Lessons Learned

7th Grade Reliability

2011-10-24T21:10:00.000-07:00

Want to get a 7th grader's attention? Tell them Google doesn't speak English. That's what we talked about all of last week, which seemed to work pretty well. At least, when my Monday class came in today, they could all tell me what language Google spoke (keywords). Today, we took the foundation of choosing relevant keywords to search for topics and applied it to looking at the websites that are on the resulting search list.

Despite some pretty non-fantastic behavior by a few of the classes, they actually seemed to think through the concept of trustworthiness of a source pretty well (a lesson previous generations never really had to learn). After a discussion of the types of domains that exist, key things to look for on a website, and not to believe everything just because it's online, I sent them off to find reliable sources on some fairly opinionated topics.

It took me forever to find things to have them search for to examine reliability. The reason for this is that when I considered how I find reliable websites, I realized that I based my decisions on the source that I am looking at. That's great if you know that the Huffington Post or The Guardian are news organizations or that about.com is not a particularly great source. Most of the websites that they would be looking at, they have no way to know if it's true or not, just based on lack of life experience. And, I can't just give them a list and say, here, memorize it, which would be totally ineffective. I can't even tell them things like don't trust blogs (nytimes.com has tons of news blogs) or don't trust wikis (Wikipedia is more trustworthy than print encyclopedias).

So, I spent AGES looking for topics to search for that would have some reliable sources and some not so reliable that the kids might be mildly interested in. What I eventually ended up going with were these questions (they had to be in question form so kids had to choose keywords), "Why is there a drug war in Mexico?" and, "Is the president doing a good job?" This brought a variety of types of sources, including opinions, answer sources, news coverage, junk, and more.

Then, I walked around and asked everyone whether or not the website they were looking at was reliable and how they knew it was. Apparently this was a good line of questioning, because it was pretty clear who knew whether or not it was a reliable source. Some of the reasons given for something to be reliable:

-It uses lots of references to outside sources (Wikipedia)
-It has a lot of news information and covers things from all over the world (Washington Post)
-The author is an expert because she has been interviewed by major non-profit organizations (National Geographic)
-The author is listed as a professor/Dr. in a related area of study
-It is described as an encyclopedia (Wikipedia)
-I recognize the news source (CNN, CBS, etc.)
-"Times"/"Post" labels tell me it's a news organization (LA Times, Huffington Post)
and my favorite reason:
-My mom uses this to look things up (Wikipedia).
I told her this was a good reason, because if you don't know whether to trust something, ask someone you trust if they trust it. Not always a guarantee, but a good starting point.

I also had one particularly perceptive student ask whether or not Facebook was a reliable source, so we spent some time discussing how it is a great source if you are looking for an opinion poll of a bunch of people, or if you want opinion quotes from normal people for some sort of article, but that you wouldn't want to use it as a hard source for an academic report of any sort. We also spent some time talking about whether or not it's good to use a manufacturer website as a source (yes if you want facts about the product, no if you want unbiased descriptions/opinions/reviews, etc.)

So, lots of interesting discussion. I'm excited to see if the rest of this week's 7th graders keep up the good work!

Things I've Learned Teaching Technology

2011-10-10T15:18:00.000-07:00

While teaching technology is not always my first job choice, (as opposed to using technology to teach content), I have learned a few things along that way that have made me a better tech teacher, I think. Many of these apply to any age to which you're teaching a new technology.

Do you have any others to add to the list?

1. Pacing is everything. You have to constantly be aware of when the learners have reached the tipping point and can't take in any new information. There are 2 ways to know when they have reached this point: glazed eyes and/or a look of general amazement that says, "Wow, there's so much you can do, and I'm not going to remember any of this tomorrow!" or when you start to see frustrated/bewildered looks and noises (hands thrown up, head hanging, abuse of the computer, etc.). The other day I had to intentionally slow down when I heard a student say, "What?! I'm completely lost!"

2. Assume nothing. Do not assume that a skill is so basic that everyone already knows it. Spell out every detail, or at least verbally verify that they do know a prerequisite skill. (I actually learned this lesson teaching swimming lessons to 4 year olds. As it turns out, you have to teach them to hold on to the edge, because otherwise they'll go under water and that that's a bad thing!) Every time I click and drag, I explain exactly how I do it so it doesn't look like magic. "Click on the image, hold the left mouse button down and keep doing so while you move the mouse over here. You should be able to see the image moving with the mouse. Then when the mouse is where you want the image, let go." The only thing you want to assume is that at least one person in the group doesn't know the basic skill behind what you're actually trying to teach.

3. Be calm. People who are not familiar with computers or a specific program all assume one thing: "If I click on the wrong thing, it will destroy everything." [In this case, "everything" is assumed to be either the document, the entire program or the whole computer.] Hence, it is with great trepidation that people try new things on computers. So, when the tiniest unexpected thing happens, people panic. (This is true of kids and adults.) The best thing the instructor can do at this point is to be calm and reassure them that not only did they not destroy anything, but that it is virtually impossible for them to destroy anything. Sometimes people also panic when everyone else is ahead of them (they think). In this case, a lot of times, the best thing you can do is to bring them up to speed with everyone else (even if you have to do it for them), because otherwise their panic will drown out any new information you're trying to give them. Calmness is the key to helping them keep up and continue to learn.

4. It's ok if you forget. Especially when I am teaching a new software, I am very intentional about telling people that it is ok if they forget the specific steps for what we are talking about. (I usually bring this up about the point where people are starting to panic or get the dazed, overwhelmed look.) I don't tell them this because I'm teaching useless information. I tell this this because all they need to remember is that the software can do that particular thing. If they don't remember what button to click or which menu it's under, that's ok. As long as they remember that it has that capability, all they need to do is find someone who knows a bit more than you do to help you find it (or Google it :-)) I think that this is important for people to hear, particularly people who aren't very familiar with computers; i.e., the people who want to write down the steps for each new skill. If they know they don't need to remember every step, they are far less likely to panic, and far less likely to miss valuable instruction because they are writing down every step for something 2 skills back.

5. As a teacher, make use of the other students. I'm pretty sure I spend at least 40-50% of every school day repeating the words, "Help the person next to you if they're stuck or if they're not there yet." (This will probably be the first words my child learns to say, given that he/she will have heard it so many times in utero!) In most classes, at least half the participants should be able to keep up with you. After every set of instructions, give time to complete, then remind those who are keeping up to help those who are stuck. This helps the confused individuals feel like they're not slowing down the class, makes those who are keeping up feel good about themselves, AND (most importantly) it saves the teacher from having to speak with every person individually to make sure they are in the right place.

Hm. As it turns out, things that help when teaching technology are just plain good teaching skills. Who knew? :-) There are a few more things I've learned teaching tech, but I will save those for future posts.

[Note: Handing out the comic depicted here from xkcd will NOT make you a good tech teacher, but it will make all the computer people you know laugh :-)]

[The error message above comes from a hilarious website that lets you make your own error messages. It is hysterical; I'd highly advise checking it out for some good belly laughs :-)]

Student Thoughts

2011-10-07T16:16:00.000-07:00

I was on Twitter the other day, where I do NOT waste time, I learn things. Seriously. There, I ran across this post recapping some of the things students said on the "Voices of the Nation" segment of NBC's Education Nation. As I read through the items, so many thoughts were flying through my head that I was literally talking out loud to myself. In an empty room. Here are a few of my reflections on some of the student comments. [All student quotes from the panel are in italics.]

1. On critical thinking: "I have to critically think in college, but your tests don't teach me that."
Yes!!! This is unequivocally true. First of all, good for colleges for still forcing kids to think hard. Elementary and high schools have largely lost their right to teach critical thinking. Testing has exhausted our time and energy for finding ways to show kids how to problem-solve, the most critical (and most common) skill needed for successfully navigating society today. Kids recognize how important this is too: "We do tests to make teachers look good and the school look good, but we know they don't help us to learn what's important to us."

2. On caring educators: "I can't learn from you if you are not willing to connect with me," and "Caring about each student is more important than teaching the class."
I see this on a daily basis. Kids need to know teachers care. It doesn't matter how you go about teaching the class, how much content you cover in a day, or even how you do discipline. If kids know you care, they will work with you and for you. We, as adults know what it's like to work for someone who doesn't care about you, and we don't expect them to. However, when we DO get to work for or with someone who honestly cares about us, it makes all the difference in the world. The same thing goes for kids. Even tiny things go a long way. Every time I tell kids good luck on a soccer game, ask them about their weekend, compliment their hair, or show them that I understand even just a tiny portion of who they are, they almost literally light up. In another student's words, "You need to love a student before you can teach a student."

3. On staying current: "We appreciate when you connect with us in our worlds, such as the teacher who provided us with extra help using Xbox and Skype," and "Us youth love all the new technologies that come out. When you acknowledge this and use technology in your teaching, it makes learning much more interesting."
Teaching in a way that seems relevant to students means they hear the content, not your methodology. When I was a kid, film strips were old technology, but teachers continued using them. Thinking back on those film strips, I don't ever remember thinking about what I was seeing. What I do remember is thinking how old film strips were, how dangerous the machine seemed, the noise it made, how scratchy the sound and picture was, etc. The same thing happens today. When we ask students to take out a textbook and read information that was written 13 years ago, they don't take in the content. They take in the medium and it's limitations, compared to what they know exists today. However, when we can, for example, show a 3 minute clip from NASA's Youtube channel describing the phases of the moon, we have at least eliminated the barrier of the medium. We must stay current.

4. On the futures of students: "Tell me something good that I'm doing so that I can keep growing in that." I keep learning this lesson over and over again, especially teaching junior high. It is literally our job as educators to highlight areas of students' strength. They may not even realize they have talent in that area. Or if they do, they may have never considered that it could be a possible career down the road. If we don't tell them, no one else will. Kids may not listen to their parents, because of the age-old reason: "You're my mom, you have to say that!" However, kids respect an impartial adult's opinion who interacts with them on a daily basis. Hearing a teacher encourage them in an area where they show aptitude and passion is a strong motivational factor for kids. Not only should we encourage them in the area of a dream, but we should help get them closer to those dreams. Field trips, articles, video clips, news items, etc., all help encourage students in the direction of their future. As another student said, "Every young person has a dream. Your job is to help bring us closer to our dreams."

5. On electives: "Bring the electives that we are actually interested in back to school. Things like drama, art, cooking, music." We never bothered to ask students what they thought about removing all areas other than test prep from the curriculum. Students know these are all important parts of life that many will not get a chance to learn any other way. When I used to teach in the regular classroom, I always liked cooking with the kids. They loved it, used all sorts of other skills, and I always saw a side of them I didn't see otherwise. Many were crushed when our school setting changed so that they would no longer be allowed to take a cooking class. Now, when I'm out on the playground with my Photojournalism students taking pictures, younger students come up and ask what my kids are doing. When I tell them, they ask with big, hopeful eyes, "So I'll be able to take that when I'm in 8th grade too?" I always feel a little twinge when I say yes, because there is a very real possibility that something as "frivolous" as this will also be ripped out of the curriculum, in favor of another intervention or enrichment course of some sort.

6. On student opinions: "Education leaders, teachers, funders, and policy-makers need to start listening to student voice in all areas, including teacher evaluations." I know there are many logistical issues with this suggestion, but in terms of teacher evaluations, it's not a bad idea. Kids aren't experts on much, but one thing they spend the first 20 years of their lives examining is teachers. While they may not know the education terminology, they know a good teacher when they see one. They know which teachers care about them, which teachers are passionate about the subject the teach, and which teachers are firm and expect much, (but only because it is best for the kids). I recently had an evaluator say that he had asked students their opinion of me and my class. Luckily, they had good things to say about me :-) At first though, I was a bit taken aback that he had considered this at least a little bit in my evaluation process. However, then I realized that (at least by junior high), kids know who is being fair and educating them to the best of their ability. If a teacher looks like they're doing an excellent job for an evaluator, but the kids are bored to tears, seething, offended, or asleep, something is not right. Students are the true experience-ers of a teacher, they deserve some chance to give their opinion. All post high-school courses in and out of official education centers require a student evaluation of the instructor. Why shouldn't younger students have the same opportunity?

If you're interested to hear more about what kids think, ASK them about it, and ask them why!

Mobile Photo Blog

2011-09-13T21:15:00.000-07:00

This week, after reviewing some of the basic photo techniques (zooming in, rule of thirds-see my example below, not centering things, etc.) one girl asked if she could show me a picture she took with her phone, which she wasn't supposed to have on in class. Needless to say, I said yes because it was a clear furthering of the educational process in this case. And, lo and behold, she showed me a beach picture she had taken that was a perfect example of the rule of 1/3s!

I had already been thinking that I really ought to find some way to leverage the camera phones and iPod Touches the kids already have with the classroom focus on photography skills, but as I thought about this student's great photo, I knew exactly what I wanted to do: Through a micro-blogging service (such as Posterous or Tumblr), create an 8th grade Mobile Photojournalism blog, in which students could text or email in pictures to the site. Both of these sites are excellent ways to have kids put their work online nearly instantly. All they do is email their writing, image, video, or sound to a specific address and it's posted immediately (though you can set it up with pre-approval by the blog administrator required, which I had planned to do).

The only problem was that as I was setting up this blog, I realized that neither of the services I was planning on using allowed texting photos into the blog. This is a critical difference, because many of my students have cell phones, but few have smart phones that can send an email. (In fact, most of the kids don't have email addresses because they don't see the point.) The email address wouldn't be a problem to create; the wrong kind of phone is a problem.

So, now I'm not sure what I want to do. It seemed like such a great idea, but now I'm stuck because I don't know how to make it work. Yes, I could have them text my phone the pictures and I could forward them to an email, but I am NOT one of those teachers who give out their cell phone numbers to students. I could have them each make their own accounts on the blog service, but that would mean they'd have to know how to get their images from the phone to another computer and I don't have time to help kids with 50 different phones figure this out. So, if anyone out there has any good suggestions on how to make something like this work, it would really help me out! Sometime, an unfulfilled idea is extremely frustrating! (Sort of like when you think of the exact food you want to eat, but you're out of a key ingredient.) Let me know your ideas!

Beginning of the Year Observations

2011-09-13T20:55:00.000-07:00

A few random observations from the first 2 or 3 weeks of school this year:

With my 8th grade Photojournalism students, I've implemented a photo of the day, in which every class starts by analyzing an interesting picture and identifying interesting, different, notable features. I knew this would be good practice for them, in terms of looking at (and taking) photos critically, but I've been impressed with the amount of participation I've had with it, as well as the interesting observations. For instance in this picture, they all thought it looked like a tornado was coming (mind you, none of them have ever seen a tornado. This is Arizona people!) A few others noted that it was odd that there were only 3 houses (because when you're in the city, 3 unsurrounded houses is unheard of). One day, when I didn't have the image up on the board right away, one girl asked me if we could please look at a picture and talk about it :-)

This was another picture I used with the 8th graders and 7th grade computer students. I used it to discuss symbolism, and how different items in a picture can create unique symbolism. In this case, we talked about what the White House is a symbol of, and what fences represent and how those contrast each other. When asking students for other examples of symbolism, it was really fascinating to see the different levels of brain development. For what the White House symbolizes, the 8th graders came up with things like freedom, power, justice, etc. The 7th graders said things like, the President, laws, Congress, etc. When they had to come up with their own examples, many 7th graders said a stop sign was a symbol. Clearly their developmental understanding of something concrete representing a very abstract idea isn't quite there yet. A good thing for me to remember at the beginning of the year.

As most teachers do, I spent my first session with each class going over the rules. However, since school started on a Wednesday and I like to start new content on Mondays, I had 3 days to kill during the second week, so everyone practiced keyboarding. Especially with 7th grade, I was absolutely shocked at how much they enjoyed the typing practice and games that I had them play. One student asked why we were teaching them this "fancy typing." Of course, this was after we had already discussed that virtually every kind of job these days would be easier if you knew how to type, so I thought of a couple additional examples to convince him :-) I always know a lesson is successful when kids ask for paper to write down the website so they can practice at home, and that definitely happened several times that week :-)

One of the things each class did during the first session was to read and sign a tech class contract. However, before they signed, we had a big discussion about what situations people sign contracts in. Inevitably, someone in every class came up with a cell phone contract (which I hadn't initially thought of). So then we discussed what would happen if they signed a cell phone contract without knowing that the payment was going to go up after several months and how they would be legally bound to pay it since they'd signed the contract. Needless to say, since this is in the near future for many of them, I had their attention. Yet again, it showed me how if you can find a situation that is relevant to kids right NOW, they will pay attention. Too bad those examples aren't always easy to find!

As usual, I forget how much kids keep me on my toes, coming up with things I never would have thought of. That's what keeps it interesting! :-)

Accessibility for the Visually Impaired and Computer Geeks

2011-08-29T08:46:00.000-07:00

Whew! After a June full of educational technology with district work, a July full of pregnancy and relaxing, and August full of school starting, I've finally regained enough momentum to blog again!

In addition to the many observations the beginning of every new school year brings for me, I have been forced into new learning. As we all know, given the option, most of us will continue to do things the way we've always done them until something comes along and forces us out of the way. Such is the occurrence in my teaching right now. (I am again teaching 7th grade Computers and 8th grade Photojournalism.) Last year, I had a 7th grader who was blind, and I had a heck of a time trying to accomodate for him, though I did try (with varying degrees of success). A major part of the challenge was that he used a PC and all the rest of the kids used Macs.

However, in 7th grade this year, I have another blind student who is very interested in sticking with the Mac laptops all the rest of his classmates use, and another who is visually impaired, but not completely blind. At the request of this last student's visual-impairment teacher, I finally sat down and did some research into what the accessibility features were on the Mac, including keyboard shortcuts for zooming the screen and enlarging the cursor. Part of me was also quite curious about the use of a PC because his teacher maintained that it had a better accessibility functions than Macs. Being a Mac-believer, I had reason to doubt this, and finally went hunting to find out.

First of all, as it turns out, Mac's Voiceover program appears to be just as capable as comparable Windows programs, and with only a few sets of keys to memorize, you can be up and on your way. For instance, command+F5 turns on the Voiceover program, which then reads any items currently on the screen. (Side note: Apple has fantastic intro videos in terms of the more extensive vision accessibility features, including Gestures, which is very cool.) I also found the commands to open a list of applications, open an application, open Spotlight, do a Google search, and so on. To test it out, I closed my eyes with a blank screen, and after about 5 keyboard shortcuts, I had opened Safari, searched Hurricane Irene in Google, selected an article and had the screen reader reading an article about it.

But wait, there's more! The best thing I discovered today (other than all of Mac's simple accessibility features) was the Safari Reader function of the Safari internet browser. This feature takes any website on which it finds a text-based article and automatically converts it into a plain-text article, with only relevant images attached. (i.e., no ads, no extraneous page links, etc.)
From this new window that pops up, you can either magnify the text many times, print it or email it, or even better, have the screen reader read it for you. This addresses one of my biggest frustrations with my blind student from last year: it was almost impossible for him to use anything on the internet because it had so many other links that the screen reader would read and never get to the actual content. Safari Reader seems to be a much better system, and will help me greatly in the coming weeks.

I was so excited today as I finally sat down and wrote down all the relevant shortcuts and ideas. As I wrote the shortcuts down (and sadly acknowledged how long it took me to do all of that,) I decided that I should really save some other people the work. Since the visual-impairment teachers seemed unaware of the accessibility functions on a Mac, I emailed them all of the relevant shortcuts, links, features, videos, etc., that I had looked up. Then I realized that in our culture of sharing, there are probably a good number of other people who may find this information useful. So, I did what any good computer teacher would do: I made a Google Doc. Of course, the people most directly impacted by this kind of information are those that are visually impaired or who work with them. However, the other biggest users of extensive keyboard shortcuts are computer geeks, and I think this could be useful to them as well. It made my geeky side happy anyway :-) Click here to access the basic information in a Google Doc and add to it yourself, or here to get an extensive list of Apple accessibility keyboard shortcuts. Hope it helps someone else too!

[And I realize this comic is PC-based, but I thought it was entertaining nonetheless, assuming you know what they do ;-)]

Why Digital Literacy Matters

2011-06-14T21:18:00.000-07:00

For years, I've heard teachers in the district rave about tech camp in Tucson. For years, I've thought, "Hm, that sounds nice. Too bad I wouldn't be able to convince anyone to pay for me to go to a resort for a week." In reality, I never asked, I just assumed that was the case. Yes, I know what that makes me. It also goes against my philosophy of "You never know till you ask." Either way, when my Instructional Technology director happened to mention that he still had slots to fill for both ISTE 2011 and tech camp, I "happened to mention" that I had never been to either. (Subtle of me, right?) So, when he offered me a spot at tech camp, I was all over it. And here I am!

While it's affectionately called tech camp, it's officially called "Camp Plug & Play 6.0" and is sponsored by the AZ K-12 Center. It's not a conference, so much as an extended workshop, in which you learn a specific skill all week. Some of this week's strands focus on iMovie, interactive whiteboards, Google, and digital storytelling (the strand I was signed up for). Though it's not really a standard sit-and-get conference, there was a keynote speaker yesterday, who made some excellent points. Her name is Angela Maiers and she was so passionate, I decided to go back for an optional evening session on the first day when I was already exhausted. The focus of her second presentation was the importance of digital literacy. I have never seen someone speak so passionately on this topic (for good reason)! These are some of her best points, written through my lens.

Being literate is no longer only about being able to read words. Obviously that is a critical, first step, but if you don't know how to communicate in this new digital world, you will feel like you're in a foreign country. We see evidence of this everyday as more and more people with public identities try to speak in a language in which they are not literate (Representative Weiner, etc., etc., etc.) One of her key elements to being literate in the digital world is learning how to be a "great infosumer." Not only do our children have to know how to read, now they have to know how to find and then select the most relevant, accurate information. Without this, we have students meandering all over the wasteland of the internet looking at images as "research" or using Honda.com as an impartial source of information.

Then, once they find the information their looking for, they need to know how best to represent that information to others. This includes synthesizing that information into a person's own unique words and understanding, as well as adding new information to what is already available. While many of our students are experts at knowing how to upload a fight video to Youtube or how to post on Facebook, they are absolutely clueless on how to post information that the world finds valuable. In Ms. Maiers' words, "The web doesn't care about you until you contribute valuable information to the community." Our students rarely think beyond the borders of their own community. They don't realize that there is a whole world of people who may be viewing their work, and that if those people find it valuable, it could be shared with hundreds and thousands of people. It absolutely behooves us to help our students differentiate between information for friends and information that is useful to people around the world.

On a related note, we have to teach kids about how to act respectably and respectfully on the web. Heaven knows adults are not setting good examples for them, and we must point this out to them. We have to help them have a bit of foresight and know that the internet actually "does NOT have an erase button." There is no such thing as deleting. If your screen name in 7th grade was sexychica, it will define you for far longer than you want. Everything a student puts on the web will be searchable by someone, potentially someone you don't want to find it (a future employer?) and will do so long after it ceases to represent who he/she really is. (There are fantastic interviews with students on this point in Along Together.) We have to help our students have the foresight to represent themselves well.

These were just a few of the points she covered in her 60 minutes, but she was kind of enough to show us her full-blown graduate class information via her wiki for free. Check it out if you want step-by-step lessons for ways to teach these concepts to your students. Needless to say, I will definitely be including portions of this information in my courses this year.

Mind, Brain & Education

2011-06-08T14:45:00.000-07:00

That's the title of an interesting collection of brain-based education articles I borrowed from a friend. While there are definitely some dryer parts to this collection, there is much that can be applied in everyday classrooms. It also expounds on the numerous inaccuracies that many teachers have been led to believe is solid research in terms of the brain and it's impact on education.

Right-brained vs. Left-brained. While there are clearly different sides of the brain that accomplish different tasks, there is no such thing as a kid who is too left-brained to be able to do something "right brained." (I read the same thing in a NYTimes article today.)
Mozart Effect. The original study describing the impact of Mozart's music on increasing intelligence in people has never been replicated, and the original study only showed a weak, temporary increase in intelligence.
Brain Plasticity is Limited to Certain Ages. The past ten years of research has confirmed that a person's brain is able to change to include new things at any age. While it is true that there are certain periods in which the brain demonstrates extreme plasticity, this process continues in varying degrees throughout life.

Here are some of my favorite ideas from the book.

Only kids who think, learn. Specifically, when kids make predictions, it ensures that they learn something. When they are engaged with the material and have to presuppose what might come next, and they receive confirmation (or not), the neural network in the brain is either rewarded with a dopamine burst for being correct, or has to rewire itself to adapt to the new information. Either way, comprehension is occurring. But it only happens when kids think. (p. 56)
Know your brain. When students understand a few key bits of information about their brain, it can motivate them to not only study more, but study more effectively. For example, if a student knows that repetition forces the neural networks to prune out unnecessary information and only latches on to the repeated information, their practice can make that knowledge permanent. (p. 58)
You can change your brain. Research has shown many times that human brains change from birth to death, due to experiences and learning. This is critical for all students to know, but especially those students who think they aren't as bright as others. When they find out that they can change their own brain by practicing new skills, correcting mistakes, and having new experiences, they are empowered to take responsibility for their own learning. (p. 61)
Think big picture. Ask the kind of probing questions that help students develop intuition about their own thinking. For instance, if a student is trying to solve a math problem, have them back up and ask themselves if they are using the right strategy for that type of problem. Or, if they're working on a science project of some sort, have them ask themselves, "Am I getting closer to the answer?" This type of metacognition (thinking about one's thinking) encourages the brain to begin to automatically ask these sorts of questions when working through any problem. By evaluating their thinking process, students learn to make their thinking more effective, by focusing on what works, and how to get there as quickly as possible. (p. 80)

It's All About Choice

2011-05-10T14:08:00.000-07:00

There are several things I've learned about teenagers in my teaching career, and two of them tend to go together. (More on the others later). My mantra, especially with difficult classes has become, "If you can make something into a choice, it will be a better day for everyone." This can relate to discipline as well as actual assignments.

When kids are being disciplined, having a choice helps facilitate the idea that their back is not up against the wall yet (figuratively). The fight-or-flight instinct hasn't been touched off yet. When I used to teach in an alternative high school, if I wanted a student to do something, I'd give them two options, even if I knew they didn't want to do either of them. Usually, that was enough to move them at least closer to the objective of the lesson, even if it still wasn't perfect. Today, when I have students that are (I'll just make up a quick, implausible example here), on Facebook or Youtube when they should be working, I tell them to close it. If they don't, the next step is "You close it, or I close it." (To most kids, keyboard shortcuts are still a total mystery. I tell them it's magic :-)) Generally, they'll start moving to close. All kids want is to feel like they're not on a one-way street.

In terms of curriculum, whenever I'm designing assignments for regular classes or my technology classes, I do everything in my power to incorporate choice into the project. When I can do this, everybody is happier, me included. For instance, my 8th graders are currently working on a project about the Vietnam War on Glogster. I gave them a list of things to include, and they chose 3-4 in each category. Added bonus: they get a big long list and are overwhelmed, and then I tell them they don't have to do it all :-) My 7th graders are making interview videos in iMovie about technology and how it impacts us. While they didn't have a choice on the general topic, they can choose the specific question they are asking people, and then can choose what the final product looks like.

Choice and motivation are like spring fever and state standardized testing: you don't get one without the other. The 7th grade project has made my life a breeze this week. The students know how to do all of the pieces, from last week's instruction and previous assignments, and I just let them go. I've literally spent all year trying to keep them off of great programs like Photo Booth because they weren't in my assignment. I finally figured out that I just had to design an assignment using photo and video and they're all over it. Just the specific technology is motivation enough. Last year, I had students supremely motivated to learn about tides, not because of the topic, but because (without any previous instruction on tides) I had them find a video describing how tides work. (Added bonus to this assignment: Youtube was blocked, so they had to find a way to work around it.) Again, sometimes just the technology itself is motivating. Imagine if you told students to take 5 pictures with their cell phones and write a story to go along with them. Motivation? Check.

[Note: all the links in this post are how these tools relate to education.]

Twitter 101

2011-04-17T22:03:00.000-07:00

[Sorry for the cross-post, those of you that follow both blogs. I thought it was suitable in both places.]

I love Twitter. After a recent conversation with my aunt about what, exactly, Twitter is, (and realizing that I’ve had this conversation multiple times), I decided to put it in writing. As they always say, if one person has a question, there are probably many others who do too. So, for those of you who don’t understand what the big deal is about Twitter, this is why it is NOT what you think.

What Twitter is NOT:

Twitter is NOT about updates about what you had for breakfast, (unless you can say it in an incredibly clever way). It is also NOT a private, direct messaging service, a la Facebook, email, instant messaging, etc. Though many use it from their smartphones, it is NOT only available on phones, but is also a website where you can tweet from (Twitter.com).

What Twitter IS:

Twitter is a “micro-blogging” service. In other words, it is like a blog, in that all posts are public, and they are listed reverse chronologically, with the newest posts listed first. It isn’t like blogs in that it has a140 character limit. Because of this limit, tweets are approximately 1-2 sentences and many people and companies use it to post links to longer articles, blog posts, etc. (It IS possible to send direct messages to people, but they still have to be 140 characters or less. Because of this, it is not a common use of Twitter though.)

Due to the public nature of Twitter, it is most useful for keeping track of public organizations and people. You don’t have to know them or ask for permission to follow them. For instance, I follow AirFrance for European travel deals (@AirFranceUS), New York Times for news and commentary (@nytimes), and Jimmy Fallon (@jimmyfallon) and Stephen Colbert (@StephenAtHome) because they are hilarious : - )

However, the reason Twitter is most useful to me in my daily life is that I can follow other people within the education community, many of whom are technology teachers like myself. We all post about things we’re doing within the classroom, open questions we’re considering in terms of educational technology, and other such things. Some of the teachers I know personally, but many I do not. Twitter gives me access to a much wider circle of like-minded people whom I can bounce ideas off of. I also follow some friends from my personal life.

Overall, Twitter is an excellent means of keeping abreast of news and information of interest to you, professionally and personally. There is much more to say in terms of effective ways to use Twitter, details about common abbreviations, hashtags, or trending topics, but hopefully this basic description helps you understand what it actually is and how it might benefit you. And if you decide to join Twitter, follow me @dierdreshetler ! :-)

When things go wrong

2011-04-13T08:38:00.000-07:00

Make sure it works!

For those of you with a little corner of your brain that goes nuts at the many possibilities of things that could go wrong with using educational technology, I have some suggestions for you. Before you are getting ready to use technology, ensure that it works by doing the following things:

try the activity yourself, so that you know all necessary steps
test the website on the computers the students will be using
make sure batteries are charged, if necessary
make sure all critical elements are plugged in and displaying/producing sound correctly
know who is available to call for help in a pinch
have a related back-up plan (more on this later)
have an educational task ready for those who finish early (www.freerice.com is an excellent option for this circumstance)

If you need to borrow someone who knows more than you to help make sure everything is working in advance, do it. Definitely do this when students are not there. This way, you can focus on teaching when the time comes. Also, make sure that YOU set everything up, even if someone else comes in to advise you on how to do it. This will give you a much better idea of what to do if things go wrong.

That said, no matter how much you've tested things out, things happen.

Do Not Give Up

Should something malfunction, do NOT give up immediately because there is a class of students staring at you. In doing this, you teach them to give up. If waiting a few minutes means they get to use technology, they will be VERY patient (if not quiet). Give the students a content-related topic to talk about/work on, and then take a few minutes to try to troubleshoot the problem. If this doesn't work, ask a student to try to get things to work. Students tend to have much more perseverance than adults. While they do this, go on with the rest of the content of the lesson. Most of the time, one of these options should eliminate the problem.

Back Up Plan

On the off-chance that you've tried to fix it, a student has tried to fix it, and you've called a co-worker and he/she can't help you, then chalk it up as a loss, and move on. These are the cases where your back-up plan is critical. Your back-up plan should be one of two things: either a different technology-based way of accessing the same content (i.e., a different website, an interactive whiteboard lesson/game, a video clip, etc.) OR a non-technology based way of addressing the content (i.e., textbook, game, discussion, writing, etc.) In having such a back-up plan, you ensure that kids will learn the desired content, no matter what the circumstance. A benefit to having a non-technology-based method is you have a way of teaching the same content to kids who don't focus while using technology.

Try Again

Lastly, just because technology may have bitten you at one point, DO NOT GIVE UP. Even if you had to bail on your last attempt, TRY AGAIN, even if its with a different website, etc. Once you have a successful experience, you'll understand why technology is such a powerful medium for educating children. And remember: there is always a learning curve when doing something new, but it will diminish with time and practice, and it will be worth it!

Haiku for me and you

2011-04-09T16:55:00.000-07:00

About a month ago, I had the opportunity to be a presenter for the first time at a conference. I applied to present in September of last year, mostly just to see if I had any chance at all of being accepted. It took me a while to decide what to present on because, having been to the MEC conference before, many of the things I know a lot about are fairly common things. Hence, I was looking for something that wasn't particularly well-known, but that has worked really well for me. With these criteria, it didn't take long to come up with Haiku, an online learning management system. Lucky for me, that was the type of thing they were looking for and I was accepted!

I first used this system when doing my final project for my master's degree, when I designed an online professional development class for teachers in my district. While Haiku's main premise is to be used to teach online classes for K-12 students, I knew it had a lot of potential to function well for professional development (in any field, really) as well as for online collaboration between administration, teachers or students.

While I hated to do a powerpoint presentation, I know that when learning about a new thing, what a person really wants is the bullet points with the main ideas. So, I went with the powerpoint and this is what I came up with. Putting this presentation together led me to realize that there are even more cool things about Haiku, that I didn't already know (including a beyond affordable pricing structure). Since I was going with the standard presentation, I decided to at least make it a little up-to-date and include some poll questions via PollEverywhere.com, in which participants can use their phones to text in an answer to a poll question (Such as: What area of education are you involved in? What areas would you be most likely to use Haiku for at your school?) I would've used a video from the Haiku website, but when I'm at a presentation, I don't want people to show me things that I can see for myself on a website. I also wanted to use my iPod Touch as a mouse, so I wouldn't have to stand by my computer the whole time. Here's my presentation:

Haiku Learning Management System

Haiku LMS pdf

When the day came to present, I was definitely nervous (made even more nervous by a co-worker who came in to watch :-)), but everything went fairly well. There were about 15 people in the workshop, which I thought was pretty good, given that it was for a product that no one had ever heard of, being presented by a me, whom no one had ever heard of. The embedded poll slides worked quite well, and gave me a quick idea of the general type of audience I was talking to (mostly administrators), as well as their opinions on various portions of the product. The remote mouse didn't work, because I had to keep logging on to the guest internet account. People seemed very interested in Haiku, and there were at least a few who sounded like they were definitely going to consider for their site.

So, for my first time out of the gate as a presenter, I felt like it went pretty well!

Arrangements and Combinations

2011-03-31T13:54:00.000-07:00

If you've ever taught math, you know that the terms "arrangements and combinations" do not mean the same thing. And that it's nigh unto impossible to teach kids the difference. (See here for a description, in case you're wondering.) How one arranges and combines kids is a critical element in classrooms, (in addition to mathematics).

I began thinking about this when I saw a post (via @shareski) on Twitter asking how people had their classrooms arranged. I have had the "opportunity" to arrange 11 classrooms, though I've only been teaching for 6 1/2 years, so I've tried many things. In my first year teaching (6th grade), I started with rows, and then moved on to pairs, and eventually grouped, and then back to rows (it was an...exciting year.) :-) I told them we had to move back to rows because they "couldn't handle" sitting together, in terms of behavior (which was true).

As I was pondering the possibilities for the next school year though, I decided that I was going to think positive and start in groups (which is always my personal preference). I did this, and never changed back. The biggest benefit I saw to groups (in addition to all the supporting research), was that it forced kids to learn how to deal with each other. This sounds a little coercive, but I prefer to call it educating :-) When they thought that there was no other option, they found a way to make it work. Albeit, every year, I had conversations about how it's an important thing to learn with kids who wanted to change seats. (I think the discussion went something like: "You don't have to like them, you just need to be able to work in the same space. This is an important skill that everyone has to learn at work-even teachers--, and it's even better if you learn it now!") This method worked the best for me through the years, particularly because we did lots of group work.

At the end of the 2009-10 school year, I let my 7th graders choose how they wanted the room arranged for the last week or two of school. After a vote, they decided to go with one big circle. While it was a physical nightmare because we couldn't get to anything outside the circle, the kids loved being able to see everyone at once, and it led to some fun discussions.

This year, when I began teaching computers, I had to set up a new style of classroom. Not only that, since I'm a traveling teacher at 4 schools, I had 4 labs to set up! 2 of the labs are laptops and the others are desktops. In the laptop labs, I have round tables with 5-6 laptops apiece, which works fairly well. In my desktop labs, computers are arranged in groups of 6 on tables, which functions in pretty much the same way.

The most important thing when using technology with middle schoolers has been to have them in places where they are next to someone at all times. The logic behind this is that someone always missed where to click, which menu the command is on, or typed .com instead of .org. When they need to verify something, there is always someone to help, which seems to be a more critical element with technology than with regular content teaching. (And it helps save my sanity, so I don't have to answer every easy question!)

No matter what, I'm always in the process of determining who needs to sit in a different combination, but the arrangement in groups always stays the same. :-)

Finally Fourth Quarter

2011-03-17T16:08:00.000-07:00

Fourth quarter is finally upon us. As usual, the year has been filled with many ups and downs so far, with more to come, I'm sure. As we came up to spring break, I did everything I could to make sure I was ready to return to school so I wouldn't have to work over break. Much of my brainstorming was characterized by frustration due to the 400 kids per grade of level whom I teach each week.

Photo Credit

The issue with teaching computers the way I do is that I have so many kids that anything that involves creating individual accounts for students online would just take way too much time. Unfortunately, this eliminates many of the most interesting Web 2.0 things to do. Alternatively, I've had them all using either my account for something or a class account, if that's an option, but not all websites allow that. I would just have the students create their own accounts, but many things require email addresses, which many of my students don't have (they think it's too slow, when they have cell phones). In addition to that, everyone creating email addresses is out because most free email sites won't allow multiple accounts to be made from the same IP address. Anyway, all this to say, my options are limited by the sheer scale I operate on. If anyone has any good solutions to this sort of problem, let me know!

These are the ideas I eventually landed on. My 7th graders have been working on their iMovies for literally a semester (much to my dismay), and they are finally finishing up. So, after basically a quarter of not having to plan for them, (they just came in and kept working), it's time for something new. As boring as spreadsheets can be, I feel like it is something that is important for the students to know. Some creative googling brought me to this lesson about the amount of fat in fast food. The focusing question I'll use for students is "Can fast food be healthy?" It has the students create a spreadsheet documenting the amount of fat in an entree, side, dessert, and drink of their choice from a fast food restaurant (also their choice). Using a website extensively documenting nutrition in various foods (including fast food restaurants), they'll determine calories, fat calories, non-fat calories, and the percentage of fat in each item and meal. From there, they'll use formulas to figure out percentage fat, enter it into a class chart, and create their own charts. This will all be posted in a blog post. From there, they'll be making a movie using flip cams to document what they learned and convincing others that it is or is not possible for their meal to be healthy to eat.

My 8th graders have 2 different assignments to keep me from getting bored. Half of them will be doing a photo contest at the beginning of the quarter. They'll take photos that represent the best thing about their school and write an accompanying piece explaining why it is the best thing in their opinion. These will then be displayed in the school library for others students to vote on. Next, (when it's too hot to got outside and take pictures), we'll use Google Earth to take a virtual tour of a place that has been in the news. They'll use screen shots and online research to create a video on iMovie explaining the situation in this location.

The other half of the 8th grade will be creating Glogs (interactive, online "posters") about the Vietnam War, with the focusing question being "Why was the Vietnam War such a big deal?" On their glog, they'll each have 3 sections, including facts, links, and images. (Here's an example I found online.) Examples of the types of things they'll be looking for include a quote from a soldier's diary, info on the draft and the controversy, links to a timeline and casualty statistics, and pro and anti-war images.

Hopefully, these assignments will keep them (and me!) engaged, even when their brains are in high school already!

Commenting Skills: How to not be a jerk

2011-03-14T21:51:00.000-07:00

One of the 21st Century skills I'm trying to teach my students is how to comment. I was reminded of this today at MEC 2011, when the keynote speaker, (Karen Cator, head of the US Office of Educational Technology) mentioned in an aside how much she wished there was a curriculum for teaching kids how to comment. Given the scandalous tone of many letters to the editor and comments on various websites in situations like the Egypt protests and SB 1070 here in Arizona, I knew that it is critical that students learn how to communicate their opinion without being (for lack of a better word), jerky.

One of the things that is most interesting in the brain development of 8th graders is that they are more and more capable of abstract thought, but not developed enough to do so consistently. Hence, one has to have just the right question to get everyone to want to actually think. It has to be something that is relevant (not generic, like say cafeteria food) and be something about which everyone has, or can develop an in-depth opinion. The topic I happened to stumble upon was having the students take photos of the neighborhood surrounding their schools and then write a paragraph or two about their opinion of the neighborhood, and the impact they think it has. Then, I took one piece of exemplary writing (which happened to somewhat criticize the neighborhood) and had the other students practice their commenting skills, after we discussed what a good comment looked like.

The criteria we listed for a valid comment were:

It can't be one word or even one sentence (at least not an 8th grade sentence: "That's cool.") This helps the author know you actually care about what they said, and what they specifically think.
Explain what you agree with or think they did well. No matter how frustrated you are with someone, you will have a much more productive conversation if you can start on common ground.
Ask a question of the author instead of insulting or calling names. This encourages the author to think about what they said, instead of being defensive and not listening to you.
Add information to the topic, by giving a related experience you've had, or the reason for your own opinion on the topic.
Re-read your comment before posting. Ask yourself: Would I say this to the author's face? If so, would I be yelling when I said it? If you answered no to the first question or yes to the second, you need to take another crack at the comment.

In education, you win some, you lose some, so I was thrilled when this lesson went over surprisingly well. Like I said, since many of the students were a bit upset with the author (who they didn't know), the criteria were a bit of a challenge, and I did end up deleting some inappropriate (read: jerky) comments, but by and large, the kids did a really quality job. We also had to have a discussion about the difference between being racist and stereotyping people, because everyone wanted to jump straight to calling the author racist, but that's another story. Check out some of the comments on this blog post, and see what you think.

And for proof that this is a valid skill that students want to know, I had an 8th grader come back to my class later in the day with a 7th grade class (his teacher had gone home sick), and he looks around at all the 7th graders working individually on their iMovies, and says, "Wow, this is boring. We were actually having fun in here this morning."

Just ask!

2011-02-11T15:02:00.000-08:00

One of my mantras in life is, "If you don't know, ask!" Yes, I was that kid in school. The one where everyone else is ready to move on and probably understands already, and school was over 2 minutes ago, and my hand goes up. Groans all around. [Many moments of embarrassment are based on this situation. But I digress.]

True, this is an irritating habit, but it solves problems, and it is even more beneficial as an adult. (I have become a little less irritating to others, thanks to Google :-)) Asking helps me find out what's going on at the airport when we can't figure out what the issue is, in grad school when I don't understand my assignment for the next week, and at the restaurant when I don't understand where that obscure $20 charge came from. (In fact, with customer service issues, I include the additional "Call a real person and ask." I'm telling you, it gets stuff done.)

The most recent way this habit has been helpful to me was a few days ago. I was to be meeting with the other district Photojournalism teachers. It ended up being just me and one other teacher, but we covered a lot of ground. We were showing examples of student work, and she showed me a slideshow of student photos in movie format. I asked how she had done this, because my students were creating photo essays, and I'd been attempting to have them upload everything to edublogs.org, but this was not working particularly well. (This was from no fault of Edublogs, but some of my 8th grade classes are not geniuses at following long sets of instructions.)

She explained that she had the students create the actual slideshow file within iPhoto, display captions through the settings bar, and then export it as an .m4v file. This sounded WAY easier to me, so I tried it the next day with my classes. Just to put the next statement in context, the previous day the old method had gotten classes maybe 1/3 of the way finished with the project. As I took these students through the process, step by step on the IWB, I was floored at how simple and quick it was. In 10 minutes, most students had completed the entire project. Done. Unbelievable. :-) (I'll post one sometime soon.) So, next time your frustrated with something, ASK and see if there's a better way. There probably is! :-)

Example

2011-01-27T11:00:00.000-08:00

Here's an example of an iMovie my 7th graders have been working on. Half of the project was finding out how to do solid internet research, and the other half if learning how to create an iMovie with the images and research they did. Here's one finished example: (If it isn't clear, they got to choose their own topics. The only rule was that if they did a person, it couldn't be someone who was alive.)

I touch learning!

2011-01-25T20:49:00.000-08:00

Wow! Today was the first time in a long time I've been at a workshop for content that 1) I was not teaching/assisting with, and 2) was essentially completely new knowledge to me. Our district kindly organized a workshop with Tony Vincent, guru of all things ed tech, particularly hand-held learning, (starting in the early days with PDAs and now iPod Touches).

While I've been aware that this technology has been in use for quite a while in various forms, I've never had personal access to it or knew if we'd have any access to it at school. Lucky for us, this is the innovation of the year in our school district Instructional Technology department. So, now I can start researching new things on this level! (Basically, before I felt like I needed to focus my limited time on things I had immediate access to.) Oh, and another reason I've been interested in this area is that I just got an iPod Touch for Christmas ;-) That definitely helped. (I'm a little addicted to it.)

So, here are some of the highlights of a sort of Highlights of iPod Touch Labs workshop, which mainly focused on some cool apps that can be used for academic purposes. Specifically, these are the ones that I thought could be most useful in the classroom and my everyday life. Hence, they now reside on MY iPod :-)

1-Bump This app lets you share files just by bumping your iPod/Phone holding hand with the other person's iPod/Phone holding hand. In everyday life (EDL) that might be used with resumes, contact information, etc. In education (ED) it might look like students turning in assignments like photo illustrations, voice recordings, etc to a single iPod for the teacher to grade or combining research information into a central location.

2-Doodle Buddy This app is a simple drawing program with standard features like different colors, text boxes and a plethora of designs to use as backgrounds and to stamp on drawings. While all these things are to be expected of a free app, it really becomes applicable when you import photos you've taken or from the web to draw/write on. For EDL, this could be useful to help write notes on an image to emphasize a particular feature. For ED, it could be particularly educational to have students find examples of a specific item online and write a fact about it (find a picture of cloud and write what type of cloud it is, submit it to the teacher via Bump). This app is similar to Comic Touch Lite, which allows you to put comic speech bubbles on pictures, which is a slimmed down version of a program I LOVE: Comic Life.

3-Dragon Dictation This free app is much more than just a simple voice recorder, which comes by default with iPods/Phones. It records your speaking and translates it into text, which can then be emailed or copied and pasted into other apps. While you do have to speak a bit slower and include end punctuation, it is an excellent speech translator. Obviously, for EDL, this would be super-useful in any of those situations where you 1) don't want to use the iPod/Phone's TINY keyboard, or 2) when you are, say, driving, and shouldn't be texting, but you need to remember something or send someone something. In ED, I think this would be fantastic when a teacher wants to give ELL students instructions. They could just record them, and then students could see the written instructions (particularly if they might be different from those for other students). Another idea: it would be a fantastic way for my photojournalism students to interview people for their articles.

Hope this gives you some new ideas to try with kids and iPods! It sure helped me out!

Who cares?

2011-01-18T20:32:00.000-08:00

While most of my 8th graders are doing photo essays on their neighborhood, 2 classes are working on developing their own blogs, at the request of their teachers. Since I spent a good bit of time blogging with my students last year, I didn't think it would be too daunting of a task. However, the way I did blogging with my students is quite a bit different from what these kids are doing. The main difference is that I've always had my students use one class blog, as opposed to having each kid have their own blog. I have no issues with either method, and always intended to have my students develop their own blogs, but just never got to it. Hence, most of the time, I told them what to write about.

Not so, with this group of 8th graders. In this case, they each have their own blog, and I'm not using this as a writing lesson so much, as how to create and keep up with a blog. After they initially created their own blogs through edublogs.org, we began discussing what it is that they might be writing about, since it was more or less up to them. The main thing I encouraged them to do was to choose a theme for their blog, so that they were always writing about the same general topic (like sports, movies, school news, etc.) I explained this by saying that people were much more likely to want to read their blog on a regular basis if they knew what was going to be there and if they're interested in that topic.

While I know that kids don't like to be told what to do, I was quite surprised at the level of resistance they had to essentially being required to limit their writing to one general idea. In fact, not only did they not want to choose a topic, they didn't understand why it was necessary in the first place. This was perplexing to me at first, but then I realized that it made perfect sense for the developmental level of 14 year olds. 1) They don't want to do anything suggested by an adult, which at 29, I guess I am. 2) Their entire brain is essentially designed to be focused on themselves right now. They just cannot fathom why someone wouldn't be interested in every single thing about themselves. 3) Culturally speaking, our culture is excellent at emphasizing the beauty in randomness. The best example of this is, of course, the ipod, in which kids can carry all of their music with them at all times, and switch instantly between any genre, artist, or song at the drop of a hat. Hence, the idea of limiting themselves to just one topic seems like a huge drag.

So, what can I do to remedy this? I think I'll start by using non-examples of random blogs from other students that won't matter to anyone outside of themselves. Then, I think I'll track down some high-quality student blogs that address one topic that other people would care about, like the excellent OmniTechNews blog. [If you have any suggestions or additions to add to my list of quality student blogs, let me know!] Hopefully, this will clear up the distinction that people do care what you have to say IF its something that they are also interested in and know where to find it.

Photo Essay

2011-01-09T15:15:00.000-08:00

While my 7th grade Computer class is right on track in terms of the original projects laid out of the year (albeit behind schedule), my 8th grade Photojournalism class gets rewritten on what seems like a weekly basis! Most weeks, I am disappointed by either the lack of progress, or the lack of motivation 14 year olds display. Hence, the weekly re-working of what we might do next. (I exaggerate, it's not weekly.)

So, after some major brainstorming prior to beginning the next quarter, I am on track to start another new project. We'll be creating a photo essay about the neighborhood that the kids live in, known as Maryvale.

I plan on introducing the project to them this week with some brainstorming on what they think of when considering the neighborhood. Next week, we'll do a photo walk around the block that surrounds the schools. Following that, they'll write captions and introduction text for their photos and then post them in a blog post, or some other tool to display a photo essay. (I'm open to suggestions on this.)

Below is the sample I made :-)

http://bit.ly/dFDrXl

Online vs. Paper Writing

2011-01-01T16:41:00.000-08:00

Over the holidays, I had a lovely conversation with a friend about her next job and how educational technology relates to it. A few things you need to know about her to preface this discussion: 1) She's going into her 3rd volunteer job in Africa, adding up to about the last 8 years of her life. 2) The job she's beginning this year is heading an English department at a girls high school that is opening in February in Rwanda. 3) She's an amazing writer and just finished a master's degree in creative writing. 4) She's in the editing stages of writing her first novel.

With these things in mind, we had a discussion about whether or not (or when) it would be appropriate to have her forthcoming students do online writing in any form. Her first assumption (being a very pen and paper type), was that it would be better to spend quite a bit of time getting the students used to doing general writing on paper before heading them into theoretically uncharted territory of writing online.

My response, (after she told me that they'd be on a wired campus) was that they should absolutely give online writing a shot. I do think students need to practice writing thoughts out on paper as this form of writing hasn't been completely outdated yet, especially in Africa. However, I think that it's critical for students all over the world to learn how to write online for many reasons.

I believe this is an imperative part of writing instruction in this day and age because it gives students incredibly real audiences. Through this, they can learn about writing in a form that is useful and/or interesting to an audience that does not know you and does not have to read your writing. Too often, classroom writing takes on topics that do not engage an outside audience at all, and are merely exercises in the conventions of writing, not the content of writing. (Ex: No one cares about how your basketball practice went outside your family, unless you can find a way to make it useful to others.)

Also, in online writing, particularly through blogging and other kinds of technology that allow commenting by readers, students learn about giving and receiving useful comments and criticism. While it does leave them open to ridiculous comments, it teaches them that those types of comments do occur, and how best to respond to them. If we leave students to discover this kind of reading and writing on their own, we take the chance that they will become those ridiculous people who make the internet feel like the crazy, wild, wild, west.

Without these kinds of opportunities to write for real people who care what students have to say and give and receive comments and criticism for others, students will be missing out on instruction in something that WILL [eventually] be part of their online lives, no matter where they live.

Asking Answerable Questions

2010-12-23T19:05:00.000-08:00

As stated previously, I've been working with my kids on their Google search skills, including searching with keywords, and using reliable websites (which does not include answers.com). They are working on a project in which they chose a topic, created a plan in Inspiration, found answers to their questions on Google, wrote a script (which we're just now finishing), and will make it into a short documentary in iMovie after Christmas. However, the sticking point for many has come not when they use complete questions to search (partially because Google "suggests" it for them) or when they use unreliable sources, but when they want to find out questions that just aren't there.

I am a firm believer in the fact that just about anything you want to find out is on Google. However, through this project, it has become clear to me that there is an art to asking a question that has an answer on Google. In discussing this with some friends the other day, one of whom is a doctor, he brought up that in medical school, they teach students to ask answerable questions. As soon as he said that phrase, I knew that was the exact problem my students were having. They are asking unanswerable questions. In reality, most of the things do have answers, they are just things that basically no one wants/needs to know. You may beg to differ, but I ask you, why do there need to be answers to questions such as the following:

how many kinds of doctors are there in the world?
what's the best car?
why do penguins eat fish?
why did Martin Luther King call his speech "I have a dream"
were Batman and Robin friends?

Now that I have a name for the problem my students are having, I have to find a way to address it. Part of the issue is realizing when they're asking silly questions that they essentially know the answer to (Martin Luther King said "I have a dream" because he had a dream!) Another issue that I need to address with all my classes is the fact that if you search for a question that's about an opinion, at best, all you'll get are other people's opinions. Hence, if you ask who's the best player in the NBA, you'll get a lot of people's opinions. In addition to that, they need to be as specific as possible in what they're searching for. I don't know how many times I've told classes that searching for "cars" is going to bring WAY more information than you need and that using several keywords is essential. But still, I find people searching "dogs."

I may also have fed into this issue to a certain degree, because I had them all come up with questions they wanted answered, when in reality, I probably should have just had them identify categories they wanted more information on. Hence, I end up with questions like, "Do tigers like to run?" as opposed to categories like "how tigers hunt."

Wow! There, I think I'm actually a few steps closer to putting into words what makes a good, answerable, useful question! Hope it helps you too!

[PS: The picture is totally irrelevant, but it's what you see when you get to school before 7 AM!]

Plain English

2010-11-23T08:57:00.000-08:00

This week, Wikipedia has been my best friend and worst enemy. Ok, that may be a bit melodramatic, but I have seen it's good and bad side. (Impressive, for a 2 day week!)

My 7th graders have been working on creating a documentary on topics of their choice. In one of my classes, I have a blind student. I've been working with his Visual Impairment teacher to help modify lessons so he can participate. (First of all, you'd be amazed how much work it is to use a computer completely without a mouse or visual cues of where you're at.) The part of the project the kids are working on right now is using Google to effectively search for information. His teacher told me that web searching is sort of a mess for the visually impaired since websites are all designed differently, so screen-reading software reads them all differently. So, I decided simply to find one basic website, and let the screen reader read him the information that he was looking for about WWI. Where did I turn? Wikipedia.

I got to the website for him, set him up, and let it go. When I came back, he said he didn't understand any of it, so I listened for a second. It turns out that every time text is a link, a screen reader says "Link" before it reads that word. Hence, a wikipedia entry might sound like this:

Long-term causes, such as link imperialistic foreign policies of the great powers of link Europe, such as the link German Empire, the link Austro-Hungarian Empire, the link Ottoman Empire, the link Russian Empire, the link British Empire, link France and link Italy, played a major role.

Needless to say, I can understand why that would be confusing. So, I spent the rest of class (while managing 30 other kids) trying to find a website that didn't sound ridiculous and have unnecessary links. (I failed.)

However, my faith in Wikipedia was restored today when I found a student looking at a picture of the bus that Rosa Parks rode on. I looked at the picture and started to read the caption when I realized it was in French. I asked why he was reading in French (which he doesn't speak), and he said he must have accidentally clicked on the language button on the left side of the page. As we scanned the list of languages, I noticed one listed as "Simple English." I clicked on it, and it "translated" the page into plain English. As I read the page, it occurred to me that it is PERFECT for ELL students learning English and younger students who need less complex sentences and words. (When I translated the page back into the regular English entry, it included more information and in more complex forms.) Simple English Wikipedia has over 65,000 articles, which is, of course, not close to the nearly 3.5 million articles the standard version has, but still a substantial number. About 80% of the things I was looking for were there.

While it does still have plenty of links, and is therefore not very suitable for my blind student, it is perfect for many, many other students. I particularly like that the homepage says that it is meant to be simple wording and descriptions of things that may not be simple concepts, which makes it particularly suitable for older students learning English or who may have learning disabilities. Also, students can add to it. If they know more information that isn't included on a topic, they can submit it. If a page they're looking for isn't there, they can create it. You just can't beat plain English!

Give it a try!

2010-11-06T18:14:00.001-07:00

This summer, the district began a cadre of teachers who wanted to learn how to make video tutorials using Screenflow, a program that records audio, video, and actions on your screen. I knew this could be extremely useful in various settings, so I signed up. Each month, we have assignments on which educational technology tools we are to create a screencast about. The theory is that it takes about an hour of work for every minute of video you create, and district wants 3 minute videos. Unfortunately, mine tend to take closer to an hour and a half of work for each minute of completed video. But, they end up being very effective, so it's exciting.

My first video was about Wallwisher, an online sticky note website. It got pretty good reviews from district personnel, so I was happy about that. For the next month, I made one on Google Lit Trips. Google Lit Trips were created by a guy named Jerome Burg and they basically take books and plot their locations in Google Earth. Then, all users do is download the "layer" in Google Earth and it automatically flies to those locations and brings up comments, discussion questions, quotes, etc. from the book. Some of the books they have done this with include "Make Way for Duckling" and "Grapes of Wrath."

My video was posted on our district website and Youtube channel about a week ago. On Friday before I left school, I got a phone call from one of the district Instructional Technology Specialists (which I aspire to be ;-)), and he read me the following comment left on the video on Youtube:

Dierdre,
This is Jerome Burg, from Google Lit Trips. I just wanted to thank you for your excellent introduction to the project. I'm honored by your kind words. I don't know if you noticed the new link to videos on the front page, but that link is actually a search string that finds all YouTube videos about Google Lit Trips. I just tested it and sure enough yours shows up.
Thanks again, it means much to me.
Jerome

I was so excited to see that 1) ANYONE saw what I made, and 2) that one of the people who saw it was the creator of the whole thing! It was definitely exciting to see the power of the web :-) It once again strengthened my view that you won't get anywhere in life without putting yourself out there. It's true: someone might say no, it might not work, people might not like it, etc. but you'll never know if you don't try. In my case, it's not like there aren't smarter, more tech-savvy people out there (there are TONS), but I'm slowly getting closer to my goal, just by trying things out and occasionally failing, but often succeeding.

Google doesn't speak English

2010-11-06T17:25:00.000-07:00

Before fall break, a teacher came up to me and said some of my favorite words (other than, "Go home, take the day off, you deserve it!"). He said, "Hey, I'd really love some help with integrating technology, especially now that I have the new Activboard. Can you help me sometime?" Yes, yes!!! :-) This is one of my favorite things to do at school. [Note that I didn't say one of my favorite things is to FIX technology.]

After a brief discussion with him, we established that he'd like to start with doing web research with his 5th graders. This was an excellent place to start, because I was planning on doing the same thing with my 7th graders in the coming weeks. So, last week, when the internet was down at school and the battery on my laptop was dead, I hand-wrote my lesson plan for the first time ever. (It bites, because my handwriting is awful and I'm not good at visually organizing information on paper.) But, all in all, it was a good start.

Yesterday morning, it was time to put the rubber to the road and I went over to work with the 5th graders. Since I had previously come in and seen some of their projects on Native Americans, I started with that topic. First, I had them close the laptops, and then take out their textbooks. (Sometimes you have to go back in time to make current technology make sense.) After we established a research question, "Why did the Iroquois build longhouses?" I had them look it up under W for Why (according to a suggestion by a student, which is what I was hoping someone would say :-)) Needless to say, it took about 15 seconds for them to realize that wasn't going to work. So then, we narrowed it down to keywords (Iroquois, longhouse, why) and I had students come highlight them on the Activboard. They looked up those keywords and came up with much more information.

From there, we addressed the fact that Google is basically an index, and you have to search in keywords, just like you do in an index. Additionally, I tried to emphasize that Google doesn't speak English, so complete sentences are irrelevant, because it looks up every single web page with all of the words you searched (including every page with Why, every page with The, etc.) That brought us to searching the keywords in the question, and then refining the search with other synonyms for better results (why, cause, reason, etc.). I also made sure to emphasize that the more accurate keywords you use, the more you'll narrow down your search results (referencing the number of results Google found).

Once we were clear on that, I had them do a quick 3 question Google Form survey/quiz to determine that we were understanding it, and then reviewed the results together, which show up in a linked Google Spreadsheet in real time. (By the way, Google Forms are the coolest thing ever for that type of instant results without expensive "clicker" systems. It's another option when you create a new item in Google Docs.) Overall, it seemed to work like a charm :-) Hopefully, it'll work that well with 7th graders :-)

I'm planning on going in to the 5th grade class again and reviewing web site quality and reliability next, and then (at least with the 7th graders) we'll talk about Advanced Search options. In the grand scheme of things, this seems like a really little thing to get excited about, but the topic is so crucial, since it's something the kids will use (eventually) multiple times a day, essentially every day of their lives. So, it's exciting seeing them learn a skill that will be so critical down the road. Whether its cool or not, its exciting to be a part of it!

PS: I dressed up as Google for Halloween. White pants and shirt, with Google logo and search bar pinned to my shirt :-)

Meaningful Blog Comments

2010-10-20T16:44:00.000-07:00

Having spent the last several weeks teaching my 7th grade classes how to write a blog post and upload a legal, relevant image, I decided that this past week was the time when we'd embark on commenting. Given that these students are intimately familiar with MySpace, it was a bit surprising how much they did NOT know about online commenting (on blogs or otherwise).

Since I only see my students for 45 minutes, 9 times a quarter, I was not able to use projects or discovery type learning to teach a fantastic lesson on this topic, as I know many others are able to do. (Here are sources one & two I used to form the basis of what I taught, and another I just noticed today.) Instead, I ended up just telling them the most salient points.

These were the sections all students were to include on every comment they left:

First, write something positive or a compliment. Just as teachers can always find at least something positive to say about a student's writing, we should all be able to find something positive to say about a blog post.
Second, give a suggestion or ask a question about what they wrote. This tells the author that you are interested in what they have to say on a given topic.
Third, add information to what they said. This might be a related experience or information that they might not know about their topic. This way, the author's knowledge is deepened by your comment.
Sample comment: That's cool that you like bracelets. They're colorful and very creative. Do you make them yourself? Colors of bracelets have meanings too!

I also explained these qualifications about commenting, hoping to eliminate hostile, inappropriate exchanges:

Comments are NOT private communication between you and the post author. Anyone in the world can read them, LITERALLY, including parents, friends, principals, teachers, people in China, etc. (I emphasized this a lot to 13 year olds!)
People form opinions of you based on what you write. You want to make sure that people know you are an intelligent human being by using proper grammar, spelling, and that you double-check for silly mistakes before you submit comments. This also means no text language! You don't want someone thinking that you think the word "you" has 1 letter! Also, 17 exclamation points are unnecessary. One or two get the point across just as well.
You are free to disagree with blog posts, but you must do it respectfully. This means not saying "Your crazy, that idea sucks!" but intelligently stating your opinion WITH REASONS, without being rude, insulting, or hurtful. Stating an opinion without reasons makes people dismiss your comments immediately.

Throughout the week, I moderated the comments to delete the one-sentence comments (as I had told them I'd do), inappropriate things, and to generally keep tabs on the conversations. Had I discovered this comment earlier in the week, it would have been my perfect example of how NOT to comment: (I would link to it, but I deleted it!)

"WOW!!!! U SEEM REAL COOL TO HANGOUT WIT WEL I LIK HTE WAY U CHUZZ OUT SHOEZ ND CARZZZZZZ.. U SEEM AWSUMMMMM DUDE ND BY THE WAY I AM A GURLLLL........"

This post, however, has some much higher-quality comments on it. While there is still a lack of punctuation or improper grammar in some of the comments, I think it turned into a decent little group of thoughts. I would spend more time ensuring proper conventions in writing, but with 26 different classes a week, I just don't have time. If I catch them before they've posted it, I'll have them fix it. Otherwise, as long as its an intelligent comment that adds to the conversation, I'm willing to let some of those things go, momentarily. But it will be addressed every time we blog, as a reminder.

I think these guidelines should make for a good baseline for all online commenting in my classrooms throughout the year.

Teaching in the Dark Ages

2010-10-10T21:13:00.000-07:00

On Tuesday, the biggest storm Phoenix has seen in years swept through the Valley, leaving a trail of hail-pitted destruction in its path. The first wave of the storm hit around noon, and shortly after, it began hailing, which is nearly unheard of in Phoenix. (See my pic above.) At this point, I was supposed to be teaching a photojournalism class with a very rough group of 8th graders. After about 5 minutes of "class" we watched a power line short out in front of our window, and very shortly thereafter, the power went out. It quickly became clear that the best that I could hope for was that they would sit down and watch the storm out the window. Eventually, their teacher ended up taking them back to class since there was literally nothing I could do without power.

This was almost a shock to me, because I've always prided myself on being able to make anything into a learning activity. And, in this case, in a regular classroom, I could have. In regular classrooms, there are still books, textbooks, paper, pencil, etc. One of the other 8th grade teachers had his students write stories about it (what I would've done), and another had them paint pictures of the storm. However, in a computer lab, there was literally NOTHING I could do in terms of computers without power (short of taking them apart, and I couldn't even do that with Macs), and I obviously wasn't sending them out with cameras in the rain (not like I could've uploaded the pictures anyway). At best, we would have been telling stories.

In this case, the teacher actually just volunteered to take them back to class (I didn't put up too much of a fight :-)) By the time my next class came an hour later, it had cleared up even though the power was still out, so I sent them out with the cameras to document the storm. (I uploaded them all to my computer when I got home.) Out of the 200+ pictures they took, there were even a few good ones. (See below.)

It was one of the very few times in my life where I've literally been stumped as to what to do next. It was a very unnerving feeling. This has since inspired me to come up with 1) some good stories to tell in case this happens again, and 2) some verbal activities kids could do in this situation. Anyone else have any other suggestions?

New ideas

2010-10-03T20:49:00.000-07:00

Have you ever had an idea that hits you all at once? So far, (at least in education) my best ideas come to me this way. These are definitely the ideas that I'm the most passionate about. This includes the online class I taught about using interactive whiteboards, which I loved, and the idea I had for my first proposal to present at a conference (still waiting to hear about this one).

One of these ideas hit me the other week. As a new trainer for the interactive white boards, I realized that teachers needed something beyond just a how-to class for the IWB software. What I would have loved when I had already completed the training but was stuck on where to go from there, was a class to sit and work on digital "flipcharts" for the board with someone to help me when I got stuck.

So, I immediately emailed my instructional technology director about such a course who promptly...did not get back to me. However, 4 days later, when he did get back to me (since he'd been out of town), he said it was a great idea, and would I be interested in heading up this idea. I was thrilled to be given such a chance, and even more happy that this type of idea had already been floated by other trainers during the summer, so there was already support for it.

This plan is really starting to move along, as we have a planning meeting this week with trainers regarding what such a forum will look like. It will definitely be come and go, and have trainers available to answer questions as needed. We are planning whether it will have any teaching component for the whole group (like higher-order thinking, integrating the software into actual curriculum, etc.) or if it will just be an "Activboard Study Hall" as we are currently calling it. (Do you remember how awesome study hall was in high school? Best thing ever, in terms of homework.) As soon as those things are planned, we'll begin implementing these classes, so yay for good ideas coming to fruition!

Opinions matter!

2010-09-22T20:31:00.000-07:00

Last week was the first week my photojournalism class started using the cameras. (I was trying to put it off, because it meant they'd be going outside taking pictures, and it was still around 110 degrees outside.) So, after spending weeks on introductory work with rules, writing captions, and learning photo rules, we finally busted out the cameras.

And it was a disaster. Actually, it wasn't terrible, it was just that 45 minutes was not even close to long enough to do what I wanted. I had been going over practices that make quality photos, having them choose a few practices, and then going outside with the cameras to try it out. This worked really well, in fact, because they loved examining what made a good picture (we'd look at 2 pix side by side, identifying why one was better than the other), and then they had fun trying to take their version of "artistic" photos after that. The problem came when we tried to upload the pictures in the last 3 minutes of class, never having done it before. (They had also never used iPhoto.)

This is a classic mistake I tend to make when teaching a new technology. I give the kids plenty of credit in terms of using the technological savvy that their generation has to "figure things out" without much explanation, however they tend to need more time to do it than I think. Which was exactly what happened here. Also, another critical error I made was having an inadequate check-out system for the cameras, which resulted in 2 cameras being stolen during the first class of the first day!! Under severe threat of field trip removal, they were returned by lunch, but I became very aware of a need to change my system.

So, the next day, I changed things up by shortening the discussion of how to take good pictures, reviewing camera rules, creating a sign-out/sign-in sheet for the cameras, and keeping the kids in the room to take pictures. Still disastrous, and I had my worst class coming up! Hence, over my lunch period, we did a total revamp. Out of frustration, I just wrote all the instructions on the board for a new lesson that involved beginning with iPhoto, then taking a picture and uploading it. Then, when the class came in, I asked their opinion if they wanted to go through all the steps together, or whether they wanted to just read them and work at their own pace. They chose to work at their own pace, and it worked like a charm. They immediately got started and it was as close to quiet as that room has ever been. What a relief!

I kept following this pattern with the rest of my 8th grade classes the rest of the week and it worked great. Most classes chose to work individually, but a couple chose to work together. No matter what they chose, it worked remarkably better than the original system, I think because they had input into how they were going to take in the information. Let's face it, when you're 14, all you want in life is to be in charge, even if in a very small way. Lesson learned: give them a choice!

This is the set of steps I eventually ended up using for this lesson:

1. Take a screen shot of something on your desktop (Command+Shift+4 on Mac)

2. Open iPhoto.

3. Create a new folder in iPhoto with your name (File-->New Folder).

4. Create a new album in iPhoto labelled "First Try" (File-->New Album).

5. Drag your album into your folder.

6. Drag your screenshot into your album.

7. Memorize the Camera Rules. Tell them to Mrs. Shetler in order to sign out a camera.

8. With a partner, each take a picture of one THING in the classroom (no people!)

9. Upload your pictures into iPhoto and drag them into your album.

10. (If time,) select the picture and edit it in iPhoto.

(The photo is by one of my students, taken on Constitution Day.)

How students use Google Instant

2010-09-12T16:03:00.000-07:00

Last week, I had an 8th grade photojournalism student who was supposed to be working on a blog post caption about a picture of the 1963 March for Freedom in Washington DC. I had showed them the pictures they were to write captions for in advance, and had showed the picture below and mentioned that the Washington Monument was in the background. (For your entertainment, I only told them this after I was corrected by a student on Thursday who informed me that it was NOT the Lincoln Memorial as I said, but the Washington Monument. Oops!)

Since all the students had to do was look at the photos and write captions for them in the format we'd discussed, I was surprised to find a student on Google. I walked over to him and told him to get back to work, but he then told me that he was trying to figure out how to spell Washington Monument, and he was using Google Instant to help him figure out when he was right! So, he'd type letter by letter until it brought out the words he was trying to spell and a picture and map of the correct item, and then he'd go back and type it correctly in to the blog post. Genius!

[By the way, automatic spell check in every program in Macs is one of my favorite school features. Whoever thinks spell check is bad for kids, has never been so terrified that they asked the teacher why the computer says their name is spelled wrong. Kids are way more likely to correct their spelling when they know its wrong in the first place.]

Teaching Tech or Teaching WITH Tech?

2010-09-12T15:35:00.000-07:00

[Don't worry, I haven't bailed on teaching technology, just thought the low-tech, no spell-check sign was funny! :-)]

I've completed my first month of teaching technology for 7th grade and photojournalism for 8th grade. I would say it's been a successful month, on the whole. Since I'm teaching a "special area" class for self-contained junior highers, I only see each group of kids once a week, which means I've spent a total of 3 hours with them, so far. While this has eliminated a lot of management issues, it's also made me realize a number of other things about teaching (or my opinion of it).

First of all, the kids are great (by and large). The 8th graders require a shorter leash to keep them on task, and are less patient with any words coming from my mouth (i.e., the quicker I can get them working on a project, the better), but are able to think deeper. The 7th graders are sweeter (currently) and are more interested in learning to do things on the computer, but have less background knowledge of computers.

I am enjoying teaching students how to use various technologies (ranging from blogs to online stickies to digital cameras to Powerpoint), but doing it in 45 minutes and/or having them remember what to do after 7 days is a bit of a challenge. I enjoy not having to explain or justify WHY I am using technology to administrators, but since I'm a traveling teacher to 4 schools, administrators are just glad there is someone in the room. It does take more patience teaching how to use specific technologies in the beginning, but the payoff should be worth it.

However, what I'm learning is that while I don't miss classroom deadlines, test score analysis, administrative pressure, behavior management, etc., I do miss finding ways to integrate technology INTO my curriculum (as opposed to technology BEING the curriculum). I'm trying to integrate a bit of the curriculum into the technologies I'm supposed to be teaching, but it's not quite the same. So, to scratch that itch, I try to offer suggestions and help other teachers who need assistance in that area as much as possible.

On a related note, I've gotten to do a lot more training for other teachers this year, as I've finally learned a number of lessons in education (now that I'm starting my sixth year). Some of those lessons include:

-If you want to do something/go somewhere, ASK.

-Figure out who you need help from, and get on their good side

-Put yourself out there (if you are curious about something new, try it; you might be good at it)

-Don't be afraid to fail (blessings might come from the experience anyway)

Hence, this year I've done some trainings for IWBs (which is a blast) and am getting ready to do a digital poster session for Delicious soon at the district's Speed Date Your Computer event.

Overall though, my eventual goal is still to end up doing teacher training full time with large groups, as well as working with teachers individually to help them integrate technology into the curriculum.

So, all that to say, if I have to choose between teaching tech or teaching WITH tech, I want to teach people to teach with tech :-) (There's some tongue-twisting alliteration for you!)

Aaaaannnd back to the grind!

2010-08-16T21:38:00.001-07:00

After a long, crazy, drawn-out summer of applications and interviews, (and not feeling like blogging), I'm back at school, teaching 7th grade Computers and 8th grade Photojournalism. This is a definite change from a 7th grade self-contained class, a change I'm thrilled to make. However, I'm not thrilled that I'll be traveling between 4 schools!!

There are definitely some bonuses though :-) One of those is that I get more prep, which is fantastic! I'm planning on using some of the extra time to do professional development with teachers who want it. I started out with this last week by doing a quick, 1 hour, "Meet Your Activboard" session for teachers who are brand new to it. They loved it. The more time I spend with teachers and technology, I realize that there are very few people who are totally against technology in the classroom; it turns out that most teachers would really like to learn how to use it, they just haven't had quality professional development. I hope that I can alleviate that issue :-)

Today was the first day of school, and I taught 2 lessons three or four times each, which I LOVED! 45 minutes each, and out the door :-) Such a relief. I think I'm going to love teaching photojournalism with the 8th graders. We did a brief discussion of what it was, and to give them a taste, I showed them a few photos from this series by the 1998 Pulitzer Prize winner. They were fascinated with it. Then, both 7th and 8th graders used www.wallwisher.com to post some unique things about themselves. Additionally, the 8th graders posted an image from Google of something that represented them (couldn't be a person) and they did a pretty good job, though 45 minutes for all of this plus going over rules wasn't quite enough time. Luckily, I have 19 more times to teach these classes to get everything right :-)

I think it'll be a good year :-)

2010-07-17T14:30:00.000-07:00

When we got to Paris yesterday, for some of us, (Darla mainly), this was the first experience having NO understanding of the language, which tends to be rather unnerving. After straightening out some confusion with train tickets for the next leg of the trip, we tracked down our hotel. After a quick scamper up the 6 spiral flights of stairs, (more of a winded, sweaty, stomping up the stairs), we dumped our stuff and prepared for a day in Paris! It was at this point that it became blatantly clear that 2 years of mandatory language study (like Ben's French) are apparently worthless. No idea how to pronounce words, letters, nothing. Oh well.

First and foremost we went to get Paris Museum passes, in order to avoid lines and save money. Since we happened to wander past it first, we checked out Sainte-Chapelle, an AMAZING set of stained glass windows in a small chapel that tell the story of the entire bible up to Jesus death. After grabbing a quick sandwich for lunch, we wandered up to the Champs-Elysses, past the Louvre (I know, I know, we're uncultured. None of us are particularly interested in that era of art) and enjoyed a respite sitting by a fountain in the Tuileries gardens.
As we wandered our way to the Arc de Triomphe on the Champs-Elysee, it was clear that there had been some large event there, which was being cleaned up (bleachers, streets blocked off, etc.) and then realized that the Tour de France had just ended at that location, days earlier. After window shopping at the high end places (like the flagship Louis Vuitton store), we climbed a never-ending spiral staircase to the top of the Arc, which had beautiful views of the city and the Eiffel Tower. When we came down, we watched in amazement as nobody was killed in the crazy traffic circle around the Arc, in which 12 streets all come into one gigantic, insane traffic circle.

Finally, we decided it was time to examine the Eiffel Tower in detail. When we got there, we decided to eat a lovely French supper overlooking the Eiffel Tower until twlight fell, and watch the tower light up and then climb it. In actuality, the sun doesn't set in Paris until like 10:00 PM, so we had things like goat cheese, quiche, and duck for supper overlooking the tower, and then realized itwas going to be at LEAST another hour and a half before it got dark. Hence, we just decided to start climbing, which ended up being cool, because we were on it right at sunset. We could only climb up to the 2nd floor, but it was amazing, nonetheless, especially lit up at night. The best part was that it lit up and had flashing strobe lights at the top of every hour, which was absolutely breath-taking from outside the tower, as the whole thing basically appeared to be sparkling. Even though it was packed with tourists and people selling crap, it was absolutely, 100% worth it :-)

Shoulder-Tap Leadership

2010-04-26T20:54:00.000-07:00

One of the lessons I've learned in teaching is that I have a responsibility, as a teacher, to tell kids what gifts I recognize in them, whether or not they do themselves. In fact, it is even more important if they are unaware of it. Hence, I've intentionally started telling kids what I think they'd be good at, in terms of a career, or the types of roles they might occupy down the line. When I told a current student that she should consider a career as a writer or journalist, she was embarrassed, but clearly excited to consider such a thing. In middle school, being given a word of direction or encouragement is sometimes all that is needed to get them to start seriously considering their futures.

I have been doing this a lot in the recent past, as opportunities have arisen. When a middle school leadership conference opportunity came up, I picked as many kids as I as allowed (3). When I asked specific kids if they were interested, they all said yes (yay for my judgement :-)) and one fairly beamed when I asked her. Upon returning from the conference today, they all said they had a wonderful time and were thrilled at being given the opportunity to attend. One even said, "Mrs. Shetler, will you please tell my 8th grade teacher that I would like to be selected to attend this event next year as well?"

Then, several weeks ago, I selected 8 or 10 students to be recognized via People to People as students with potential leadership. (You know, the type of organization that invites you to attend a "reception gala" in DC--on your own dime, of course--and then asks you to buy the book with your name in it for $29.99 or something. I didn't really care about the rest, just wanted kids to know they were thought of in that way.) On Thursday, the selected students received letters explaining this. Right away, I had kids come up to me saying things like, "Thank you for nominating me, Mrs. Shetler!" and "My mom was so proud of me!" and "My mom is going to frame that letter!" and "I get the window and John gets the aisle when we go to Washington!" I wasn't sure how to explain to them how the trip actually works, though I tried. (But today, I still had students talking about having car washes to raise money to go!) So, I was thrilled at how excited those kids were.

Unintended consequence though: all the kids that didn't get nominated wanted to know why! I felt so bad when one of my gifted kids who I've had for two years now asked why I didn't nominate him... So, I had to explain to them that no matter how smart they may be, leadership is just one of many desirable traits a person can have.

Despite this philosophy putting me in the occasional tough position, I still firmly believe that it is essential to recognize skills in students, especially leadership skills, since it is clear that we are in desperate need of future leaders in this state!

MEC 2010 Day 1

2010-03-15T20:12:00.000-07:00

"How did you get your administrator to let you go to that MEC conference at ASU??" Well, I asked. If you wish you could go to a fun tech conference, ASK! I can't guarantee it'll work all the time, but it works more often than you'd imagine :-) I had a blast today at my first big edtech conference, and especially had fun tweeting about it! I never get to tweet that much since I don't have a data plan on my phone :-) Anyway, here's a quick summary of some of the cool things I learned about:

-Twitter -Great workshop with Tony Vincent :-)

-Kindergartners who are tweeting!

-Gmail's new Forgotten Attachment Detector (beta)

-Live Classroom 2.0-Free weekly edtech webinars

-Kidsblog-A free blogging service for kids that doesn't require email addresses

-Twoogie-a fun one for fans of Twitter and Doogie Howser MD :-)

The Back Side of Web Blockers

2010-03-09T17:13:00.000-08:00

In a good example of the double-edged sword of web blockers, I posed a veiled challenge to my kids a week or two ago. We were getting ready for our quarterly benchmark tests and I knew we hadn't talked about tides yet in science and that it was going to be on the test, and I was running short on time. Hence, I wrote the following on the board: Find a video online that describes to you how tides work. Then embed that video in a blog post. I have never done any of those things with the kids before, but I wanted to see what/how they'd do :-)

Not surprisingly, they knew exactly how to find videos, but they also know that youtube is blocked. So, immediately, one kid raises his hand and asks what to do, since youtube was blocked. I said, "Figure it out," knowing that 1) there are plenty of other places to find videos online, and 2) there are even more proxys available which get you around web blockers to the blocked site. 30 seconds after the first kid raised his hand, someone else goes, "Got it! I'm in!" They found a proxy (several actually) that worked, and others used various other sources. Eventually, everyone got a basic idea of how tides work, though we ran out of time for the embedding bit. I'll try that again some other time :-) Then, to guarantee that everyone had the same understanding I wanted them to have, I showed them this high-quality video from HowStuffWorks, which helped out as well. Yay for technology!

A few cool tech things

2010-03-09T16:23:00.000-08:00

As the kids (and the teachers) start to wind up for our state standardized testing (AIMS) and other tests, stress levels rise and behavior goes down the tubes. Needless to say, this is true on both sides of the teacher's desk. So, as is usually my M.O., I've resorted to technology to ratchet down stress levels and behavior issues.

About a month ago, I ran across this genius idea by @rmbyrne on Twitter (author of the always excellent Free Technology for Teachers blog). His idea was to take a topic and compare what different technology sources say about it. So, since women's suffrage was next up in our march through US History, we read the 8 paragraphs in the textbook about women's suffrage, then read sections of the Wikipedia entry on the same topic, and then looked at primary source documents (which we've studied) about women's suffrage. Then, the students wrote blog posts explaining why they would choose one source over another, and how the information that was offered by each differed.

This turned out to be a great exercise. It benefitted the students in several ways. First, it showed them the beauty of Wikipedia (which they've discovered off-handedly, but we haven't done any direct work with). They weren't aware how much information could be found there, which needless to say, is a wealth of information. Next, in order to save time, which was not surprisingly, running short, I found about handful of primary source items available online (poems, photos, legislative documents, etc.) , showed them to the kids and explained them. First of all, they were very interested in them, which was great. But even better, I was shocked to discover that they were fascinated with the concept of the Library of Congress, where I'd found some of the sources. They just thought it was the coolest thing that there was a place where all these original sources were stored :-) Bonus for the LOC! And finally, they were able to reflect on which source was most effective in various ways on the class blog, by answering some questions I posed.

Speaking of the blog, I was thrilled to discover last week that somehow, a college class of students studying to be teachers discovered our class blog and posted lots of comments on it. The kids were THRILLED to see that other people actually cared about what they had to say!

Where can a degree get you?

2010-03-09T15:51:00.000-08:00

It occurred to me recently, that after 5 years of teaching, I'm a good teacher, but I'm still an awful classroom manager, and it exhausts me every single day. No, I take it back. I knew that already. What occurred to me is that there are ways around that part of teaching, and I really don't have to make myself suffer through something that just does not come naturally to me.

Lucky for me, I (will in May) have a degree that can get me to those kinds of jobs. So, this year, I'm not just applying to 2 places, I'm looking at all kinds of other places, from teaching educational technology at online universities or in face-to-face community colleges, to teaching basic computer classes to middle schoolers, to doing professional development for teachers, to teaching online classes for a K-12 online school.

So, I've sent out inquiries to many of these places and am planning on sending out more. I finished my Curriculum Vitae the other day, which felt good (and professional :-)) It was surprising as I created the CV and my resume, to realize that I am actually pretty qualified for many of the positions I listed above! Good job, NAU! It feels great to actually have some options outside of teaching in an elementary self-contained classroom. That's the thing with a BA in education. Generally, the only thing you can do with it is teach. So, I'm excited to have more options. Wish me luck!

New ideas and old stories

2010-01-25T19:47:00.001-08:00

Here are a few random thoughts I'm submitting for your review. I hadn't posted anything in a while, so here is a little of "this and that" as my great grandma used to say. :-)

Last week I acquired a set of ActivExpressions which are devices which can send messages to my interactive whiteboard (ActivBoard). Their basically little texting devices with which they can send text messages to my board. When everyone has answered, it pops up a graph showing what percentage gave what answer. The kids love it. In fact, it's hard to keep their hands off of them. I take away about 2 of them a day for kids pretending to talk on their "cellphones." Seriously, it is amazing how much time 7th graders still spend just playing. Craziness. I'm still learning how to use them effectively as a learning tool. (I'm open to any suggestions!)

This week we started an immigration project, since we're studying the Industrial Revolution. My students are researching the story of particular immigrants during the late 1800's, and then they're choosing someone they know who's family has immigrated to the US sometime in the more recent past (in the last 75 years :-)). Then they'll interview that person (or someone in their family who knows the family immigration story) and compare and contrast the two stories. Theoretically, this is the plan. I'm having a hard time getting the kids to understand that the person they interview doesn't have to be 1) a family member, or 2) someone who personally immigrated themselves. We spent forever clarifying that today. Some of the kids themselves are immigrants, while the families of other students have been in the country for many generations. I think that when all is said and done, they should be great stories, but it'll take some time. We're actually struggling to find good stories from the late 1800's. Anyone

have any immigration stories from that era? Here's hoping for the best on that project!

Then tonight, from my wonderful PLN (personal learning network) of individuals that I follow on Twitter, I found a great new way of displaying students writing in images, called FlickrPoet. You paste or type in text (poetry or otherwise), and then it chooses related images from Flickr to illustrate your writing. I tried it with some rain poems my kids wrote on a very rainy Thursday last week. Below are screen shots of the images that it produced for one of the poems. Pretty cool, huh?

But do they remember?

2010-01-03T20:39:00.001-08:00

I think I'll show my students this video this week. I'll probably play it once all the way through, and then go back and watch it again, stopping to explain things in a touch more detail than is available in the provided 7 minutes. :-)

A new challenge...

2009-12-07T20:09:00.000-08:00

Tonight I successfully taught my first basic computer class for adults (at least, I think I was successful :-)) Thanks to some very helpful stimulus funding, we have been able to implement a so-called "Parent University" at our school, which enables us to offer free courses to interested parents and community members. We originally had offered classes in parenting, infant care, English, computers, consumer math, and algebra, but had such great demand that we are currently basically offering several sections of English and computers. So tonight, another teacher and I divided up the adults and took about 20 each.

After talking with kids all day, it's a bit unnerving to be teaching adults. I wrote my name on the board, and was shocked to realize that people were taking notes! Without being asked! :-) The other added "bonus" to the class (other than that most have never touched a computer) is that the vast majority of the students don't speak English (or at least not fluently). Hence, there was a lot of me holding up components and going, "KEYBOARD. Say it with me-"keyboard."" So, that added an extra challenge. In reality though, a truly basic computer class like this one is 50% teaching people a different language anyway. So today, our vocabulary was:

keyboard
mouse
monitor
CPU
cursor
click
double-click
shift
return
delete

So, for an hour on Mondays and Wednesdays, we're going back to the basics. It was actually kind of fun (outside all the running around to different computers to make sure everyone's looking at the right thing...) On top of that, it turns out that adults are much more engaged in learning :-) (I know, big surprise) So, we had a good time. Hopefully it continues as well as it started!

The uncut version?

2009-11-29T17:40:00.000-08:00

I just finished approving a bunch of my students' blog postings and faced the same dilemma I always come up against. Do I proofread their postings or not? I have no issues correcting simple mistakes in which words are skipped, repeated, etc. If they got a chance to read it again, they'd catch it. Those aren't mistakes kids tend to learn from. However, other mistakes--spelling mistakes, grammar mistakes, phrasing--all of these things are mistakes from which kids can learn lessons for the next time around, and which they won't learn unless someone TELLS them they're wrong. Also, I hate to put my kids' writing out onto the great, big, public internet without looking perfect (because it makes BOTH of us look bad).

On the other hand, if I put it out there WITH the mistakes, maybe it's teaching them a lesson to proofread their own work closer before submitting it, and/or that they should have someone else read it before submission.

Teachers tend to have strong (and very opposite) opinions on this topic, so it's bit pointless to discuss this with them, unfortunately. This posting is an attempt to get some valuable outsider opinions about this topic :-) Let me know your thoughts. Now that I think about it, for an even broader perspective, I'm going to see what my kids think. I'll post this as a blog posting for them to respond to and we'll see if they can form some relevant opinions on the topic (and maybe even use the persuasive techniques we've been talking about).

Out of desks

2009-11-25T14:55:00.000-08:00

It is Thanksgiving and my desks runneth over. I got student #31 on Tuesday, and I am now officially out of student desks. This one has a seat, but the next one won't. I told our curriculum specialist this and she responded, "No problem, we've got more desks in room 59." Dang it, that wasn't the point!

This last new student is a doozy though. He is about to be 14 and got moved to my 7th grade class from 6th grade. Yes, you read that correctly. He was held back twice for varying reasons, and they realized this year that if he completes 6th grade this year, goes into 7th grade next year, he'd be 16 while in 8th grade, and we're not legally allowed to have 16 year olds on our PreK-8 campus. Hence (or thus, as my students would say), he'd have to go straight to 9th grade after 7th. (Can you start to hear the splintering of the system going on here?) So, the new genius plan is to put him in 7th grade for the rest of this year (effectively skipping 6th grade), and then he'll be on track. However, he's already falling far behind 6th grade standards, so how in the world is he going to survive 7th grade standards, and jumping into them in the middle, to boot!

At lunch, I mentioned that I got this student, and the 5th and 6th grade teachers all got this slack-jawed look of fear in their eyes, and said, "You got HIM??? Good luck...." Then stories came pouring out explaining how terrible this kid is for every teacher he's with. Needless to say, a feeling of dread soaked through me at that point. After day 1, he did ok, but I don't know... On an acadmic level, I don't know how it will every work. On a behavioral level, if I can keep him scared stiff of the 7th graders (which he currently is), it might work. I know, I know, that's not a good strategy. I'm mainly just hoping that his behavior issues were a function of being stuck with age-inappropriate peers. Time will tell...

And thus...

2009-11-25T14:29:00.000-08:00

Whew, it's been an adventurous week in the classroom! (And by that, I mean disastrous!) Due to my PREVIOUSLY excellently-behaved classroom, their horrible behavior this week was a shocker! I don't know if it's due to my sudden influx of new students or the holidays, but needless to say, it requires a bunch more work on my part.

Either way, (luckily) they still do not cease to be entertaining. As of late, we've been discussing the Civil War in History. Wars in history are completely unknown to these kids. As far as they knew, the Civil War involved someone handing out guns on both sides and people running around shooting anything that moved for four years straight, non-stop. So, we had to put that notion to bed. Needless to say, the fact that armies would line up, and then start running at each other with guns was a completely foreign concept (and quite distressing, as well!) After a discussion of the surprising violent Battle of Bull Run, one particularly innocent student looks up at me and says, "Mrs. Shetler, how come they didn't just use pillows instead of guns? It would have been so much safer!" Bless his heart...

Then, the next day as we were continuing this discussion about Civil War battles, a student asks me, "Mrs. Shetler, who were we?" As in, which side were we on? Another kid pipes up, "Yeah, did we win?" I was literally speechless. How does one answer this? Technically, Arizona wasn't a state (and wouldn't be for another 50 years) so the residents had no "side." I couldn't tell him that "we" (as in the US) won, because I'm sure that's not how Civil War history is taught in South. They're so used to it being "us against them" in all other wars in history, as well as in every video game they play. I ended up telling them some adaptation of what I described above, but this was just very difficult for them to understand :-) If nothing else, I just had to laugh at how much this question stumped me!

On an unrelated note, my students randomly get excited about using new words (even down to making up words just for the sake of using new words). A while ago, we were reading a poem that used the word "shall" and I mentioned in passing that it was a more formal, fancy way of saying "will." Next thing I knew, I had a girl who was telling me, "I shall try inverse operations, but I'm not sure about it..." Then this week, I had another student randomly start using the word Thus. So now, I had 13 year olds running around saying, "I lost my voice, and thus I shouldn't talk today." "...and thus, Arturo rode his bike over my foot." "Thus the water moves the sediment down the river," etc. It's hilarious :-) I tell them to keep using those words, because it'll guarantee them a great score on their state writing tests, because it is so unexpected!

The following video is basically unrelated, but a great excuse to combine Jack Black and school :-)

A New Experiment

2009-10-19T15:41:00.001-07:00

I love it when teaching and learning intersect!

When I got my Activboard last year, I was not informed I needed or even might want to consider any training. Additionally, there are very strict requirements as to who gets these boards, and I was never informed what I did to deserve it. Don't get me wrong, I ADORE it, and have been begging for one for years. It's just that, as with many other tech integration ideas, I was given the technology and then was expected to take the initiative and figure it out myself (in my vast amount of spare time). Unfortunately, this is why millions of dollars worth of technology goes unused in schools every day. In fact, I have seen the exact same thing happen in the past two weeks as people walk in to their classrooms in the morning to discover and Activboard there, with no knowledge of how to even turn it on.

Because of my interest in technology, I did take it upon myself to take all the training I could find, and then experiment with it. However, like I said, too many others don't. I'm very glad I took the training, but even so, while it did a great job explaining how to use the actual software, it didn't do such a good job of showing how it could be used effectively to help students learn more in the classroom. Hence, ever since this summer, I've been designing a better course in the back of my head.

Here comes the intersection of my teaching and what I've been learning in my ed tech master's program at NAU. This semester and next, my major (and final) project is to create a project that supports professional development in educational technology. How perfect! What I'm learning is something that is directly necessary at the school level! For this reason, I've spent nearly the entire first day of my fall break planning a 4-week online course in Beginning Use of Activboard Software. For once, it's been exciting working on a school project! (Actually, that's been true of much of my Master's program.) Now, I actually create the online course shell and then wait to see how it actually plays out in the coming months... Here's hoping for the best :-) Have any of you (my vast world of readers) ever taken an online course? Was your experience positive or negative? Why?

Finally Making Progress...

2009-09-28T21:00:00.000-07:00

Wow! Talk about a long time coming! Today my students and I were finally able to blog, but it took us 7 weeks of school to get there.

I'm using the Edublogs site, which forces all posts and comments to go through me before they are published (which is very helpful). After deciding to use blogs with the kids (and do it right!) I located an extremely helpful blog posting (fitting) which had 5 lessons for introducing kids to blogging. We started out talking about what blogs were by looking at a number, then we looked at a few PSA videos about safe posting online and cyberbullying (made a BIG impression on the kids!), and finally discussed what made meaningful posts as well as helpful comments.

After getting all this done, I started our class blog. Through Edublogs, you can either set up student blogs individually or set up one class blog in which students have individual logins and categories. To be on the safe side, I started with one class blog. If students can prove they are posting high quality posts and meaningful comments, they will be able to get their own blog.

The only issue that came up for this was finding email addresses to use with the kids. Since many of my students don't have computers/internet at home, many don't have email addresses, which is required to sign up for many online things. In most cases, the point of what we are doing is not that they have an email address, but that they can be verified through the address. Hence, (again from the same helpful blog post) I discovered that I can actually create 20 sub-emails under my own gmail account, which was really helpful. Using my teacher gmail, I added all the students who didn't have email already (around 18) and then all account information was automatically sent to me. (Way simpler for me to keep track of than irresponsible 12 year olds!)

After much ado, and much playing around with Edublogs, I finally fixed all the glitches with accounts, passwords, invitations, etc, and was prepared for today. Of course, before we could even log on to our class blog, we spent the requisite 15 minutes waiting to get a consistent internet signal. (This has been the norm with the laptops this year. After about 15 minutes of the wireless signal dropping in and out, we're good to go the rest of the time.) My kids were extremely patient as they waited through a ridiculous internet connection, and 27 other kids to catch up to them. But when it finally all came together, it worked like a charm!

While I could have forced kids to perfect their posts before I allowed them to be published (and probably will enforce this next time), I decided that for the first time out, I'll let them see what their writing (and commenting) looks like to the rest of the world. This worked like a charm. A number immediately realized mistakes they had made (but couldn't unless I did it for them). For their first post, I had everyone just post general information about themselves (family, hobbies, etc.) One girl described her best friend, and immediately regretted publishing it, as 3 other girls then approached her and asked why they hadn't been listed. Tough lessons, but I think the point was made.

So overall, it was a good experience and I think it can only get better! Good luck to my class! Please come comment on the blogs too, the kids will love it!

Compliments

2009-08-27T20:40:00.000-07:00

So, a new year has begun. I have new faces and old faces in my 7th grade classroom. About 5 of my 30 kids were in my class last year, much to my chagrin. They're great kids, but I just REALLY like starting my year fresh. Oh well. I have the gifted "cluster" of students, which means I have 3 or 4 gifted kids and the rest are about middle ground. After my first day, my only real opinion was, "At least I didn't have a kid come in that was aiming to be trouble from the second he stepped foot in the door." And so far, that has proved to be true. The more I think about it though, the more of a good omen it seems.

Although things are still not perfect, every year gets a little better, and I get a little bit more confident. Overall, I feel like I have a pretty decent class, near as I can tell. At one point today (Day 9), it occurred to me how well they all seem to get along, and how rare that is! Last week all the specials teachers said the class was good, but that means nothing the first week because all the kids are good. However, I give the compliment to the kids anyway. A compliment is a compliment, right? The first time I did this, my 6th graders didn't know what a compliment is, but now every kid knows what it is and is listening intently for it. The reason for the intense desire for compliments is because we have a compliment paper chain started in the classroom, so that every time they get a compliment from another teacher, they get another link. When it gets to the specified length (around 40 or 50), they get a pizza party. (I know, I know Mom, I shouldn't reward them with food...After a while with 13 year olds though, you do what works.)

Anyway, to say the least, now the kids listen very keenly for compliments. So today, they had 2 specials (don't ask me why), and it's not uncommon for the teachers to tell me as the kids are leaving if they did well. However, the kids claimed that both teachers had given them compliments which I didn't hear (it's also not uncommon for kids to make up compliments :-)) so I said I'd talk to those teachers later. However, BOTH of those teachers tracked ME down later in the day to tell me how much they enjoyed working with my class today, how good they are, and how they all participate and get along! Yay!!

Part of me feels like this is a bit too good to be true and/or that maybe I'm jinxing this, but I guess time will tell...

Boxes, Boxes, and MORE BOXES!!!

2009-08-07T09:36:00.000-07:00

I don't get paid to go back to work until Tuesday (8/10). Hence, one would think I would go back to work on Tuesday. Not true. I am a teacher, which means I do MUCH work without pay. I spent the past week in my classroom going through box after box after box. After box. Part of the reason I went back early, was because after 4 1/2 years of teaching, I know it takes longer to unpack a classroom than it does to unpack a house. I don't know why, it just does. Again, one would think I wouldn't have to pack up every single item in the room since I stayed in the same room, but I did. Such is life. At my school, it's usually better to not ask questions. So, I knew I had a ton of boxes to unpack, and when I walked in Monday morning, a new realization came crashing down on me. I had tons more boxes in my room than I ended the year with because all of the 7th grade curriculum was now in my room. This is what I saw when I walked in.

I would say there were a minimum of 60 boxes in my room. This may be skewed logic, but I decided that given the circumstances, I'd start with the furniture, and then I'd be able to put the contents of the boxes in their assigned locations. This was a great idea, but in order to do that, I had to move the boxes to move the furniture. So once the furniture was in place, I had to move and open the boxes again. Oh well, good exercise, right? So, I moved all the student desks into groups, moved my desk to it's place, and the bookshelves to their place. Doing this along with all the boxes was a bit like doing one of those tile puzzles where there's a square container with tiles, minus one and you have to get them all into the correct place, moving one at a time. Either way, it got done.

Then, I started opening boxes. Now, it's one thing to unpack boxes that you packed. It's another to unpack boxes with things you are not familiar with. The first thing I discovered was that I seemed to have an immense number of boxes of science materials. I would say at least 30 of the boxes are science materials (test tube racks, beakers, goggles, chemicals, rocks, microscopes, etc.) That was a sad discovery that I'm going to have to house all that business, I don't know where. Next, I discovered that I inherited an inordinate amount of textbooks. I took all the ones I needed and still had about 15 extra boxes in the back of my room. I had 70 extra dictionaries, 160 extra history workbooks, 40 extra science books, and the list goes on. It was crazy! (And it wasn't like the other 7th grade teachers needed them, they're just extra. So that's a bit of a mystery.) Finally, I discovered that I acquired every single item out of a person's

classroom who retired. Every item, right down to ancient textbooks, old software, erasers and

paper clips. Among other things, I discovered a clipboard from the 1984 Democratic National Convention, a set of 1961 Encyclopedias, and 11 boxes of manila folders!! Crazy talk (and a little bit irritating).

So, I buckled down and starting finding places for as much as I could. By the end of Day 1 of De-Boxing, I had 3 out of 4 of the required textbooks in the students' desks, my classroom library of reading books on the shelf, and many of the peripheral reference books we use in class on the shelf, in addition to the furniture being arranged. There were still at least 2/3 of the boxes still full, but I had at least opened most of the boxes to find out what was in them and arranged them in appropriate locations around the room. The entire east wall was covered in Science materials (still is). The south wall had the boxes and boxes of extra, unneeded materials that

showed up. The west wall had all of my own boxes. Still a lot of boxes, but I at least knew what

was in them. In the center of the room were all the empty boxes, where I tossed them with great relish.

5 days later, many of the boxes are still there, but they are at least contained in a bit more orderly fashion. :-) Now, all boxes are either unpacked or touching a wall, my desk is functional, all computers are functioning, laptops are updating as we speak, no boxes remain on desks, and posters are up. Now, I just need to figure out what I'm going to teach in said classroom!!

An End of the Year Smile :-)

2009-06-08T20:20:00.000-07:00

First of all, this was probably the best last week of the school year I've ever had. No one did something stupid enough to ruin my entire memory of the year or make me cry, and it wasn't totally insane with getting things done. This is partially due to the fact that the school actually gave us 2 days in which we could pack, with students there. Because we had to be out of school basically the same minute the students were on Friday, so the school could begin renovations, everything had to be packed before then, so Monday and Tuesday while the kids watched endless movies, I packed. I think this helped make it better because I wasn't mad at kids for being terrible packers. Also, we went on an awesome trip to the pool (see photo). Kids never seriously misbehave at the pool because they're so happy to be in the water :-) Best fieldtrip ever. (In my words and a student's :-)). An additional bonus is that I get a Smartboard next year, but more on that later.

But my favorite thing was this note I received from a student on Thursday. It reads as follows:

Thank you so much Mrs. Shetler for being there when I needed you. I thank you a lot for trying your best to help me get good grades. If you were my teacher until I was done with school I would be so happy because you would know what my name is and everything about me. And, I'm not trying to be a goody good, I'm just trying to be a nice student and trying to be myself. And, now that I had you for a teacher, I think I will respect a lot of people and care for them. I will make sure that I go to school and never forget all the stuff you taught me. I will also remember that you told me not to quit and to keep on doing good in school. Thank you Mrs. Shetler for doing a lot of stuff for me. I appreciate it so much.

Sincerely,

Miranda

You Have a WHAT?

2009-05-25T13:32:00.000-07:00

This week was our last week of testing (finally!! yeah!!) For various reasons relating to testing, the kids had a different schedule all week. Usually, we don't allow them to go to the restrooms (other than complete emergencies) except before school and at lunch. In the morning, this is never a problem because they start class at 8:30 and leave at 10:45 for lunch. However, during testing week, their lunch gets pushed back almost two hours, so they have to wait a lot longer to use the restroom. (I'm going somewhere with this, don't worry.)

So, one day, as our late lunch is finally approaching, a kid tells me he has a msrlglkskakgkskkga. (This is what I heard). After about the third mumbling time, I finally make out that he's telling me he thinks he has a mrmsgmslrl infection. I finally said, "You have WHAT kind of an infection?" To which he frustratedly responds, "I think I have a flabber infection!!" I looked at him (knowing full well he really needed to use the restroom) and said, "You mean, you think you have a BLADDER infection?" He and the whole rest of the class crack up, but he must save face, so he goes on proclaiming he has a flabber :-) That was definitely the comic relief necessary after a stressful day of testing :-)

Easy work

2009-04-30T22:33:00.000-07:00

This week, I had a number of experiences with the word "easy" that were "good teacher" moments. First, one of my students who is notorious for turning in nothing (last quarter: 41 missing assignments), is actually putting effort into his work. He's actually quite brilliant, but only wants to do things HE wants to do and tends to get easily overwhelmed. He finally started working after a meeting with his parents in which he got the impression he was going to fail 6th grade if he didn't get his act together. (In reality, I would have had to start the paperwork process for this in September if I actually had intentions of doing this. Needless to say, that didn't happen. I told his parents this when they left the room, and they said I should let him think he was going to fail, if it was motivating him. :-)) So, either way, after 2 days straight of keeping up with (almost) all of his daily assignments, he looks at me and says, "Mrs. Shetler, it's easy to do my work." My jaw just about dropped. If it's so easy, why was this lesson so long in coming?!?!? Either way, good deal for him. :-)

Then, on Thursday, I was determined to use the laptops, as I hadn't done so in a couple of days, so I decided to have the kids research swine flu (I know, I know, H1N1) since there seemed to be rampant misinformation. Actual quote from student: "Is it true you can die from swine flu in 48 minutes?" So I had them research a bunch of questions about symptoms, how you get it, where it started, etc. I didn't tell them how or where to research it, just to see what turned up and what they decided to read. I did, however, tell them to look at the address or source and make sure it was something they had heard of before; i.e., news station, newspaper, etc.

First of all, the connection to "easy" is that this lesson was super easy, as is often the case with technology use. When I say easy, I mean "easy" in that all behavior problems almost entirely cease and the kids are almost entirely engaged. To me, that is an easy lesson, because behavior is what makes my day crazy. To be sure, I still spend a lot of time working on tech issues, but all that I do is essentially educational, which is what I'm there for (not to scream at kids).

Anyway, after about 10 minutes of near silent searching (bliss!), a (Mexican) girl came up to me and said in a pouty voice, "Mrs. Shetler, it says that swine flu started in Mexico because Mexicans are dirty and don't clean themselves!" She said this with a hurt look of, "I know this isn't true, but it's on the internet. Does that make it true?" So I said, "Well, does that sound like something that is a fact or an opinion?" With eyebrows still raised in consternation, she said, "Opinion..." So I replied, "So do you think you should trust that source?" "Nope!" she said and went back to searching. Lesson learned. :-) That was my "good teacher" moment of the week.

That's the kind of easy lesson I wish I could teach everyday.

Heads Up

2009-04-28T20:35:00.000-07:00

I am not a superstitious person. At all. However, this morning, I happened to find a penny in the hallway (which I always pick up, not because I'm superstitious, but because I'm cheap) and it was heads up. I thought for approximately 1 second about the purported "luckyness" of found heads up pennies, and went on with my day.

Then this afternoon, 2 colleagues came to the door with good news. The penny must have done it's work. In order to understand how much I appreciated this item, you have to understand the prior situation. I've known since January that I wanted to apply for a different job out of the district for a million reasons (see all previous posts), and had applied for several. Didn't hear back from any place for various reasons and had to turn in my contract to my current district last week. I was very bummed because I was not excited about the way my current job was going to change next year, AND my partner in teaching succeeded in getting a different job.

In the midst of all that frustration, 3 7th grade teachers who I have high respect for came and asked if I'd be interested in teaching 7th grade with them. I told them I would love to, not because it was 7th grade, but because I'd love to teach with them. (I was actually very flattered that they chose to ask me.) So, I went and talked to the principal about it, but evidently it was too late because the position was already filled. More frustration and hoping for miracles. Today I got my answer :-) The person who was going to take the other 7th grade position decided to take an 8th grade position!

So, short of a job out of the district, this is probably the best solution for me for next year. I'll get to teach with great people, I get to stay in the same room (another lucky thing!!), and I "get" to learn another grade level. We shall see how it turns out, but it has to be better than this year! Yay for lucky pennies!!

Am I Crazy?

2009-04-20T20:58:00.001-07:00

There's been a quote that's been running through my head lately: "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result." By this definition, I have completely gone off the deep end. Because every day, I go in, hoping that I might get just a modicum of respect and care for their education. But every day, I get nothing. No, let me rephrase, I get blatant disrespect, defiance, and things thrown at me. Clearly, I am far too tolerant, which I know, and I spend every day trying to alleviate this, some days with more success than others. For the last week though, I've felt completely useless. Like, I may as well just prop up a dummy in front of the class and they'd learn just as much.

I was definitely questioning my chosen profession today. Maybe I need a desk job where I can relate to reasonable adults on a daily basis. Or, maybe I should pursue the technology thing and try to get a job in a computer lab. Or maybe I should be a campground host and hang out in my RV.

To be fair, I'm also in a bad mood because my co-worker got another job in a different district, and I did not. Not even a response. My contract is due Thursday, and the places I applied at have hardly even started posting jobs for next year. The one job that sounded appealing at my own school, I was turned down from because I waited too long (on the other jobs I had applied for).

Sighhhh...........

Definitely not a good teacher yet....

Word play with 6th graders

2009-04-15T21:50:00.000-07:00

It's really funny listening to kids figure out how/why certain words and phrases work the way they do. We're in the middle of a series of tobacco lessons, and today we were talking about why peer pressure affects kids and one girl came to a revelation. "Hey! I get it! Peers are people like you and they put pressure on you! Peer pressure! I get that now!" Lights going on...

Then, out of the blue, a different kid comes up to me today and informed me what "Jewish" means. Before I could answer, he says "It means when people are half Jewish, you know, like sort of Jewish. That's why they're called Jew-ish." :-) Gotta love 6th grade word play :-)

AIMS Reflections

2009-04-03T13:54:00.000-07:00

A reflection on Arizona's Instrument to Measure Standards (AIMS) standardized test. I'm not generally a big poet, but I didn't think this one turned out too bad...

AIMS Day

Bubbling, bubbling, bubbling
Soft, nervous scribbling
A yawn, a stretch, a silent groan, a sigh
Got it!---wait! Nope, this is it… whew, that was close

Perfect bubbles, heavy and dark
Wheels turning, pondering, thinking, considering, wavering, confused
Hushed whispers=reading silently, lips move
Intent, must do well

A sea of sloppy bubbles
Eenie, meenie, miney, moe, C if you don’t know
Figuring, counting, calculating
Pages flipping

Bubbling, bubbling, endless bubbling…

-D. Shetler, April 2007

Do or Die

2009-04-02T21:56:00.000-07:00

Well, it is AIMS week here in Arizona (our state standardized test). The kids are doing their best, and I'm proctoring with the best of them. Actually, I take that back. The best of them would walk around and monitor the entire 3 hour testing block. I walk around every half hour or so and give anyone the evil eye who dares make any sound outside of breathing, writing, erasing or thinking. It's effective for most kids.

I have learned a few things about these tests in my past 4 years of teaching. 1): Bribe them, when necessary. Since I'm required by law to read the exact same test directions for all 8 sections of the test, the kids get tired of hearing me say it and I get tired of hearing me say it. However, I get even MORE tired of hearing them say, "Why do you have to read it again?? We know what it says! Just let us start!" So, I told them that whoever could go the whole week without saying this got candy. :-) I know, Mom, I shouldn't reward with candy, but I can only give out so many free homework passes :-) It's saving my sanity, and by proxy, their lives, so it's all good in my mind.

2) Get as much done as is physically possible during the first 30 minutes of each test, because that's when the kids are most focused (i.e., no one's done yet.) After that, it's hit or miss, between getting up to get someone something, checking to see who's done, telling someone in a nearly silent whisper that they are not the only person in the room and they need to shut their mouths, etc. So today, I set up 15 laptops with Google Earth during the first hour. After that, I started collecting notes that got passed, paper airplanes, etc.

3) Remind them that it is important to their teachers, parents, and should be important to themselves that they do the best they can on it. I learned this last year in one of my master's classes, when I read about a study where that was the only difference between 2 groups of kids, that the teachers reiterated the importance of this topic before they took the test. The group that was reminded did better. That's an easy enough strategy to implement :-)

4) Tests are NOT allowed on the floor. If they are on the floor, the teacher collecting them MIGHT step on part of it while picking it up and rip it and then have to re-bubble/re-write half your test for you and that is NOT what the teacher wants to do!!!!!!

Today was Day 4 of testing and the kids are starting to wear down. Yesterday they flew through both parts of the test, which makes me very nervous, so I told them to take their time today. (They don't realize how lucky they are to have an un-timed test.) They all burst out, "But it was easy!! It was easier than the Galileo! We just knew all the things because you taught it to us!!" Yay!!!!!! Warm fuzzy for me :-) Even though I hate to teach to the test, I really, really, really don't want my kids to get to this super-big test and not have a clue what they're looking at or how to solve problems. So, I'm not sure if that makes me a good teacher, but at least my kids don't feel too bad about the test, so far. We'll see how that applies to their test scores though...

Another edition of, "Seriously?!?"

2009-03-29T22:08:00.000-07:00

And welcome to another edition of "Seriously?!?" (I'm not sure why my life is starting to feel like a game show, but it's distressing how many of my postings are taking that form!! And yes, this is vaguely reminiscent of Seth Myers and Amy Poehler's version of "Really?!?" on SNL.) A student comes in from lunch last week and asks if he can go to the restroom to wash his hands (given that there is no soap provided in the classrooms, and they stopped giving us our monthly ration of paper towels in December--hello budget cuts...). He said he needed to go wash the fish smell off of his hands.

Naturally, I asked why his hands smelled like fish. "Me and Carlos were playing Fish Tag." You were playing WHAT?? I was then informed that Fish Tag meant picking up a dead fish (from the canal the school backs up to) and throwing it at your friend. You've got to be kidding me. I was so mad at them, I really wanted to make them sit and suffer with their fish smell, but I knew that would make ME sit and suffer with their fish smell (and I have a policy against punishing kids AND myself in the process). So, I wrote them both detention and told them to go wash their hands. I was in such a state of disbelief when they explained, innocently of course, what they were doing. I did feel a little better after I reamed them both out for having even considered taking a DEAD fish off the ground and throwing it at each other... Unbelievable.

Stay tuned for next week's edition of "Seriously?!?" in which I catch a 6th grader eating part of his AIMS test. (This hasn't happened yet, but it wouldn't even surprise me at this point.)

A bittersweet congratulations...

2009-03-27T19:25:00.000-07:00

In our staff development meeting yesterday, we had a surprise visit from the superintendent to congratulate us on higher test scores, and let us know how impressed the district higher-ups were with the school, given that we've previously tended to be bottom of the barrel. So there were lots of warm fuzzies and applause.

I definitely appreciate the recognition we're finally getting from the district for our hard work, however, there was a distinct bittersweet feel to this congratulations, in my opinion. While I'm thrilled that our test scores are going up, it doesn't do a whole lot of good, given that the school will be completely restructuring next year with at least 50% new teachers, if not more; new name and everything. Only about 20% of the students will remain, and most will be replaced by elementary students, since it will be a K-8 school next year. So, that's a weird feeling.

Also, it felt bittersweet given that we've basically been required to totally abandon what we know to be good teacher pedagogy for essentially teaching to the test. The students have been tested to death and are sick of doing worksheets and memorizing discrete skills. It's nearly impossible to teach in a constructivist, project-based manner when you are required to be teaching the exact same thing with the same materials on the exact same day as all 11 other teachers. So, like I said, I'm glad our test scores are going up, but I feel like I am a worse teacher than I was before...

Applications in!

2009-03-22T22:02:00.000-07:00

Well, all my applications are in at other districts (finally)! Now I just wait and see... Wish me luck :-)

Getting told by 6th Graders

2009-03-15T14:20:00.000-07:00

Welcome to another rousing episode of "Getting Told By 6th Graders."

It goes like this. My kids inform me of something they THINK I have no idea about. For instance, when they say things like, "My pencil got jacked! (That means someone stole it, Mrs. Shetler.)" Seriously guys. I'm not that old.

Well, the Friday before Spring Break (Friday the 13th) when we are 5 school days away from our standardized testing, another episode of "Getting Told By 6th Graders" was sprung on me. I was trying to get through the content we needed to cover that day (we're too close to testing to spend the day before spring break watching movies or having a party). The Literature book passage we were reading was about genes and chromosomes, and the kids were not interested in reading (neither was I for that matter).

However, they WERE interested in talking about it. So we had several discussions about cloning, if twins have the same DNA, etc., etc. Then someone asked about how the woman had 8 babies at once. So I said, "Well, when they make a baby in a lab with an egg and sperm--" and they were gone. You can't just launch into talk of those things without preface, which I did unthinkingly. Eventually I did manage to get through the discussion, but not before several other topics came up along this line, and finally one girl pipes up with this winner:

"Mrs. Shetler, did you know that in high school they have a whole class about this stuff?? It's called Sex Ed."

And BAM, so ends another episode of "Getting Told By 6th Graders" :-)

Crime and Punishment

2009-03-11T22:17:00.000-07:00

Here's a "you've got to be kidding me!!!" moment. The same student who threw a pencil at another kid's eye (see Feb post) told another kid "I'm going to f*** your mom." So, needless to say, I kicked him out of the room. This was about 12:30 in the afternoon. He didn't get to the office until 1:00 (it's a 2 minute walk at most). He told the secretary he didn't get there sooner because he "had something to do." Like what???? Go buy some hot cheetos at El Super down the street?? Anyway, this was also added to the referral that was written.

His punishment? A detention. (One!)

You've got to be kidding me... At least in this case, I know I did the "good teacher" thing by not letting him get away with it in the classroom...

What would I do?

2009-03-11T21:59:00.000-07:00

So, I had it all figured out, where I wanted to teach next year (Alhambra district), what I was going to do if I didn't get a job there (go to a different school in Cartwright), etc. Why I think I'll be able to get a job anywhere outside the district in an economy like this, I don't know, but hey, I'm a glass half-full kind of person. Then, someone had to thrown in a third idea that threw me all off. The best laid plans, right?

At church, someone tells me that the school her daughter goes to a school for the arts (part of the name), and that they are expanding their 6th grade to add 2 classes and adding 4 fifth grade classes next year. First of all, the major plus is that they are hiring. Who's doing that nowadays? No one. (The amount of teachers being laid off per district around here is in the hundreds, some as many as 700!!!) So, that's already a good thing. Not only that, but this is a free, art-focused school. So, I decided to take a little look-see. The school is incredible. The kids do all their core classes in a long morning session, then in the afternoon all middle school kids are required to take piano and an instrument or dance. The application says they are looking for constructivist, project-based teachers, which is exactly what I'm all about. For those of you that don't know, that means a person who does NOT give 15 tests a week as I'm required to do (not quite that many, but close), but does fun things that actually require kids to learn about things they choose to do and are interested in. Not only that, but it's right downtown and I could ride the light rail to work!! So basically, the more and more I look at this school, the more I realize that if I could hand-pick a teaching job, this is it.

So what's the catch, you ask? You may recall that the school I teach at is low-income, high free/reduced lunch, etc. This is not by accident. I enjoy working with this population, and for all practical purposes feel called to work with them, since no one else is beating down the doors to do it. Schools in upper-class districts will never hurt for good teachers. I like to go where I'm needed :-) This other "dream job" school that I'm looking at though, while still free, does have a lottery waiting list, and tends to serve kids from a bunch of the middle-upper class areas nearby. (And plus, parents that aren't working 2 night jobs and have 5 other kids at home, plus 2 grandkids at home are more likely to be involved in this sort of endeavor.) These are probably also parents who are more likely to be watching their child's teacher very closely, which I have had the luxury of not dealing with yet in my teaching career.

So, this is a bit of a moral dilemma (though totally premature, since I haven't even gotten applications to both places yet). The school sounds awesome, but the population might be...a big challenge, and I'd be far less needed. But, it would have a lot of fantastic peripheral benefits, I'm more likely to get a job there, and there would be lots of kids involved in music. The first district I am looking at though, has a far greater emphasis on technology and entails working with a population I'm familiar with, and has a much better track record with the given population. So, I don't know. What will most likely happen is I won't get a job anywhere and I'll hopefully at least be in another school in my current district. We'll just see. At least I know that if worst comes to worst and I have to stay at the school I'm at, I'm still slotted to teach 6th grade, which is better than over half the other current 6th grade teachers can say.

Testing, testing...Is this thing on??

2009-02-28T21:30:00.001-08:00

All year long, I've busted my butt to get my kids to learn fractions, poetry terms, how to draw conclusions, etc., and I know they're learning things. But then, when it came to the district's quarterly tests, it was like nothing had ever entered their heads. Same scores, every time. This time, for whatever reason, they actually made small measures of progress as a class (2%, 6%, etc.)

However, when they were taking the next day's test, I sat down and analyzed the kids' individual results, and these were the results:

-18 of 29 kids improved

-9 kids improved by double digits

-Gained a total of 253 percentage points (adding up each individual's gain)

My biggest excitement was when I realized that my two kids who never try or always give up got the following scores:

-the first went from a 26 to an 80%

-the second went from a 12 to a 74%

I was thrilled!! I knew both those kids were smart enough to do it, but never tried. Needless to say, I called both their parents and was finally able to give them GOOD news for a change :-)

The one student just decided to try on the test, for no apparent reason. However, the second one is my giver-upper. He literally refused to learn fractions. Just refused to take in new information!! He just gets SUPER easily overwhelmed and gave up as soon as he got 5 seconds in. This was the reason he ended the quarter with 41 missing assignments. He'd see how much missing work he had and, you guessed it, give up. My mantra to him for the last 3 months has been DON'T GIVE UP. YOU HAVE TO TRY. And periodically, I could get him to learn just one tiny little step here and there, and eventually he got the whole thing, amazingly. Hence, when he came to the test, he actually had a modicum of knowledge and confidence, and did well!! I was so proud.

I've also been really proud of him this week because he's finally attempting to make up his work. If he does it a little at a time, he can focus, not get overwhelmed and get it done. You should have seen his face when he saw his grades at the end of the week and realized he WASN'T failing every subject, for the first time this year! He was thrilled, which thrilled me, because he finally cared!

It definitely felt like a "good teacher" moment. :-)

PicLits

2009-02-28T21:17:00.001-08:00

Check out this cool site called PicLits that's kind of a visual version of magnetic poetry. I'm sure I can find out some way to use this in the classroom :-) (Unlike wordle.net which is still super cool, but I can't figure out a single way to use it in class :-)) Until then, it just looks cool! See what you think-

See the full PicLit at PicLits.com

Relapse...

2009-02-13T21:45:00.000-08:00

I was just re-reading some of my previous posts and remembered the one I posted about a student who had made a point of telling other kids not to call names because "we don't do that in here," which is what I always say. It made me sad to remember that, because even though that kid wasn't perfect at that point, now he is a total disaster.

He has a major anger management thing going on due to an estranged, jailed father (and who knows what else), and at least 3 times a day, I look up to see or hear him threatening someone or calling them horrible, horrible names. It's really awful. (On top of the fact that I have 2 other kids that have their own major issues, but that's a whole nother story.) For instance, today (a half day after conferences before a three day weekend) I gave him some missing work he had to make up, which his mom had requested. He gave me this totally insulted look, like how could I possibly consider making him do work over the long weekend (I told him he should've done them in class in the first place), and then he said that it wasn't his fault that I didn't see his papers when I graded them because they stuck to the other papers. (I told him that doesn't happen with 15 assignments). He took several of the papers and walked away while I went to get another one. I turn around less than a minute later to see him with another kid in a headlock, and didn't let go until I forced him to. I asked the other kid what he had said to set the other kid off and he replied that he hadn't said a thing (which I believe, he's my smartest kid who knows better than to get mixed up with this one). I'm pretty sure he was just mad at me, and took it out on the other kid. I felt bad about that one.

Another example of the extreme anger and hatefulness inside of him was when I asked him to call his mother about something he was doing wrong after another kid had just used the phone (whom he dislikes). I handed him the phone and he refused to use it until I had "wiped it off" (The first kid to use it has known hygiene issues). He refused several times until he thought I was calling his mom for him. (I wasn't, I was calling the principal.) THEN, he dials and another kid hits his pocket and pipes up, "Hey! Why are you calling me!" So he got caught on that one. He dials again, and this time I take the phone to make sure he's calling mom, and who's voice mail picks up? His own.

Another time, he was talking about a couple of girls who came in late, and referred to one of them as "that thing." Needless to say, I could go on with the stories. The hatefulness in his voice and disregard (and lack of safety) for others is really disturbing to me. He and his mom wanted him moved out of my class this week, but when mom saw his grades, she realized that that wouldn't solve any problems (which I fully agreed with. I know that if he switched classes, he'd start the same thing all over again. It's not me or the class that is the problem, it's his own issues that are the problem.) So anyway, I definitely have NOT made progress with this one. I know it's an extreme case, but it really does make for very difficult days for me. Hopefully, somewhere down the road, I'll be a better teacher because of this, but right now, it sure doesn't feel like I'm able to help this one be successful...

100% !!!!!

2009-02-13T21:10:00.001-08:00

Yay!!!!!! For the first time EVER (in 4 years) I had 100% of my parents show up for parent-teacher conferences!! (including a couple phone conferences). Seriously, in the past, I felt good if I got more than half the parents to come to mid-year conferences. The fall conferences are usually closer to 70% attendance, but 100% is fairly unheard of in our district. I brought home my sign-in sheet and put it on the fridge, this is how proud I am. :-)

I'm fairly certain that two things helped make the difference. The first thing is the student-led conference format. We've been talking about conferences coming up for the last week or two and prepared folders of work they're proud of, work they're not so proud of, grades, self-evaluation, teacher evaluation, test results, and goals for the next quarter. They wrote letters persuading their parents to come, as well as practiced what they would do during conferences, since the kids have to be there as well. And, since they're student-led, it means that the parent and student come in, and the student immediately sits down with the parent and begins their conference. About 10 minutes later, I walk over and look over the goal paper that the student should have completed. (The students write 2 goals in class, and then during the conference the parent and student write a third goal together.) I make sure the goal is useful and offer any sage wisdom I can come up with to support that goal, ask if they have any questions (which they usually don't since the kids have gone through all of the information in their folders) and send them on their way! :-) My favorite thing is that it involves very little work on my part. One of my colleagues whom I love dearly said her agenda for each conference was as follows: 1) Academic talk, 2) Behavior talk, 3) Make them cry, 4) Happy cry, 5) Go home. I don't have the energy for that kind of intensity. She's a redhead though, she can take it.

And the other thing that helped make conferences successful for me was the brownies (see previous posts). The kids had so much fun making the brownies and were so proud of them, they really WANTED their parents to come to conference (another first). It was so cute watching them point out to their parents which ones they made, and what they did to make them. (The pictures I displayed on the TV of the kids baking brought lots of smiles, too :-)) I had several parents who didn't show up at first, so I called them, and at least twice, the parents said that their child was very upset with them for not getting to their conference on time, after all the work they had gone to. Those parents were very relieved to hear that they could come at a different time. :-)

So all in all, conferences went really well this time around. Actually, I usually enjoy conferences (except for the fact that I have to work two 12 hour days in a row) because I get to talk to adults and have rational conversations and see kids actually look repentant for once. Like I said, it can be nice, it's just very draining. This time, I didn't feel stressed at all. I was mainly making sure little brothers and sisters didn't tear the place apart, or eat 14 brownies, and the like. :-) So, maybe I'm developing one small area of expertise in this crazy job of teaching :-) Yay!

Chemical Reactions in the Kitchen

2009-02-10T20:36:00.000-08:00

Well, parent teacher conferences are coming around again, so in the tradition established by my fall conferences this year, I decided to have the kids make food for conferences. (Hey, it got 93% of my parents there last time, which was a first!) We made decided to make brownies, the kind that DON'T come from a box. (Half the kids didn't know that was possible!) (Disregard my gratuitous use of parentheses.) I was planning on making them in the room, and then having seeing if I could bake them in the home ec room. When I asked the teacher if that was possible, she asked if we just wanted to make them there in the home ec room. This was a total gift and worked SO much better than every other time I've attempted to make food in my own, non-kitchen classroom.

So, today was brownie day and the kids were thrilled. I foolishly told my co-worker that I expected the kids to have better behavior than usual, because they'd be so excited to be somewhere new and doing something different. (This is actually what happens with the laptops, so I wasn't speaking without good reason to believe that). This morning was crazy and I spent half the morning lecturing the kids about behavior which I DESPISE doing, and am pretty sure I'm no good at doing.

Anyway, right after lunch, we went over to the home ec room, got everyone set up and ready to go. There were definitely some hiccups, as far as set-up goes, that was my fault. For instance, I didn't realize till this morning that there were only 3 available kitchen set-ups to use, and I had 7 groups making brownies. So, I had to find something else for the others to do while the first half was working, so I had them write a paragraph summarizing the recipe which they'd already read, and then a paragraph about their opinion of how it went. (These are actually skills they need to be able to do on writing assessments--summarize key ideas and justify an opinion with facts.) This worked surprisingly well, and after they finished writing, they (mostly) waited patiently for the others to finish!

Overall, I was super impressed with the kids. Luckily enough, I did not have to eat my words about their behavior being better (or at least decent) in the kitchen. The home ec teacher was great and had stuff setting out and ready to go for the kids, including aprons and bandanas! The kids were so cute! I was so surprised at how well they worked together in their groups, as well as how they helped out. I had a kid that just started sweeping, without being asked, another who volunteered to help another group with dishes, and another assisting other groups in making sure they were doing things right.

The only thing I did not anticipate, was how much different it is to have kids mis-measuring when chemical reactions need to take place in order for the whole thing to work! So, I had to be watching like a hawk to make sure that 2 t. of vanilla went in (not 2 Tablespoons) or that they didn't use the 1/3 c. instead of 1/4 c. because they couldn't find the other. The biggest thing I didn't anticipate was when I had one group have an extremely dry batter. They knew it wasn't right and I knew it wasn't right, but we couldn't figure out what they did wrong. Then, I turned around for a second and when I came back, they were trying to figure out how they were going to use the little container of salt to measure of half cup of it!!! I said "No, no, no, no, no!!! You need 1/2 TEASPOON of salt! Wait a minute-is that how you measured the baking powder?" Sure enough, they had put in 1/2 cup of baking powder!!!! Needless to say, that pan just didn't turn out. :-) It was a learning experience right? I felt bad for the kids, because they tried so hard, and were one of my best, smartest groups. Minor misunderstandings can lead to big problems! Oh well, for a first time, 6 out of 7 turned out, so that's not too bad right? :-) The kids had a ball, and even though it was crazy busy for me, it ended up working really well. :-) I'll post some more pix tomorrow.

It's rarely as bad as I think...

2009-02-10T20:23:00.000-08:00

So, today I (finally) had my post-observation meeting with the principal, in which we discuss the observation and go over the formal evaluation form together. I've been too busy to think terribly much about what the whole "pencil in the eye" affair (see previous post), but it has definitely been in the back of my head. I had personally felt like I didn't handle it correctly (that I should have stopped class, wrote him up, and sent him to the office immediately). However, when I mentioned being unsure of how I should have dealt with it in my meeting today, the principal says, "Oh no, I thought you dealt with that beautifully! You had him into the time-out room immediately, and you didn't make a big scene out of it. Half of the kids didn't even know it happened, you kept going with the lesson, and almost no one's learning was disrupted. You did a great job handling that!" I can't even tell you how relieved I was to hear that. On top of that, it's that time of year where I generally begin to feel like a total failure as a teacher, so I really needed to hear that :-)

And then, bless her heart, she went on to say how I do a wonderful job as a general rule, and that Borman will be lucky if they get to keep me next year and how I'll have a long, successful career as a good teacher :-) (I'm not trying to brag, just trying to make up for all my postings regarding the bad things that happen :-) She actually said these things!) So, that definitely was a high point of my day. It reminds me that no matter how bad I think things are going, its probably not as bad as I originally thought. Maybe I do have some "good teacher" in me yet :-)

Are You Kidding Me??

2009-01-25T10:25:00.000-08:00

This was definitely an "are you KIDDING me??" moment. Every year, teachers have to be observed by principals once or twice a year, and Thursday was my day. I had told my kids that the principal was coming in to watch me and that they should behave, etc. Evidently, I've had one too many people come through my room this year (this happens when they're thinking about closing you're school), because it no longer encourages better behavior in my students.

So here I am, having a wonderful discussion on Greek democracy vs. American democracy with my students with the principal observing my amazing teach ability :-) All of a sudden, to what should my wondering eyes appear, but a student cry of pain which continued on to my ear. "Mrs. Shetler!" he cries, "Chris just hit me in the eye with a pencil!!"

ARE YOU KIDDING ME????? I didn't say this, but I was in total disbelief. Sure enough, one student threw a pencil at another student facing him (as in, their desks touch), and hit him in the eye. Since I didn't actually see this happen, I have to assume this was intentional. (Luckily the pencil didn't stick in his eye, more of a glancing blow...) So, I sent the thrower to principal, sent the kid with the red eye to the nurse, got the other kids started on something democratic and proceeded to write out the referral form.

The rest of the observation went fine, but I just could not get over how unbelievable this kid is. (To be fair, every single day he does something that amazes me, but still.) Anyone else have an "are you kidding me?????" moment this week?

Class Olympics

2009-01-19T19:44:00.000-08:00

Last week, we studied the Ancient Greek Olympics all week, which then culminated in creating our own class Olympics on Friday. It was great fun and encouraging. Since the kids were interested, they did better work, and since I was more interest I put more work into it. (The opposite of a vicious cycle- what would you call that?) Anyway, early in the week, I had them read some descriptions of the characteristics of various city-states in Greece (this came from a great 6th grade social studies website), including the Spartans with whom they are already familiar with through the movie. (I know, I know, why are 6th graders watching stuff like that???) They had to choose which group of people they were most like and explain why and they did an awesome job! They listed their choice and gave several supported reasons why they were most similar to that group. I think their writing is improving because I make them do it all the time :-) (No-brainer, right?) So that made me feel good.

Throughout the week, we read more about the Ancient Olympics and compared it to what we already knew about the modern Olympics and what had and hadn't changed. (Perfect opportunity for a Venn diagram.) In addition, we chose 7 "sports" to include in our class

Olympics, wrote the rules for them (functional writing), created record-keeping forms, and chose which ones to participate in. On Friday afternoon, we began the festivities, which included the following sports: running, paper basketball (throwing wadded up paper into the trash can), arm wrestling,

thumb wrestling, hitting a volleyball (how many times you could hit it with

out dropping it), twister and musical chairs. (Again, these were all chosen by the kids.)

Everything went great (if not a little noisy). The kids loved it. I took pictures the whole time, and we even had a medal ceremony in which bronze, silver and gold medal winners got their medals and got their pictures taken :-) A good time was had by all!

I think that definitely qualifies as a "good teacher" moment :-)

Challenges!

2009-01-14T21:17:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, my kids were being tested for something, and so they had to wait in the hallway and read their books. I look over and one kid has his book upside down. I told him to flip it over, figuring he was just being a dork. He looks at me with a smile and says, "I'm just trying to challenge myself!"

That was my smile of the day :-)

A few minor successes

2009-01-14T20:58:00.000-08:00

It's been a while! I've been crazy busy with testing (reading scores went up, math went down), Christmas events (a barely successful attempt at making Chex Mix with the kids in not enough time), and coming back to school without being overwhelmed by life. However, I've been meaning to blog for a while about a few things that have gone right.

First of all, in December, I was gone for a day at a workshop, and when I returned, a student (who is very respectful, but totally out of seat, talking, etc.) had a note for me. It reads as follows:

"I will try my best not to give up. Thank you for believing in me, and that I can have a really good success in my life. Instead of giving up, I will try a lot harder. PS: You are the best teacher ever!" :-) Yay, that was nice! This kid still drives me up the wall every day, but bless his heart anyway, right :-)

Then yesterday, earlier in class we had discussed the meaning of the word "opaque" and "transparent." Then later in the day, one of my favorite kids (who never does his work, but listens and participates in discussion) is looking at a page protector that something had come in. He holds it up to his face, attempts to look through, and says, "Hey, this is opaque, right?" Yes! You got it! Somebody is learning something!!

On Monday, the same kid and I were finally sitting down and hammering out some more work on fractions (if I never see another fraction again, it will be too soon!) and he did some good work. This was encouraging. However, then later on, we happened to be in lockdown for two hours and man were the kids bored. So, he finally comes up to me and asks me to write down fraction problems for him because he wanted to keep working!!!! Yay!!!

So, among all the craziness, good things are still happening, I just have to look for them. And I am. I recently came across an old journal that was a list of one good thing that happened each day during my first year of teaching. That was probably a life saver. So, I decided to take up the habit again, and it is such a good thing. It reminds me to actually look for good things, which is a great habit! Give it a shot! :-)

It's Official

2008-11-29T09:48:00.000-08:00

They have finally stopped pulling the punches and Borman Middle School is officially closing at the end of the year. Declining enrollment, employer sanctions laws that are hostile to illegal immigrants, and horrid test scores for the last 6-8 years were the reasons cited, which are all fair. They are actually planning on reopening it next year with a new name as a K-8 school, along with several other schools in the district in the same situation. (This means that, instead of the current 12 6th grades, there will be 5.) I have to say, after all the things that have gone on this year, I'm actually relieved to have a final end in sight.

They promised jobs to highly qualified teachers with seniority somewhere in the district, and would give preference to people who want to stay at Borman. Based on those things, I could probably stay at Borman, and would definitely have a job somewhere in the district. However, after the way Borman has been treated, and seeing the progression of the school the past four years, and after a lot of hard thinking, I'm planning on applying at another district for next year. Part of me feels like a failure, and the superintendent told us that the test scores and school closing did not mean we were bad teachers or a failure. However, it seems to me that somewhere along the line, someone did fail. It may not have been one single person, or one single decision, but something has gone horribly awry if more than half of the schools in the district are now underperforming. Something is not right. That is a major reason for me leaving the district. It would be awfully tempting to say that it's just hard to teach kids in poverty who are learning English at the same time, and that's why our test scores are low. However, the district right next to us, with the same population of kids, has all of their schools performing AND is winning awards. Clearly, somewhere along the line, someone or something failed.

And, since I hate failing in any way, I'm going to go somewhere where they are being successful at teaching students. (My kids would kill me for starting a sentence with "and.") Again, a big part of me feels like I've failed the kids I am teaching, but I also wonder if I just haven't been given the right tools to do the given job. If I kept on in this district, I have a feeling I would burn out sooner rather than later, due to frustration at constant failure. So, I think I'm doing the right thing for me and my future students.

Hopefully, THAT makes me a good teacher.

They're learning!

2008-11-11T20:28:00.000-08:00

Yay! They're learning something! The longer I'm a teacher, the more I realize that the earlier you start something, and the more often you do it, the better students get at it. I know, this sounds like a "duh" moment, but it's true. Allow me several "for instances." [And yes, I know, none of the following things will be on our standardized test, but I think they are victories nonetheless :-).]

For example, I have been making a big deal with my kids about saying the word "library" correctly. I have quite a few every year who want to say "libary," which annoys the heck out of me. So, several times this year, I made them all say it correctly before they went in the library door. Now, when I say it fast, they think I'm saying it wrong and constantly correct me. :-) They're learning!

Another vocabulary example: I have also been attempting to get my students to use academic English in their writing, as opposed to conversational English. Heretofore, I really didn't think this was a distinction that 6th graders who are learning English would be able to make, and so I didn't address it, but this year I've been trying. The result: I was describing a science lab paper the kids would need for a project and I described it as a "worksheet thingy." At this point, at least 3 kids pointed out to me that it was not proper to say something like that and I should be more specific. :-) They're learning!

A non-academic example: I have always told my kids to pick up trash on the playground when they see it, and I always make sure they see me picking up trash as well. However, this year I have been pushing it, and I tell them most days to pick up trash as we're walking inside. On Friday, when I went out to pick the kids up after lunch, one kid was walking toward me with at least 3 cans in his hand. Two other kids saw him and immediately ran off to find trash. As we were walking inside, another girl went off to the track to pick up some blowing garbage. Yay! They're learning! We can make a difference, even if it's just in the little things.

Lesson learned: Start early, repeat often.

Google it!

2008-11-04T19:23:00.000-08:00

Today my students were working on a daily math review, and there was a question about what the commutative property was. I didn't learn what that was until I was 16, so I didn't expect them to know the answer, and they didn't. Personally, I can never remember the difference between commutative and associative properties, and so I went to my computer while they were working on the problems and googled it. As I was doing this, one of my kids came up to ask how to do the commutative property problem. As he asked, he looked at my screen, and I just imagined he was putting 2 and 2 together to see that I was looking up something I was about to try and teach them!! (I don't know that's what he was thinking, but it wouldn't be altogether surprising.) I told him to skip the problem and go back to his seat :-) So, I continued googling, found my answer in the expected 5 seconds or less, and went on to explain to the class what it was. I'm not really sure that this qualifies as good teaching, but it least gave me an answer to tell them :-) Lesson learned? When in doubt, Google it!

[By the way, in case you were wondering what the commutative property is, it is the rule that states that 6 + 3 = 3 + 6.]

Coud This Be True??

2008-11-02T14:20:00.000-08:00

If you've read my blog before, you may recall that a while ago I said I was waiting for one good thing to happen to make up for all the crazy bad stuff. As an update, there is still lots of crazy things going on at my school (our principal got fired and we have countless random "interim" people all around instead, we were told all teachers in 6th grade must literally be teaching the same page on the same day, etc.) These things are all incredibly frustrating and annoying.

In the face of all of these things, I am forced to focus on the little things :-) One encouraging thing is that we have been given a reasonable lesson plan format to follow, which is significantly less detailed. This effectively has given me my Saturdays back, as I was spending the entire day doing lesson plans. Another good thing is that my other team member has returned from maternity leave and I no longer have to "take care" of the sub next door and do two teachers' worth of work. These things are great, on an organizational level.

On an educational level though, I was greatly encouraged this week when I happened to hear two comments from kids that made me feel like perhaps I am making progress. I was talking to my student who is always full of questions (usually academic, always non-stop). The girl sitting next to him said that she was in his class last year and that his talking drove the teacher nuts. I asked if his behavior was any better this year, and they both agreed that it was somewhat better than it was last year. This may sound like an incredibly minor thing, but this means that something I'm doing is making a modicum of difference! (I know that may not necessarily be the case, but I will gladly take credit!! :-))

The other comment I heard came from a situation where a new student was teasing another student about something 6th graderish (name, hair, height, I don't know). One of my other, shall we say, "outgoing" students then yells across the room, "Hey! Leave him alone! We don't tease people in here, right, Mrs. Shetler?" This literally warms my heart. We have had numerous conversations about teasing people (especially about their names), and how we should absolutely not be doing that. (And yes, in my room, we always use the imperial "we," :-)). While there is still PLENTY of teasing that goes on, evidently my point has gotten across!

Perhaps I am becoming a better teacher yet...

Cooking with 6th Graders

2008-10-15T19:23:00.001-07:00

Parent-teacher conferences are this week. In another valiant attempt to include food and/or cooking in class, I decided to have the kids make no-bake cookies to serve to parents at conferences. I could get away with this because the language arts standards we were addressing the last few weeks were about functional text (reading schedules, charts, signs, recipes, etc.) The first battle was finding a recipe that was truly no-bake AND no-heat. (Most no-bake recipes involve melting various concoctions on the stove.) So, I sent my good friend, and passionate recipe-searcher, Liz Brinkman on a mission to find a real-deal, no heat cookie recipe. This is what she came up with.

The first big task was getting the kids to understand what all of the ingredients were.
"It says honey. Can I bring syrup instead?" .....Not really the same thing.
"Do I have to put in the peanut butter? What if I don't have crunchy?" Yes you have to have peanut butter, and no it doesn't matter what kind.
"What is non-fat evaporated milk powder? Is that like baby formula?" Same idea, but DON'T bring baby formula. Look for powdered milk.
"Where do I find a coconut?" PLEASE don't bring a whole coconut. We're looking for shredded coconut; the kind that's in little bits.

After that task was navigated on Friday, and everyone had divided up the ingredients to bring in, I promptly forgot to remind them to bring it all in on Tuesday. So about half the kids actually had the ingredients on Tuesday. Thanks to some awesome parents, and a bunch of kids who had plenty to share, we ended up with enough of everything to make the recipe (7 groups made it, actually). Having enough ingredients was a victory in and of itself.

Once we're actually ready to begin assembling the cookies, and I've handed out the mixing bowls, spoons, and measuring cups, this is the first thing I see: kids banging the bowls with the spoons and putting the bowls on their head. In the words of Seth Myers and Amy Poehler on Weekend Update, "REALLY?!?" Some days it's like teaching 3 year olds... Then I had to triply review that if we need 2/3 of a cup of honey, you need to put in 2 of the 1/3 cups. Even after going over it several times and making them repeat it back to me, I still caught several trying to put it in the half cup. (It's amazing how much kids DON'T figure out on their own...)

We did run short of honey, but this was generally remedied by adding more peanut butter. (My whole room smelled like peanut butter and honey--it was great!) After getting everything generally mixed together right (although I did have a good contingent dump the coconut into the mix, even though the balls were supposed to be rolled in it--"add more peanut butter!!") we finally got everything put away into plastic bags and safely stored in the lounge fridge. I did have to beat a couple teachers off with a stick at lunch the next day, but they turned out great. My floor was completely covered in graham cracker crumbs, but it was easily vaccuumed.

It turned out to be a lot of fun for me and the kids, and it wasn't even very disastrous! Maybe that's what good teaching is like: having "fly by the seat of your pants" fun, and even learning something in the meantime!

Yellow Pages vs Websites

2008-10-05T13:57:00.000-07:00

I was planning my 700 hours worth of lesson plans yesterday. (My kids are starting to learn that I exaggerate a lot.) This planning for every subject is ridiculously time-consuming, not to mention the outrageous lesson plan format we have to follow. ANYWAY, beside the point. This week in Language Arts (English, for you old school people), my kids are studying functional text, which includes things like recipes, directions, schedules, signs, phone books, etc.

As I was on my hands and knees yanking the phone book out of its resting place at the bottom of my closet, where it cushions my glassware and boosts up an occasional child, a thought came to me. What is the point of the phone book? When do I ever use it? Clearly, not much. However, I suppose it can still be of use if a person is looking for a plumber or a roofer and doesn't know one. Hence, I will still teach my kids how to use the yellow pages.

However, once a person does know what specific company, restaurant, or organization they want information on, the group's website is much more useful. For that reason, this week we will be locating information on a website as well (which is a totally different skill than using MySpace). I know this may seem like a bit of a no-brainer, but the state standards out there would probably say that I shouldn't be wasting my time on things that aren't going to be on the standardized test at the end of the year. In my humble opinion though, (imho in text speak), it is a necessary life skill that I use all the time. Like I say, though it may be looked down upon by some, I think that is one small thing that contributes toward being a good teacher (even though it may not boost my students' test scores). :-)

Wordle

2008-09-27T16:25:00.000-07:00

Wow, this is a fun, marginally useless website!! www.wordle.net

If you have time to kill, give this a shot. I pasted in the words from my blog, and this is what came up. The words that are written most often are bigger :-)

Where's Ashton Kutcher?

2008-09-15T22:00:00.000-07:00

I'm really starting to wonder if I'm being Punk'd. For some reason, we have had nothing but disastrous things happen to the 6th grade at my school this year. I believe I've explained a number of previous events, including having to take on teaching all subjects a week ago (as opposed to 1 and half subjects previously) and having my room broken into and an entire lab worth of laptops stolen. This weekend, I found out that my room, along with others had been broken into again by others. Luckily (for me), this time there was minimal damage done to my room, and nothing taken (not that there was that much else left to take). Just as I was processing all of this, I found out I'd have to take on an extra 9 students, since my co-worker didn't have a sub today.

In the midst of settling all these kids, I was called out to a meeting in which we found out 3 of our 6th grade teachers are being involuntarily transferred to elementary schools who are short teachers, since our numbers are so far down that we are currently overstaffed based on the number of students per class. The decision as to which teachers go is based on seniority, and so our 2 brand new teachers were forced to leave, unless anyone else volunteered to take other positions. I really felt like the right thing to do was to volunteer to take one of the elementary positions in order to support our brand new teachers who have just moved across the country. However...I like my job (at least when a thousand bad things aren't happening). I have no desire whatsoever to start over at a new grade level 4 weeks into the school year, and so I'm staying. I know no one can fault a person for wanting to keep their job, but I still feel awful for those teachers that are going to have their lives turned upside down (not to mention the students in their former classes who will be split among the remaining teachers, and the students in their new classes who will be taken from other teachers and reassigned). I know I did nothing wrong, but I still feel like the right thing to do would've been to help someone else avoid a terribly unfortunate situation...

As I take on about 7 new students tomorrow that will come from these departing teachers, I have a chance to create a stronger classroom. I hope I will come out of this a better teacher. Wish me luck. Actually, scratch that. Wish me wisdom.

Tornadoes and Menopause

2008-09-13T16:06:00.000-07:00

I was in the middle of a science lesson this week on tornadoes. (Reminder: this is the first week I have ever, in my entire life, taught science.) My kids were fairly engaged and of course, asking all kinds of questions I can't answer, so we started a list. They were asking things like, "What happens if a tornado runs into a mountain?" and "Could a chicken survive a tornado?" and "What happens if a plane flies into a tornado?" I was wracking my brain for any bit of information I have about tornadoes, and can't answer any of the questions. In the midst of this, one kid pipes up and says, "What's menopause?"

I lost it. I totally cracked up. I have no idea where that question came from, but I was ecstatic that for once I had a decent answer. I said, "I'll tell you when we study the human body next semester."

We'll see if he remembers. I'm not sure if this makes me a good teacher or not, but it sure gave me a good laugh :-)

Making Them Speak

2008-09-13T15:56:00.000-07:00

If you read my last post, you know that I had two kids on the verge of tears after making them speak in the front of the class to everyone. One just flat out refused to go, and the other stood up there for 5-10 minutes before a meager one sentence left his mouth and he fled to his seat. Yesterday I found that those efforts at making them get over their stage fright were worth it.

Their assignment for this week was to do a book talk (basically a verbal book review) for the class. They had a week to prepare (to plan and mentally prepare themselves :-)) and then everyone got up in front of the class and presented. The girl that had actually been crying last week, hemmed and hawed, and begged not to do it, but finally got up and did a very nice job. That was a victory in itself. The other student who had been terrified, but got a bit out last week also managed to survive another speech without passing out, and did a fine job as well.

However, the real victory came later on during Social Studies. They had already shared their current events with two small groups, and I asked if anyone wanted to volunteer to share theirs in front of the class in the last few minutes. I looked around and I noticed one of several hands that had shot up instantaneously. It was my crier from last week! She was waving her hand furiously in the air so that she could get up and share. :-) Needless to say, I let her go first (and she did an excellent job of presenting). At that moment, I felt like a good teacher :-)

Making Them Cry

2008-09-05T22:15:00.001-07:00

Is being able to make kids cry a good or bad thing? It's generally not something I strive to do, but in this instance, I didn't feel too terribly bad. I made one kid from each group get up today and share a current event they had recorded. The point was not to share the current event, but to practice speaking in front of a group without giggling, shrieking, contorting one's body, facing backwards, having someone else read it for you, crack up, burst into tears, etc. The first kid flat out refused. When I could tell she was so petrified that she was just about to cry, I let up and said I'd come back to her. Just about that time, another kid says, "Hey, are you crying??" Not helpful. That comment actually did bring on the tears (technically not my fault). Then, after several other kids had gone, the next kid got up and couldn't get a single word to come out of his mouth. After quite a while, and lots of giggling, he managed to get out one sentence (as compared to the required three) while standing next to me, and then sprinting for his seat. He was the last one to go, and then I asked if there were any volunteers that wanted to share their current events. To encourage this, I said, "See look, no one actually died of embarrassment!" At which point, the last kid that had gone, said, "No, but I was scared--to--death!!" No actual tears, but still. Poor things. Would this make me a good or bad teacher? :-)

Adaptation is the Name of the Game

2008-09-02T19:48:00.001-07:00

They say that teachers need to be ready to adapt. The all-knowing "they" is not kidding. In my first 3 weeks of school, my teaching has been turned totally upside down. There are tons of reasons for this, most of which I will not go in to. (I know, dangling modifier...) However, these are the 2 biggest reasons. After 3 years (plus 3 weeks of this year) of teaching 2 subjects to 2 or 3 classes, we've now been informed that since our district is underperforming, we are no longer allowed to trade classes with another teacher. We are all required to be self-contained. As stated, I did not find this out until last Friday. So now, for the first time in my life, I get to do the one thing I wanted to avoid at all costs, which is teaching all the subjects at once. Given that I was never interested in this, it is pretty daunting to me to take it on in a week's time.

The other major change was that this morning when I walked into my room, I discovered that the laptop lab that had been stored in my room was now empty of all 29 laptops. My room had been broken into, and they were all stolen. This may not seem like a big deal to my teaching, but it is to me. If no one else was using the laptops, (which was about 4 out of 5 days a week), I made a point to use them. Even if I hadn't planned on it, I found a way to incorporate them in to whatever we were doing. Now, without the laptops there to use multiple times a week, I'm almost at a loss for how to teach the kids. The textbooks all seem outdated, irrelevant, too difficult, and worst of all, boring. I guess the infamous THEY says "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger." THEY sure better be right. I guess I'll know as I get settled into this new way of teaching...if I'm a good teacher yet.

Why I'm Here

2008-09-02T19:34:00.000-07:00

What you have just stumbled upon is my first attempt at a blog. It is based on a thought that I have had in my subconscious for the last four years of my life. "Am I a good teacher yet?" I am a 6th grade teacher (in my 4th year teaching), and I strive to be good at what I do. For that matter, I strive to be excellent at what I do. However, on many days, I'm not so sure I've hit the mark. I'm definitely making attempts, and I've definitely done some things right. However, I still know that I have a long way to go at getting good at this game we call teaching. Therefore, this blog will basically serve as my documentation of the adventures of teaching that present themselves before me, and the refining process they have on my teaching ability. There will definitely be humor, (since my students amaze me, crack me up, and boggle my mind on a daily basis), there will definitely be advocacy of technology (I'm in an educational technology master's program right now), and there will definitely be examples of my attempts at becoming a better teacher. I hope you'll join me on my journey!