Sunday, October 9, 2011
New CA Law
Got to love great current events! One of the things that I try to do in my classroom is let students know when big current events happen. I do a couple of things: I spend one day doing current events and I post worthy articles on my bulletin board. Today I stumbled across this little gem: New Law Makes Tanning Beds Off-Limits to Most California Teens. The reason I get so interested is because this article states that the tanning beds that my students (most of whom are from CA) won't be able to tan when they get home. We will have to see if there is an uproar when I post this on the bulletin board.
Monday, September 26, 2011
South Korea and Education
Today, I read an interesting article from Time magazine entitled "Teacher, Leave Those Kids Alone". Originally, I was attracted by the title of the article wondering what thing we are attacking teachers on now...come to find out that it was about South Korea. As a teacher and as a person that follows the news, you always hear about how the United States education system is behind everyone else in the world...we often hear about countries like Finland, Singapore, and South Korea. But honestly I am glad for our teenagers and our teachers that we are NOT South Korea. I have never heard about how long these kids study...our students think that they do so much homework but these students really are at school from 8 am until 10 pm...WOW! People want us to be like South Korea in terms of how much we know....but I ask at what cost I ask.
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
What Teachers Really Want
As many of you know...or will figure out in a few seconds...I am a teacher. I have wanted to be a teacher for as long as I can remember...partly because I had great teachers in my life and to a young mind you "want to be just like them". Now that I am actually a teacher, there is SO much behind the scenes that you don't know even know happens. This brings me to what I read today...an op-ed piece by Ron Clark (read it here). Ron Clark has been talking a lot recently about the teacher's perspective on things and I have read a bit of his work. I always felt that he was writing to teachers and thereby preaching to the choir...however this op-ed piece really hit home for me. Parents are one of the hardest things a teacher has to deal with.
I am just going to highlight a couple of things that Clark touched on that stick out in my situation.
And parents, you know, it's OK for your child to get in trouble sometimes. It builds character and teaches life lessons. As teachers, we are vexed by those parents who stand in the way of those lessons; we call them helicopter parents because they want to swoop in and save their child every time something goes wrong. If we give a child a 79 on a project, then that is what the child deserves. Don't set up a time to meet with me to negotiate extra credit for an 80. It's a 79, regardless of whether you think it should be a B+.
Okay so because I work at a therapeutic boarding school, these kids get in trouble a lot...that is to a point how I know them. However...some of them aren't at my school because they did drugs/alcohol/sex etc. it is because they have a horrible relationship with their parents...and sometimes these parents are helicopter parents. Their kids become so handicapped by them that they don't know how to do it on their own..so they come to me unable to complete an assignment completely on their own. Some days I come home so sick of helping one student with their assignment...and you could argue its because their parents influenced their decision making ability to be zero.
Some parents will make excuses regardless of the situation, and they are raising children who will grow into adults who turn toward excuses and do not create a strong work ethic. If you don't want your child to end up 25 and jobless, sitting on your couch eating potato chips, then stop making excuses for why they aren't succeeding. Instead, focus on finding solutions.
If your kid wants to be an exception to every rule you've got your work cut out for you....and my students sure like to be exceptions. Executive skills=jobs you learn in school to help with life: organizing, planning, working, being proactive...I bet you could guess how many of my students understand these skills.
We know you love your children. We love them, too. We just ask -- and beg of you -- to trust us, support us and work with the system, not against it. We need you to have our backs, and we need you to give us the respect we deserve. Lift us up and make us feel appreciated, and we will work even harder to give your child the best education possible.
All I can say is ditto. Even though I can come home from a long day and wonder why I still want to wake up and do it tomorrow--I do it for the kids. I love them...and I know other teachers do too...so give us the benefit of the doubt.
I am just going to highlight a couple of things that Clark touched on that stick out in my situation.
And parents, you know, it's OK for your child to get in trouble sometimes. It builds character and teaches life lessons. As teachers, we are vexed by those parents who stand in the way of those lessons; we call them helicopter parents because they want to swoop in and save their child every time something goes wrong. If we give a child a 79 on a project, then that is what the child deserves. Don't set up a time to meet with me to negotiate extra credit for an 80. It's a 79, regardless of whether you think it should be a B+.
Okay so because I work at a therapeutic boarding school, these kids get in trouble a lot...that is to a point how I know them. However...some of them aren't at my school because they did drugs/alcohol/sex etc. it is because they have a horrible relationship with their parents...and sometimes these parents are helicopter parents. Their kids become so handicapped by them that they don't know how to do it on their own..so they come to me unable to complete an assignment completely on their own. Some days I come home so sick of helping one student with their assignment...and you could argue its because their parents influenced their decision making ability to be zero.
Some parents will make excuses regardless of the situation, and they are raising children who will grow into adults who turn toward excuses and do not create a strong work ethic. If you don't want your child to end up 25 and jobless, sitting on your couch eating potato chips, then stop making excuses for why they aren't succeeding. Instead, focus on finding solutions.
If your kid wants to be an exception to every rule you've got your work cut out for you....and my students sure like to be exceptions. Executive skills=jobs you learn in school to help with life: organizing, planning, working, being proactive...I bet you could guess how many of my students understand these skills.
We know you love your children. We love them, too. We just ask -- and beg of you -- to trust us, support us and work with the system, not against it. We need you to have our backs, and we need you to give us the respect we deserve. Lift us up and make us feel appreciated, and we will work even harder to give your child the best education possible.
All I can say is ditto. Even though I can come home from a long day and wonder why I still want to wake up and do it tomorrow--I do it for the kids. I love them...and I know other teachers do too...so give us the benefit of the doubt.
Sunday, July 10, 2011
Shakespeare in High School
So, during the month of June I read three Shakespeare plays, Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Richard III. It has been and continues to be a great experience with my students as we focus in on these three plays in preparation for our own trip to Cedar City and the Utah Shakespeare Festival. I am excited to spend that week with my students and see this plays (among others). I thought I would take a second and talk about what we did with each play for other teachers and readers who might want to spice up how they read Shakespeare.
Romeo and Juliet--Honestly one of the most taught plays of our time. A lot of our students had actually read it already in freshman English so this was a review. However, the way that we read the plays made little details stick out a little bit more. We started with this one because they knew the basic story line and we could focus in on extra detalis and vocabulary. The students were already split up into four groups and each group was given an improv situation that related to the act we were reading that day. (To see our improv scenes go here here and here) Each group was also given a "theme" to focus on. One group counted the number of references to love, another to death, another to count the references to skanky women, and the final to skanky men. For all of our plays, we had the students keep track of "weird words" but for this play we focused extra on it so that students understood that they can look up words that do not know. I think all of the students found something new from reading this play out loud and with others.
A Midsummer Night's Dream- Another one that is pretty common in high schools, but a lot of our students hadn't read this one yet. Prior to reading this play, we had one of our groups do a presentation on the myths that are covered in this play about Titania and Oberion as well as Pyramus and Thisbe. This allowed our students to understand those stories when we got to them in the play. As teachers, we liked this play because the students read a bit of it on their own and there were able to understand it to a certain extent. This play is short and simple and to the point and with time constraints we didn't do much more than discuss it. We focused on more understanding of the language just like with Romeo and Juliet.
Richard III- Not your traditional high school play, but we are covering what the festival is doing this year. It is actually one of the plays that I enjoy, and since I was the history major (I am co-teaching with another English teacher) I ended up taking the lead on this play. We had one of the groups present about the War of the Roses which helped the students understand that difference between the House of York and the House of Lancaster. One thing that is important to remember with the histories is that Shakespeare expects you to know of the information that he is talking about because his audience did. So the first day of class we discussed what historical fiction was and how it is based in reality. Then we drew a huge family tree on the board so that everyone knew how everybody was related. They all got very confused with who was who with all the names but as the play went on they kind of figured it out. The only problem that we had was Lord Stanley versus Earl of Derby--same person but referred to in both different ways in our play. With this play I also had the students pick apart key quotes from the play and pick out their favorite insults from the play. I think it helped them focus in on different sections of the play. Overall, the students found this one boring; I think it was the length and how long winded it can be at times. I wonder if they will feel the same after we view the Ian McKellan version of the play. If you choose to teach this play, I highly recommend adding this movie to it, and splitting the play up into smaller chunks to hold student's interests; we didn't have the luxury of the time to do that.
Best of luck as you read Shakespeare!
Romeo and Juliet--Honestly one of the most taught plays of our time. A lot of our students had actually read it already in freshman English so this was a review. However, the way that we read the plays made little details stick out a little bit more. We started with this one because they knew the basic story line and we could focus in on extra detalis and vocabulary. The students were already split up into four groups and each group was given an improv situation that related to the act we were reading that day. (To see our improv scenes go here here and here) Each group was also given a "theme" to focus on. One group counted the number of references to love, another to death, another to count the references to skanky women, and the final to skanky men. For all of our plays, we had the students keep track of "weird words" but for this play we focused extra on it so that students understood that they can look up words that do not know. I think all of the students found something new from reading this play out loud and with others.
A Midsummer Night's Dream- Another one that is pretty common in high schools, but a lot of our students hadn't read this one yet. Prior to reading this play, we had one of our groups do a presentation on the myths that are covered in this play about Titania and Oberion as well as Pyramus and Thisbe. This allowed our students to understand those stories when we got to them in the play. As teachers, we liked this play because the students read a bit of it on their own and there were able to understand it to a certain extent. This play is short and simple and to the point and with time constraints we didn't do much more than discuss it. We focused on more understanding of the language just like with Romeo and Juliet.
Richard III- Not your traditional high school play, but we are covering what the festival is doing this year. It is actually one of the plays that I enjoy, and since I was the history major (I am co-teaching with another English teacher) I ended up taking the lead on this play. We had one of the groups present about the War of the Roses which helped the students understand that difference between the House of York and the House of Lancaster. One thing that is important to remember with the histories is that Shakespeare expects you to know of the information that he is talking about because his audience did. So the first day of class we discussed what historical fiction was and how it is based in reality. Then we drew a huge family tree on the board so that everyone knew how everybody was related. They all got very confused with who was who with all the names but as the play went on they kind of figured it out. The only problem that we had was Lord Stanley versus Earl of Derby--same person but referred to in both different ways in our play. With this play I also had the students pick apart key quotes from the play and pick out their favorite insults from the play. I think it helped them focus in on different sections of the play. Overall, the students found this one boring; I think it was the length and how long winded it can be at times. I wonder if they will feel the same after we view the Ian McKellan version of the play. If you choose to teach this play, I highly recommend adding this movie to it, and splitting the play up into smaller chunks to hold student's interests; we didn't have the luxury of the time to do that.
Best of luck as you read Shakespeare!
Monday, June 20, 2011
Amos and Andy and The Book of Mormon
So, I try not to get involved in dividing things. I don't like conflict on the Internet, I feel like people can mean different things with the same words without the tone. However, I really like this post from the Washington Post. It really diplomatically covers the dividing thing--do you support the musical The Book of Mormon or do you not support the musical? He pretty much says that it doesn't really matter. What matters is that if it was about The Koran (Quran) or the Torah these people would be putting up a fight. However, because Mormons don't scream bigotry we don't get any sort of attention. But I appreciate this man who did say something.
My favorite quote:
"I am no Mormon, but I have witnessed bigotry and ignorance directed against this American community. The LDS Church is placed in the difficult position of seeing their most sacred beliefs mocked in a nation that murdered their prophet in a shameful lynching. Broadway has given aid and comfort to the mob of ignorant folk who know nothing of modern Mormonism outside of their prejudices."
Best ending ever: "I stand in solidarity with my Mormon neighbors."
Read article at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/on-faith/post/amos-and-andy-and-the-book-of-mormon/2011/06/15/AGRlHPWH_blog.html?fb_ref=NetworkNews
My favorite quote:
"I am no Mormon, but I have witnessed bigotry and ignorance directed against this American community. The LDS Church is placed in the difficult position of seeing their most sacred beliefs mocked in a nation that murdered their prophet in a shameful lynching. Broadway has given aid and comfort to the mob of ignorant folk who know nothing of modern Mormonism outside of their prejudices."
Best ending ever: "I stand in solidarity with my Mormon neighbors."
Read article at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/on-faith/post/amos-and-andy-and-the-book-of-mormon/2011/06/15/AGRlHPWH_blog.html?fb_ref=NetworkNews
Sunday, June 12, 2011
The Truth About Forever
This week in my summer Shakespeare class that I am teaching, we talked about marking up a book. The basic idea was that you want to write all over the margins, and we read an article about it and had the students respond to the article by doing just that. I have one student in this class who is a proficient reader (I mean really, sometimes we have to prevent him from reading books so he'll get what he is suppose to done). As we read the article, he jotted down more notes than most of my other students but one note that he wrote down keeps haunting me. "Not while I'm free reading." While true, most of us are not going to circle parts of speech or write a summary of what we just read to help us study for a test, but we do respond to what we read--whether subconsciously or consciously. This blog post is dedicated to him, because I just finished one of my all-time favorite books and though I checked it out from the library and could not write in it: I have a response.
It is funny how so much of our lives our connected to what we read. I started reading this book (The Truth About Forever by Sarah Dessen) again because another student of mine happened to start reading it out of our school library and I have enjoyed discussing it with her. However, it reminded me how much I don't remember the little details. Then as I read it (almost all of it today--oh Sundays are so much better with an afternoon for reading) and I realized that it connected with a conversation I had just had earlier today. I was talking to someone about their concerns with life, and how everything is so up in the air. She has just moved to a new town, and is feeling quite out of her element. She left behind a boyfriend, amazing friends, basically a second family to go and live on her own to fulfill her life-long dream. As we were talking she said something like I keep living in the past and looking forward to the future. In my head, I kept trying to figure out how to help her live in the moment though the moment sucks, dizzying, stressful, and all around impossible. (Even though I've been there, and did the exact same thing and to an extent still do.) As I read the closing lines of this book, I realized that this was the answer: "But there was only one truth about forever that really mattered, and that was this: it was happening." No matter how crazy life can get, we need to take it all in. And to my lovely reader student who thinks you can't write in a free read book: that's what I would have written after underlining that line.
It is funny how so much of our lives our connected to what we read. I started reading this book (The Truth About Forever by Sarah Dessen) again because another student of mine happened to start reading it out of our school library and I have enjoyed discussing it with her. However, it reminded me how much I don't remember the little details. Then as I read it (almost all of it today--oh Sundays are so much better with an afternoon for reading) and I realized that it connected with a conversation I had just had earlier today. I was talking to someone about their concerns with life, and how everything is so up in the air. She has just moved to a new town, and is feeling quite out of her element. She left behind a boyfriend, amazing friends, basically a second family to go and live on her own to fulfill her life-long dream. As we were talking she said something like I keep living in the past and looking forward to the future. In my head, I kept trying to figure out how to help her live in the moment though the moment sucks, dizzying, stressful, and all around impossible. (Even though I've been there, and did the exact same thing and to an extent still do.) As I read the closing lines of this book, I realized that this was the answer: "But there was only one truth about forever that really mattered, and that was this: it was happening." No matter how crazy life can get, we need to take it all in. And to my lovely reader student who thinks you can't write in a free read book: that's what I would have written after underlining that line.
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
This is an older book but a good book. I had read this a couple of years ago, but I didn't read it with the mind of a teacher. At my school, Ender's Game is used as a 10th grade English book, and I hadn't thought of it as a book that would be more than a book for entertainment, since then I have changed my mind. A student of mine that enjoys discussing books while reading them, but struggles with reading comprehension and the discussion seems to help. I started reading it a little bit after she did, but she has a lot more time than I and she ended up finishing it in a weekend. Which does say a lot, a girl that doesn't really read a lot finishes it in a weekend. So now that I was reading it by myself, I had time to pay attention to what I like to call the "teacher things." It has a lot of great themes, great vocabulary words, and good for reading comprehension. I highly recommend it for other teachers to use in their classes.
I do enjoy this book. It is very well written and definitely holds your attention. It is a great book for boys especially because of the war centered themes. It is also a great book because readers can get started on this book and read the others in the series. I haven't read any of the other ones in the series, but I am now looking forward to reading them soon.
Finally, what else am I reading? I am reading Richard III in preparation for the Shakespeare class I am co-teaching this summer. I am also hoping to start The Truth About Forever by Sarah Dessen. My next post will be about the book that I have been listening to and just finished as well: My Last Song by Nicholas Sparks. Stay tuned!
I do enjoy this book. It is very well written and definitely holds your attention. It is a great book for boys especially because of the war centered themes. It is also a great book because readers can get started on this book and read the others in the series. I haven't read any of the other ones in the series, but I am now looking forward to reading them soon.
Finally, what else am I reading? I am reading Richard III in preparation for the Shakespeare class I am co-teaching this summer. I am also hoping to start The Truth About Forever by Sarah Dessen. My next post will be about the book that I have been listening to and just finished as well: My Last Song by Nicholas Sparks. Stay tuned!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
| Top ↑ |
