Love & Logic

Happy Wednesday everyone! We get out an hour early on Wednesdays, so that made the day fly by! I wanted to write a post about a book I'm reading right now called Teaching with Love & Logic: Taking Control of the Classroom. Have you heard of it?

Written the year I started Kindergarten.
WHY AM I JUST NOW HEARING ABOUT THIS?

As I mentioned in my last post, I left the meeting with my principal and mentor teacher with a stack of books and this is the one I was told to start with! The ideas Fay and Funk describe are used by my mentor teacher and the principal and many other teachers at my school. The approach is basically what I believed already, just articulated much better than I ever could have!

The basic approach is not just to love your kids to pieces, but to make sure they know how much you love them. You can't withdraw from a bank account you don't make deposits in, and you can't make demands on someone you haven't built up. These children spend nearly half of their waking hours with us and I have so much influence on whether they have a good day or a bad day. I want to make sure they know without a doubt that they are loved.

One of my favorite teaching quotes-
and my attempt to make it pretty enough to be a printable!

One of my favorite strategies I've read about is giving children choices. Instead of just telling them what to do all day, you give them choices (make sure you're ok with either choice!) These can be little choices, like whether to start with math or reading, or as a form of discipline. I had the opportunity to do this today when the kids were reading their books silently around the room. Some kids were talking and I said in a friendly voice, "Hey boys, you have a choice. You can either read on the bean bags silently, or split up and go back to your desks to read. It's up to you." They chose to stay on the bean bags and stop talking. Such a little change from "Boys, you need to read silently", but it gives them the power! Love it!

Look how quiet and peaceful she is. Bet she doesn't need to be given choices...

That's just a little about that, but if you have some free time and are interested, I definitely recommend this book. For more info, here's their page. They have programs for teachers AND parents! I'm continuing to love my placement and am learning from a MASTER of teaching with love and logic. Things are looking up over here!!