Tuesday, April 17, 2012
Monday, April 16, 2012
Sunday, April 15, 2012
Saturday, April 14, 2012
Thursday, April 12, 2012
Online Learning
How Online Learning Is Shaping The Future Of Education Right Now
In recent years, more education professionals have noticed the benefits of online learning. Such programs allow students to comprehend a subject matter in a structure that can be more convenient for their learning styles. Time constraints for online learning programs are different than in the traditional classroom setting.
Students who do not cope well with the pressure of having to work quickly can take their time when necessary. Conversely, students who pick up on things faster and become bored with traditional programs can use online learning programs to work through the material at a quicker pace and move on to the next lesson.Each online program is different, so look at the pacing of the program to determine if the school offers this kind of flexibility.
Technology in Online Learning
Online learning programs are also beneficial because they allow students to interact with technology more frequently. Because of the prevalence of technology in today’s world, an online component can be advantageous for college graduates. Though traditional classroom-based courses can incorporate technology, online programs require students to use computers and the Internet as a means to an end. Students who complete such programs might understand technology on a deeper level and can apply advanced skills throughout their academic careers and professional life.Increasing Acceptance of Online Learning
In light of these benefits, more K-12 districts are recognizing online learning programs as an acceptable medium for educating their students. Recent meta studies have found that in some cases online learning may be superior to traditional classroom-based instruction. Because of the increase in acceptance of online learning in grade school education, online-based university programs could become more widely accepted as well. As these programs become more acceptable, distance learning could grow in popularity for both K-12 schools and institutions of higher education.Online Learning in College
For many working adults, online university programs are much more convenient. Taking online classes can allow students to set their own schedules, attend school – even with their busy schedules, and complete lessons and assignments from the comfort of a home . Taking courses online also allows students to retain a full-time job. Instead of trying to schedule work shifts around required classes, students can complete coursework when it is convenient for them. Students who enroll in online graduate programs can continue to pursue higher education without sacrificing their careers.In the past, students sometimes avoided online programs because they were not as well-respected as traditional programs. However, as these programs can gain esteem and validity, more students will seek universities that offer online learning. Students may even begin to choose universities based on the strength of their online programs. Instead of comparing schools based solely on rankings, students might research a school’s online offerings to determine whether their required classes are available online. In light of this, many universities might consider offering strong classroom-based programs and strong online programs so students can choose their ideal method of study.
The future of education is never certain, but all of the evidence suggests that online learning is on the rise. As universities include more opportunities for online study, more students could seek out universities based on these criteria. This change can affect the way students learn, as well as the way universities structure their degree programs.
Zach Buckley is a freelance writer who is interested in exploring the intersection of culture, science and education. He lives in the Midwest and enjoys music, literature and good food.
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
The Whole Child Initiative
The Whole Child Initiative
Join ASCD and our Whole Child Partners as we change the conversation about education and move from a vision for educating the whole child to action that results in successful, well-rounded young people.Whole Child Website
Learn more about each tenet:
Healthy | Safe | Engaged | SupportedChallenged | Sustainable
The Whole Child Initiative
What will prepare each young person to work in careers that have not yet been invented; to think both critically and creatively; and to evaluate massive amounts of information, solve complex problems, and communicate well? Research, practice, and common sense confirm that a whole child approach to education will develop and prepare students for the challenges and opportunities of today and tomorrow. Every school, community, classroom, educator, student, and family has unique challenges and strengths, and has a role to play in ensuring that each student is healthy, safe, engaged, supported, and challenged. Collectively we have the knowledge, skill, and ability to meet these challenges and share these strengths. Join ASCD and our Whole Child Partners as we change the conversation about education and move from a vision for educating the whole child to action that results in successful, well-rounded young people.
Explore resources and opportunities for action here and on www.wholechildeducation.org, and together we’ll change the face of education policy and practice. Find sets of indicators related to each tenet below. Taken together across all five tenets and the central necessities of collaboration, coordination, and integration, these indicators may serve as a needs assessment, set of strategic goals and outcomes, framework for decision making, or the definition of what a whole child approach to education truly requires. Download the indicators (PDF).
Whole Child Tenets
Each student enters school healthy and learns about and practices a healthy lifestyle.
Each student learns in an environment that is physically and emotionally safe for students and adults.
Each student is actively engaged in learning and is connected to the school and broader community.
Each student has access to personalized learning and is supported by qualified, caring adults.
Each student is challenged academically and prepared for success in college or further study and for employment and participation in a global environment.
What You Can Do
Search by topic for free, in-depth resources from ASCD and our partners.
Grade your school and community and learn about strategies that support the whole child.
Subscribe to the whole child newsletter, blog, and podcast for updates on whole child news and resources.
Conduct a community conversation to help your community explore how to work together to support the whole child.
Learn about Healthy School Communities.
Stay updated through social media: Like us on Facebook and follow the Whole Child on Twitter.
From the Blog
Throughout April: Supportive Education Communities
April-05-12 2:12:16 PM
2012 ASCD Outstanding Young Educator Award Winners
April-05-12 1:43:23 AM
Free Webinar: What Makes the Adolescent and Teen Brain So Different?
April-02-12 2:01:11 PM
Game-Based Learning and a Whole Child Approach
March-30-12 4:38:36 PM
Action Tool
Downloadable professional learning activities and a Powerpoint presentation to help you lead and implement a school- or districtwide initiative for the whole child.
Plus, a school improvement planning process gives you steps and strategies for leading a successful whole child initiative.
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
The 5 Qualities of Remarkable Bosses
The 5 Qualities of Remarkable Bosses
Consistently do these five things and the results you want from your employees--and your business--will follow.
Getty
In the eyes of his or her employees, a remarkable boss is a star. Remember where you came from, and be gracious with your stardom.
Remarkable bosses aren’t great on paper. Great bosses are remarkable based on their actions.
Results are everything—but not the results you might think.
Consistently do these five things and everything else follows. You and your business benefit greatly.
More importantly, so do your employees.
1. Develop every employee. Sure, you can put your primary focus on reaching targets, achieving results, and accomplishing concrete goals—but do that and you put your leadership cart before your achievement horse.
Without great employees, no amount of focus on goals and targets will ever pay off. Employees can only achieve what they are capable of achieving, so it’s your job to help all your employees be more capable so they—and your business—can achieve more.
It's your job to provide the training, mentoring, and opportunities your employees need and deserve. When you do, you transform the relatively boring process of reviewing results and tracking performance into something a lot more meaningful for your employees: Progress, improvement, and personal achievement.
So don’t worry about reaching performance goals. Spend the bulk of your time developing the skills of your employees and achieving goals will be a natural outcome.
Plus it’s a lot more fun.
2. Deal with problems immediately. Nothing kills team morale more quickly than problems that don't get addressed. Interpersonal squabbles, performance issues, feuds between departments... all negatively impact employee motivation and enthusiasm.
And they're distracting, because small problems never go away. Small problems always fester and grow into bigger problems. Plus, when you ignore a problem your employees immediately lose respect for you, and without respect, you can't lead.
Never hope a problem will magically go away, or that someone else will deal with it. Deal with every issue head-on, no matter how small.
3. Rescue your worst employee. Almost every business has at least one employee who has fallen out of grace: Publicly failed to complete a task, lost his cool in a meeting, or just can’t seem to keep up. Over time that employee comes to be seen by his peers—and by you—as a weak link.
While that employee may desperately want to “rehabilitate” himself, it's almost impossible. The weight of team disapproval is too heavy for one person to move.
But it’s not too heavy for you.
Before you remove your weak link from the chain, put your full effort into trying to rescue that person instead. Say, "John, I know you've been struggling but I also know you're trying. Let's find ways together that can get you where you need to be." Express confidence. Be reassuring. Most of all, tell him you'll be there every step of the way.
Don't relax your standards. Just step up the mentoring and coaching you provide.
If that seems like too much work for too little potential outcome, think of it this way. Your remarkable employees don’t need a lot of your time; they’re remarkable because they already have these qualities. If you’re lucky, you can get a few percentage points of extra performance from them. But a struggling employee has tons of upside; rescue him and you make a tremendous difference.
Granted, sometimes it won't work out. When it doesn't, don't worry about it. The effort is its own reward.
And occasionally an employee will succeed—and you will have made a tremendous difference in a person's professional and personal life.
Can’t beat that.
4. Serve others, not yourself. You can get away with being selfish or self-serving once or twice... but that's it.
Never say or do anything that in any way puts you in the spotlight, however briefly. Never congratulate employees and digress for a few moments to discuss what you did.
If it should go without saying, don't say it. Your glory should always be reflected, never direct.
When employees excel, you and your business excel. When your team succeeds, you and your business succeed. When you rescue a struggling employee and they become remarkable, remember they should be congratulated, not you.
You were just doing your job the way a remarkable boss should.
When you consistently act as if you are less important than your employees—and when you never ask employees to do something you don’t do—everyone knows how important you really are.
5. Always remember where you came from. See an autograph seeker blown off by a famous athlete and you might think, “If I was in a similar position I would never do that.”
Oops. Actually, you do. To some of your employees, especially new employees, you are at least slightly famous. You’re in charge. You’re the boss.
That's why an employee who wants to talk about something that seems inconsequential may just want to spend a few moments with you.
When that happens, you have a choice. You can blow the employee off... or you can see the moment for its true importance: A chance to inspire, reassure, motivate, and even give someone hope for greater things in their life. The higher you rise the greater the impact you can make—and the greater your responsibility to make that impact.
In the eyes of his or her employees, a remarkable boss is a star.
Remember where you came from, and be gracious with your stardom.
Jeff Haden learned much of what he knows about business and technology as he worked his way up in the manufacturing industry. Everything else he picks up from ghostwriting books for some of the smartest leaders he knows in business. @jeff_haden
Consistently do these five things and the results you want from your employees--and your business--will follow.
Getty
In the eyes of his or her employees, a remarkable boss is a star. Remember where you came from, and be gracious with your stardom.
Remarkable bosses aren’t great on paper. Great bosses are remarkable based on their actions.
Results are everything—but not the results you might think.
Consistently do these five things and everything else follows. You and your business benefit greatly.
More importantly, so do your employees.
1. Develop every employee. Sure, you can put your primary focus on reaching targets, achieving results, and accomplishing concrete goals—but do that and you put your leadership cart before your achievement horse.
Without great employees, no amount of focus on goals and targets will ever pay off. Employees can only achieve what they are capable of achieving, so it’s your job to help all your employees be more capable so they—and your business—can achieve more.
It's your job to provide the training, mentoring, and opportunities your employees need and deserve. When you do, you transform the relatively boring process of reviewing results and tracking performance into something a lot more meaningful for your employees: Progress, improvement, and personal achievement.
So don’t worry about reaching performance goals. Spend the bulk of your time developing the skills of your employees and achieving goals will be a natural outcome.
Plus it’s a lot more fun.
2. Deal with problems immediately. Nothing kills team morale more quickly than problems that don't get addressed. Interpersonal squabbles, performance issues, feuds between departments... all negatively impact employee motivation and enthusiasm.
And they're distracting, because small problems never go away. Small problems always fester and grow into bigger problems. Plus, when you ignore a problem your employees immediately lose respect for you, and without respect, you can't lead.
Never hope a problem will magically go away, or that someone else will deal with it. Deal with every issue head-on, no matter how small.
3. Rescue your worst employee. Almost every business has at least one employee who has fallen out of grace: Publicly failed to complete a task, lost his cool in a meeting, or just can’t seem to keep up. Over time that employee comes to be seen by his peers—and by you—as a weak link.
While that employee may desperately want to “rehabilitate” himself, it's almost impossible. The weight of team disapproval is too heavy for one person to move.
But it’s not too heavy for you.
Before you remove your weak link from the chain, put your full effort into trying to rescue that person instead. Say, "John, I know you've been struggling but I also know you're trying. Let's find ways together that can get you where you need to be." Express confidence. Be reassuring. Most of all, tell him you'll be there every step of the way.
Don't relax your standards. Just step up the mentoring and coaching you provide.
If that seems like too much work for too little potential outcome, think of it this way. Your remarkable employees don’t need a lot of your time; they’re remarkable because they already have these qualities. If you’re lucky, you can get a few percentage points of extra performance from them. But a struggling employee has tons of upside; rescue him and you make a tremendous difference.
Granted, sometimes it won't work out. When it doesn't, don't worry about it. The effort is its own reward.
And occasionally an employee will succeed—and you will have made a tremendous difference in a person's professional and personal life.
Can’t beat that.
4. Serve others, not yourself. You can get away with being selfish or self-serving once or twice... but that's it.
Never say or do anything that in any way puts you in the spotlight, however briefly. Never congratulate employees and digress for a few moments to discuss what you did.
If it should go without saying, don't say it. Your glory should always be reflected, never direct.
When employees excel, you and your business excel. When your team succeeds, you and your business succeed. When you rescue a struggling employee and they become remarkable, remember they should be congratulated, not you.
You were just doing your job the way a remarkable boss should.
When you consistently act as if you are less important than your employees—and when you never ask employees to do something you don’t do—everyone knows how important you really are.
5. Always remember where you came from. See an autograph seeker blown off by a famous athlete and you might think, “If I was in a similar position I would never do that.”
Oops. Actually, you do. To some of your employees, especially new employees, you are at least slightly famous. You’re in charge. You’re the boss.
That's why an employee who wants to talk about something that seems inconsequential may just want to spend a few moments with you.
When that happens, you have a choice. You can blow the employee off... or you can see the moment for its true importance: A chance to inspire, reassure, motivate, and even give someone hope for greater things in their life. The higher you rise the greater the impact you can make—and the greater your responsibility to make that impact.
In the eyes of his or her employees, a remarkable boss is a star.
Remember where you came from, and be gracious with your stardom.
Jeff Haden learned much of what he knows about business and technology as he worked his way up in the manufacturing industry. Everything else he picks up from ghostwriting books for some of the smartest leaders he knows in business. @jeff_haden
Monday, April 9, 2012
Let It Go Or Put It In Your Pocket: How Emotions Affect Our Careers
Let It Go Or Put It In Your Pocket: How Emotions Affect Our Careers
Let it go or put it in your pocket. Whether we are aware of it or not, our emotions do not only play out in our personal lives; they are running rampant in our occupational lives as well. Quite often, these emotions are sprinting in the wrong direction directly through our subconscious and into the faces of those we work with, as well as, those we love.
I have been privileged to provide career and academic advice for thousands of people at all different life stages and from all different cultures. Although I have seen many differences and needs, I have noticed one area that remains constant: Emotions impair so many from landing a job, moving forward after a lay-off, or growing within a company or organization.
It is perfectly normal to combine our emotions with our careers, as it is what makes us human. However, how we tend to and address these emotions is critical for personal growth and development. When feelings begin to create unrealized obstacles, we must take a step back and either let them go, or put them in our pocket to address at a better time.
With that said, here are some strategies and examples I’ve learned along this emotional career journey:
1. Put your problem into perspective: Draw a line from 1-10 on a piece of paper. At the end of 10, write down something that was or could be one of the hardest challenges/times in your life. Now place your current event on the line and step back. How does is it fit in? Does this problem fall low on the line? Perspectives are important and we all must be able to look at the big picture of our lives.
*Thank you to Louise Jacobs for providing this fascinating information and tool. I have used this strategy so very often, and it truly makes a difference.
2. Let it go: Let go of negative feelings holding you hostage. If you are angry, sad, or resentful, your potential employer or current employer will feel and notice it immediately (they have feelings too)! There is no reason to let emotions hold you back from career growth. All stages of grief are normal and require time to heal. However, holding on for longer than necessary will only consume you and affect those around you. Let these emotions go when you are ready, and you will find a much more pleasant time awaits you (and probably that promotion or job you wanted).
3. Put them in your pocket for later: If you are not ready to let go of negative emotions, and need to move forward now, put these feelings and/or situations in your pocket and address them at a better time. Do not take them out at work, or with a potential employer.
4. Stop blaming others for your situation: If we spent less time blaming others, and more time working to improve and build upon our already amazing skills, can you imagine how much more productive our society could be? Give the blame back to the person or place that gave it to you in the first place. You don’t need it, as it only takes up more space in your mind and heart. The only change you can make is the change you create; take the opportunity and run.
5. Give what you want to receive: Yes, this good old karma thing is not a new discovery, but it is so true! For example, if you go out to a restaurant and the waiter or waitress is in a horrible mood, how does your meal typically end up? How does your mood change during dinner? We must give the energy we want to breathe in. If we give love, we will get love. If we smile at others, most of the time, they will smile back. Be a mirror for reflection, and you will not only change how you feel, but how others feel as well.
6. Stop comparing yourself to others: Don’t spend endless amounts of time comparing yourself to others. You are you, and there is nobody as unique! If lay offs come along, and you happen to be let go, don’t spend endless hours wondering why this and that co-worker did not get let go as well. This is an endless curiosity, and to waste time with this focus in mind is counterproductive. Move forward.
7. Put the negative feelings and/or situation in another location: Envision and imagine yourself taking the situation and/or feeling and physically disposing of it somewhere. Oscar the Grouch is a good receiver for negative situations and feelings; he’s grumpy and lives in a garbage can; you get two for the price of one!
8. Don’t take everything so personal: Business is still business, even if you have been at a company for a lifetime. Times are rapidly changing with technology, as are jobs, needs and requirements. These are not personal changes, but rather, world changes. Move with the times, and don’t let fear, anger or resentment slow you down.
Let it go or put it in your pocket. Whether we are aware of it or not, our emotions do not only play out in our personal lives; they are running rampant in our occupational lives as well. Quite often, these emotions are sprinting in the wrong direction directly through our subconscious and into the faces of those we work with, as well as, those we love.
I have been privileged to provide career and academic advice for thousands of people at all different life stages and from all different cultures. Although I have seen many differences and needs, I have noticed one area that remains constant: Emotions impair so many from landing a job, moving forward after a lay-off, or growing within a company or organization.
It is perfectly normal to combine our emotions with our careers, as it is what makes us human. However, how we tend to and address these emotions is critical for personal growth and development. When feelings begin to create unrealized obstacles, we must take a step back and either let them go, or put them in our pocket to address at a better time.
With that said, here are some strategies and examples I’ve learned along this emotional career journey:
1. Put your problem into perspective: Draw a line from 1-10 on a piece of paper. At the end of 10, write down something that was or could be one of the hardest challenges/times in your life. Now place your current event on the line and step back. How does is it fit in? Does this problem fall low on the line? Perspectives are important and we all must be able to look at the big picture of our lives.
*Thank you to Louise Jacobs for providing this fascinating information and tool. I have used this strategy so very often, and it truly makes a difference.
2. Let it go: Let go of negative feelings holding you hostage. If you are angry, sad, or resentful, your potential employer or current employer will feel and notice it immediately (they have feelings too)! There is no reason to let emotions hold you back from career growth. All stages of grief are normal and require time to heal. However, holding on for longer than necessary will only consume you and affect those around you. Let these emotions go when you are ready, and you will find a much more pleasant time awaits you (and probably that promotion or job you wanted).
3. Put them in your pocket for later: If you are not ready to let go of negative emotions, and need to move forward now, put these feelings and/or situations in your pocket and address them at a better time. Do not take them out at work, or with a potential employer.
4. Stop blaming others for your situation: If we spent less time blaming others, and more time working to improve and build upon our already amazing skills, can you imagine how much more productive our society could be? Give the blame back to the person or place that gave it to you in the first place. You don’t need it, as it only takes up more space in your mind and heart. The only change you can make is the change you create; take the opportunity and run.
5. Give what you want to receive: Yes, this good old karma thing is not a new discovery, but it is so true! For example, if you go out to a restaurant and the waiter or waitress is in a horrible mood, how does your meal typically end up? How does your mood change during dinner? We must give the energy we want to breathe in. If we give love, we will get love. If we smile at others, most of the time, they will smile back. Be a mirror for reflection, and you will not only change how you feel, but how others feel as well.
6. Stop comparing yourself to others: Don’t spend endless amounts of time comparing yourself to others. You are you, and there is nobody as unique! If lay offs come along, and you happen to be let go, don’t spend endless hours wondering why this and that co-worker did not get let go as well. This is an endless curiosity, and to waste time with this focus in mind is counterproductive. Move forward.
7. Put the negative feelings and/or situation in another location: Envision and imagine yourself taking the situation and/or feeling and physically disposing of it somewhere. Oscar the Grouch is a good receiver for negative situations and feelings; he’s grumpy and lives in a garbage can; you get two for the price of one!
8. Don’t take everything so personal: Business is still business, even if you have been at a company for a lifetime. Times are rapidly changing with technology, as are jobs, needs and requirements. These are not personal changes, but rather, world changes. Move with the times, and don’t let fear, anger or resentment slow you down.
Friday, April 6, 2012
On Bullying: Resources and Questions for Writing or Discussion
On Bullying: Resources and Questions for Writing or Discussion
By KATHERINE SCHULTEN and HOLLY EPSTEIN OJALVO
Dave Allocca/STARPIX, via Associated PressThe director of “Bully,” Lee Hirsch, is flanked by two of the subjects of the film, Kelby Johnson, left, and Alex Libby. Go to related post on Media Decoder »
In 2010, after Phoebe Prince died, we asked students, What Can Be Done to Stop Bullying? Later that year, when Tyler Clementi committed suicide, we asked What Should the Punishment Be for Acts of Cyberbullying? Hundreds of students wrote in to discuss both questions. That summer, we also posted a collection of resources on bullying for teachers and parents.
Since then, the subject has been in the news more than ever. Visit the related Times Topics page and you’ll find articles about the trial of Dharun Ravi; the controversy over the new “Bully” documentary; charges of antigay bullying in student suicides in Minnesota; and news of a number of initiatives — from state curriculums to a White House conference to a foundation created by Lady Gaga — devoted to addressing the problem.
What do you think: Has all the attention to this subject by parents, educators, legislators and filmmakers helped?
Below you’ll find our new, comprehensive list of resources, including lesson plans, Times articles, links to organizations around the Web, and a list of questions that we hope will inspire writing and discussion on this important subject.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Some Questions for Discussion or Writing
The following questions are suggested by the related Times or Learning Network materials that are linked above them.
From “Teenagers Tell Researchers It’s a Cruel, Cruel Online World”:
Have you witnessed “people being mean or cruel” online, as 88 percent of teens say they have? Have you joined in?
How can the use of social media “echo and amplify” bullying?
From “Bullying Law Puts New Jersey Schools on Spot”:
Do you agree with the statement, “There is no such thing as an innocent bystander when it comes to bullying”?
Are laws like New Jersey’s Anti-Bullying Bill of Rights necessary, or do they go too far?
From “Gossip Girls and Boys Get Lessons in Empathy”:
Can empathy be taught?
From an Op-Ed, “Bullying as True Drama”:
Would you say there is bullying in your school, or would you just say there is “drama”?
What’s the difference between “drama” and behavior that is more serious?
Why might the language adults use to talk about bullying (“victim” and ” perpetrator,” for instance) be alienating to young adults?
From “Behind Every Harassed Child? A Whole Lot of Clueless Adults,” A.O. Scott’s review of the movie “Bully”:
How can adults — often unwittingly — contribute to the problem of bullying?
To what extent do you think cruelty is “embedded” in our schools and in our society as a whole?
From “The Bleakness of the Bullied,” Charles M. Blow’s column about the bullying he endured at age 8:
How does it feel to a child to be bullied?
From our lesson plan, ‘A Troubling Trend’: Discussing Bullying and Anti-Gay Attitudes:
What, if anything, can be done to make schools safer and more inclusive?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Learning Network Resources
Lesson Plans and Other Teaching Materials:
Lesson | ‘A Troubling Trend’: Discussing Bullying and Anti-Gay Attitudes
Reader Idea | A Student-Driven Bullying Curriculum
Lesson | No Place for Bullies: Holding Anonymous Discussions to Reflect on Solutions
Lesson | Does Motivation Matter? Debating the Legal Category of Hate Crime
Lesson | Who’s Got the Power? Reflecting on Healthy and Abusive Relationship Dynamics
Lesson | Responding in Kind: Writing Essays About Choosing Kindness in the Face of Cruelty
Lesson | Many Reasons Why: Reflecting on Teen Depression
Lesson | Monkey See, Monkey Do: Considering the Social Ecosystems of Schools by Learning About a Baboon Troop
Lesson | Hall Monitors: Investigating Violence in Schools
Guest Post | 10 Ways to Talk to Students About Sensitive Issues in the News
Reading Club | Should Character Be Taught? Students Weigh In
Teaching Resources Series | Adolescent Health
Q. and A. | How Facebook Use Correlates With Student Outcomes
Student Opinion Questions:
All of the following questions are still open to student comment:
Should the R Rating for ‘Bully’ Be Changed?
Can Kindness Become Cool?
How Should Schools Address Bullying?
What Should the Punishment Be for Acts of Cyberbullying?
What Can Be Done to Stop Bullying?
How Do You Use Facebook?
How Much Do You Gossip?
Who Has the Power in School Social Life?
Are You Popular, Quirky or Conformist?
Do You Unknowingly Submit to Peer Pressure?
Does Your Digital Life Have Side Effects?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Selected Recent New York Times Content:
Articles:
Film Review: “Behind Every Harassed Child? A Whole Lot of Clueless Adults”
“Bullying Law Puts New Jersey Schools on Spot”
“In Suburb, Battle Goes Public on Bullying of Gay Students”
“Minnesota School District Reaches Agreement on Preventing Gay Bullying”
Motherlode: “What Works to End Bullying?”
Motherlode: “How Do We Define Bullying?”
“Accusations of Bullying After Death of Staten Island Teenager”
SchoolBook: “Bullying Changes a School, One Child at a Time”
Well: “Talking About the It Gets Better Project”
“Rutgers Verdict Repudiates Notion of Youth as Defense”
From the Opinion Pages:
Nicholas D. Kristof: “Born to Not Get Bullied”
Bill Keller: “Tyler and Trayvon”
Bill Keller: “Tyler and Trayvon, Continued …”
Charles M. Blow: “The Bleakness of the Bullied”
Op-Ed: “Bullying as True Drama”
Op-Ed: “Make the Punishment Fit the Cyber-Crime”
Times Multimedia
Interactive | Coming Out: Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Teenagers Talk About Their Lives
Slide Show | In Skidmore, Mo., a Killing Lingers
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Other Resources on the Web
The Bully Documentary Project | Toolkit for Educators
The Bully Documentary Project | Share Your Bully Stories
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services | Stop Bullying Now!
Bit Strips | Stop Bullying Comic Challenge
National Council of Teachers of English | Resolution on Confronting Bullying and Harassment
Medline Plus | Bullying
The It Gets Better Project
Education.com | Bullying
National Crime Prevention Council | Bullying
Teaching Tolerance | Bullying
By KATHERINE SCHULTEN and HOLLY EPSTEIN OJALVO
Dave Allocca/STARPIX, via Associated PressThe director of “Bully,” Lee Hirsch, is flanked by two of the subjects of the film, Kelby Johnson, left, and Alex Libby. Go to related post on Media Decoder »
In 2010, after Phoebe Prince died, we asked students, What Can Be Done to Stop Bullying? Later that year, when Tyler Clementi committed suicide, we asked What Should the Punishment Be for Acts of Cyberbullying? Hundreds of students wrote in to discuss both questions. That summer, we also posted a collection of resources on bullying for teachers and parents.
Since then, the subject has been in the news more than ever. Visit the related Times Topics page and you’ll find articles about the trial of Dharun Ravi; the controversy over the new “Bully” documentary; charges of antigay bullying in student suicides in Minnesota; and news of a number of initiatives — from state curriculums to a White House conference to a foundation created by Lady Gaga — devoted to addressing the problem.
What do you think: Has all the attention to this subject by parents, educators, legislators and filmmakers helped?
Below you’ll find our new, comprehensive list of resources, including lesson plans, Times articles, links to organizations around the Web, and a list of questions that we hope will inspire writing and discussion on this important subject.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Some Questions for Discussion or Writing
The following questions are suggested by the related Times or Learning Network materials that are linked above them.
From “Teenagers Tell Researchers It’s a Cruel, Cruel Online World”:
Have you witnessed “people being mean or cruel” online, as 88 percent of teens say they have? Have you joined in?
How can the use of social media “echo and amplify” bullying?
From “Bullying Law Puts New Jersey Schools on Spot”:
Do you agree with the statement, “There is no such thing as an innocent bystander when it comes to bullying”?
Are laws like New Jersey’s Anti-Bullying Bill of Rights necessary, or do they go too far?
From “Gossip Girls and Boys Get Lessons in Empathy”:
Can empathy be taught?
From an Op-Ed, “Bullying as True Drama”:
Would you say there is bullying in your school, or would you just say there is “drama”?
What’s the difference between “drama” and behavior that is more serious?
Why might the language adults use to talk about bullying (“victim” and ” perpetrator,” for instance) be alienating to young adults?
From “Behind Every Harassed Child? A Whole Lot of Clueless Adults,” A.O. Scott’s review of the movie “Bully”:
How can adults — often unwittingly — contribute to the problem of bullying?
To what extent do you think cruelty is “embedded” in our schools and in our society as a whole?
From “The Bleakness of the Bullied,” Charles M. Blow’s column about the bullying he endured at age 8:
How does it feel to a child to be bullied?
From our lesson plan, ‘A Troubling Trend’: Discussing Bullying and Anti-Gay Attitudes:
What, if anything, can be done to make schools safer and more inclusive?
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Learning Network Resources
Lesson Plans and Other Teaching Materials:
Lesson | ‘A Troubling Trend’: Discussing Bullying and Anti-Gay Attitudes
Reader Idea | A Student-Driven Bullying Curriculum
Lesson | No Place for Bullies: Holding Anonymous Discussions to Reflect on Solutions
Lesson | Does Motivation Matter? Debating the Legal Category of Hate Crime
Lesson | Who’s Got the Power? Reflecting on Healthy and Abusive Relationship Dynamics
Lesson | Responding in Kind: Writing Essays About Choosing Kindness in the Face of Cruelty
Lesson | Many Reasons Why: Reflecting on Teen Depression
Lesson | Monkey See, Monkey Do: Considering the Social Ecosystems of Schools by Learning About a Baboon Troop
Lesson | Hall Monitors: Investigating Violence in Schools
Guest Post | 10 Ways to Talk to Students About Sensitive Issues in the News
Reading Club | Should Character Be Taught? Students Weigh In
Teaching Resources Series | Adolescent Health
Q. and A. | How Facebook Use Correlates With Student Outcomes
Student Opinion Questions:
All of the following questions are still open to student comment:
Should the R Rating for ‘Bully’ Be Changed?
Can Kindness Become Cool?
How Should Schools Address Bullying?
What Should the Punishment Be for Acts of Cyberbullying?
What Can Be Done to Stop Bullying?
How Do You Use Facebook?
How Much Do You Gossip?
Who Has the Power in School Social Life?
Are You Popular, Quirky or Conformist?
Do You Unknowingly Submit to Peer Pressure?
Does Your Digital Life Have Side Effects?
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Selected Recent New York Times Content:
Articles:
Film Review: “Behind Every Harassed Child? A Whole Lot of Clueless Adults”
“Bullying Law Puts New Jersey Schools on Spot”
“In Suburb, Battle Goes Public on Bullying of Gay Students”
“Minnesota School District Reaches Agreement on Preventing Gay Bullying”
Motherlode: “What Works to End Bullying?”
Motherlode: “How Do We Define Bullying?”
“Accusations of Bullying After Death of Staten Island Teenager”
SchoolBook: “Bullying Changes a School, One Child at a Time”
Well: “Talking About the It Gets Better Project”
“Rutgers Verdict Repudiates Notion of Youth as Defense”
From the Opinion Pages:
Nicholas D. Kristof: “Born to Not Get Bullied”
Bill Keller: “Tyler and Trayvon”
Bill Keller: “Tyler and Trayvon, Continued …”
Charles M. Blow: “The Bleakness of the Bullied”
Op-Ed: “Bullying as True Drama”
Op-Ed: “Make the Punishment Fit the Cyber-Crime”
Times Multimedia
Interactive | Coming Out: Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Teenagers Talk About Their Lives
Slide Show | In Skidmore, Mo., a Killing Lingers
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Other Resources on the Web
The Bully Documentary Project | Toolkit for Educators
The Bully Documentary Project | Share Your Bully Stories
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services | Stop Bullying Now!
Bit Strips | Stop Bullying Comic Challenge
National Council of Teachers of English | Resolution on Confronting Bullying and Harassment
Medline Plus | Bullying
The It Gets Better Project
Education.com | Bullying
National Crime Prevention Council | Bullying
Teaching Tolerance | Bullying
Tuesday, April 3, 2012
Arts Involvement Narrows Student Achievement Gap
Arts Involvement Narrows Student Achievement Gap
A new NEA study finds disadvantaged students do better academically if they are intensely involved in the arts.
By Tom Jacobs
No Comments and 151 Reactions | PRINT | SHARE
(Richard Thornton/Shutterstock) Related Stories
Larger Schools May Breed Less Parental Involvement
Arts Education Promotes Emotional Intelligence
Surprise Sector for Job Growth: The Arts
Are the Arts Irrelevant to the Next Generation?
PBS Chief to Put Arts Front and Center
Students from the lower end of the socioeconomic ladder tend to do less well in school than those from more upscale families. But newly published research identifies one sub-group of these youngsters who tend to exceed expectations: those who participate heavily in the arts.
“At-risk teenagers or young adults with a history of intensive arts experiences show achievement levels closer to, and in some cases exceeding, the levels shown by the general population studied,” a team of scholars writes in a new National Endowment for the Arts Research Report. “These findings suggest that in-school or extracurricular programs offering deep arts involvement may help to narrow the gap in achievement levels among youth.”
This will be good news for the characters of Glee, and their counterparts in real life — especially those from poor families. The primary focus of the report, titled “The Arts and Achievement in At-Risk Youth,” is on teenagers and young adults in the bottom 25 percent of the socioeconomic scale (as measured by family income, parental employment and the parents’ level of education).
For that group, the authors write, there is a remarkably strong association between participation in the arts and a wide variety of positive outcomes.
“In two separate databases, students who had arts-rich experiences in high school showed higher overall grade point averages than did students who lacked those experiences,” the researchers write. These band members and ballerinas even had slightly higher-than-average GPAs in math.
What’s more, those higher grades paid off. Disadvantaged high school students heavily involved in cultural activities enrolled in competitive colleges — and in four-year colleges in general — at higher rates than their counterparts who avoided the arts.
The researchers, led by UCLA education policy analyst James Catterall, caution that this data does not establish cause and effect. It is possible that the same factors that lead some kids into the arts also make them more likely to excel in other arenas.
On the other hand, it’s also possible that engagement with the arts provides motivation or stimulation that has an impact far beyond the studio or practice room.
The NEA report is based on four separate sets of data: The National Educational Longitudinal Study of 1988, the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study (Kindergarten Class of 1998-99), the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002, and the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth of 1997. Each of these studies followed children for a number of years; three of the four tracked their activities in high school and then measured their life achievements into early adulthood.
Engagement in the arts was gauged by giving students one point for each arts activity they participated in (either in class or extracurricular), with “extra points for recurring exposure to a specific arts activity, for service in an arts leadership position, or for advanced-placement coursework in the arts.”
Crunching the numbers from the four studies, the researchers found 71 percent of “low-SES students” who were heavily involved in the arts attended “some sort of college” after graduating from high school, and 39 percent attended a four-year college.
In contrast, for those who had little or no involvement with the arts, 48 percent attended a college of any type, and only 17 percent attended a four-year college.
“Most of the positive relationships between arts involvement and academic outcomes apply only to at-risk populations,” the researchers. Most, but not all. Among high school students from higher-income, higher-education families (the top 25 percent in socioeconomic terms), those who were involved in the arts had a significantly higher GPA than those who did not: 3.17 compared to 2.97.
Among this relatively privileged group, “college-going rates were higher if students had engaged in arts-rich experiences in high school,” the researchers report. “Ninety-four percent of the high-arts group went on to a four-year college, vs. 76 percent of the low-arts group.” And they did well once they got to college, with 55 percent earning “mostly As” compared to 37 percent of the non-arts-involved group.
In an introductory note, NEA Chairman Rocco Landesman complains that “over the past four decades, budget pressures and an increasing focus on just reading and math have crowded the arts out of too many school days. What’s lost? The chance for a child to express himself. The chance for the idiosyncratic child who has not yet succeeded elsewhere to shine. A sense of play, of fun, of discovery.
“James Catterall and his fellow authors have shown that something else is lost, too: potential. Students who have arts-rich experiences in school do better across-the-board academically, and they also become more active and engaged citizens, voting, volunteering, and generally participating at higher rates than their peers.”
Landesman’s takeaway from the study is clear: “I firmly believe that when a school delivers the complete education to which every child is entitled — an education that very much includes the arts — the whole child blossoms.”
A new NEA study finds disadvantaged students do better academically if they are intensely involved in the arts.
By Tom Jacobs
No Comments and 151 Reactions | PRINT | SHARE
(Richard Thornton/Shutterstock) Related Stories
Larger Schools May Breed Less Parental Involvement
Arts Education Promotes Emotional Intelligence
Surprise Sector for Job Growth: The Arts
Are the Arts Irrelevant to the Next Generation?
PBS Chief to Put Arts Front and Center
Students from the lower end of the socioeconomic ladder tend to do less well in school than those from more upscale families. But newly published research identifies one sub-group of these youngsters who tend to exceed expectations: those who participate heavily in the arts.
“At-risk teenagers or young adults with a history of intensive arts experiences show achievement levels closer to, and in some cases exceeding, the levels shown by the general population studied,” a team of scholars writes in a new National Endowment for the Arts Research Report. “These findings suggest that in-school or extracurricular programs offering deep arts involvement may help to narrow the gap in achievement levels among youth.”
This will be good news for the characters of Glee, and their counterparts in real life — especially those from poor families. The primary focus of the report, titled “The Arts and Achievement in At-Risk Youth,” is on teenagers and young adults in the bottom 25 percent of the socioeconomic scale (as measured by family income, parental employment and the parents’ level of education).
For that group, the authors write, there is a remarkably strong association between participation in the arts and a wide variety of positive outcomes.
“In two separate databases, students who had arts-rich experiences in high school showed higher overall grade point averages than did students who lacked those experiences,” the researchers write. These band members and ballerinas even had slightly higher-than-average GPAs in math.
What’s more, those higher grades paid off. Disadvantaged high school students heavily involved in cultural activities enrolled in competitive colleges — and in four-year colleges in general — at higher rates than their counterparts who avoided the arts.
The researchers, led by UCLA education policy analyst James Catterall, caution that this data does not establish cause and effect. It is possible that the same factors that lead some kids into the arts also make them more likely to excel in other arenas.
On the other hand, it’s also possible that engagement with the arts provides motivation or stimulation that has an impact far beyond the studio or practice room.
The NEA report is based on four separate sets of data: The National Educational Longitudinal Study of 1988, the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study (Kindergarten Class of 1998-99), the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002, and the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth of 1997. Each of these studies followed children for a number of years; three of the four tracked their activities in high school and then measured their life achievements into early adulthood.
Engagement in the arts was gauged by giving students one point for each arts activity they participated in (either in class or extracurricular), with “extra points for recurring exposure to a specific arts activity, for service in an arts leadership position, or for advanced-placement coursework in the arts.”
Crunching the numbers from the four studies, the researchers found 71 percent of “low-SES students” who were heavily involved in the arts attended “some sort of college” after graduating from high school, and 39 percent attended a four-year college.
In contrast, for those who had little or no involvement with the arts, 48 percent attended a college of any type, and only 17 percent attended a four-year college.
“Most of the positive relationships between arts involvement and academic outcomes apply only to at-risk populations,” the researchers. Most, but not all. Among high school students from higher-income, higher-education families (the top 25 percent in socioeconomic terms), those who were involved in the arts had a significantly higher GPA than those who did not: 3.17 compared to 2.97.
Among this relatively privileged group, “college-going rates were higher if students had engaged in arts-rich experiences in high school,” the researchers report. “Ninety-four percent of the high-arts group went on to a four-year college, vs. 76 percent of the low-arts group.” And they did well once they got to college, with 55 percent earning “mostly As” compared to 37 percent of the non-arts-involved group.
In an introductory note, NEA Chairman Rocco Landesman complains that “over the past four decades, budget pressures and an increasing focus on just reading and math have crowded the arts out of too many school days. What’s lost? The chance for a child to express himself. The chance for the idiosyncratic child who has not yet succeeded elsewhere to shine. A sense of play, of fun, of discovery.
“James Catterall and his fellow authors have shown that something else is lost, too: potential. Students who have arts-rich experiences in school do better across-the-board academically, and they also become more active and engaged citizens, voting, volunteering, and generally participating at higher rates than their peers.”
Landesman’s takeaway from the study is clear: “I firmly believe that when a school delivers the complete education to which every child is entitled — an education that very much includes the arts — the whole child blossoms.”
Monday, April 2, 2012
When is it OK to stop having cyberbullying conversations with my teen?
When is it OK to stop having cyberbullying conversations with my teen?
March 30, 2012generationtextonlineLeave a comment
So you spoke with your teen last week about cyberbullying….Congratulations! I am excited that you are using these lessons. So that’s it, you are good to go. Check that off your list!
But wait… since that talk, has your teen been using FB? I already know the answer…Of course they have! So FYI… your teen is witnessing cyberbullying on a daily basis. Do you need to have the “cyberbullying” talk again?
A teacher at a high school was introducing me the other day, and I liked his analogy. He told his students they were going to take part in my workshop that day, even though many of the students had participated in my workshop the previous year.
You can just see the eyes rolling and the yawning, right?
He said, “the presentation about internet safety and cyberbullying is going to be different every year, because technology changes every year. The lessons and examples are different each time you see it…depending on how old you are. Different ages are exposed to different things.”
He asked the kids, “Do you go to math class every day and know everything there is to know about math? No, you go to math class everyday because in order to be good at math and get better, you need to study it on a daily basis.”
This teacher is right.
I mean, how many times do you ask your teen to clean their room before it actually gets done? :)
As your teen sits down to dinner tonight, hand them this Pop Quiz!
Today’s Pop Quiz!
You get in a fight with your friend at school. You feel she doesn’t understand your point of view. Should you:
a. Send her a text explaining your feelings
b. IM your other friend to tell her about the fight
c. Go to her Facebook page and tell her your side and why you feel the way you do
d. Call her and tell her how much you hate being in a fight. Set a time to get together and talk about it in person.
Discussion questions:
1. Have you seen someone do something like this?
2. Tell me about a situation in your life or your friend’s life that started with this reaction to a fight.
3. What were the results?
4. What are the possible things positive or negative things that could happen if you were to handle the situation by each of the choices?
5. Do you have other ideas of how to handle this situation?
6. Does it make sense to talk to an adult about how to handle this?
7. Do you think it might make sense to ext her and tell her how much you hate being in a fight. Set a time to get together and talk about it in person.
– Jill Brown
March 30, 2012generationtextonlineLeave a comment
So you spoke with your teen last week about cyberbullying….Congratulations! I am excited that you are using these lessons. So that’s it, you are good to go. Check that off your list!
But wait… since that talk, has your teen been using FB? I already know the answer…Of course they have! So FYI… your teen is witnessing cyberbullying on a daily basis. Do you need to have the “cyberbullying” talk again?
A teacher at a high school was introducing me the other day, and I liked his analogy. He told his students they were going to take part in my workshop that day, even though many of the students had participated in my workshop the previous year.
You can just see the eyes rolling and the yawning, right?
He said, “the presentation about internet safety and cyberbullying is going to be different every year, because technology changes every year. The lessons and examples are different each time you see it…depending on how old you are. Different ages are exposed to different things.”
He asked the kids, “Do you go to math class every day and know everything there is to know about math? No, you go to math class everyday because in order to be good at math and get better, you need to study it on a daily basis.”
This teacher is right.
I mean, how many times do you ask your teen to clean their room before it actually gets done? :)
As your teen sits down to dinner tonight, hand them this Pop Quiz!
Today’s Pop Quiz!
You get in a fight with your friend at school. You feel she doesn’t understand your point of view. Should you:
a. Send her a text explaining your feelings
b. IM your other friend to tell her about the fight
c. Go to her Facebook page and tell her your side and why you feel the way you do
d. Call her and tell her how much you hate being in a fight. Set a time to get together and talk about it in person.
Discussion questions:
1. Have you seen someone do something like this?
2. Tell me about a situation in your life or your friend’s life that started with this reaction to a fight.
3. What were the results?
4. What are the possible things positive or negative things that could happen if you were to handle the situation by each of the choices?
5. Do you have other ideas of how to handle this situation?
6. Does it make sense to talk to an adult about how to handle this?
7. Do you think it might make sense to ext her and tell her how much you hate being in a fight. Set a time to get together and talk about it in person.
– Jill Brown
Monday, March 26, 2012
YouTube Just Launched A Site Specifically For Teachers
YouTube Just Launched A Site Specifically For Teachers
There are thousands of inspirational and educational videos on YouTube right now. Many are perfect for your classroom. Knowing this, YouTube has created a new site that curates these videos and organizes them into an easier-to-find system that’s perfect for teachers.
YouTube Teachers is a brand new channel that displays helpful videos on teaching and learning about basically everything. If it’s a lesson plan or teaching tool, it’s probably on YouTube Teachers. Below you’ll see a few of our favorite videos that were surfaced by browsing the new YouTube Teacher site.
As you can see below, the splash page to YouTube Teachers resembles a chalkboard background on top of a notepad. Because, let’s face it, who doesn’t store their chalkboard on top of a notebook? I kid, I kid.
I have really been enjoying the new site and have tried to put it through it’s paces. It’ll be a great go-to resource for all teachers looking for a lesson idea or thought-provoking video on YouTube without having to sift through a billion cat videos. (Don’t get me wrong, I love a good cat video as much as the next guy but now when hunting for an educational video.)
You can sign up to become a part of the new YouTube Teachers community and get regular e-mails about popular videos.
YouTube Teachers is really all about playlists. They encourage you, as a user, to build an extensive playlist of helpful videos about particular topics. Then they want you to share those playlists with others. Sounds simple enough.
( see link below )
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9db9FyDkppk&feature=player_embedded
Don’t know how to make a playlist or other finer points of YouTube? Mathademics put together a helpful video that is sure to help you out
This is the first of two big ways YouTube is reaching out to the education community. In a couple weeks, they’re expected to announce some larger changes that will really benefit teachers in particular. Stay tuned! Literally
There are thousands of inspirational and educational videos on YouTube right now. Many are perfect for your classroom. Knowing this, YouTube has created a new site that curates these videos and organizes them into an easier-to-find system that’s perfect for teachers.
YouTube Teachers is a brand new channel that displays helpful videos on teaching and learning about basically everything. If it’s a lesson plan or teaching tool, it’s probably on YouTube Teachers. Below you’ll see a few of our favorite videos that were surfaced by browsing the new YouTube Teacher site.
As you can see below, the splash page to YouTube Teachers resembles a chalkboard background on top of a notepad. Because, let’s face it, who doesn’t store their chalkboard on top of a notebook? I kid, I kid.
I have really been enjoying the new site and have tried to put it through it’s paces. It’ll be a great go-to resource for all teachers looking for a lesson idea or thought-provoking video on YouTube without having to sift through a billion cat videos. (Don’t get me wrong, I love a good cat video as much as the next guy but now when hunting for an educational video.)
You can sign up to become a part of the new YouTube Teachers community and get regular e-mails about popular videos.
YouTube Teachers is really all about playlists. They encourage you, as a user, to build an extensive playlist of helpful videos about particular topics. Then they want you to share those playlists with others. Sounds simple enough.
( see link below )
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9db9FyDkppk&feature=player_embedded
Don’t know how to make a playlist or other finer points of YouTube? Mathademics put together a helpful video that is sure to help you out
This is the first of two big ways YouTube is reaching out to the education community. In a couple weeks, they’re expected to announce some larger changes that will really benefit teachers in particular. Stay tuned! Literally
What we CAN do about cyberbullying!
What we CAN do about cyberbullying!
March 24, 2012generationtextonlineLeave a comment
Most parents have heard of the term cyberbullying, but how is it different than the good old fashioned bullying of their own childhood?
Remember the kids who got pushed into a locker? How about the kid sitting alone in the lunch room? Maybe it happened to you as a teen. Remember how mean the girls could be…spreading rumors and making fun of peoples’ clothes and hair? How about the boys… wedgies in the locker room and on the bus?
Most adults have a personal story of their own. What is yours?
Cyberbullying is a whole different ball game. It’s 24 hours a day and it comes via text message, Facebook and Formspring. The humiliation can be unbearable. 100’s of people see it and the victim can’t erase it. People can say what they want online and the victim has no control over it. Reports about Tyler Clemente, the Rutgers freshman, say he looked at the cyberbullying targeted at him 38 times before jumping off the George Washington Bridge to his death. If you want to get a feel for cyberbullying look at the “comment section” on any NJ.com article or blog where people can leave anonymous messages. And those aren’t teens cyberbullying, those are adults!
An international research project led by an Australian Catholic University (ACU) professor has found that the factors leading to incidents of cyber-bullying are different to those which result in traditional bullying.
(http://www.cathnews.com/article.aspx?aeid=30571)
According to Professor Sheryl Hemphill, the main factors leading to episodes of a traditional bully are:
•academic failure
•family conflict
•past bullying
But what about cyberbullying?? What leads someone to cyberbully another??
The project found only one of these is a factor leading to incidents of cyber-bullying….past bullying in the form of relational aggression, commonly known as:
•exclusion
•spreading rumors.
So what does that mean for MY teen?
Here is what I tell the teens I work with. We can’t control what other people do. We can’t stop someone from cyberbullying. We can’t stop someone from making up lies. We can’t stop someone from trying to humiliate another. We can’t reason or resolve a problem with a cyberbully. A person who chooses to cyberbully finds protection behind the screen or a fake username. A cyberbully is not interested in telling the truth or finding the truth.
So let’s look at this study… if someone being the target of exclusion or a rumor is a factor leading to cyberbullying, we can do something about that. We can control our own behavior. We can control excluding someone or spreading rumors about people. We can teach our kids to be kind and positive. We can teach our kids how to apologize when they have done something to hurt someone. And we can choose not to cyberbully.
–Jill Brown
March 24, 2012generationtextonlineLeave a comment
Most parents have heard of the term cyberbullying, but how is it different than the good old fashioned bullying of their own childhood?
Remember the kids who got pushed into a locker? How about the kid sitting alone in the lunch room? Maybe it happened to you as a teen. Remember how mean the girls could be…spreading rumors and making fun of peoples’ clothes and hair? How about the boys… wedgies in the locker room and on the bus?
Most adults have a personal story of their own. What is yours?
Cyberbullying is a whole different ball game. It’s 24 hours a day and it comes via text message, Facebook and Formspring. The humiliation can be unbearable. 100’s of people see it and the victim can’t erase it. People can say what they want online and the victim has no control over it. Reports about Tyler Clemente, the Rutgers freshman, say he looked at the cyberbullying targeted at him 38 times before jumping off the George Washington Bridge to his death. If you want to get a feel for cyberbullying look at the “comment section” on any NJ.com article or blog where people can leave anonymous messages. And those aren’t teens cyberbullying, those are adults!
An international research project led by an Australian Catholic University (ACU) professor has found that the factors leading to incidents of cyber-bullying are different to those which result in traditional bullying.
(http://www.cathnews.com/article.aspx?aeid=30571)
According to Professor Sheryl Hemphill, the main factors leading to episodes of a traditional bully are:
•academic failure
•family conflict
•past bullying
But what about cyberbullying?? What leads someone to cyberbully another??
The project found only one of these is a factor leading to incidents of cyber-bullying….past bullying in the form of relational aggression, commonly known as:
•exclusion
•spreading rumors.
So what does that mean for MY teen?
Here is what I tell the teens I work with. We can’t control what other people do. We can’t stop someone from cyberbullying. We can’t stop someone from making up lies. We can’t stop someone from trying to humiliate another. We can’t reason or resolve a problem with a cyberbully. A person who chooses to cyberbully finds protection behind the screen or a fake username. A cyberbully is not interested in telling the truth or finding the truth.
So let’s look at this study… if someone being the target of exclusion or a rumor is a factor leading to cyberbullying, we can do something about that. We can control our own behavior. We can control excluding someone or spreading rumors about people. We can teach our kids to be kind and positive. We can teach our kids how to apologize when they have done something to hurt someone. And we can choose not to cyberbully.
–Jill Brown
Thursday, March 22, 2012
10 Effective tips to be a Great Teacher
10 Effective tips to be a Great Teacher
Looking to really connect with your students?
1) A Great Teacher Will Always Be There- If you are not in your classroom, you are not teaching. Yes, teachers must take days off occasionally, but do not make it a habit. If you are feeling a little sick, unless it is serious, show up! A sick regular teacher is ten times better for his or her students than a healthy sub is. Regular attendance is a must. Be proud to have a perfect attendance record.
2) A Great Teacher is Accessible- You need to help your students at all times. That means before school, during lunch, and after school. No, you do not have to do it all the time. Start out with something like two days a week before school, lunch, and after school. You are the best tutor your students can get. Teach them!
3) Great Teachers Know Their Students on a Personal Basis- Talk to them during lessons. What is their favorite music? TV? Movies? Talk to them in the hallways. The more you know, the more you can adapt. It is easy to converse during class time. Little comments between concepts can go a long way. If some show up early for class, you can really get personal. No class time? Pass out a questionnaire. Above all, learn their names quickly!
4) A Great Teacher Knows Many Parents- Get phone numbers. Make two calls a day to parents. If you can, make more. They do not need to be long. Just a short hello and that you are interested in their child. In just a short time, you can indeed make contact to at least one parent of each student. Parents can be your biggest ally. Students will perform and behave better if they know you are talking to their parents.
5) A Great Teacher Knows What They are Teaching- If you do not know what you are doing, how can you teach? This involves complete preparation.
6) A Great Teacher Attends school events- Make yourself seen at school sports and performances. Being seen in this setting shows students you care about them and support them.
7) A Great Teacher Lives in or Visits the Neighborhood- If you do not live in the same place as your school, make some visits on weekends. Go to a local place to eat. Shop at a local store. Many of your students may have parents who own local businesses. Patronize them. Visit a church. The more your students see you, the more they will be willing to behave in class. They will see you as someone who is willing to be on their level.
8) A Great Teacher Eats Lunch on Campus- Wander around at lunch and sit at a student table. Buy a school lunch and join them. Many students help sell food. Make a point to buy something.
9) A Great Teacher is Always Fair- Expect the best, but be flexible. Fairness does not have to mean leniency It simply means to grade your students on a balanced scale.
10) Great Teachers Never lose Their Cool- Bite your tongue. All things will pass. Never carry a grudge. Things in your classroom will happen. This goes hand in hand with being professional. Acting like a raving lunatic is a sure way to shorten your career
Looking to really connect with your students?
1) A Great Teacher Will Always Be There- If you are not in your classroom, you are not teaching. Yes, teachers must take days off occasionally, but do not make it a habit. If you are feeling a little sick, unless it is serious, show up! A sick regular teacher is ten times better for his or her students than a healthy sub is. Regular attendance is a must. Be proud to have a perfect attendance record.
2) A Great Teacher is Accessible- You need to help your students at all times. That means before school, during lunch, and after school. No, you do not have to do it all the time. Start out with something like two days a week before school, lunch, and after school. You are the best tutor your students can get. Teach them!
3) Great Teachers Know Their Students on a Personal Basis- Talk to them during lessons. What is their favorite music? TV? Movies? Talk to them in the hallways. The more you know, the more you can adapt. It is easy to converse during class time. Little comments between concepts can go a long way. If some show up early for class, you can really get personal. No class time? Pass out a questionnaire. Above all, learn their names quickly!
4) A Great Teacher Knows Many Parents- Get phone numbers. Make two calls a day to parents. If you can, make more. They do not need to be long. Just a short hello and that you are interested in their child. In just a short time, you can indeed make contact to at least one parent of each student. Parents can be your biggest ally. Students will perform and behave better if they know you are talking to their parents.
5) A Great Teacher Knows What They are Teaching- If you do not know what you are doing, how can you teach? This involves complete preparation.
6) A Great Teacher Attends school events- Make yourself seen at school sports and performances. Being seen in this setting shows students you care about them and support them.
7) A Great Teacher Lives in or Visits the Neighborhood- If you do not live in the same place as your school, make some visits on weekends. Go to a local place to eat. Shop at a local store. Many of your students may have parents who own local businesses. Patronize them. Visit a church. The more your students see you, the more they will be willing to behave in class. They will see you as someone who is willing to be on their level.
8) A Great Teacher Eats Lunch on Campus- Wander around at lunch and sit at a student table. Buy a school lunch and join them. Many students help sell food. Make a point to buy something.
9) A Great Teacher is Always Fair- Expect the best, but be flexible. Fairness does not have to mean leniency It simply means to grade your students on a balanced scale.
10) Great Teachers Never lose Their Cool- Bite your tongue. All things will pass. Never carry a grudge. Things in your classroom will happen. This goes hand in hand with being professional. Acting like a raving lunatic is a sure way to shorten your career
Friday, September 16, 2011
Trainning vs Development....
Training Isn’t Dead – But it Should Be
Posted on September 15th, 2011 by admin in Leadership, Talent Management, Uncategorized
By Mike Myatt, Chief Strategy Officer, N2growth
In the text that follows I’m going to poke holes in a process generally accepted as productive, when it rarely is. I’ll likely take some heat over this, and while this post works off some broad generalizations, in my experience having worked with literally thousands of leaders, they are largely true. More than $60 Billion dollars is spent each year in the U.S. on employee training. More than 25% of those dollars are spent on “Leadership Training.” Here’s the thing – when it comes to leadership, the training industry has been broken for years. You don’t train leaders you develop them – a subtle yet important distinction lost on many. Leadership training is alive and well, but it should have died long, long ago…
An Overview of The Problem
My problem with training is it presumes the need for indoctrination on systems, processes and techniques. Moreover, training assumes that said systems, processes and techniques are the right way to do things. When a trainer refers to something as “best practices” you can with great certitude rest assured that’s not the case. Training is often a rote, one directional, one dimensional, one size fits all, authoritarian process that imposes static, outdated information on people. The majority of training takes place within a monologue (lecture/presentation) rather than a dialog. Perhaps worst of all, training usually occurs within a vacuum driven by past experience.
The Solution
The solution to the leadership training problem is to scrap it in favor of development. Don’t train leaders, coach them, mentor them, disciple them, and develop them, but please don’t attempt to train them. Where training attempts to standardize by blending to a norm and acclimating to the status quo, development strives to call out the unique and differentiate by shattering the status quo. Training is something leaders dread and will try and avoid, whereas they will embrace and look forward to development. Development is nuanced, contextual, collaborative, fluid, and above all else, actionable.
The following 15 items point out some of the main differences between training and development:
1. Training focuses on the present – Development focuses on the future.
2. Training focuses on technique – Development focuses on talent.
3. Training adheres to standards – Development focuses on maximizing potential.
4. Training focuses on maintenance – Development focuses on growth.
5. Training focuses on the role – Development focuses on the person.
6. Training indoctrinates – Development educates.
7. Training maintains status quo – Development catalyzes innovation.
8. Training stifles culture – Development enriches culture.
9. Training encourages compliance – Development emphasizes performance.
10. Training focuses on efficiency – Development focuses on effectiveness.
11. Training focuses on problems - Development focuses on solutions.
12. Training focuses on reporting lines – Development expands influence.
13. Training is mechanical – Development is intellectual.
14. Training focuses on the knowns – Development explores the unknowns.
15. Training is finite – Development is infinite.
When it comes to current and future leaders, training will place them in a box, while development will free them from the box. If what you desire is a robotic, static thinker – train them. If you’re seeking innovative, critical thinkers – develop them. I have always said it is impossible to have an enterprise which is growing and evolving if leadership is not. What say you?
Posted on September 15th, 2011 by admin in Leadership, Talent Management, Uncategorized
By Mike Myatt, Chief Strategy Officer, N2growth
In the text that follows I’m going to poke holes in a process generally accepted as productive, when it rarely is. I’ll likely take some heat over this, and while this post works off some broad generalizations, in my experience having worked with literally thousands of leaders, they are largely true. More than $60 Billion dollars is spent each year in the U.S. on employee training. More than 25% of those dollars are spent on “Leadership Training.” Here’s the thing – when it comes to leadership, the training industry has been broken for years. You don’t train leaders you develop them – a subtle yet important distinction lost on many. Leadership training is alive and well, but it should have died long, long ago…
An Overview of The Problem
My problem with training is it presumes the need for indoctrination on systems, processes and techniques. Moreover, training assumes that said systems, processes and techniques are the right way to do things. When a trainer refers to something as “best practices” you can with great certitude rest assured that’s not the case. Training is often a rote, one directional, one dimensional, one size fits all, authoritarian process that imposes static, outdated information on people. The majority of training takes place within a monologue (lecture/presentation) rather than a dialog. Perhaps worst of all, training usually occurs within a vacuum driven by past experience.
The Solution
The solution to the leadership training problem is to scrap it in favor of development. Don’t train leaders, coach them, mentor them, disciple them, and develop them, but please don’t attempt to train them. Where training attempts to standardize by blending to a norm and acclimating to the status quo, development strives to call out the unique and differentiate by shattering the status quo. Training is something leaders dread and will try and avoid, whereas they will embrace and look forward to development. Development is nuanced, contextual, collaborative, fluid, and above all else, actionable.
The following 15 items point out some of the main differences between training and development:
1. Training focuses on the present – Development focuses on the future.
2. Training focuses on technique – Development focuses on talent.
3. Training adheres to standards – Development focuses on maximizing potential.
4. Training focuses on maintenance – Development focuses on growth.
5. Training focuses on the role – Development focuses on the person.
6. Training indoctrinates – Development educates.
7. Training maintains status quo – Development catalyzes innovation.
8. Training stifles culture – Development enriches culture.
9. Training encourages compliance – Development emphasizes performance.
10. Training focuses on efficiency – Development focuses on effectiveness.
11. Training focuses on problems - Development focuses on solutions.
12. Training focuses on reporting lines – Development expands influence.
13. Training is mechanical – Development is intellectual.
14. Training focuses on the knowns – Development explores the unknowns.
15. Training is finite – Development is infinite.
When it comes to current and future leaders, training will place them in a box, while development will free them from the box. If what you desire is a robotic, static thinker – train them. If you’re seeking innovative, critical thinkers – develop them. I have always said it is impossible to have an enterprise which is growing and evolving if leadership is not. What say you?
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Five Leadership Strategies for the New Year
An Open Letter to Principals: Five Leadership Strategies for the New Year
By Eric Sheninger
8Eric Sheninger is principal of New Milford High School and the subject of a recent article in USAToday on social media in the classroom. He is the author of Communicating & Connecting With Social Media. You can also follow him on Twitter at NMHS_Prinicipal.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As the calendar turns to August, school leaders across the country are meticulously planning for the upcoming year. This process has become more difficult as mounting challenges such as budget cuts and what seems like a relentless attack on the profession of education have taken their toll on staff morale. With this being said, quality leadership becomes even more essential in order to cultivate a school culture whose primary focus is on the learning and achievement of each and every student.
Here are some of my leadership strategies for making change during challenging times. Please feel free to share any other ideas in the comments section below.
Strategy One: Make No Excuses
Success in this endeavor relies on us to take a no-excuse attitude. Ask yourself this: What am I prepared to do to improve all facets of my school? How will I accomplish more with less? Think and reflect upon the ways to accomplish the goals you set as opposed to the challenges, roadblocks, and pushback you will experience. These are all common complications that arise during the change process and should not be used as excuses not to push forward.
We must be the pillars of our respective institutions and focus on solutions rather than problems. Succumbing to the negative rhetoric, abiding by the status quo, and having a bunker mentality will do nothing to initiate needed changes in our building to improve teaching and learning.
Each day we are afforded an opportunity to make a positive difference in the lives of our students through our role as education leaders. Our passion for helping all students learn and assisting staff in their growth should be the driving motivational force to make our schools the best they can be, regardless of the obstacles. Everything is changing -- the world, learners, job market, technology, access to information -- the sad reality though is that schools are not. We need to be catalysts to drive this change!
Tip: Meet with your administrative team and teacher leaders prior to the start of the school year to identify issues where excuses routinely arise. Begin to map out collective responses focusing on positive solutions to these problems.
Strategy Two: Model a Vision for Excellence
Begin by articulating a clear vision to your staff. The consensus has to be that every student can and should learn. Getting your entire staff to embrace this concept is at the heart of effective leadership. I prefer to use the word “embrace” rather than “buy-in" -- a more commonly used word synonymous with change efforts. We should not be trying to sell our staffs on pedagogical techniques and other initiatives that will better prepare our students for success once they graduate.
In order to promote the embracing of new ideas, strategies, and techniques we need to collaboratively work with staff to transform traditional classroom environments into vibrant learning communities where all students are authentically engaged.
Tip: Engage your staff in a brainstorming session during the first faculty meeting in order to develop a collective vision on how to transform the school for the betterment of all students.
Strategy Three: Embrace 21st Century Pedagogy and Curriculum
A vision begins with talk, but will only become reality with action. As society evolves due to advances in technology, we as principals must ensure that instruction follows suit or we run the risk of our schools becoming irrelevant. By irrelevant I am referring to our ability to prepare students with the skills to think critically, solve problems, demonstrate learning through creation, and compete in a global society.
As instructional leaders, it is our primary responsibility to observe and evaluate instruction. With this comes the responsibility to ensure that teachers are provided the freedom to take risks, knowledge of effective practices, resources to make it happen, and flexibility to incorporate innovative teaching strategies. With these parameters in place, principals must then be able to consistently identify, foster, support, and promote 21st century pedagogy.
Inherent within this shift is the need to re-evaluate the curriculum as the real-time web and information age present new challenges to instruction and student engagement. The time is now to lay the foundation to ensure that our students evolve into critical consumers of content, understand the importance of digital citizenship, as well as possess the ability to create, analyze, and interpret an array of media messages.
Tip: Start the year off by gathering key stakeholders to collaboratively revise your curriculum to emphasize essential skills necessary for today's learners to excel beyond your walls.
Strategy Four: Breathe Life Into Professional Development
Most teachers cringe when they hear the words “professional development” and rightfully so. The traditional model utilized by many schools forces educators into structured silos based solely on district and school goals while ignoring staff interests and passions. PD can be inspiring and fun when people are free to follow these interests and develop their own support communities.
Tip: If you thirst for an innovative culture focused on student achievement, begin the process of transitioning to Professional Learning Communities (PLC's). To take it a step further, model and encourage your staff to form their own Personal Learning Network (PLN). Then step back, give up some control, and watch your staff thrive as their passion fuels a transformation of the teaching and learning culture at your school.
Strategy Five: Stay Connected
Principals need support -- here are some resources to help you stay connected to others making change:
•A Principal's Reflections My blog
•Connected Principals Community and resources for principals
•Burlington High School Principal's Blog Patrick Larkin's Blog
•#cpchat Connected principals chat on Twitter.
•#edchat Educator chat on Twitter
•What is Edchat?
•Administrators Discussion group on Edutopia
•Educators PLN
•Future of Education Steve Hargadon's interview series with leading educators
•Edcamp a series of "unconferences" around the world
Change begins with a no-excuse mentality. Don't waste one more minute pondering what could be. There is a revolution going on right now in learning, and it is up to us to lead the way. Please share any leadership strategies that are making a difference in your building.
By Eric Sheninger
8Eric Sheninger is principal of New Milford High School and the subject of a recent article in USAToday on social media in the classroom. He is the author of Communicating & Connecting With Social Media. You can also follow him on Twitter at NMHS_Prinicipal.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As the calendar turns to August, school leaders across the country are meticulously planning for the upcoming year. This process has become more difficult as mounting challenges such as budget cuts and what seems like a relentless attack on the profession of education have taken their toll on staff morale. With this being said, quality leadership becomes even more essential in order to cultivate a school culture whose primary focus is on the learning and achievement of each and every student.
Here are some of my leadership strategies for making change during challenging times. Please feel free to share any other ideas in the comments section below.
Strategy One: Make No Excuses
Success in this endeavor relies on us to take a no-excuse attitude. Ask yourself this: What am I prepared to do to improve all facets of my school? How will I accomplish more with less? Think and reflect upon the ways to accomplish the goals you set as opposed to the challenges, roadblocks, and pushback you will experience. These are all common complications that arise during the change process and should not be used as excuses not to push forward.
We must be the pillars of our respective institutions and focus on solutions rather than problems. Succumbing to the negative rhetoric, abiding by the status quo, and having a bunker mentality will do nothing to initiate needed changes in our building to improve teaching and learning.
Each day we are afforded an opportunity to make a positive difference in the lives of our students through our role as education leaders. Our passion for helping all students learn and assisting staff in their growth should be the driving motivational force to make our schools the best they can be, regardless of the obstacles. Everything is changing -- the world, learners, job market, technology, access to information -- the sad reality though is that schools are not. We need to be catalysts to drive this change!
Tip: Meet with your administrative team and teacher leaders prior to the start of the school year to identify issues where excuses routinely arise. Begin to map out collective responses focusing on positive solutions to these problems.
Strategy Two: Model a Vision for Excellence
Begin by articulating a clear vision to your staff. The consensus has to be that every student can and should learn. Getting your entire staff to embrace this concept is at the heart of effective leadership. I prefer to use the word “embrace” rather than “buy-in" -- a more commonly used word synonymous with change efforts. We should not be trying to sell our staffs on pedagogical techniques and other initiatives that will better prepare our students for success once they graduate.
In order to promote the embracing of new ideas, strategies, and techniques we need to collaboratively work with staff to transform traditional classroom environments into vibrant learning communities where all students are authentically engaged.
Tip: Engage your staff in a brainstorming session during the first faculty meeting in order to develop a collective vision on how to transform the school for the betterment of all students.
Strategy Three: Embrace 21st Century Pedagogy and Curriculum
A vision begins with talk, but will only become reality with action. As society evolves due to advances in technology, we as principals must ensure that instruction follows suit or we run the risk of our schools becoming irrelevant. By irrelevant I am referring to our ability to prepare students with the skills to think critically, solve problems, demonstrate learning through creation, and compete in a global society.
As instructional leaders, it is our primary responsibility to observe and evaluate instruction. With this comes the responsibility to ensure that teachers are provided the freedom to take risks, knowledge of effective practices, resources to make it happen, and flexibility to incorporate innovative teaching strategies. With these parameters in place, principals must then be able to consistently identify, foster, support, and promote 21st century pedagogy.
Inherent within this shift is the need to re-evaluate the curriculum as the real-time web and information age present new challenges to instruction and student engagement. The time is now to lay the foundation to ensure that our students evolve into critical consumers of content, understand the importance of digital citizenship, as well as possess the ability to create, analyze, and interpret an array of media messages.
Tip: Start the year off by gathering key stakeholders to collaboratively revise your curriculum to emphasize essential skills necessary for today's learners to excel beyond your walls.
Strategy Four: Breathe Life Into Professional Development
Most teachers cringe when they hear the words “professional development” and rightfully so. The traditional model utilized by many schools forces educators into structured silos based solely on district and school goals while ignoring staff interests and passions. PD can be inspiring and fun when people are free to follow these interests and develop their own support communities.
Tip: If you thirst for an innovative culture focused on student achievement, begin the process of transitioning to Professional Learning Communities (PLC's). To take it a step further, model and encourage your staff to form their own Personal Learning Network (PLN). Then step back, give up some control, and watch your staff thrive as their passion fuels a transformation of the teaching and learning culture at your school.
Strategy Five: Stay Connected
Principals need support -- here are some resources to help you stay connected to others making change:
•A Principal's Reflections My blog
•Connected Principals Community and resources for principals
•Burlington High School Principal's Blog Patrick Larkin's Blog
•#cpchat Connected principals chat on Twitter.
•#edchat Educator chat on Twitter
•What is Edchat?
•Administrators Discussion group on Edutopia
•Educators PLN
•Future of Education Steve Hargadon's interview series with leading educators
•Edcamp a series of "unconferences" around the world
Change begins with a no-excuse mentality. Don't waste one more minute pondering what could be. There is a revolution going on right now in learning, and it is up to us to lead the way. Please share any leadership strategies that are making a difference in your building.
New teachers...
New Teachers: Are You in It for the Long Haul?
By Jaime O’Neill
Welcome, newbies, to the wonderful world of education. You are now embarked upon that career for which you’ve been preparing for so long. You’ve jumped through the hoops, sat through classes that often seemed irrelevant and/or stultifyingly dull. You’ve taken those horrible courses in education and teacher training that were required of you, those classes that took time away from gaining greater command of the discipline you were preparing to teach. And, despite the fact that those education classes offered almost nothing, you sat through them, nonetheless, demonstrating to all future employers that you have what it takes to deal with the myriad pointless faculty meetings and in-service breakout sessions that lie ahead. Should you find that you don’t like teaching, you can, of course, change course and head into the better-paid realms of administration, where a tolerance for wasting vast amounts of time in meetings is absolutely central to the work you will do.
But I’m getting ahead of myself, since you’ve only just begun and already I’ve got you bailing out.
The temptation to bail out is, however, one of the hallmarks of your new career. A bad student, a bad class, a paranoia-prompting administrative overseer, or the mere drudgery of the paperwork that now takes up so much of your time will have you considering other occupations nearly every week. When the stress of meeting a big and ill-defined spectrum of expectations leads you to pour one more glass of wine each night than you know is good for you, you’ll surely think that a career in retail sales might be a better alternative than taking attitude from a kid whose chief concern is the current state of his complexion, not your precious words of wisdom.
For some of you, that kid, or some other catalyst, will drive you out of the classroom. For those who stay, it won’t help your dedication or your motivation to find your job threatened each and every year when the annual state budget reveals once more that big cuts to education are coming, that you’ve been pink slipped until or unless there’s a last-minute reprieve. That yearly panic will cause you to wonder why you ever went into teaching in the first place, and you will surely make plans to seek other employment with each mention of just how precarious your employment is.
If you manage to avoid losing your job for budgetary reasons, many of you are in for the duration. Dedication, or the force of habit, will keep you coming back, year in and year out, as you gradually morph into some version of those teachers you yourself once had: people with impossibly faulty senses of style, or ear hair, or other focal points of ridicule that served to amuse you and your middle school peers back when you were a kid.
But what separates you now from the pack of twerps in front of you is that you're older and wiser; you’ve got perspective, skills, and insights to share. Having once sat where they sit, you know how much posturing is going on, how much insecurity they possess despite the attitudes they cop. You also know the challenges they face, the rockiness of the road that lies ahead, and how many ways there are for them to spin out and crash.
If you stay, you’ll harden yourself against the whispered derision, the groans when you explain an assignment, and the student excuses you’ve heard over and over—excuses you may once have offered to one or more of your own teachers. You’ll soldier on through days that seem interminable, through semesters in which little you try seems to work, through years that can seem like decades.
And you’ll keep up that work, and re-steel your resolve because there are those days when things click into place, when a face lights with understanding, or an exchange with a class makes even you see an idea in a new light. You’ll keep up that work because your students frequently remind you of just what it feels like to learn new things, and to experience the sense of growth that comes with knowing more.
You will reach the end of each academic year feeling somewhat spent, but exhilarated, and you will return when classes resume the following fall because you know the satisfaction that comes with doing work that can make a difference in people’s lives, that offers you a chance to make small but meaningful contribution to the future.
You will return because, unlike so many other jobs, teaching allows for repeated chances to get it right, to learn from the things that didn’t work, to use your brain, your creativity, and your full range of talents to invent new and better ways of doing it.
Despite administrators who often have priorities that conflict with real learning, despite the emphasis on testing and the educational fads that get trotted out by politicians and educrats who seldom get near actual students, you will return because you have a growing suspicion you are needed, and the feeling of being needed isn’t always easy to come by.
You will return because, when it is all said and done, you are a teacher. You didn’t choose this profession; it chose you. It picked you out when you were a student, selected you because getting rich wasn’t your highest priority, because you were absorbed by the subject you now teach, because you had a teacher who made you want to be a teacher—one who stirred your interests, fired your passion to learn, and helped you find your way.
Now you want to help your students find their way. You can’t get enough of doing that. You won’t get enough of doing that, not this year, not next year, because there is never enough of helping students if you’re a teacher.
And, if you made it this far, the chances are you're a teacher.
By Jaime O’Neill
Welcome, newbies, to the wonderful world of education. You are now embarked upon that career for which you’ve been preparing for so long. You’ve jumped through the hoops, sat through classes that often seemed irrelevant and/or stultifyingly dull. You’ve taken those horrible courses in education and teacher training that were required of you, those classes that took time away from gaining greater command of the discipline you were preparing to teach. And, despite the fact that those education classes offered almost nothing, you sat through them, nonetheless, demonstrating to all future employers that you have what it takes to deal with the myriad pointless faculty meetings and in-service breakout sessions that lie ahead. Should you find that you don’t like teaching, you can, of course, change course and head into the better-paid realms of administration, where a tolerance for wasting vast amounts of time in meetings is absolutely central to the work you will do.
But I’m getting ahead of myself, since you’ve only just begun and already I’ve got you bailing out.
The temptation to bail out is, however, one of the hallmarks of your new career. A bad student, a bad class, a paranoia-prompting administrative overseer, or the mere drudgery of the paperwork that now takes up so much of your time will have you considering other occupations nearly every week. When the stress of meeting a big and ill-defined spectrum of expectations leads you to pour one more glass of wine each night than you know is good for you, you’ll surely think that a career in retail sales might be a better alternative than taking attitude from a kid whose chief concern is the current state of his complexion, not your precious words of wisdom.
For some of you, that kid, or some other catalyst, will drive you out of the classroom. For those who stay, it won’t help your dedication or your motivation to find your job threatened each and every year when the annual state budget reveals once more that big cuts to education are coming, that you’ve been pink slipped until or unless there’s a last-minute reprieve. That yearly panic will cause you to wonder why you ever went into teaching in the first place, and you will surely make plans to seek other employment with each mention of just how precarious your employment is.
If you manage to avoid losing your job for budgetary reasons, many of you are in for the duration. Dedication, or the force of habit, will keep you coming back, year in and year out, as you gradually morph into some version of those teachers you yourself once had: people with impossibly faulty senses of style, or ear hair, or other focal points of ridicule that served to amuse you and your middle school peers back when you were a kid.
But what separates you now from the pack of twerps in front of you is that you're older and wiser; you’ve got perspective, skills, and insights to share. Having once sat where they sit, you know how much posturing is going on, how much insecurity they possess despite the attitudes they cop. You also know the challenges they face, the rockiness of the road that lies ahead, and how many ways there are for them to spin out and crash.
If you stay, you’ll harden yourself against the whispered derision, the groans when you explain an assignment, and the student excuses you’ve heard over and over—excuses you may once have offered to one or more of your own teachers. You’ll soldier on through days that seem interminable, through semesters in which little you try seems to work, through years that can seem like decades.
And you’ll keep up that work, and re-steel your resolve because there are those days when things click into place, when a face lights with understanding, or an exchange with a class makes even you see an idea in a new light. You’ll keep up that work because your students frequently remind you of just what it feels like to learn new things, and to experience the sense of growth that comes with knowing more.
You will reach the end of each academic year feeling somewhat spent, but exhilarated, and you will return when classes resume the following fall because you know the satisfaction that comes with doing work that can make a difference in people’s lives, that offers you a chance to make small but meaningful contribution to the future.
You will return because, unlike so many other jobs, teaching allows for repeated chances to get it right, to learn from the things that didn’t work, to use your brain, your creativity, and your full range of talents to invent new and better ways of doing it.
Despite administrators who often have priorities that conflict with real learning, despite the emphasis on testing and the educational fads that get trotted out by politicians and educrats who seldom get near actual students, you will return because you have a growing suspicion you are needed, and the feeling of being needed isn’t always easy to come by.
You will return because, when it is all said and done, you are a teacher. You didn’t choose this profession; it chose you. It picked you out when you were a student, selected you because getting rich wasn’t your highest priority, because you were absorbed by the subject you now teach, because you had a teacher who made you want to be a teacher—one who stirred your interests, fired your passion to learn, and helped you find your way.
Now you want to help your students find their way. You can’t get enough of doing that. You won’t get enough of doing that, not this year, not next year, because there is never enough of helping students if you’re a teacher.
And, if you made it this far, the chances are you're a teacher.
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Radio amateur pour les élèves doués!
Teaching radio in the digital age
Cherry Creek Schools program teaches youth about wireless technology
Posted: 07/12/2011 10:47:01 AM MDT Updated: 07/12/2011 10:47:01 AM MDT Author: 89331
Students in an Understanding Wireless Technology class — from left, Jack Diack, 10; Ian Pearson, 10; Aida Telford, 9; and Anjalie Kini, 9 — listen to transmissions coming from their radio as they use a dual-band antennae to locate a hidden transmitter during class July 1 at Prairie Middle School in Aurora. Photo by Lindsay Pierce, YourHub
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Daniel Smith
E-Mail: dsmith@denverpost.com
Some Cherry Creek High School students conversed with people around the globe recently — and learned to do it without a cell phone.
As part of the school district’s Inside/Out program to offer additional learning to gifted and talented students, Bob Sterner, the district’s senior telecom engineer, introduced them to amateur radio technology — ham radio.
Not just the on-air broadcast aspects, but the technical wizardry behind it.
“We’ve tried to demystify some of the magic behind wireless technology,” he said.
Sterner and volunteer Byron Paul Veal, who runs an established youth amateur radio program at Acres Green Elementary in Littleton, spent 15 hours each with 45 students in the program.
“For me it was just a natural fit — I could go in and explore with these kids that are already easy learners, excited to get into new things and not afraid to tackle something they’re not familiar with,” Sterner said.
He demonstrated some popular technology secrets, using a universal remote control, an oscilloscope and a small robot.
“They love it — they get to class early, they don’t want to leave for break, they don’t want to go home … ” Sterner said.
Veal said out of four subject areas to choose from, surprisingly, a majority wanted to learn about Morse code.
One student, using the code’s dots and dashes, made a contact in Belgium last week from the radio in the classroom, Veal noted.
Students selected projects to complete as a presentation for their parents at week’s end.
Some students built a directional antenna built made from PVC pipe, metal measuring tape and hose clamps that was used on a “fox hunt” — locating a transmitter hidden in a nearby field with the directional antenna, in the same way biologists track collared wildlife.
“I feel obligated to pass this information on,” Sterner said. “I want to see more kids get their license and more kids on the radio.”
He said most amateur radio operators are now 60 years old or older, but have had a hand in inventions used around the globe.
He said he has a friend who actually bounces radio signals off the ion trails of meteors hurtling through the atmosphere to communicate with other operators hundreds of miles away.
He said rhetorically: “If we don’t refresh that population, who’s to say where we’re going to go?”
Cherry Creek Schools program teaches youth about wireless technology
Posted: 07/12/2011 10:47:01 AM MDT Updated: 07/12/2011 10:47:01 AM MDT Author: 89331
Students in an Understanding Wireless Technology class — from left, Jack Diack, 10; Ian Pearson, 10; Aida Telford, 9; and Anjalie Kini, 9 — listen to transmissions coming from their radio as they use a dual-band antennae to locate a hidden transmitter during class July 1 at Prairie Middle School in Aurora. Photo by Lindsay Pierce, YourHub
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Daniel Smith
E-Mail: dsmith@denverpost.com
Some Cherry Creek High School students conversed with people around the globe recently — and learned to do it without a cell phone.
As part of the school district’s Inside/Out program to offer additional learning to gifted and talented students, Bob Sterner, the district’s senior telecom engineer, introduced them to amateur radio technology — ham radio.
Not just the on-air broadcast aspects, but the technical wizardry behind it.
“We’ve tried to demystify some of the magic behind wireless technology,” he said.
Sterner and volunteer Byron Paul Veal, who runs an established youth amateur radio program at Acres Green Elementary in Littleton, spent 15 hours each with 45 students in the program.
“For me it was just a natural fit — I could go in and explore with these kids that are already easy learners, excited to get into new things and not afraid to tackle something they’re not familiar with,” Sterner said.
He demonstrated some popular technology secrets, using a universal remote control, an oscilloscope and a small robot.
“They love it — they get to class early, they don’t want to leave for break, they don’t want to go home … ” Sterner said.
Veal said out of four subject areas to choose from, surprisingly, a majority wanted to learn about Morse code.
One student, using the code’s dots and dashes, made a contact in Belgium last week from the radio in the classroom, Veal noted.
Students selected projects to complete as a presentation for their parents at week’s end.
Some students built a directional antenna built made from PVC pipe, metal measuring tape and hose clamps that was used on a “fox hunt” — locating a transmitter hidden in a nearby field with the directional antenna, in the same way biologists track collared wildlife.
“I feel obligated to pass this information on,” Sterner said. “I want to see more kids get their license and more kids on the radio.”
He said most amateur radio operators are now 60 years old or older, but have had a hand in inventions used around the globe.
He said he has a friend who actually bounces radio signals off the ion trails of meteors hurtling through the atmosphere to communicate with other operators hundreds of miles away.
He said rhetorically: “If we don’t refresh that population, who’s to say where we’re going to go?”
Monday, June 27, 2011
Five Fundamentals for Creating a Positive Writing Atmosphere
Five Fundamentals for Creating a Positive Writing Atmosphere
By Gaetan Pappalardo
6/23/11
Writers write. They never say they're "going to write." They write here, there, and everywhere. Professional writers usually stick to a schedule. But most writers write when they can, when life doesn't get in the way. Some write on napkins at the local diner or on a receipt using the steering wheel as a desk.
I'm writing part of this blog on my dining room table at 6:45 am, dressed and ready for school; my three-year-old is snoring on the couch in the living room and I'm trying to delay cleaning up the cat puke. That's my usual atmosphere when school is in session. No coffee shop, no fancy den, no oak desk with the dull glow of lamplight, just fifteen minutes to pound the keys.
I've been writing for quite some time so drafting most of my blogs in the shadow of the morning routine is no biggy. However, junior writers need more of an atmosphere to concentrate on the art of writing.
TIME + SPACE + CHOICE = REAL WRITING
---Barry Lane
1. Set a Time to Write and Stick to It!
Real writing needs real time. Hemingway once said, "Writing is long periods of thinking and short periods of writing." While I don't have the luxury of a regular writing time, our students absolutely need one.
Barry Lane, in his book But How Do You Teach Writing?, calls for a "regular and predictable writing time, which allows students to rehearse what they are going to write about in their heads, hours before it's time to write." Kids need that "heads up" when it comes to writing. Plus, it helps them focus on the events, thoughts, and curiosities in their life about which they can write. This is what Pulitzer Prize winner Don Murray calls "writing before writing."
In plain clothes, "writing before writing" is daydreaming. I spent most of my elementary school days daydreaming about what kind of battle I would create with my Star Wars figures when I got home. Playing with action figures is undoubtedly responsible for my ability to write today. I was writing every day of my life, just not on paper. Just imagine if I had the freedom and the time to write it down. Where would I be today? No matter how you slice it, writing is hard and kids need daily, uninterrupted time to mess up, scribble out, slash ideas, and find gold without the question of ". . . when will I get another chance?"
2. Writers in Spaaaaaace (Announced like "Pigs in Space")
I allow my students to write anywhere in the room their little heart fancies -- on their desk, under their desk, at a free desk/table, on the rug, lying down on the rug, in the corner, on a chair with a clipboard, next to the fish tank -- wherever! However, the key word in this whole paragraph is "write." Wherever they end up, they need to write. If not, students begin to lose mobility privileges. It's important to set precedent early in the year: "You have the freedom to move only if you intend to use your space efficiently." Oh, and I always allow my students to take off their footwear. We release heat from out heads and our feet. It's just a comfort thing (though maybe smelly).
3. Choose Your Tools Wisely
I present my students with a smorgasbord of writing tools in order for them to find comfort, which will promote writing confidence. And we all know what happens when a writer is confident: ***Poof! Super Duper Pow***!
I offer pens, erasable pens, pencils, mechanical pencils -- I honestly don't care what a student chooses as his writing weapon. I'll let a student write in blood if it makes him/her feel comfortable enough to take the risk. At least four different types of lined paper, a journal, blank paper, and a computer are on the menu. However, students do need to prove themselves worthy of using such tools. After observing some drafting, I will encourage (and sometimes require) certain students to use certain tools. It really depends on their fine motor skills and how efficient they are with certain types of lines and/or computers.
Note: Regardless of the tool they use, I heavily discourage students from erasing during the drafting process. We often chant in the beginning of the year, "No braking for erasing! No braking for erasing!" Erasing causes a burp in the thought process. Just keep going, man.
4. Modeling: Set Pure Tone
Jeffrey Wilhelm, professor of English education at Boise State University and the director of the Boise State Writing Project, believes that teachers need to write in order to teach writing. In his interview for the book, Teaching the Neglected "R", he clearly states that it's important for teachers to do the writing assignments they give students and then ask, "Would I do the work I'm asking my students to do?"
I spend a great deal of in-class modeling by writing in my journal or on my computer. This technique is a double-edged sword. It shows that I (teacher) value writing and it controls the sounds volume in the room.
If the idea of a writing workshop is new to your students they will feel a bit weird with the freedoms they just received and will probably . . .
a) talk
b) look for friends to sit next to and talk
c) hide in a corner and . . . you guessed it, talk.
My response? "Excuse me, but I can't concentrate when you're talking." Never fails. If you do this persistently and consistently, it will diffuse the talkers long enough for them to realize that, "Hey, this writing thing isn't so bad," and they'll stop talking because they'll be engaged in the writing process.
5. Embody the Writer's Attitude
I learned to write in my room, not in school. It's not a terrible way to hone your craft, but I often think how my writing life would be different if I had a mentor, a teacher, or a fellow writer as a child (other than my mom). Different, I presume.
My thoughts on how I became a writer resonate with Donald Murray's reflection on his life: "All the qualities that made me weird in my family, in school, on the street corner, the qualities that I usually tried to hide and was often ashamed of, were what made me the writer I am." I want you to remember that, brothers and sisters, the next time you just don't get a student.
I let the reins loose in the name of creative freedom and in the spirit of the education I wish I received. My ideas might not be right for you, but there's one point on which I guarantee we will agree. We both desire to inspire each and every student in our classrooms. We want them to come to the page with confidence, a feeling of ownership, and an attitude that blinks in neon lights: I can do this.
We both want them to want to write, right? What are some of your techniques to foster a writing atmosphere?
By Gaetan Pappalardo
6/23/11
Writers write. They never say they're "going to write." They write here, there, and everywhere. Professional writers usually stick to a schedule. But most writers write when they can, when life doesn't get in the way. Some write on napkins at the local diner or on a receipt using the steering wheel as a desk.
I'm writing part of this blog on my dining room table at 6:45 am, dressed and ready for school; my three-year-old is snoring on the couch in the living room and I'm trying to delay cleaning up the cat puke. That's my usual atmosphere when school is in session. No coffee shop, no fancy den, no oak desk with the dull glow of lamplight, just fifteen minutes to pound the keys.
I've been writing for quite some time so drafting most of my blogs in the shadow of the morning routine is no biggy. However, junior writers need more of an atmosphere to concentrate on the art of writing.
TIME + SPACE + CHOICE = REAL WRITING
---Barry Lane
1. Set a Time to Write and Stick to It!
Real writing needs real time. Hemingway once said, "Writing is long periods of thinking and short periods of writing." While I don't have the luxury of a regular writing time, our students absolutely need one.
Barry Lane, in his book But How Do You Teach Writing?, calls for a "regular and predictable writing time, which allows students to rehearse what they are going to write about in their heads, hours before it's time to write." Kids need that "heads up" when it comes to writing. Plus, it helps them focus on the events, thoughts, and curiosities in their life about which they can write. This is what Pulitzer Prize winner Don Murray calls "writing before writing."
In plain clothes, "writing before writing" is daydreaming. I spent most of my elementary school days daydreaming about what kind of battle I would create with my Star Wars figures when I got home. Playing with action figures is undoubtedly responsible for my ability to write today. I was writing every day of my life, just not on paper. Just imagine if I had the freedom and the time to write it down. Where would I be today? No matter how you slice it, writing is hard and kids need daily, uninterrupted time to mess up, scribble out, slash ideas, and find gold without the question of ". . . when will I get another chance?"
2. Writers in Spaaaaaace (Announced like "Pigs in Space")
I allow my students to write anywhere in the room their little heart fancies -- on their desk, under their desk, at a free desk/table, on the rug, lying down on the rug, in the corner, on a chair with a clipboard, next to the fish tank -- wherever! However, the key word in this whole paragraph is "write." Wherever they end up, they need to write. If not, students begin to lose mobility privileges. It's important to set precedent early in the year: "You have the freedom to move only if you intend to use your space efficiently." Oh, and I always allow my students to take off their footwear. We release heat from out heads and our feet. It's just a comfort thing (though maybe smelly).
3. Choose Your Tools Wisely
I present my students with a smorgasbord of writing tools in order for them to find comfort, which will promote writing confidence. And we all know what happens when a writer is confident: ***Poof! Super Duper Pow***!
I offer pens, erasable pens, pencils, mechanical pencils -- I honestly don't care what a student chooses as his writing weapon. I'll let a student write in blood if it makes him/her feel comfortable enough to take the risk. At least four different types of lined paper, a journal, blank paper, and a computer are on the menu. However, students do need to prove themselves worthy of using such tools. After observing some drafting, I will encourage (and sometimes require) certain students to use certain tools. It really depends on their fine motor skills and how efficient they are with certain types of lines and/or computers.
Note: Regardless of the tool they use, I heavily discourage students from erasing during the drafting process. We often chant in the beginning of the year, "No braking for erasing! No braking for erasing!" Erasing causes a burp in the thought process. Just keep going, man.
4. Modeling: Set Pure Tone
Jeffrey Wilhelm, professor of English education at Boise State University and the director of the Boise State Writing Project, believes that teachers need to write in order to teach writing. In his interview for the book, Teaching the Neglected "R", he clearly states that it's important for teachers to do the writing assignments they give students and then ask, "Would I do the work I'm asking my students to do?"
I spend a great deal of in-class modeling by writing in my journal or on my computer. This technique is a double-edged sword. It shows that I (teacher) value writing and it controls the sounds volume in the room.
If the idea of a writing workshop is new to your students they will feel a bit weird with the freedoms they just received and will probably . . .
a) talk
b) look for friends to sit next to and talk
c) hide in a corner and . . . you guessed it, talk.
My response? "Excuse me, but I can't concentrate when you're talking." Never fails. If you do this persistently and consistently, it will diffuse the talkers long enough for them to realize that, "Hey, this writing thing isn't so bad," and they'll stop talking because they'll be engaged in the writing process.
5. Embody the Writer's Attitude
I learned to write in my room, not in school. It's not a terrible way to hone your craft, but I often think how my writing life would be different if I had a mentor, a teacher, or a fellow writer as a child (other than my mom). Different, I presume.
My thoughts on how I became a writer resonate with Donald Murray's reflection on his life: "All the qualities that made me weird in my family, in school, on the street corner, the qualities that I usually tried to hide and was often ashamed of, were what made me the writer I am." I want you to remember that, brothers and sisters, the next time you just don't get a student.
I let the reins loose in the name of creative freedom and in the spirit of the education I wish I received. My ideas might not be right for you, but there's one point on which I guarantee we will agree. We both desire to inspire each and every student in our classrooms. We want them to come to the page with confidence, a feeling of ownership, and an attitude that blinks in neon lights: I can do this.
We both want them to want to write, right? What are some of your techniques to foster a writing atmosphere?
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