Almost time to make new years resolutions

One of my New Years resolutions will be to update this more frequently.  I think I will try to make it happen on a weekly basis.

The school year has gotten away from me much faster than I intended. I have spent the first two month of school sick with a sinus infection and I think I am just now finally done catching up.

I am applying for a grant with a few of my peers to work on improving co-teaching strategies within my school. I will let you all know as it happens and what fun things we discover.

Tools for Teaching!!!

I just finished a 3 day workshop with Fred Jones on Tools for Teaching. It was fantastic. I haven't finished gathering my thoughts and plans for how I will incorporate this in my classroom this year, so for now I present you with some highlight quotes from the workshop. (all quotes from Fred Jones himself unless otherwise indicated)

* Student behaviors will not exceed your expectations.
* By the time you give consequences for the behavior, it's already occurred
* 80% of all goofing off is talking to neighbors, 15% is out of seat, 5% is everything else
* The biggest variable linked to goofing off is proximity
* Either you work the crowd or the crowd works you
* a stable green zone is death
* the biggest hurdle to working the crowd is the furniture
* No child has ever been nagged into righteousness
* Never do anything for students that they are fully capable of doing for themselves
* A teacher does 5 matinees a day, show biz people would never do that
* We systematically destroy our highest job function (tomorrow's lesson planning) with our lowest job function (yesterday's clerical work)
* Ears are overrated
* Practice does not make perfect, only perfect practice makes perfect ~ Vince Lombardi
* Think of learning as a performance and coach that performance
* Don't ever mix discipline and instruction
* Calm is strength and upset is weakness
* Consistent is one of those words that does not have degrees, kinda like the word dead,
* Don't ever make a rule that you aren't willing to enforce 100% of the time
* Your emotions are irrelevant, is the child over the line or not? Play this game with your head, not your heart
* It takes 1 fool to backtalk, it takes 2 fools to make a conversation out of it
* The rules in any classroom are reality
* There is only one professional in the room. Save your time and energy for the things that only a trained professional can do
* Kids don't care how much you know until they know how much you care ~ source unknown

These were just all the quotes that I copied in my notes. Obviously they are out of context, but feel free to take from them what you will. I will try and do a reflection post after I plan a bit. In the interim, here's the website: http://www.fredjones.com/ I highly recommend you check it out.

This Lesson Went Really Well

So a little bit ago, somebody introduced me to this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxPZh4AnWyk

This is the Susan Boyle video. When I saw it, I was struck by the overwhelming possibility for teachable moments. Then I got this idea:

Step 1 - show the video to my resource classes.
Step 2 - give them a writing prompt. I asked them to reflect on what they thought of Susan when she first walked on stage. Were they like the audience members who rolled their eyes? What did they expect her performance to be like? What did this video teach them about their own prejudice and bias and how they judge people?
Step 3 - have them share their thoughts about those questions with the rest of the class and allow for one of those fantastic courageous conversations.
Step 4 - encourage them to do something about this. I charged them to keep this video in mind whenever they found themselves judging somebody based solely on their appearance.

This may sound really cheesy, but it was fantastically effective. I did this with my 10th graders and they loved it. The fact that this video is viral right now lead to total student buy in. They were all willing and eager to go along with me wherever I took it.

I know I am fortunate in that there is no set curriculum for my resource classes and therefore I was able to do this lesson. I hope other teachers can find a way to fit something like this in. It really seems to have made a difference in my students. I have since walked by and seen some of my students showing the Susan Boyle video to their friends and asking them the same questions i asked. How cool is that?

The Blog that most inspires me

http://www.teachforever.com/

I will probably do some self reflection like his failures series at the end of this year. I feel that I will have a fair amount to comment on.

One of my failures of course, being that I haven't done more with this blog, but I do intend to.

Good Movies About Eduction

These are movies that I have come to love as sources of inspiration. These may just be movies, but stuff like this actually does happen everyday. I suggest you see them.

Dangerous Minds
Mr. Holland's Opus
Dead Poets Society
Freedom Writers
The Ron Clark Story
Coach Carter
Mona Lisa's Smile
Chalk
Take the Lead
Sister Act 2

There are many others of course and I fully plan to add on to this list. In the mean time, add some of your faves or go check out these.

An Interesting Day

So this post will not be offering any suggestions for you, but I felt the need to reflect on the interesting day I had today.

My morning went by very quickly since I teach 4 different classes periods 1-4. My lunch was spent fulfilling my coaching duties (cheerleading) and then the real interesting part began.

Sadly, one of my students lost someone in his family two nights ago. This was his older sister's fiance. My student's father left him when he was like 5 and this man has served as a father figure for him ever since. Needless to say, my student was very upset. He came looking for me at the end of lunch and stayed with me all through my 5th period planning, just crying and talking with me about what he was going through. My heart broke for this boy, but at the same time, I couldn't help but feel happy and blessed that my students feel comfortable enough with me and consider me to be a person in their life that they feel they can go to when things get tough. He cried, he laughed, he had moments where he just sat in quite, but I really felt like I was able to help him. I walked with him to his 6th period class and explained what was going on to his next teacher and told him that I had my second planning period during 6th and if the teacher needed to send him somewhere to talk, he could come to my room.

On my way back upstairs I went through a completely different type if interesting situation, I was on the receiving end of a mooning. It was not directed at me, but it was class change time, so I got caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. So I got to escort a young man down to the office for exposing his rear in the middle of a crowded hall.

I spent the majority of 6th period finally eating my lunch and working on IEPs until...

I see one of the seniors in our department being taken in handcuffs by the cops from my window. I am informed by security that this young man (just turned 18 recently) was found with large quantities of pot on his person and in his car. I am so mad at this kid. He was 56 days away from graduation and now he is going to be charged as an adult with intent to distribute in a school zone. There is no end to the lengths his case manager went to to help this boy make it through to his senior year and he goes and throws it all away.Of course his case manager is upset because she feels like she didn't do enough. Also, we had reported to his mother that we suspected he was involved in this kind of stuff based on behavior and friend changes and she told us it wasn't possible and that we should just stick to our jobs.

Finally, the day ended with cheer practice where I got to witness two of my juniors re-enact the Joanne and Maureen number, ("Take me or leave me") from Rent.

I know I intended this blog to be for helpful ideas, but I have yet to have a day with such a wide range of emotional and interesting situations all in one afternoon. I hope maybe you all can glean something from this, so it still feels useful.

Smartboard from a wii?

So my school currently has Promethean boards in a few rooms, but this is amazing. For any of you in a school that does not have any type of smart board, check this out.

Playing Cards in School Continued

You can use cards for pretty much any lesson involving categories. They are great for unit reviews. It just takes a little bit of prep time. For example: Label cards with terms from a government unit (amendments, presidents, branches of government, court cases, etc.) you can then use this deck to play Go Fish. "Do you have a civil rights amendment?" "Do you have a Supreme Court Justice?" etc. You can also use the cards for a Poker Style game Straight = 5 amendments in a row, Full House = 2 Supreme Court Justices & 3 Presidents, etc. Or you can make a few decks and have students race in groups to see who can group the cards properly first (put all presidents together, all local representatives, all justices, all civil rights activists)

These same ideas can be used with any subject. I find that some decks have a plastic coating on it which is washable. I often use a washable marker to label the cards with the new terms and wipe it off with a damp cloth before i label it for the next unit.

Hopefully this will get the ball rolling for you and open the door o a bunch of other ideas for how you can use cards in any classroom. I know my students perk up anytime I bring in a card game. Try it, let me know how it goes.

Playing Cards in School

I would like to encourage every teacher to invest in a deck or two of cards. I find playing cards to be very cheep yet incredibly useful in the classroom. They can also be used effectively for any subject if you know how to get creative.

Math

• Addition, Subtraction, Multiplication War - (you can do division, but it is harder due to decimals)(also, I like to call it peace not war, but that's just me) Each player throws down two cards instead of one and the winner is based off of the result of their two cards. (ex. if you are doing multiplication and person A has 2 and 6 (total of 12) and person B has 10 and 5 (total of 50) then person B wins) I usually have them do the person with the lowest total wins when doing subtraction
  
• Addition, Subtraction, Multiplication Snap - (same division warning) All players throw down one card at the same time, the first person to correctly apply the chosen action (add, subtract, multiply) wins all of the cards. This can be done with several players, however I do not recommend more than 4. The game is won by getting the whole deck
• 5 Card Opps - Each player gets 5 cards. they then have a set time (based on your students skill level) to come up with as many problems and their solutions with those cards. They must write down the problems using proper Order of Operations (PEMDAS) The winner is the person with the most correct problems at the end of the time. (ex. cards: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5: 1+2+3+4+5=15, (1+3)/4+2-5 = -2, and so on.)

I'll go into the details of how to use cards in other subjects next time and more math uses in the future as well.