Teaching Seasons

Teachers typically get observed by their supervisors once a year. It is their "grade" so to speak. My very first observation in Texas as a new teacher was whilst teaching a lesson on seasons. I had just moved down to El Paso from Minnesota and was teaching First Grade. My assistant principal sat quietly off to the side as I used some ancient technology to show different "seasonal" pictures to the class whilst students would call out the season shown. It was a review lesson and I felt my students knew their seasons well enough that we would all come out looking brilliant! We came to a picture showing white on both the trees and ground and my students called out "SUMMER!"

Arghhh! I was so frustrated thinking that we would need to start all over and get winter down. To me it was obvious: white in the trees and on the ground was snow! Later, as the two of us sat together critiquing the lesson, my supervisor gently told me that in the spring and summer, Texas has cotton in the fields and cotton coming out of the cottonwood pods. Texas doesn't have the same four seasons as in Minnesota. This taught me a valuable lesson, however, and I know now that when the weather conditions are just right, I have to "seize the moment" and get those seasonal reviews taught. Today was a perfect, stereotypical "fall" day and we all went outside as I tried to get the lesson reinforced before it changed and we were back to the heat of summer!

We took a walk around the school looking for and identifying signs of autumn. We saw leaves turning colors and some were falling to the ground. The weather was wet and windy. The birds were gathered around looking for food as they continued south. Perfect, right? Yes...

And then some eagle eye from our class spotted this in our parking lot...

The Bradford pear trees had green leaf buds and white flowers... NOT signs of autumn...

Arghhhhh!