Dance with the Devil

Yesterday I got an email with an incredible offer. Would I like 10 desktops hardwired into my classroom? Well yeah!

The offer came from our technology liason teacher. I have worked with her for many years through the good and bad. Last Fall, technology at my school was in tough shape. So bad in fact that the science department had a protest “march” for the district technology director. (we stood in front of the principals office with cardboard signs) We probably didn’t do more than aggravate this administrator who held our technological fate in his hands. It made us feel better. Our Principal and VP had gone to bat for us many times with frustratingly few results.

Our Internet went down daily at random times. We were waiting for power cords requested in June until January. Battery life on our precious 5 year old laptops were deemed to be to “industry standard”. The batteries lasted about an hour and took several hours to fully charge. Problem was I had three 85 minute classes in a row, so without power cords the laptops were rendered unusable. I offered to use my own money to buy some inexpensive generic power cords, but was informed we could only use the brand name cords, which cost about $50 more apeice.

Many sites were randomly blocked. Searching one day for “tooth diagram” my request was blocked due to questionable content. Many of my online lessons depended on flash to run. The IT guys couldn’t get the program to stay on the computer. This took many weeks and several images to correct. We also did not have software to play DVDs on the laptops. Only IT staff could put software on the Laptops, as they were in “deep freeze” and erased all nonofficial programs every night.

So with 10 poorly functioning laptops and 30 students in a class, I was encouraged to embrace “21st” Century Learning Skills”. Keep in mind that this is not a poor inner city school, but the only high school in a suburb considered by many to be “the” place to live.  SO having been in the 21st Century groove since about say ….. 2000,  many of my lessons are technology dependent.  So back to the devil–I know there will be days that I regret saying yes-but wish me luck because if I can make it work it will be awesome!!!!

“A teacher is one who makes himself progressively unnecessary.” – Thomas Carruthers

Sometimes I feel like I don’t work hard enough during class-toward the end of the semester I wonder if I am getting lazy.  Students don’t seem to need me as much.  Same thing happens at the end of a unit.  I hope this is why.

I tell my students half  jokingly that I do not teach, I provide learning opportunities.  I found this quote on a page loaded with quotes about the nature of teaching and learning.  You can find it at Quotes to Inspire Teachers and Learners of English.  Find your favorite.

Just Sayin’ Persistence

Having read Larry Ferlazzo‘s blog today, this quote caught my eye (and mind).

This comes from Dr Kathie Nunley’s Educator’s Newsletter: “…task persistence in young adolescents is extremely predictive of their income and occupational levels as adults.  In males, it’s actually more predictive than even intelligence. Researchers measured task persistence in 13 year olds and found that high task persistence predicted higher grades throughout high school and higher educational attainment in adulthood.

Andersson, H. & Bergman, L. (2010).

Don’t you love when someone spends years and mucho bucks to “discover” what we

already know as teachers?  The role of persistence in education cannot be underrated.

How is persistence factored into  grades?  Should persistence be considered as

important as intelligence in the classroom?  Can a student’s ability to be persistent be

honed and improved?  What role or responsibility do teachers have in this task?

I feel that persistence has long been underated in the classroom.  It is one variable

that students can change.  It is also the variable that can lead to improvement of other

academic skills.  I feel that teaching the value of persistence falls within the teacher’s

domain.  Designing grading systems and curricula that honor and value persistence

is a good first step.

Summer

Summer is the time of year that teachers use to reflect on and recover from a demanding school year.  It is a wonderful opportunity to explore new resources that will fuel your passion for teaching in a whole new way.  I am spending a great deal of time exploring options for learning that I can use with the technology equipment available to me at my school.  Sometimes it is frustrating to see a resource that would be perfect only to see it can’t work with our existing technology resources.

Right now I am bound and determined to get an invite to google plus-I love the idea of circles, so that I can separate the different facets of my life such as a separate circle for work, one for family and one for friends.

One of the most difficult aspects of exploring potential resources is keeping them organized.  My student teacher told me about Diigo and now I am hooked.  Diigo is simply an online bookmark system.  It allows you to access your bookmarks from any computer.  (Gotta love the cloud!)  It also allow you to tag entries for easy retrieval.  My favorite part of Diigo is Diigo in Education.  This brings me a fresh list of tech resources, articles on education and many other interesting tidbits,  I have this sent in a digest every 24 hours and am always excited to read through the listings.  Of course not everything is useful to me, but it seems every week or so I can cull out some gems for future use.

So you can see, teaching is never far from my mind but in the summer it is lovely to have the option to get away from thinking about school for a little while!

Relationships

      

I read many other education blogs each day and often find statements that resonate

with me and help me to verbalize my educational philosophy. On 6/27/11 Justin Tarte

wrote” Building and establishing strong relationships with your students is absolutely

ESSENTIAL if you truly want to positively affect their lives and have an everlasting

impact.”

http://www.connectedprincipals.com/archives/3842?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

This is from a list of  ten important lessons he has learned from his students. I have so

often found this to be true.  For students who live in an environment where education is

not always the first priority, this is especially true.  Students, regardless of differences,

all respond to people. Creating a relationship with a student helps to prevent teacher

depersonification.   In my experience, students who can relate to you outside of the

teacher “box” are much more willing to work with you.   I  am not advocating a lack of

professionalism, but rather the exhibition of a teacher’s natural warmth and concern

for each individual student. One may call into question how this impacts respect in a

student/teacher relationship. Respect is impacted in the fact that it is not based in fear

over power inequities, but rather trust that the adult knows the student enough to

promote the best interest of the student.

 

 

Layered Curriculum

5 0r 6 years ago, I stumbled across Layered Curriculum.  My son’s science teacher was in a accident and was going to be absent for several weeks.  He sent home a checklist that allowed students choices for methods of learning content.  The idea was that the end results would be the same for all, but each student would get to that point in her own way.

Upon learning that this type of curriculum even existed, I set out to research the mechanics of it.  The go to person was (is) Kathie Nunely who coined the phrase “layered curriculum”.   She makes information available on her website called brains.org.  This site includes many sample units and details about how Kathie implements this system.  This was a career changing experience for me. I envisioned a tool for increasing student motivation and increasing student ownership for their work.

But as any good teacher-despite wanting to jump in full force-I started with a small carefully selected groups of students,  I chose students that would give me useful and critical feedback.  This group was totally heterogeneous, as are all my classes.  The feedback was positive and students were excited by this approach to learning.  I knew I was on to something and spent much of the rest of the following summer switching over my curriculum setup.

Passionate Teaching

I just finished up my 18th year of teaching.  I teach at a high school, teaching Anatomy and Physiology.  I love my job.  I frequently wonder what my life would be if I hadn’t stumbled into teaching.  I held professional jobs prior to teaching, but they were different.  I need a job that allows me to be passionate.  Passion is a great asset to a teacher.  Sometimes, I feel like it is the only thing that keeps me going during the tough times.

I have always been an empathic person and my previous career really honed this trait.  I bring this to my classroom, blend it with science and sit back (yeah right!) and watch learning happen.

 Photo Credit  http://www.flickr.com/photos/oedipusphinx/