Compliment accepted.
The waitress in the Bill of Rights cafe.
The best piece of teaching advice my mom has given me is to always make learning fun. Admittedly, I seek resources from Pinterest and teaching blogs to gather ideas of how to make topics like least common multiples and The Proclamation of 1763 more exciting. A popular trend in the current education world is to “set the stage to engage”. This phrase can be seen trending as a hashtag on Instagram and Twitter where teachers share photos of their classrooms transformed into restaurants to teach a lesson about adding decimal places or an operating room prepped for text feature surgery.
Inspired by my own mom and many teachers across the country, I have done various classroom transformations. Each time I “set the stage to engage,” I marvel at the way even my most reluctant learners completely buy-in to the lesson. I consider the little bit of extra planning time it takes to engage my students to be an investment with a rewarding payoff. For me, the payoff happens when students are so into the lesson, no one asks to use the restroom or leave to get a drink. Or when they ask if they can play a newly introduced Math game during indoor recess. The sweetest of all is when students ask if they stay in my class longer than the already lengthy 90-minute blocks.
I feel fortunate to begin my teaching career when fostering student engagement is supported and encouraged. I hope this concept of making learning fun will stick around and be a staple in every teacher’s toolbox.
Lauren Huber is a fifth grade teacher at White’s Tower Elementary in Kenton County. She loves making school a fun place to be for all students. When not in the classroom, she loves traveling, crafting and cooking.
Getting Mom engaged, too– reading to students.
