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So I saved an educator’s life today while talking to her after lunch.  We were walking back from Panera to the afternoon session of the UCI Writer’s Project and we were engrossed in a discussion about using metacognitive strategies in the classroom to teach how to think.  My partner in theoretical crime then stepped off the curb with no other thought in her head other than thought, and I pulled her back from the brink of death from the blow of a charging black SUV.  

So my question today is this: is there such a thing as too much thought awareness?

Today we covered everything from Think Alouds as a way to model metacognitive awareness, to activities that encourage and develop the metacognitive muscle.  But in our attempt at looking in, is it possible to loose sight of the big picture, the big idea, and the outside realm?  

Clearly we did.   

(For a related post, see “An Honors Student Does Not a Critical-Thinker Necessarily Make“)

Welcome to the Carnival of Education #177 hosted this week by Where’s the Sun?  The theme was empowerment so my entry covers the first step in teacher empowerment, “How to Find a Job in Education that you Love.”   You may not need this entry now, but you never know when a How To list like this one comes in handy.  We all know teachers there who are looking for work, but are they looking smartly?  Check out my article for some tips on how to search, who to contact, and tips during the interviewing process.

Enjoy Le Carnival! 

Remember Rich Hall in HBOs 1980s comedy, Not Necessary the News?  He created sniglets, words that should have been in the dictionary, but weren’t.  For example:

• Foodgitives: The food on one side of a TV dinner tray that escapes to the other side. (Hall 1985a: 31)
• Furnidents: The indentations left in carpet after moving heavy furniture (Hall 1983)
• Sniffleridge: The groove running between the nose and the mouth (Hall 1984: 92). 

Well, today I’m asking for help in creating our own. (more…)

“Oh, you must be so excited to summer break.”

“Must be nice being a teacher, summer break and all.”

Don’t you just hate it when civilians assume that just because your students are at camp, you are too?  Once of the things I do love, however, is that summer is a time to hone our skills, become better at our craft, and focus on our own professional growth.  

I got into the UCI Writers’ Project this year.  I’d been invited to apply in the past but had to say no, thank you for two years in a row.  The first year, I just couldn’t afford to not work summer school.  The second time I gave birth to Ben.  So now, here I am, and while I couldn’t afford to not work summer school again, the fact is I felt that I couldn’t afford to not be in a pool of such gifted people.  I needed my brain to be a spa this summer, albeit a really intensive, energy-draining spa.  In fact, it’s more like a gym.  And we all know that going to the gym massages your body in forward-movement, the way attending UCI will massage my neurons.

I’m nervous.  I’m excited.  And I’m hoping that I can live up to the pool of educators that I will be associating with.  The list of speakers is phenomenal.  The selected teachers all range in skills, age, and grade levels.  

So, as I close up shop for the school year, plan Ben’s Traveltown birthday party, and get ready for the in-laws coming into town, I am also preparing for my Voice unit presentation that I will be presenting on the first week.  

It starts on Monday and I am really looking forward to being a student again.  My posts may be fewer and farther between this July, but I will update when I can.

Have a great and rejuvenating summer vacation.

OK, so you know that teacher that from my post, “Cheering on the Demise of One’s Own School?” Well, he’s got his pom-poms in a bunch, let me tell you.

On Wednesday’s faculty union meeting, we were held hostage by the toxic spewings of this most angry of people.  We are a school in our 4th Year of PI and many of us in the core subjects have been BEGGING for collaboration time that is on the clock.  We are, after all getting tired of being told collaboration is a key component for reform, and not being given supported time to do so.

A restructured day has been on the table every other year for 6 years now, and keeps getting voted down for one reason or another, most of which has to do with distrust of what the administration wanted from the teachers on these early student release days.

Well, we have a new administration now, and here is the debate again.  But this time, there seems to be a bigger wave of desire for the change.  Maybe it has to do with more trust in our new principal, maybe because teachers’ saturation points have been reached.  Whatever.  But finally, in an attempt to help us out with collaboration time, with grading time, and with curriculum development, our new principal went through the process of building consensus and educating some teachers about what the needs were and how this could serve us.

So here we were, finally voting, and up goes the hand of Mr. SmogofNegativity.  I think I’ll just share some memorable quotes from the yell-fest that was our union meeting: (more…)

I’ve been reading a lot of headlines lately about NCLB leaving out the over-achievers and potential leaders in our schools.  Joanne Jacobs mentions it in her article, “What About the Smart Kids?” and the NYTimes and the Common Core blog both have touched on this latest Fordham report that claims that the achievement gap is closing, but from the bottom up.  

Nobody can deny that this is happening, but there is also another symptom of NCLB that has slowly passed like a plague of yore over our schools, the disappearance of electives from the schedules of the middle-ground students.   (more…)

Sometimes I get a mental check at how new to edublogging I am.  I just discovered Dangerously Irrelevant, can you believe it?  Anyway, I like the guy’s style.  So he just posted an interesting article titled, “Ed Tech Quarantine,” that wonders “whether we technology early adopters need a self-imposed moratorium on talking about new technology tools…”

I’ve been saying something like this for a while.  It is very important for those of us who have discovered the value of technology in education to be very careful in how we pitch our programs and in how we attempt adoption.  We’ve all seen eyes glaze over as we talk Twitter.  We’ve all seen teachers check their watches as we preach about interactive whiteboards.  

I have found, however, that there are ways to speak the language of these more traditional educators.  Keep talking in metaphor.  As I have said before, “Ed Tech is the new Home Ec and Shop,” and NOT teaching technology is preparing students only for OUR future, not THEIRS.

Technology awareness and literacy are not just elite, honors-bound classes anymore.  These are the blue-collar skills of our students’ generation.  So, while I agree with Dangerously Irrelevant’s musings of respect, I still know that we can’t drop the standard entirely.  (And by standard I mean the whole banner-flapping- astride-a-horse-in-an-Errol-Flynn-movie kind of thing.)

I commented on the post as follows: (more…)

In today’s Joanne Jacobs article, Computers Don’t Boots Poor Kids’ Grades,” I commented that they may not boost them now, but as we all know, our mission as educators is not just to increase test scores, but also to create life long learners.  Look, I think that if we as educators are charged with preparing students with the strategies that are their future, we must make them computer literate. That means doing everything we can to promote safe and easy computer usage in the home.

Just as we as educators strive to make books accessible to those who are struggling readers, so too must we add computers to that list, for technology is not just for the elite anymore. The Home Ec and Shop classes of yesteryear are dwindling away and in their place needs to be classes and encouragement in those skills that will be our students’ future blue-collar skills…those in technology.

The statistics of what the kids do with a computer once it’s in the homes can’t derail us from our mission, to educate and prepare. Get those computers in the homes and in the schools. Then we’ll tackle responsible usage. But if we allowed the irresponsible to dictate every generation’s movement towards their future success, TV would have been banned long ago and books would still be in pyres. (more…)

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I received this email today from my sis.  It’s one of those chain emails.  You know, “send this out to 6 people and all your wishes will come true.”  This one, however, not only has a purpose, it also includes some pretty cool math.  Look, I don’t know your politics, but I do know this: nobody likes the gas prices.  As you read on, you’ll see that someone actually put some exponent knowledge to good use.  Do what you will about the info, but if you want to pass it on, just cut and paste, baby.  Forgive the wacky formatting… (more…)