Went to the ER instead of waiting for an appointment. I apparently did something to my shoulder that causes muscle spasms and requires, among other things, obscene amounts of ibuprofen and a follow-up with a specialist. Add to that Thursday’s program sleepover (awake, of course, for staff), which went so beautifully I need to sit and think of how to even explain it, and a weekend convention in another state, and you have the recipe for one tired creature.
A student blows up at a teacher, drops the F-bomb. The usual approach at Lincoln – and, safe to say, at most high schools in this country – is automatic suspension. Instead, Sporleder sits the kid down and says quietly: “Wow. Are you OK? This doesn’t sound like you. What’s going on?”
He gets even more specific: “You really looked stressed. On a scale of 1-10, where are you with your anger?” The kid was ready. Ready, man! For an anger blast to his face….”How could you do that?” “What’s wrong with you?”…and for the big boot out of school. But he was NOT ready for kindness.
The armor-plated defenses melt like ice under a blowtorch and the words pour out: “My dad’s an alcoholic. He’s promised me things my whole life and never keeps those promises.” The waterfall of words that go deep into his home life, which is no piece of breeze, end with this sentence: “I shouldn’t have blown up at the teacher.” Whoa.
” —Lincoln High School in Walla Walla, WA, tries new approach to school discipline — suspensions drop 85% (via mchotdog)
what a radical idea yo
(via matthewdgold)
Bam. Kids “misbehave” for actual, real, valid reasons. And have feelings.
(via amydentata)
Maybe it’s very different in high schools, and from an administrator’s seat. But I was taught to approach students as people who might be acting out because of problems at home or elsewhere in their environment and to keep this in mind when working with them. Is this not common sense?
The Albert Kennedy Trust supports young LGBT people who are homeless, at risk of homelessness or living in a hostile environment. As part of this we run a mentoring scheme which provides young people with a stable, one-to-one relationship that is supportive, respectful and non-judgemental. We are currently looking for new mentors and we particularly need Black and minority ethnic, female, trans and disabled applicants. If you would like to volunteer with us, and make a real difference to a young LGBT person’s life, you can find all the details, including a role description and application form, at http://www.akt.org.uk/help-us/mentors.htmlThe Albert Kennedy Trust is looking for mentors in Manchester (London has enough mentors for now) - particularly Black and minority ethnic, female, trans* and disabled people.
Please signal boost.
Signal boosting.
I’ve found, even since high school, that having a mentor in the LGBTQ community can make a world of difference to a youth who otherwise lack support. If you’re in the area and you want to change someone’s life, give some time.
Instead of spending this restless night doing anything remotely productive, we will be plotting my future wardrobe accordingly.
Would you want black and white or color?
And more importantly, would you want it laid out in the grid like Tumblr had it, straight across horizontally, or straight down vertically?
Also, would anyone be interested in having it as a little printed booklet to keep in their desk, quarter-page size?
Today I continued on like usual, scraping up my legs trying to attach one end of a string to a stubby tree branch. The other end was attached to a bucket.
I got up the darned tree.
Later? Three different kids climbed the tree and used the bucket to hoist up books and art supplies. It makes kids in the program who otherwise cannot sit still for long enough to try to read, because it strikes them as boring, want to curl up with a story. A couple of kids were for one reason or another unable to climb the tree…so they sat under it or on the grass to join them, in a way.
And on top of that, I have apparently amassed a small team of kids who are insistent that they teach me how to climb a tree properly, because I embarrass them when they come outside and find me hanging stuck from the same branches like a sloth for the first two (or…five…) tries.
Worth it all.
Tonight I sit and start a comic about being a teacher.
Monday I…get my back checked out like a good girl.
So the general exhaustion has been slowing me down from making any substantial posts, because there are many other things in non-internet-life that require my attention as the shift in income really settles in on top of it. But there is definitely posting to be had.
Things my kids taught me: I am apparently capable of doing handstands.
Things the ground taught me: I do not know how to get out of a handstand without turning it into a flat-on-my-back flip. Also, dirt and woodchips can and will get anywhere regardless of whether or not you tuck your shirt in.
I need a mask.
Or a sock puppet.
I want to see this. I want to see PPT make an #education video with a sock puppet.
Ah, darn, actually I have to consider this option too…paper bag puppet maybe?
Learning styles—the notion that each student has a particular mode by which he or she learns best, whether it’s visual, auditory or some other sense—is enormously popular. It’s also been thoroughly debunked.
The scientific research on learning styles is “so weak and unconvincing,” concluded a group of distinguished psychologists in a 2008 review, that it is not possible “to justify incorporating learning-styles assessments into general educational practice.” A 2010 article was even more blunt: “There is no credible evidence that learning styles exist,” wrote University of Virginia cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham and co-author Cedar Riener. While students do have preferences about how they learn, the evidence shows they absorb information just as well whether or not they encounter it in their preferred mode.
» via MindShift
So I can lecture now because my students prefer it?
I’m always amused when a group of “distinguished psychologists” makes a statement like this and claims it is based on “scientific evidence”. Do they really believe this negates all the “empirical evidence” lowly classroom teachers observe every day? I wonder how much grant money was used to fund this study?
Wait. So so you agree or disagree with learning styles?
It worries me when we attack a science that is more often than not on “our side.” The end of the article says:
This doesn’t mean, however, that teachers and parents should present material to be learned in just one fashion. All learners benefit when information is put forth in diverse ways that engage a multitude of the senses.
…
…[S]tudents benefit from encountering information in multiple forms.
So approaching material from the learning styles angle works — just not for the reasons many people think it does. The article still encourages using multiple means of teaching the same information.
Putting their profession and the outcome — “scientific evidence” — in quotes like that is demeaning. Educational psychologists are an important part of education; they assist teachers on the front lines in turning the empirical evidence they observe every day into data that can help push policy in the right direction (though whether the policymakers pay attention is suspect, or an outright no).
I speak as someone in both fields.
crunkidz69 answered your question: Should teachers dissuade bright pupils from becoming hairdressers?
didnt read! it was to long! (thats what she said)!!!!!!!!!!!
Going to nod my head at the fact that it might have been a wall of text. May be the only time I do this.
Tl;dr highlights:
Publishing Syndicate is seeking submissions for its newest anthology series: My Story is Out: High School Years. This groundbreaking anthology, created by LGBT young adult author Lyndsey D’Arcangelo, will be a collection of personal real-life stories about surviving high school as an LGBT teen and coming out on the other side.
We are looking for humorous, heart-warming, wistful and inspiring stories written bystraight, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals 25 years old and younger.
For instance, you can submit a story of how you turned a tragedy into a triumph, or a lesson-learned story from the struggles you have endured being a LGBT teen. Remember, your story must be about your personal experience—a story that will touch the hearts, lives and souls of LGBT teens all over the world.
Click for more information, including guidelines for submission. The deadline is open until they have enough material. I wracked my brain over this and personally have nothing, but knew I had to put it out to all of you as well! This is a great opportunity for your students — or, if you’re within the age limit, to consider as a teacher, activist, or hey, general human being with any relevant experiences.
First I should note that I work with youth in the United States rather than the United Kingdom. I do think that all youth should strive to graduate high school — although for some students, a GED may be a better option in extreme cases.
In general, however, the issue of furthering students’ education while also doing what is “right” for them is is a tricky issue. We’re told that college should be our students’ goal, and our goal for our students. Statistics show that income generally increases with education — as do a host of other positive lifestyle indicators.
But I’ve always had issues with this philosophy. Maybe this will lose me followers and the respect of peers, but I stand by it: some students do better with hands-on learning. Some students would fare better in trade schools than four-year colleges. College education does tend to correlate with better pay and the positive factors that come with that, but I have thought for a long time that it can often be more a capitalist venture than the den of learning that many still view it as, and financially out of reach to many despite the availability of financial aid, which will still leave a gap for some students that then must be filled somehow.
Our hands are sometimes tied. We should be supportive of our students, help them to make decisions about their future that are responsible and best-suited to them, but we’re also supposed to push them toward college and, I believe, professions that are better-viewed by society.
I believe we should never deride a student if they genuinely want to be a hairdresser, or an auto mechanic, or a med tech. We should ask them why they want to go into these fields. We should ask them if they’ve looked at all their options, if there’s anything related they’d like to shoot for but don’t feel they can achieve, because that can happen. But we should never tell a student outright, “Why would you waste your time on that?”
Yes, there are people in the world who are bank tellers or daycare assistants or heating techs because they didn’t make choices that let them do “greater” things. But there are also people out there who know that this is what they want to do. There are people who go into high school knowing that they want to do hair.
Help your students see what their options are. When they choose a career path lacking further education that someone thinks is “beneath” that student, let them know that there are college majors out there that, even if they leave college and go right into that field anyway, could help them in that field and could give them the opportunity to explore that field further than a given position. But sometimes work-based learning and apprenticeships are important, even necessary — anything involving job shadowing or exploration is especially so, because it might keep a student from making the mistake of forgoing more education for the sake a profession it turns out they don’t want.
And besides…when you show disrespect to a student’s ideas, I doubt they’re going to be listening whole-heartedly to the advice that follows.
It should also be noted that for society to function, we need people in all sorts of jobs. There should be no less value placed on people as human beings for working in what you might personally consider a “lower” position than what you might consider a “higher” position. If we want our students to treat all people with respect — from the principal to the custodian — we have to practice the same.
I admit that whenever I see someone use the term First World Problems or describe a damaged or neglected area in the United States as “like a Third World country,” it makes me twitch. The phrases are used as a ranking system, often without context of the original meanings of First or Third World, with a subtext based on stereotyped images of wealth, poverty, and development: “This is a problem that someone in a poor country couldn’t possibly have,” or “This disaster area is so damaged that it’s like living in an undeveloped country.”
Then someone referred to the area in which they teach in the US as akin to a third world country and I thought I ought to post something.
Instead of going the social justice route more bluntly on this one, I thought I’d try doing so by satisfying intellectual curiosity instead. This page explains the origin of the First (and Second!) and Third (and Fourth!) Worlds in the original model, touches on modern use, and offers links to further exploration of things like wealth and development around the world.
Thank you. I hadn’t had the opportunity to check that this evening, though one of my tasks tomorrow is to read through his blog. I apologize if it came across that I was stating he did not; rather, I stated that I did not know, and wanted to know where Educated to Death was getting some of their ideas about “failing” schools.
However, I am still of the opinion that one cannot and should not make blanket judgements or generalizations about all of a category based on personal experience. Even noting that one is working from personal experience seems moot when they then speak in vast generalizations to judge the entirety of the educational community. To me, and perhaps this is an unfair standard but, I expect educational professionals to be above that.
I have a certain respect for people who choose to work in low-SES areas, because it does present a certain well-documented set of challenges. However, my experiences have not in any way matched the suppositions Educated to Death makes of teachers or classroom management principles in low-SES areas, and his post makes a number of generalizations about students in both high and low SES that are not only not necessarily true, but stereotype-perpetuating and harmful to both groups.
If nothing else, continuing to spread these ideas, as based only on personal experience and not on data, could help inform teacher expectations that will then contribute to negative outcomes for low-SES students and an ignorance of potential risks for high-SES students. Educational professionals should be able and willing to look at current research to inform both their teaching practices and their knowledge of the profession. If Educated to Death uses anything other than personal experience to make the assertions he does, I will be far more willing to take a more serious look.
instintodepoa answered your question: 0144: #Classroom Management in Contexts of Affluence and #Poverty
aprendizagem se dá pela apropriação do objeto já dizia Piaget…
Você pode elaborar / explicar? (Peço desculpas, eu estou usando um tradutor, eu não…
Oh! Eu entendo a teoria de Piaget. Eu tive que estudá-lo muitas vezes em mais de um contexto. Eu acho que eu estava curioso sobre a sua relação com a entrada de blog.
