September 5, 2008
The other day I received this article from a colleague that was rather irksome in many ways, albeit it did make me think.
As an instructor in both highschool and college, I know how pedagogically inexperienced many (NOT
ALL) of my colleagues are at the colleges, but on the other hand I know how content weak some of my colleagues are here. The difference for me is that the high schools are a tighter community (many colleges have over 1,000 adjuncts!). We, who are stronger in content, can go to those teachers who may have a fantastic rapport with kids and can do the effective dog and pony show (I mean that positively here) and help them infuse that with content. A colleague mentioned the depth of curriculum, and we’re aware of the various points of view on things like History. How do we cover it all? Who knows, but I do know those of us who teach at the college too, see both sides of these things and do stay more on the cutting edge (I am Not trying to make myself look cool here, but bear with me…). I spend my time reading the current research (got a book the other day on Digital Natives that was published the day I bought it), I blog about it, I talk about it, I present 4-6 times a year outside of CUSD, I have two articles being published this month, BUT this isn’t about me. I am not out there trying to further myself and then drag the kids along. In one world I like making sure the kids know what I do, not because I am all about ME, but because it shows them what THEY CAN DO. Why do I work hard? I don’t know. In a perfect world we would, as high school educators, have time & resources to do it ALL, BUT
we don’t. And frankly many of us don’t want to. Even the good ones. We want to be with our families and we don’t want to do work for which we’re not paid, albeit some of continue to press forward for the mere love of learning.
I’ve got a friend and colleague who teaches AP Lit and South HS in PHX, and she doesn’t bother with the AP test. What she does is teach the kids to be strong, effective citizens who strive for communicative
intelligence. She infuses the literature of the class with real world, current MEANING. Instead of teaching to the test, she teaches them about life, and through the strategies she uses, the students learn HOW to test. Instead of teaching to the test, and yes, we DO teach to the test, and perhaps when we’re all sitting here having this discussion in another 25 years (she’s been at South since God was a boy) then maybe we too can teach that way.
And what about CIVICS? I took is Freshman year in 1989 (my history teacher friend’s favorite year!), and we don’t teach that class anymore, and frankly, the reason depends on your political inclinations, which is not for here, but might be for there. I took that class Freshman year, then World History in
10th (there was an AP European option!), then AP US Hist, and Gov’t in 12th. Where’s all of this going? I don’t know, but the political & sociological shifts in the USA directly correlates to programs that are
funded and programs that are cut. Now what do we do?
We find MEANING. The kids don’t hate the content. They do not hate reading about the world’s canonized protagonists, they don’t hate learning about Washington’s involvement in the French & Indian War along side Braddock and how that experience directly correlated to his successes in the Revolution. What they hate is busy work. They hate work that doesn’t have meaning. They want work to mean something. Why do we study this they ask? Why do we study that? If YOU can’t answer that, then you need to sit down and think about it (I DO ALL of the time).
Posted in school, student2.0, teacher2.0 
August 30, 2008
Several months ago now a CFP came through on the use of innovative technology in the classroom. I immediately thought of the work I’ve been doing with Google in my classroom and wrote up a proposal, which was accepted. In June 2008 I sent the first draft to the editors and received their comments back on the fourth of July. I appreciated this process and worked hard on the second draft and had three colleagues read through it. Shelley, Joe and Shirley had invaluable comments and suggestions, and when I sent off the second draft it was with their blessings. This week, the editor, sent me a final draft for my review. I just finished sending it back to her and now we just wait for publication. I will keep you posted, but in the meantime, here’s the abstract:
The migration of online educational needs to tools like Google Apps coupled with the notion that today’s 21st century students are digital natives who have lived their entire lives online, forces educators to find ways to use technology to enhance traditional curriculum. This article examines how one program (AP Language & Composition) incorporates Web 2.0 tools including several Google Applications (gmail, docs, notebook, personalized homepage, pages, calendar, blogger, and talk) into its secondary high school curriculum. Furthermore, this work addresses the gap between students and teachers that occur cross-generationally through a discussion of the successful technology best practices in teaching and learning from a Baby Boomer teacher, a Gen Xer teacher, and then the NetGen students we teach daily.
Posted in google, publications
August 26, 2008
Donna had my calling Cox at 1AM one evening, and they said with high def the video storage is ONLY 16-20 hours! Donna was really upset and I was getting the brunt of it. When installing the box I knew it had USB ports, firewire ports, and eSata ports. If I could just figure out how to connect the Cox HD DVR box to an external hard drive then I would be in the money. The guy at Cox told me this was possible and it made it sound easy, so Claire and I headed over to Best Buy. We found a good hard drive and took it home. Donna was ok with the decision and waited for me to connect it. Well, nothing happened. Nothing at all. I left it connected over night, and I still was over 80% on the box.
The next day I did some research and the Scientific Atlantic manual and website said that this should work just fine. I called Cox back and complained. They said they had no idea what I was talking about it, and this should not work. I was frustrated and went back on the Best Buy site. I found another hard drive that said something like “DVR Expander” on the box. I figured I’d grab it, and if it doesn’t work then I was out of luck. Te “DVR Expander” was not much more. I got it home, crossed my fingers, connected it, and I got the following notification on the screen! I quickly agreed, checked the storage capacity, and it had dropped from 80%+ to about 28%!!!!
Posted in video
August 22, 2008
I use to love to check my email. It was that feeling of sitting down at the table, flipping open my computer and logging into email. I would sometimes forget in the evenings or weekends to check work email, so then I would have even more to read and respond to. Then I got a BlackBerry.
Now we’ve got problems. I don’t have that just feeling like it’s Christmas morning anymore and I am running downstairs to see what’s new. Now I yank my phone out of my pocket every few seconds and check. I’ve gotten GMAIL on my phone since the day I bought it, and recently work hooked my up with GroupWise on my Curve, too.
Now I go home, flip open my MacBook Pro to read my email and sit there to a lonely and empty inbox.
Posted in Blackberry
August 19, 2008
A couple of years ago I got an email at work from someone named Sharon from United Blood Services. They needed a new sponsor at my high school to organize blood drives. What was I getting myself into? I agreed immediately that the National Honor Society would sponsor this. Heck, it’s blood. It’s important. We all use it every second of our lives.
The first kickoff at Chase Field was very odd to me, and I didn’t Sharon liked me at all. I had already run my first drive and didn’t know what I was doing. Quickly I started getting people signed up to give blood. Slowly we began to get a ton of people to donate. Suddenly, Sharon tells me that we have a chance of beating everyone in our region. I began to push, and guess what? We did. We won. We were awarded a banner at Chase Field ON THE FIELD. It was pretty cool.
Going into the second year of blood I struggled. Frankly, I knew how important the blood drives were, but I was burned out. I was recruiting and inputting (most) myself, and I had to give up something for my sanity. The day before drives were the worse for me because I just felt the stress. My friend Erica was my cheer leader and I stuck it out. I resigned myself that we wouldn’t take the win this year. See the regions are based on total number of senior students, and this year we were in the same division as Highland High School. We’d been close with Highland and their sponsor has always been very amicable with me, but now we were up against each other. It was never really an issue. In the end Highland won. Actually I later discovered they won the division and way more.
This year, it was really a fluke what happened. Our student coordinator who I trained all last year was going to miss the first three weeks of school. He took it upon himself to assign himself a co-coordinator who grabbed the reigns and ran with it. She built a committee, assigned biweekly meetings, and took off.
Friday was our first blood drive of this year. They had us scheduled at 208 appointments, and they always calculate that down. As the team began recruiting and putting people into the computer, I sat back and was told not worry about it. Friday morning I got a call from Sharon who said we had way more people that expected (they always expect a certain percent of no shows), and we had to cut off walk-ins. After a bit I got a chance to head to the gym and we were packed! People were just piled into the gym. The kids told me they didn’t need more for anything and sent me back to class.
Today we had Sharon and her manager come out to debrief. They announced that we had 135% of our donations! We had more than 35 people beyond our 208, a minute number of noshows and a lower deferral rate than usual. Sharon and her boss, Jeanette, were duly impressed with the team. They were excited as was I.
After a great meeting with the kids, I walked the ladies out. I mentioned that after not doing well last year, our goal this year was 500 donations. Sharon said everything has changed with the new AZ law that allowed 16 year olds to donate. My response then was that our goal is now 600. Sharon was speechless, and Jeanette smiled politely on her way out the door. Can the kids do it? I know they can.
Posted in nhs
August 17, 2008
It’s been awhile, but last week was busy for all of us. The students became very stressed because all of the summer work was due. Some of this became escalated if they didn’t bother reading until this week. On top of that is that one of the assignments was a group project, and the students who usually grab the assignment and lets other group members slide can’t do it here; they’re all THAT student! Now that’s done, and I bet the APES can rest a little easier this weekend.
As for me, I am struggling to find ways to inform the students of the purpose of the Google Group for this class. What I get is: typos, no punctuation, misspellings, a lack of sentence structure, etc… Moreover, at this is more surprising to me, is that students will begin private discussions between 2-3 people and send them out to the entire group. I’ll give them this though… When I discussed the purpose of these groups with the students a few days ago, many students were really surprised that each of those messages go out to 200+ students. A colleague at a different school who uses Google Groups for the same purpose is having even more problems.
I’d prefer not to have to give them Google Groups “guidelines” because, even though it is FOR a CLASS, we don’t want it to feel like it’s for a class. On the other hand, we want to remind them of their audience and the purpose of the groups. It’s a fine line we walk.
Posted in Summer Reading, google groups
August 7, 2008
The projects surround the summer reading are beginning to come due, and as that happens I get more worried, frantic questions. Some I’ve answered 200 times already and some are better asked. Some students are confused between the two books, and sometimes I become confused too. The nonfiction is tied to the analysis, while the fiction book has the sources and test. Today the sources are due in class, and some students understand where we’re headed with this better than others. I hope by the weekend, everyone is on track. We also assigned their first group project of the year, and from the past, I recall that it’s always a rocky process — having your grade based off a group. Some of these kids are so use to being the only one to do all the work in a group that either students fight for control over the assignment or drop the ball all together. In the next two days, they will have samples that shows them exactly how the project looks, but every year there are groups who don’t follow the formatting at all. Just don’t. I am not sure why, since we’re very clear about the format.
Then there’s the other (I hope smaller group!) who really hasn’t read their books. Some of them haven’t even begun their books at all. Sure maybe one of them, but we are working with both simultaneously. If they don’t do the fiction, they hurt their peers grades in the group project and blow the test. If they don’t do the nonfiction, their earn a zero on the first major paper of the year, and then the parents and I both are concerned. Yes, I read fast now, and they tell me “‘course you can read fast, Adams. You’re an English teacher!” But lemme tell you… when I was your age, I read, too. I was never given 6 weeks to read anything, and I got it done.
I am sure for the most part, they will come through. Most will do ok on the projects, paper, and test, and some will falter. Some will fail. Some will have calls home, and, unfortunately, some will try to drop as they get the first low grades of some of their educational lives. We strive forward, do what we can, educate kids.
Posted in Summer Reading
July 31, 2008
Copied from PhD Comics
Posted in comic
July 29, 2008
I had mixed feelings about today, but once I got into it all was good. I am so use to working with Mrs Crabtree that I don’t remember to tell Mrs Deakin some things. I hope I don’t forget anything! For example, tonight I added my kiddies to the Google Calendar but didn’t add hers. I won’t not add them but I also don’t want to step on anyone’s toes. I really enjoyed my afternoon classes, especially. Zero hour is a huge class, and really fun. I suppose they all are. The English 11 course is, as always, interesting. It’s like night and day between that class and the two before it. I’ll be fine. Tomorrow we’re handing out syllabi and doing some other fun projects. I am having the students do a “Facebook Poster” for the wall. I know it sounds corny, but hey who cares? They’ll be fun for Open House.
Posted in google calendar, school
July 27, 2008
Monday students return to school. This week we spent working in our rooms, meeting people, having meetings, and planning. Mrs Deakin and I spent time developing our course; she has a strong background in writing, so I’m glad we found ways to infuse that into the AP curriculum. It doesn’t seem like we have too many new people, but there are some. Collums and Warnke are gone. Scarbrough is new, and we love her. Evan and Johnson are cool, too. Then we realized Luke Hickey is gone, and that was terrible. We loved working with Luke.
Friday the kids came to help. Mostly the department chairs and level leads got the help they needed. We moved books all day, and I had a few people work closely with me to get several things accomplished. I also have two students repeating AP Lang this year for their own reasons. Quite an interesting situation, indeed.
Ok, I think I will have more to say once they arrive. For now, I think I am numb. Not really excited about Monday, but I am ok going. Our new administrator, Ken James, has already shown phenomenal leadership, support, and a humaness that makes me want to work my best for him.
Posted in Basha
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