Reflections on Teaching

Blogging Against Disablism Day 2010

May15

As with most things, I’m more than a day late and a dollar shy on this one, which occurred on May 1st, but some recent events have led me to believe that it’s better to write late than not at all, so please indulge me. As with many thing, Ira Socol, has led me to this. Thank you Ira!

The posts that I’m about to put up will reflect my experience as the mother of a child with Autism Spectrum Disorder, so let me disclose my current policy about that. After reading this post, by Ira Socol, I decided that, like many “public” writers, I was using my son in my writing without really getting his permission.

First, I’m trying not to make Ms. Palin’s mistake of using my son as a “hunting trophy”. I share my particular experiences because my son is autistic, but he is at the high functioning end of the spectrum. Many of the stories from autism families are about the difficulties, OR miraculous recoveries. While I agree with Autism Speaks that we need to share our stories so that the public understands, I sense a dearth of tales about families like mine, where it’s part of the picture, but not the picture (more about that in my next post). I also do NOT want to present myself as some “miracle worker.” We got very lucky with my son in a number of ways, he’s a good personality match for my husband and I, he has a “mild case” of autism, he has a pretty sanguine and happy disposition. This is about me and my family’s experience, and is part of a whole, and not a single example to be taken out of context.

Next, since my son is becoming older, I recently showed him what I’ve written, told him why I’m writing (to share with other parents), and gotten his permission to write about this.

Last, I used to drop his first name in the past, but I’m going for not naming him at all going forward. It won’t take much work online to figure it out, and it’s a little late, but it was the least I could do.

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ED 667 Module 1: Resource Guide

May8

Here is my resource guide to some basic online tools that are essential for a Technology Coordinator. First, I’m doing this assignment using two Web 2.0 tools, this blog, and social bookmarking software (Diigo). Blogs are an easy way to publish and share information. For a resource list like this, you could also use a wiki, a social network, or any number of other Web platforms. This blog is my “hub”, so it’s where I prefer to share resources. I’ve separated my list into three section, tools for sharing, resources for information on “best practices”, resources for curriculum and teaching, and technical resources. These are not comprehensive, but instead focus on my top two tools.

Social Bookmarking

Social bookmarking is not only a fast way for you to save bookmarks, and have them available on any computer with an internet connection, but they are an easy way to share and find great sites, articles, and posts with others. The key part of social bookmarking is that you can “publish” your bookmarks, but also that the taxonomy, or indexing, is done by anyone who “saves” that particular URL, so we are all collectively defining the purpose of the resource. This is being referred to as “folksonomy” which means that “folks”, rather than professionals, are organizing materials. This has both a plus side (you can create a index that is easy and intuitive for you to use), and downsides (one person’s intuitive is another person’s obscure, and typos can complicate things whether you share or not). Here are my two picks:

Deli.cio.us was the first major social bookmarking tool and is still the grand-daddy in this category. Its advantages are an easy interface, and ubiquity (lots of other people are on it, so you can easily share with friends).

Diigo is my personal favorite for social bookmarking. I’m fortunate that most of my online professional learning network uses it as well. I prefer it because it allows for highlighting, sticky notes and other notations on pages you’ve saved. I’ve used this tool with students a few times, and it’s very slick. In addition, it works with the delicious API, and I can have any bookmarks sent to my delicious account when I save them to Diigo. This keeps me in two networks, not just one.

Research and Best Practices

Why use technology and why use Web 2.0? One of the tasks of the Technology Coordinator is to convince others to use these tools, both for themselves and in their classrooms. You will need to show that it is not just “fun” for the kids, but improves instruction. You will also need to have a source of standards, and best practices to share. Here are my picks for this category:

The International Society for Technology in Education, is the organization education technology professionals. It has a annual conference, which I’ve attended for the last two years, that attracts from 15 – 20,000 participants. They are the source of the standards guiding this course, NETs or National Educational Technology Standards. As education technology has moved towards Web 2.0, so has ISTE, and they have a blog hub, ISTE Connects, which can keep you up to date on both formal and informal discussions on topics in the field.

My next resources is EduCause, which has a great series of short, easy to read flyers on different Web 2.0 tools, called 7 Things You Should Know – 60 Resources. These are in a handy PDF format, and are short (7 paragraphs) and sweet. They make a nice “handout” or online resource to use in trainings on Web 2.0 tools.

Curriculum Resources

These are resources for use in classroom instruction with students. As a current computer lab teacher, this is “where I live”. I need to keep up on resources for six grade levels, and locate resources for research projects, etc. This is the area I have the most background in and I could list lots of different pages, but for now I’ll share my top two:

Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day… is a blog that my friend, and fellow Sacramento teacher, Larry Ferlazzo maintains. It includes multiple daily updates. The links are largely geared towards high school ESL/EFL students, so many are appropriate for younger students too. His work is not only prolific, but has been recognized by the IRA (International Reading Association) where he was the Grand prize winner of the 2007 Presidential Award for Reading and Technology.

Instructify is run by the LEARN NC out of University of North Carolina. I used to be a freelancer doing articles for them about a year ago. They do really nice short reviews of Web 2.0 and other education technology topics. Most are nice little nuggets of around 200 words, but they also do longer Instructifeature posts that going into more depth on a topic.

Technical Support

This is the area I expect I will learn the most about, and I’m looking forward to concentrating on these links in the review of extracurricular links. For now, these are two of my favorites:

Giz Explains: An Illustrated Guide to Every Stupid Cable You Need is a handy article that lists almost all the common (and a few not so common) computer cables you are likely to run across. Since I grew up with an old school programmer for a dad, I’m used to knowing the right name for tools (like cotter pins, instead of that whatchamacallit) I loved this article. Clear photos are provided which make it all so clear.

My experience with web pages goes back to coding in HTML. A little bit of code knowledge can go a long way, and HTML Basic is an invaluable reference. Your web editing tool may ~~provide~~ not provide the strike through and replace tag, but they can be very handy when you need to show that a web page or blog post has changed since it was first posted. This article, focuses in on just a couple of great tags to have in your back pocket.

Manners, please!

March22

This week was full of many hard lessons. One of those has to do with this blog. The commentary on my post about getting pink slipped by my district while they were simultaneously attempting to bring in TFA interns, started to devolve to a level I would rather not see. While there were many contributors to this problem, I should have had a better handle on the comment moderation. I do have a comment policy, which says that people should not attack others, and that comments will be closed on a topic if they cease to be productive. Some commenters started to impart motives to another, condescension, that got the discussion onto a more personal track that was not at all productive. I had to pull comments that had been posted, put the blog on full moderation mode, and close comments on that post.

My take, as someone in the middle of this mess in real life, everyone is pretty stressed out and lots of us are going into bunker mode. In off-line conversations with TFAers they felt the work they do is being personally attacked. I want to make clear, my stand on this was not about all members, or any one member, but rather the system. We’ve agreed to disagree on TFA as a solution.

I know from talking to tenured/experienced teachers like myself, we feel our work is being discarded, and we’re being painted too broadly as not fixing failures that are more of society’s responsibility, rather than resting wholly at the schoolroom door. It’s been a pretty crazy week, that I will not bore you with the petty details of some of the many conflicts that have come up, but my conclusion is that everyone is pretty edgy, including myself.

As this unwinds, I will likely be blogging about topics of controversy. In addition, I’m cross-posting at FaceBook, and getting a local following now, and the local teacher crowd is pretty agitated these days. I expect there will be the chance that this may happen in the future. My goal is to do my best to keep the dialogue civil. I’m asking for my readers help in doing this. I have put my blog back to a moderation scheme that will automatically approve comments from people who have already had an approved comment. Comments will continue to be closed on the pink slip post.

Photo Credit: Mind Your Manners on Flickr photosharing

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SCUSD School Board Meeting March 18, 2010

March21

Here are my notes with tweets sent at the time:

The board meeting got started late…

Getting ready for bd mtg on tfa replacement teachers being hired in my district and it’s a full house #pinkslip
Late start to school bd mtg as they get ready to discuss bringing TFA to our district
Finally bd is coming out of closed session at #scusd

I was wrong about this, it was only an informational presentation:

@k_shelton yep vote on whether to bring in TFA for positions they say are unfilled but have strangely given notice to teachers in those jobs

It started with some other items, like the pledge by a student (with her autobiography), an Adult Ed teacher of the year award:

At #scusd bd mtg teacher getting adult ed educator of the year shared she got #pinkslip
#scta pres speaks our truth, why bring in TFA if you handed out 750 #pinkslips in #scusd?

The Superintendent then gave a report on his Priority Schools, of which Oak Ridge will be one.

Superintendent’s report at #scusd on priority schools (which would be mine)
As super shows figures at #scusd and our api and ayp show growth and don’t look that bad…

I give some background to folks following my tweets telling them that TFA will not take the place of AdultEd teachers being laid off because basically, Adult Ed funding has disappeared and so have the classes, then the discussion begins:

@Stephieand the teacher of the year is in adult ed which I don’t think they will use them for

They are having TFA do the preso at #scusd mtg
Super at #scusd bd mtg is pleaing that the focus be on the children, which suggest those who oppose will be painted as not doing it for kids
TFA has sent up a rep who flashes some union cred and being a teacher’s son
scud Their mission helping kids pass algebra test would be credible, if they hadn’t laid off a bunch of 9th grade algebra teachers
scusd TFA says their mission is to get folks to become opinion and policy leaders on education
scusd TFA I’m not seeing the connection to how this will solve the immediate issues
@k_shelton I’ll be talking
Letting Ken know would be speaking during public comment
This discussion of TFA at #scusd is dragging on…
TFA flak is claiming all their recruits are “certified” because they are intern credentials
They only have 6 weeks of training before they start out.
Bd mbr Arroyo grills them on the retention issue @scusd bd mtg
Bd Mbr Rodriguez picks on the $4000 per intern admin cost
Rodriguez and Arroyo slam home that they are concerned about TFA not being rooted in community
Bd Mbr Jerry Houseman is saying this is bad timing for bringing a program in like TFA
This was one of the last comments and I think it was the kindest way to put things
Bd mbr Rodriguez points out that we will still need to address achievement issues
This is important because she is signaling that although she doesn’t see this as an appropriate solution, something will need to be done.
Okay now someone from CSU ed dept is saying she has local career changers ready to go #SCUSD

At about this point, I delivered my own speech to the board, and you can watch it here, I speak at about 32 minutes in.

Okay discussion on TFA at #scusd over, it was informational, but I’m sensing it’s a dead issue.

What were my impressions? Hmm, I was less impressed with the case that the officials from TFA made about their program that the more what sounded like more sincere testimonials from TFA Alums. I didn’t get one point that they seemed to make which was no one was talking about the children. When we go up there saying, this isn’t effective, and question there studies saying they are, that’s not rhetorical point, it means that there is no way that an intern with no teaching experience, and only 6 weeks training can compare to a credentialed teacher. I don’t think they compare that well to new teachers with a full credential. I don’t say that to brag, or put them down but because it’s part of the discussion about what’s best for the kids. Folks can see that as an attack, or self-protection (or even self-delusion), but for me it is based on the needs of our students.

I think the statement, this is not the time for this program here, sort of summed up the entire situation really well. I w0uld not want to rule out the need for this in 10 years, when many teachers will be retiring. But, if they come in now, they will bump out teachers who are in the 5 – 8 year seniority range. There isn’t as large a group of teachers after that in the district so if that group is gone, when the retirements kick-in, the district will be like a ghost town.

Next, there is much more to be done. The priority schools will need to be reformed, with or without TFA. That will not be an easy job. This will cause a lot of moving around. Complicating things will be the layoffs, recension, which begin this weekend with 170 notices going out for pink slips that have “date errors”? Any recensions before the end of the year will make things pretty straightforward. After that point it gets messy, as administrators coming “down” will be bumping into positions, etc. All of this is dependent on getting a bargaining agreement with the district and teachers’ union (an area of considerable behind the scenes maneuvering, and stealth PR in the local paper). The details vary, but I’m sure this story is VERY familiar to anyone in California, and we’re not the only district going through this.

posted under communication, politics/policy | No Comments »

Ms. Mercer, I love your week in lab posts, but…

November21

I like to think this blog is pretty ecclectic (although this may be self-delusion on my part). I’ve gotten positive responses to a variety of different posts over the last few weeks from ones where I blogged about brain science and the education of children in poverty (wow, that sounds way too passive — how about poor kids?), to ones about using this blog to involve kids in my observation of their teacher, to one about what I was doing in the lab with kids (response here).

No one ever comes out to say they don’t like my more political posts, but I am regularly told by others that I’m “so political”, which means that not everyone is comfortable with what I have to say. I’m not going to argue with folks about this, but instead let readers know if you love reading about what I’m doing in the lab, but you’re not so crazy about the rest of what I write, there is a simple solution. I put all of my lab reflection posts in one category, “Week in Lab” which you can access in the sidebar, or subscribe to it on RSS. I’m not going to change who I am and what I write about, but I’m if that’s not what you want to spend your leisure time reading, I offer this easy solution.

If you hate when I gas on about what I’m doing in my lab, you can do the same by looking at or subscribing to the Politics/Policy category.

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