On your mark... get set...

Here it is... year 3. New room, new teaching assignment, new grade level, new team... so I almost feel like calling this Year 1: The Sequel.

I've decided to changed the focus of this blog slightly. Instead of having people wade through my rants about my school district, I thought it might be more edifying to move beyond my own situation and join the discussion on technology, professional development, and shifting schools.

With some vacancies left by teachers who moved on to other districts and administrative positions, here I am in my third year as the co-chair of the Language Arts department. I've also taken a position on the school's leadership team (working on our school improvement plan.) Taking all of those things into consideration, I've taken on quite a bit this year and I feel a renewed sense of interest in helping my school develop effective and worthwhile PD. After attending the NSDC conference in Orlando this summer I brought back some ideas for our staff, and the LA department in particular, to adopt.

For the first time many teachers are being asked to track what they're doing in the classroom using actual data. We're attempting to collect data on student learning through common assessments, action research, and regular pre- and post-assessments. While this can be done in a useful way, I'm afraid many of our teachers see it as busywork and they're concerned about viewing students as numbers rather than human beings. To be honest, I'm so new at some of this that I don't know what to do to allay their fears.

Many of them have been in this district for so long, they've seen initiatives come and go, and come back again. Many of them are disillusioned and suffering from "new initiative fatigue." We bring in speakers who say the same things over and over, we're doing things that were ended ten years ago because they "weren't working..." I can understand their frustration. I suppose my goal with this blog is to engage others in conversation about motivating teachers and influencing administration to enact effective and worthwhile PD.

So... any suggestions?

Some thoughts on "Year Two"

Well, my second year of teaching is coming to an end. The students have graduated and all that's left is paperwork and packing. I'll be changing assignments -- yet again -- next year as I move to 7th grade Language Arts. As I get ready to spend the summer preparing for a new curriculum, new novels, etc. I thought I should make some final comments about this year.

1. I've learned that I need to e-mail messages to everyone, whether I've spoken to them in person or not. If I speak to someone in person and I have no "hardcopy" record of it, I learned this year that it could come down to my word versus theirs if they decide to accuse me of something. I won't say more than that, but I'm going to spend next year perfecting professional redundancy.

2. I'm finally learning how to manage grades, parents, behavior, etc. It's only taken two years, but I'm finally starting to get it. A little less pressure from higher up would have helped this year, since I'm still new and still learning, but that just comes with the job, I guess. Next year should be interesting, with three different preps and a new set of novels to teach. I suppose life would get boring if there was no change. Still, I'd like to do the same thing for at least 2-3 years so I can reflect on my teaching instead of always coming up with something new.

3. I'm going to SERIOUSLY tone down the amount of technology I try to use in class. This year I went a little nuts and got overwhelmed by the amount of new tech tools I was trying to use. Next year, I'll follow Thoreau's advice: "Simplify, simplify, simplify." Though I may be getting a Promethean or SMART board next year, I'm going to try and get back to basics with regard to tech in the classroom.

4. "No." I had to start toward the end of this year, but next year I will be working on my ability to say, "No." As a new teacher, I need to work on my teaching, not running a club or some other after-school activity. Again... back to basics.

5. I'm going to have more fun than I did this year. I love my job, but this year was NOT fun.

6. As much as possible, the school work is going to stay at school.

There it is... bring on Year Three.

Classroom blogging

After-school meetings are usually the last thing on my mind following a long day in the classroom. This last meeting, however, left me encouraged to keep on keepin' on. Just the other day we had scheduled a "tech fair" at our school, which is probably simpler than it sounds. It was really four teachers who had attended the IL-TCE conference back in February presenting some of what they learned to the rest of the faculty. Myself and one other faculty member presented Blogs & Wikis... and received some very positive feedback.

I've been working with our district's tech department to look into school-wide blogging for next year, and the response from this tech fair told me that a good deal of teachers would be willing to try blogging and are actually excited about the idea. I think the key is to get teachers to believe that blogging will, if not revolutionize, then streamline their ability to get and give feedback from students and parents. It has certainly saved a lot of extra paper in my classroom; I carry my laptop home some nights and that's it.

With Spring Break over and the kids already talking Summer, it's been a busy and tiring two weeks. The feedback from our teachers on this presentation, though, has me reinvigorated. I'm excited about getting this set up for next year and anxious to see how each classroom teacher will take this idea of classroom blogging and make it uniquely their own.

(I think I'll go order David Warlick's book now.)

Just got blog-blocked...

I'm wondering how many other teachers/students out there have the problem of their district blocking web sites at the first sign of student mis-use. Last year we were able to use some YouTube videos to complement our lessons. This year they blocked it. I helped a Special Ed. teacher find a site that allowed students to "create their own superhero," which tied into a lesson she was doing in Language Arts. That site is blocked too. After attending the ICE conference in St. Charles, Illinois, in February I was introduced to Netvibes as a way of keeping track of blogs or podcasts that I might want to follow as a means of building a Personal Learning Community. This morning, I try to open my Netvibes page... I'll give you three guesses. You'll only need one.

I'm on the tech committee for our building and I'm a contributor to some of our district tech meetings, and we've even discussed the problem of blocking sites purely for the sake of keeping kids away. We came to the conclusion that instead of blocking everything, we should be educating the students on how to use the Internet appropriately. This is beginning to remind me of 2-3 weeks ago when China started blocking YouTube for the videos related to Tibet. There's great information out there, but if we just block it instead of exploring it as an educational opportunity, we're losing a great tool.

Perhaps my question should be this... are there districts that have come up with a good way of teaching their students appropriate uses of the technology? I'm finding that's not happening here, as far as I can tell from my Language Arts classroom in this little corner of the building, and instead we're opting for the quick fix.

This is a quick post, but I want to make sure to publish it before they start blocking my blog!