It’s Step 1 of my Top Secret New Teacher Handbook.  Hope it creates some shortcuts, a machete even, through the education jungle.

-Tweenteacher

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OK, guys.  So I got it from the horse’s mouth at CUE.  According to the ISTE Director of Governmental Affairs, No Child Left Behind is not going away.  

In the weeks leading up to the election, the Obama administration talked the talk, proving that Educational Technology was on their radar, but if you’ve been listening, the silence on Ed Tech has since become deafening.  (...)
Read the rest of How to be an Ed Tech Advocate (515 words)

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I believe a classroom library is the heartbeat of a teacher’s environment.  It is the window into their own personality, and it reflects the importance of literacy in the classroom.  I believe every teacher, no matter the subject taught, should have one.

 Access to books should be thought about with the same differentiated approach as any other lesson, assessment, or activity.  It seems to me that there are four kinds of library-learners:

1. THE BRASH BIBLIOPHILE:  These are students who are well versed in the language of book choice and seek out what they want, avidly asking questions or using learned or inherent strategies to find the book that will make them sigh into their bed with a flashlight in hand.  They will find their way to their local bookstore by any means necessary, and look through the stacks until their parents pull them away.  

(...)
Read the rest of The Importance of The Classroom Library (923 words)

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I’m a little frustrated at the message this sends to those of use who have invested in this career.  I mean, I know that we need to recruit new teachers, but a talented person with great ability in their field does not necessarily a good teacher make. Remember, teaching is about two skills that must be mastered: that of content and that of communication.(...)
Read the rest of Am I So Past My Prime? (198 words)

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Post tags: alternative credetials, credential, Ed Tech, ELA, employment, free, fundraising, Language Arts, learning, life long learners, merit pay, middle school, performance pay, teaching, TLN, Writers Project, writing

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Post tags: audit, blog, budget, Ed Tech, education policy, ELA, firing, internet literacy, learning, middle school, textbooks, Title I

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So we’re at my department meeting yesterday, and my head announces that due to budget cuts, we won’t be administering the CAT6 this year.  There was this pause in the room that suggested suppressed sarcasm. (...)
Read the rest of Budget Cuts trim away the CAT6 – somehow we’ll survive (204 words)

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I’m presenting the following sessions:

“Podcasting with 50 Middle Schoolers – RU Crazy?!” – I’ve done this session in the past to great success, so I won’t go on too long about it.  But I will say that this session will cover beyond the question of ”What is Podcasting.”  It will take it to the application level.  It covers how to create a Standards-based podcasting class, across multiple curriculum strands, for a diversity of learners in order to reach and inspire an entire community.  Podcasting can be not only educational for those students involved, but can also be educational and unifying to an entire district community.  Bulldog Radio demands high-level thinking and problem solving from its students, with the goal of communicating with families of many different backgrounds and learning levels.  

You also come away with great strategies on student-created rubrics, project-based learning, and student management and organization in both the classroom the computer lab.

“Collaboration-Blocked by a Firewall Near You” - We know about the success of collaboration and peer-feedback in the K-12 classroom.  We talk about the need to bring our students into the 21^st century by teaching them Internet literacy and responsibility.  But what happens when what we know we should be teaching is blocked by firewalls and a fear-filled district Internet policy?

In the session, I will teach educators how to get around this issue using XWiki Workspaces, a Free and Open Source program that allows a classroom to become its own World Wide Web.  Using XWiki Workspaces, a teacher can easily set up a student blog, wiki, photo album, etc…that can only be read and commented on in the secure environment of a school site, classroom, or lab.

While there are some programs available out there (i.e. Echalk) that provide teachers with similar abilities, these options come at a cost: a high district price tag and dependency on tech coordinators and web builders.  Using XWiki Workspaces, a single teacher without tech experience and without educational red tape can use a single computer, desktop, laptop, Mac or PC to act as the server for their projects.

The key is that the program runs behind the school’s firewall.   That is why it is not blocked by it.  Also this guarantees that there is no access to the sites you create outside of that firewall.  Therefore, a district with fears of posting student work online doesn’t have to worry about the work being compromised or preyed upon.

We know that student online transparency important, but the fear that dictates district firewalls block student collaboration. We need to find a way around such fear.  With XWiki Workspaces a teacher can address the literacy and responsibilities that need to be taught while still following district policy. 

Down the line, of course, by showing a district how successful online collaboration can be, a teacher may open the doors to greater online transparency.  Sometimes it just takes showing the more nervous administrators the benefits before they buy-in to the future.

Hope to see you all in Palm Springs in March.

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Post tags: blog, classroom management, CUE, Ed Tech, education, ELA, k-12, k12, learning, life long learners, metacognition, middle school, project based learning, rubric, writing

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Anyway, had I not stuck with it, I would never had heard a wincing grammatical error by the Pashma Lakshmi of the dance floor, Carrie Ann Inaba. 

The scenario: Susan Lucci, in yet another stunningly stiff and impassionate contribution to the ballroom, is told by the judges that her paso doble is wonderful.  Everyone’s looking to help Susan “break out of her shell” so they all congratulate her for what, I don’t know, and at the end of it, Carrie Ann demands that Lucci turn around to the camera, own her success, and announce to the millions sitting at home, “I did GOOD!”

In my world, there’s a pause and Tom Bergeron (cool guy, funny, smart, I used to watch him on Fox’s Breakfast Show co-starring with Bob the puppet) whispers, “Well…I did well.”  Maybe, it’s even cued by the producers in his earpiece.  But no...

…in Susan Lucci’s grandiose vapidity, she turns to the camera, glazed smile of pride on her face, and declares to the world, “I did GOOD!”

Carrie Ann Inaba gave Susan Lucci an 8, but I give Carrie Ann a 0.  And I don’t think Susan Lucci did very well, either. 

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Post tags: Curriculum, ELA, internet literacy, Language Arts, learning, technology, writing

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You know when you enjoy a book so much you begin to slow down towards the end just to make the sweetness last?  Well, Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book is one of those.  NG writes with a rhythm in his words that seduces you.  Coupled with an amazingly simple and brilliant plot, his latest foray into young adult horror will leave you holding your breath through the entire story until that final page allows for your exhale.  (...)
Read the rest of Book Review: The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman (797 words)

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So you know when you get your group of kids on the first day, there are those who immediately set off your alarms?  Well, that definitely happened to me on my first day.

I have a student who clearly needs help.  His peers are weary of him already and his confrontational style seems not as intentional as inherent.  The startling comments and “seething anger”, as his last year’s teacher put it only three weeks into the school year, seem uncontrollable.  This same teacher recorded that he asked if her windows were bullet proof.  I wasn’t, of course, given this information up front.  I had to seek it out. 

His first quickwrite of this year centered on cussing out his last teachers and cranking them nightly on the phone.  His pride in his violent video games is apparent.  

Like children with Asperger’s (of which he has not been tested to date), he seems unaware of cues or the goings on around him: calling out with inappropriate comments, walking in front of me while I talk to the class, handing me items while I’m in the middle of instruction.  Annoying, yes, but harmless.  

He also will not make eye contact (could be cultural, but this seems different than others of his ethnicity and nationality) and walks robotically, stiffly, without movement in his shoulders.  Strangely enough, and I’m clearly not a diagnostician (though I play one on TV), the few students in my career who have had symptoms like this seem to also come with apparent sinus problems.  His eyes are puffy with nasal issues, he is sniffy, and I can’t help but wonder if there is a connection.

So I approached the counselors who know me as a real student advocate and as a teacher with a somewhat effective antenna.  I don’t send kids to the office.  I handle my own discipline issues, which are few.  So when I come in, they listen.  The afternoon after the first day of school I walked in and said, “So, what’s up with X?”  They pretty much flopped the file onto the desk, a file the size of our Language of Literature book.(...)
Read the rest of Should a free education be unconditional? (363 words)

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First I shared a list of 11 statements about myself. Embedded in the list is one fib. The kids read the statements out loud and then I have kids volunteer guesses as to which is the fib. They also have to justify why they feel it’s the fib.

With each one they chose that is an actual fact, I do a quick one-minute oral narrative about that fact that makes them wanting more. When they hit the fib, well, then I do a little soapbox number.

Here was my list:

1. My father is the 1969 World Champion Jeopardy player.

2. I was kicked out of Brownies in 4^th grade.

3. When I was a child, I was a model on The Price is Right.

4. When I was 14 I went to Greece and dropped my coolest pair of sunglasses into a well of frogs.

5. My dad created Capt. Jack Sparrow.

6. When I studied at Oxford University in England, I ended up having an emergency appendectomy.

7. My husband and I met in 2^nd grade.

8. I am a certified OpenWater II scuba diver who goes diving with her mom.

9. When I was in school, I was a straight A student.

10. I once worked at a guest ranch, working in the stables, leading the kiddie rides across the Arizona desert.

11. One weekend, I was so bored that I went skydiving just to do something new.

Can you guess the fib? Answer: # 9. Yes, it’s true. I was NOT a straight A student. In fact, I didn’t find a joy in learning or in school until the occasional high school class or college class when I could actual point to classes I was actually interested in.

In other words, I not only didn’t have a passion in or for school, but I also remember what I didn’t like or understand. As a teacher, my recollections add to my ability to reach out to a diversity of learners. As a teacher, my willingness to share myself, my strengths, and my foibles adds to my ability to reach them as well.

Then I had the kids develop 4 truths and a fib.  They partnered up and tried to guess each other’s fibs, giving little verbal narratives about each truth.  Afterwards, their partners had to circle the story they would like to hear more about.  We did a real quick review of sensory details and I modeled creating a bulleted list of details from one of the truths.  The one I modeled was # 11.  So here’s what I wrote:

*a free-fall out of a plane feels like you’re lying on a table.  That’s how much pressure there is on your body.

*the plan ride up was so loud, we couldn’t hear each other yell our words across the aisle.

*When you jump, the only real idea of speed you have is the fact that the plane is getting smaller so quickly.  When you level out, your hands flap, but the horizon stays the same for a long time.  Otherwise, it’s almost like a loud hovering.

*when you pull the cord to let out the parachute, you get an intense wedgie.

*my feet fell asleep which drifting down to the ground

*my mouth was open during free-fall so when I landed, my teeth felt like they were wearing socks.  They were that grimy.

Then the kids created their own bulleted list of sensory details.  It began a potential narrative, should they chose to return to this concrete description brainstorm.

Share yourself, your experiences, and the themes of your life. You are the supplemental material. Share yourself and your students will learn more.

Hope your first day went as well as my own.

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Post tags: 2008, achievement gap, blog, computers, Curriculum, curriculum design, Ed Tech, education, education policy, ELA, Golden Lines, integration, interviewing, k-12, k12, learning, life long learners, middle school, new teachers, technology, writing

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These questions and many more are explored in today’s The Opening Bell.(...)
Read the rest of My new Interactive Whiteboard: Part I (807 words)

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…On the Importance of Questioning

“Honor confusion.”

“Confusion represents an advanced stage of understanding.”

“Teachers shouldn’t avoid confusion, but produce it.”

“Quality of reading is evident in the questions.”

“Questions are the key to drive learning.”

…On the Reading Process

“There is a messiness in reading…You revise your reading as you read.”

“Reading is a process of text constructions, just like writing.”

“Reading is a social activity that needs to happen in conversation.”

…On Difficulty in Reading

“The world is a difficult text and all of the strategies we bring to literary texts can be applied to the lives and the world in which they [students] live.”

“We often need to be completely lost before we can find our way.”

“Art defamiliarizes [makes the familiar strange and the strange familiar] so that we pay attention…it needs to be difficult to make us stop and pay attention.”

“It’s the lines in the poem that make the least sense that give us the greatest understanding.”

Hope you got something out of it.  Enjoy.

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Post tags: 2008, collaboration, critical thinking, dialogue, ELA, k-12, k12, Language Arts, learning, metacognition, middle school, teaching, UCI, Writers Project

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Kelly Gallagher, educator and author of Teaching Adolescent Writers, came and spoke to the UCI Writing Project on Friday and his focus of the presentation was a Golden Line: The Goal in Education is “Everybody Improves.”  

Duh, you say, isn’t improvement always the goal of education?  Actually, no. When you consider AYP scores, for instance, the goal is to hit a benchmark, not the level of improvement you made to hit it.  (...)
Read the rest of Kelly Gallagher’s Golden Line (723 words)

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Post tags: 2008, achievement gap, assessments, blog, collaboration, computers, credential, critical thinking, CUE, Curriculum, curriculum design, curriculum development, differentiation, digital immigrants, digital natives, Ed Tech, education, education policy, ELA, equity, integration, internet literacy, jobs, k-12, k12, Language Arts, learning, matthew needleman, middle school, professional development, research, technology, test, test prep, Think Aloud, Title I, UCI, writing

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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“)

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Post tags: America's Choice, critical thinking, Ed Tech, education, honors, k-12, k12, Language Arts, learning, life long learners, metacognition, middle school, teaching, Think Aloud, UCI, Writers Project

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Enjoy Le Carnival! 

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Post tags: 2008, blog, btsa, Careers, carnival of education, contract, credential, Ed Tech, education, education policy, ELA, employment, How To, jobs, k-12, k12, Language Arts, learning, middle school, new teachers, professional development, teaching, Title I, top 10

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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…(...)
Read the rest of How to Drop the Gas Prices Using Math (707 words)

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Post tags: critical thinking, curriculum design, curriculum development, education, k-12, k12, learning, life long learners, Math, teaching, Title I

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