September 26th, 2007 walkere
I went to a High Schools That Work network meeting yesterday. It was fairly interesting - three schools shared strategies that they have been using to improve their schools of the past few years.
One of the topics covered was how to improve enrollment in AP courses. The Assistant Superintendent for Mount Olive school district gave a presentation on their new system. Rather than make strict standards for admitting students into honors and AP courses, students can simply request to be in them.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Education, Ramblings | 1 Comment »
September 24th, 2007 walkere
This is a trick I learned in my college education courses. Another one of my classmates thought it would be a cool idea to fake a memo on school letterhead and use it to convince students that an unpopular policy was taking effect.
He told them that they were going to be charged 10 cents per page of copy paper… and that included any tests, quizzes, and assignments they did. The point was to get them to witness in a personal way the onerous nature of taxes in colonial times.
I took the technique a step further and realized that you can create you own newspaper articles. I often use New York Times articles in class, so if an article looks identical to a real one… the students are none the wiser. Check out this guide on Associated Content to learn how to write your own fake news article and make it look real.
Posted in Resources, Internet, Education | No Comments »
September 24th, 2007 walkere
I heard a few interesting comments from other teachers today. In all of the comments, the teachers are expressing some level of disgust and or contempt for the administration. I thought it would be interesting to write them down… perhaps I’ll have to keep a log throughout the year.
In the first instance, we had just gotten out of a faculty meeting. The meeting was in the auditorium, which is down a long hallway from the main portion of the building. As you exit the auditorium, there is a set of doors leading directly out into the parking lot. For whatever reason, these two doors were locked (with padlocks). We had to walk down a long series of halls to get back to the front door - probably 3 to 4 minutes of casual walking.
One teacher was clearly annoyed and she started complaining. She said something to the effect that the administrators did whatever they could to make our lives miserable. Then she said, “It’s bad enough we have to be here every day!”
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Education, Ramblings | No Comments »
September 23rd, 2007 walkere
In New Jersey and across the country, politics are roiling over public employee pensions. I just got into the profession, and sometimes I wonder if there will still be an effective pension program in place when I retire in thirty plus years. This is also a reason that I may leave the classroom after a few years, pursue a PhD in education, and stake a place in educational research and teacher education.
With that in mind, it’s time to start thinking about alternative forms of retirement savings. Many school districts offer 403b plans for their employees. Chances are, these are just a waste of your money unless the school actually offers matching contributions.
Check out this overview of different types of investment plans that I wrote on Helium.com. I’ve spent a good amount of time researching the various options, and you should start reading up too. We need to start planning now for the likely possibility that our safety net won’t be intact when it comes time to retire.
Posted in Education, Ramblings | No Comments »
September 23rd, 2007 walkere
My school has implemented a whole school reform model, as per the state’s requirements for Abbott schools. Part of this model is that the school is broken down into small learning communities.
As it is implemented in our school, students are divided into clusters of approximately 100 students. These students share the same Social Studies, Language Arts and Literacy, Math, and Science teachers. These teachers also have a common planning period where they meet each day to perform various duties.
The argument going on in the school now is… should teachers be compensated for this?
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Education, Ramblings | No Comments »
September 22nd, 2007 walkere
Money is generally a problem with education. There’s never enough of it, and there are always too many things that need to be paid for.
So what priorities should we set?
I wrote an article at Helium, arguing that getting basic supplies is more important than paying for teacher training. After all, what good does extensive training do if you have no paper and if you have no functioning computers?
My reasoning here is partly coloured by my experience in my own school. We have no paper freely available, and the only way to get copies is to put a request in at the office. If you’re lucky, you’ll get the copies back within 2-3 days. No chance for spontaneity there.
Computers are equally haphazard. There are no central labs, and the laptop carts contain at most sixteen laptops. Of these, several are generally missing or malfunctioning. The working ones have an old version of Internet Explorer and MS Word and nothing else. The old version of explorer can’t even display many new pages correctly (like pbwiki.com).
What’s the point of spending thousands of dollars on fancy workshops when these basic needs are going unfulfilled? What do you think our priorities should be?
Posted in Education, Ramblings | No Comments »
September 22nd, 2007 walkere
I originally wrote this article for budding freelance writers, but it could be useful for students and teachers as well.
Students always ask, “How long should this be?” Teachers can respond in a number of ways - “Five paragraphs,” “Two pages,” or “400-600 words.” What is the most precise? The word count.
One problem with paragraphs is students could interpret that to mean two sentences per paragraph or ten. Two pages could likewise mean two pages with 2″ margins and 16 point font, or two pages with no margins and an 8 points font. 4-600 words can only mean one thing… 4-600 words.
How do you measure the word count, then? If the document is in MS Word (or any modern word processor), it’s as simple as finding the Word Count feature. Check out this article on Helium to set up MS Word to tell you the word count of an article.
Posted in Resources, Internet, Education | No Comments »
September 21st, 2007 walkere
Teaching in an urban district, I never thought I’d be in this situation. My class is too small. It has one student.
Originally, I thought it was a scheduling glitch, which it probably is. I figured it would get cleared up. The first day of school, I had no students. Then I had one; but she was a junior, waiting to get transferred into a US II class.
Then one day a girl from another one of my US I courses randomly got transferred into my Period 6 Honors US History class. She wasn’t going anywhere; she needed to take US I. Apparently, no one else was coming in. For the past week, it’s been a one student class.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Education, Ramblings | No Comments »
September 21st, 2007 walkere
The first stop in my class on the way to colonization was the Spanish Empire in the Americas. Spanish holdings constitute almost half of what is now the US, so how can we understand our history if we don’t understand those that came before us?
This lesson plan is intended to be a one day introduction to the development and culture of the Spanish Empire. It is far from exhaustive, and I would love to do more with it. However, I don’t have the time in your packed curriculum to dwell on it. So if you’re looking for a short, one day overview of New Spain, read on.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Lesson Plans, Resources, Education | No Comments »
September 20th, 2007 walkere
In one of my education courses, we read the book Urban Teaching by Lois Weiner. It was mildly interesting and informative, but it wasn’t terribly great. There is one phrase from the book that I do remember and cling too, though.
She discussed the broken and twisted nature of the administration in most urban districts. The term she used was “sick.” In the metaphor, the administration (and the school as a whole) is like an organism - a leviathan if you will. When it does not function properly, it is sick, malformed, and dysfunctional. This dysfunction, of course, has deleterious effects on the operation of the school as a hole.
Why do I bring this up? Because the administration in my school is hopelessly dysfunctional. It is unbelievably sick.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Education, Ramblings | No Comments »
