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So, in a move reminiscent of a 12-year old girl caught up in the riot mentality of rumors, I believed the whisper I heard about not getting my Whiteboard for 2 months.  But I tell you now: it was false, dear readers!  Yes, not only have I heard that the boards have shipped, but the company even came after hours this week and brought me a borrowed board to use in the meantime.  Props for service and courtesy.  

So I write to you today as a contrite tweenteacher.  Lesson learned.  Don’t listen to the gossip in the teacher’s lounge.

So, in an attempt to bring this post around to some actual advice for all you educators out there, I want to reiterate that point: do not waste one minute of your time this year in a toxic teacher environment.  This is different than a Toxic Teaching Environment which can be defined as anything that gets in the way of you doing your job: under-funding, lack of school wide discipline, fractured classrooms, etc…

No, I’m talking about a specific breed of pollution that is meant to choke the enthusiasm out of you: the Toxic Teacher Environment.   (more…)

Howdy all!

The Carnival of Education is in town and tweenteacher has joined the parade.  Interesting host and post.

Enjoy!

So, I had my online training.  I met the Whiteboard sales guy in my classroom to discuss where the board is to be mounted.  I talked with my principal to develop an interactive whiteboard presentation during our first staff development in an attempt to drum up excitement amongst the somewhat less-than-tech-enthused staff.  I spent time over my summer developing my own curriculum for the first quarter: pulling out my books, pacing my units, and choosing those individual static lessons that I will expand into Interactive board lessons.  

It wasn’t long, however, that I began to suspect I had wasted my time.  The odor of bullshit was in the air…

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Welcome to another Carnival of Education hosted this week by Joanne Jacobs.   After taking a writing break for a few weeks, I am back in the party.  Something I love about Le Carnival is that is represents both sides of the fence.  You can see opinions about effective teaching from all over the spectrum and pick and choose your own education.  

Enjoy!

Is the tale of the recent surge of Interactive Whiteboards a grade-B horror flick or a Cinderella story?  Are they the villain or the belle of the ball?  They’ve begun creeping into trendsetting classrooms, taking over precious wall space and sending those unfortunate overhead projectors of said classrooms to basement warehouses to gather dust alongside carousel slide projectors and the purpled-mimeograph machines of yesteryear.  Are they an inevitable given in tomorrow’s classroom or an expensive fad?  

These questions and many more are explored in today’s The Opening Bell. (more…)

Hey Tweenteacher readers!  I’m getting back into the swing of things after an almost three week break following my intensive month of writing with the UCI Writers Project and an isolated cabin stay with the in-laws in Greer, Arizona.  My return to civilization was marked by a lot of sleep (sometimes one needs a vacation after a vacation) and some movie rentals.

So for a while there in the 90s I was a huge Tenacious D fan and as such, I find it my duty to see any Jack Black movie.  Which brought me recently to the Jack Black/Mos Def vehicle, “Be Kind, Rewind.”  Please don’t think less of me, I’m not necessarily recommending the movie in it entirety because it’s a great premise that can’t seem to hang its plot on properly.  

Premise: During the dawn of the DVD era, two losers working in a on-the-way-out video rental store accidentally erase all of the tapes and must recreate the video library as a means to save the store.  

As  brilliant cross-promotional tool, the studio also released some of these short films on youtube.  My advice?  Skip through the movie and fast forward to montages of their C-level recreations of A-level movies.  Driving Miss Daisy will never be the same.  Here’s the trailer for their “Ghostbusters” version as enacted by JB and MD.

As cruddy as a movie as it was overall, it did, however, get me thinking about how to teach summarizing in a fun way (a near impossibility.)

Perhaps the students could be recreating books in 5 minutes or less with only the materials available in the classroom or home?  Let the summarizing chaos ensue!