The Future

During our SKYPE conversation this week, Ed mentioned this Newsweek article on creativity.

http://www.newsweek.com/2010/07/10/the-creativity-crisis.html

After everything that we have read in our text books and articles, as well as the different websites and school models we have looked at, I see one overwhelming piece of middle level education missing. What is the objective? Everyone seems to have a different priority and a different way to "best" serve the needs of our kids. We need to all be on the same page. This Newsweek article discusses the lack of creativity our students currently possess. I think we all see this daily. With creativity comes determination, independence, and confidence. Are these skills more important to teach our students then the academic content? If we teach creatively and integratively it doesn't need to be a choice. There are middle schools in Maine and across the country that are doing great things, we need to share that! I think in order for real change to be made we need to educate the educators. All teachers, administrators, law makers, and anyone else in charge of the wellfare of our adolescents need to be educated in adolscent development. From week 1 of this course we discussed the lack of prepartion. Now we need to act on it. We need to share the information and resources we have used with our schools and with teacher prepartion programs at universities and our lawmakers. We need to have a clear goal of preparing our students to be positive contributing members of society. That comes through gaining skills, not through scoring well on a test. The skills will help you on the test, but the academic content doesn't help you out much with your indivdiual confidence, creativity, indepedence, etc.

Technology in the classroom

Here are my thoughts on the technology we used in this class. An how ALL of it can be used in my class in conjunction with the MLTI.

Moodle:At first I found the moodle to be very overwhelming. I was confused of where to find information and the overload of information and links that were available through this resource. Once I became familiar with the tool, it was pretty simple to follow. I like how you can add lots of resoources and post comments directly to submitted work. In my class, I think that this tool would be great for parents to see the grades and responses. I think it's a resource you have to pay for, so I'm not sure how realistic it is, but I would set each one of my students up with an account. The forums are a great tool for discussion among the class, after guidelines for respectful posts have been established among the class.

Voice Thread: I really liked this tool. I thought it was great how you could post video and audio comments and then respond to other people. I particulary was interested in the drawing cabilities. As one of the "genres" that my students learned about during their mutli-genre projects was picture to text. I think this tool would be great for all students to post their different views of the same picture. The voice thread would be a wonderful tool to use among the whole school on the same topic or to communicate with a different school as well.

Blogs: I loved being able to see what other people wrote and the comments that posts initiated. This would be a great way to record current events and book reviews. You can post videos, podcasts, and links to other resources. It's also a great tool to hold students accountable for researching "professional bloggers" that are interesting to them/content relevant.

Google Docs: This is a great tool for collaboration. Lab reports could be easily done, shared, and edited through this. Students could also submit their work through this and I could edit it easily without going through many sessions of paper and pencil revisions.

Skype: We just skimmed the surface of the capabilities SKYPE has. This is a great tool for students to converse with people near and far. You can share documents through SKYPE and have conversations with experts on specific subjects. I've also thought about setting up a mentoring program with my students and college students. This would be a great way for my students to ask for help and discuss with their partner.

Are We Doing Enough?

Coming of Age Chapter 8 discusses the health and wellness issues that middle school students face. As I was reading it the number one question that came to mind was, are we doing enough? Someone wrote in their blog earlier this week that schools are spending more time teaching more social etiquette than we use to and some parents are shifting the responsibility of teaching these morals to their children onto the school system. Either way, students need to learn them. The section that covers alcohol consumption and abuse linked in my head to the section on page 139 about leading causes of death among adolescents. The number one cause is accidents. I fully realize that it is not the school’s job (and definitely shouldn’t even be on the radar for middle school) to teach about alcohol safety, but again kids need to learn it somewhere. Too many young people get behind the wheel after drinking and “think” that they are ok, or go swimming, or go to bed while they’re still puking and the night ends horribly. The argument about “abstinence only” is the same; it is a moral issue that schools battle with. I like many other teachers just want the best for my students, and I think that we could lower the number of “accidents” that students have with a little education that is realistic to their lives.

Advisory

"Advisors must be willing to develop a relationship with students different from the one they experience as a regular classroom teacher" This We Believe in Action pg. 68

I have gone back and forth with how I feel about advisory at my school all year long. We have it everyday for 25 minutes. So, with a 180 school day calendar we spent 2000 minutes (33.33 days) in advisory. Two days a week we either walk around the block or exercise in the school and one day a week we SSR. As the year has gone on, I have found myself defending the program more and more. The connection that I able to make with my students is very different than the one I make in class. My students have me as their advisor for all 4 years they are at our school. Each group has ~12 students and has an equal distribution of boys and girls and students from each grade. With the small consistent group, students work together and the older students are able to develop leadership qualities. Another great asset is that if the academic teachers are noticing something is a little off with a student, they can consult that student's advisor and see if they have noticed a change/ have information to provide the academic team. We do not have anytime that we indivdiually meet with our advisees like the reading recommends. I would like to try and implement something similar to that at least once a month for all students.

Mind-stretching work like this requires no textbook, no equipment, no larger budget.

"Mind-stretching work like this requires no textbook, no equipment, no larger budget."- Marion Brady

I found that line of the article to hit home the most. I got an email the other day from my secretary saying that I needed to cut $500 out of my science budget next year. I can easily cut some of the materials and labs I put in there, but that does not sum up to $500. I have been stressing about this all week and talking with other science teachers about what they requested for the upcoming year. Brady is right in his idea that the most powerful examples of learning take place when the human experience is being observed. This works incredibly well for science and social studies, and sometimes math. Geometry lends it self very well to being observed naturally and construction of most things are based on mathematical principles. There are still the literacy skills and basic math required to observe these concepts in real life that are missing. I think what I will take away from this article is to try new things! Be confident and discuss with the students that chances are worth taking, and maybe I don't need all those things.

How do you prepare for student led?

As I've been reading the curriculum information this week, I've gotten some great ideas of how to engage students and even some student projects. I'm very interested in talking to someone from Maranacook Community Middle School about the sled construction project mentioned in the TWBIA video. I agree that student buy in is essential for real learning and it happens by having the students create the curriculum. I still am hesitant to give up that control. The scenarios of passive vs. active learning (TWBIA page 62) were good examples of the difference between the two, but also pointed out that these units are entirely student led. How do teachers prepare for these types of units? I think that I would constantly feel one step ahead of the kids (and as a very organized/planned person, I would hate that!).

The video clips on curriculum were great. I can see how the hot air balloon example was teacher planned, yet student led and executed. I know that I could do that type of project, so maybe I should start there. I wonder if the students came up with that idea or if he led them to it based on his plans. I also liked the "Art Based Partnership" clip. It reminded me that while we are all thinking about thematic units, we should be including our allied arts staff and cross planning that way too. Lastly, how do you combine student passions and interests with what you "need" to teach? Do you generate a list of topics that interest the students and pick the ones that fit the stated curriculum/standards then try to fit in the other stuff if applicable within the other concepts? Through all this reading, I can't stop thinking about when quality of education will come before quantity of education. I would rather know (and prepare students to know) a lot about one topic then a little about everything.