How to Skin a Cat

In-service

Fri, 19 Feb 2010 01:00:31 +0000

http://www.tsta.org/teaching/current/t&lworkshops.shtml

We could send out a survey to members (KISD?) asking them which workshops they would be interested in attending. Free for members – small fee for non-members? I think a “small” fee would encourage people to attend and perhaps JOIN TSTA.

A Better Beginning :Helping New Teachers Survive & Thrive (emphasizes mentoring programs – surveys, contract language)
I Can Do It: exciting classroom management system that offers educators a systemic way to improve classroom management
Cooperative Discipline: Provides educators with the skills necessary to create a positive, learning environment by providing appropriate intervention techniques for misbehavior and preventive measures that stop most misbehavior from occurring.
Diversity in the Classroom: Students will benefit from discussing and learning about diversity issues when educators create a safe, cooperative learning environment in the classroom and the school.
Paraprofessionals & Teachers – Building a Winning Team (emphasizes personality differences, appreciating & valuing differences, conflict management, communication & listening skills (2 days)
Is Your School Healthy? (Emphasizes the “sick school syndrome,” (environmental illnesses) and what the association can do)
Staying in the classroom and Out of the Courtroom (emphasizes “how to decrease your legal liability in the classroom)
Defensive Teaching: Don’t Be a Target (emphasizes “tips for interacting with students,” using good judgment,” “maintaining classroom order,” “thinking before acting,” “how to avoid becoming the next target”)
The Texas Code of Ethics & You (emphasizes SBEC policies & procedures; provides the “code”; discussion regarding filing a complaint; timelines; questions & answers)
Chapter 37: Making Your School Safe (emphasizes actual language of the law; provides steps for the teacher relative to enacting chapter 37; forms & sample memos; how the law should work at the campus level)
Hey, Can “They” do That? (emphasizes the Education Code and how to “break” it; reviews important sections of the code; personnel files and the law; paying for lost textbooks)
Safe Schools

Capturing Kids’ Hearts

Thu, 18 Feb 2010 03:15:41 +0000

From the Discussion Forum of my Lamar Class:

Part of a grant our campus received required a high percentage of the faculty to attend the Capturing Kids Hearts training to be able to build positive relationships with students. Students are greeted before entering the classroom with a hand shake and they are able to effectively communicate with students by knowing their name and things about the student like their interests, aspirations and goals.

And this guys then replies:

I attended the Capturing Kids Hearts training in 2007. It was one of the best trainings I have ever had. My challenge is the hand shaking at the door. I always have students who want to chat for a few moments before they leave the room. If I miss someone, I still try to shake their hands within the first few minutes of class. They come to expect it.

Then this woman chimed in with this:

Capturing Kids Heart is a training that I have been hearing a lot about lately. I do believe that it is a wonderful training, however, it is exactly what elementary teachers have been doing for years. We greet students at the door with a hug or high five, they feel safe talking to us. It is nice to see older grades buying into the same philosophy

Mr. Tool is now the expert on this program, and decised to school her with this todbit:

It’s a lot more than greeting them at the door. It’s about accountability in their work, their lives, and creating an atmosphere of mutual respect too. However, you are right in the similarities in greeting the students.

Her repsonse?

well I most certainly did not mean that it was only about greeting students at the door. I do actually realize that there is more to it than that, such as the disciplinary side, and the accountability of it as well. I just was commenting on the statement that many people have made about greeting at the door. Elementary students often feel much more respected by their teachers than older grades, this is because we have worked hard to create that atmosphere in the classroom where they will not be put down or given a sarcastic comment by students or teachers when they make a statement or ask a question. That is lost somewhere in the older grades as students are beginning to feel more self-conscience about themselves and insecure. Capturing Kids Hearts helps older grades and even elementary ones, grasp the concept of allowing kids to learn and work in a safe environment.

My reponse to the whole Capturing Kids’ Heart bandwagon?

Before Capturing Kids’ Hearts can work, there has to be a culture that supports it. I attended that training in 2001 in my former district, and I have seen first hand that a handshake in the morning doesn’t mean anything if that is all the students get. It’s not that my colleagues hated kids of their jobs – it’s that there were so overwhelmed and overworked. I think any principal who tried to implement programs like that should make sure that the staff is supported first. I just go back to If You Don’t Feed the Teachers, They Eat the Students.

The Tool responds to me:

I understand your frustration. I speak from a perspective of working at a school in the Houston ISD that has seen the enrollment drop from 1500 to 800 in the last 6 years because parents do not want to send their children to the “gang” school. A few former students have been featured in Texas Monthly magazine and Dateline NBC, and it wasn’t for the good that they were doing. A former student of my school now sits in jail, charged with killing another student’s mother. I understand overwhelmed and overworked. I understand being cursed out, students not doing their work all the times, high absence rates, etc. I stay focused on those that are there and when others come back, I focus on them too. It is frustrating, but the bottom line is that I set the tone in my classroom. My expectations are set extremely high for my students, even when I am told that they cannot do things. I set my students up for success, even the 16 year in the 8th grade who reads at a first grade level. (There are others similar to that student too.) I spend time at the beginning of the year working with my students to create their rules and they “police” the class themselves. Capturing Kids’ Hearts works in my classroom because I established the culture that supports it. Ninety-five percent of my students passed TAKS last year. Forty-seven of the 151 made commended performance. I have learned that sometimes you have to feed yourself.

Oh, how I wanted to post what I really thought about him and all of his classroom accomplishments. How GREAT he is. How he must LOVE his classroom. But I didn’t. I just posted this:

No frustration on my part. I’ve just seen the program fail. Flip Flippen does not have a magic band-aid – even if the program is good and worthwhile, it can still fail if the culture doesn’t support it.

The role of the AP is create a campus climate – I disagree that teachers have to “feed themselves” – that just seems go against everything that has been presented in this program.

Did I cop out? Am I being too sensitive? For some reason, this struck a nerve with me. Ticked me off. Perhaps because I’ve seen it fail in at inner-city school with at-risk students. Perhaps because I’ve had this pushed down my throat without any support. Perhaps because I suspect my principal was rewarded with kickbacks for promoting this to other districts. Perhaps because I went to school with their poster boy of success, Junior.

I don’t hate the program. But I get angry with this guy’s self-righteous tone. His superior attitude. His “feed yourself” comment.

I hope to God this man doesn’t ever become MY administrator.

TSTA and other plans

Sun, 31 Jan 2010 22:54:58 +0000

Just a few of my ideas that I am posting so I don’t forget them:

1. Monthly TSTA happy hour.

2. TSTA workshop with different members presenting on different educational topics.

What to do when a colleague plagiarizes
Preparing for a long-term sub/emergency sub plans
Authentic learning
Preparing for PDAS
Technology
Klein ISD board meeting updates
Texas/National educational policy
How to file a grievance
What really is a hostile work environment

3. Research versus book report – KISD really needs this.

4. Start saving up my projects for reading/TAKS tutorial classes

5. Start saving up authentic technology assessments for publication

6. Lesson plans for J and J

What are some other topics that teachers might be interested in for professional development?

End of Course

Tue, 26 Jan 2010 22:20:10 +0000

I *love* that we are supposed to be field testing the English I EOC test this May, and we still have no idea what is going to be on it. Namely, the essay. Compare contrast? Personal narrative? How to? I think we pretty much cover everything else in the TEKS, but I’d kind of like to know this little tidbit.

I’ve heard now that schools who are on a 9 week schedule can give the EOC tests at the end of the 9 week period and *not* at the traditional semester. That makes me happy. I also heard that the students can take the tests as many times as they need. Again, more happy.

But what happens when a student fails a test? Since it’s only worth 15%of their grade, can they fail the test and still pass the class? What’s this I heard that a student only needs to pass 9 out of the 11 (12?) EOC tests? How many EOC tests will there be? What happens when a student switches schools mid-year? What happens when a student is denied credit for a subject? I want to heard definitive answers.

I heard through the grapevine that they hired a new secondary ELA coordinator – from an elementary school. In most cases, I’d laugh it off as rumor, but I wouldn’t be surprised at all. I understand that having a middle school and high school coordinator is asking a bit much, but can we *please* get someone in there who at least is certified to teach high school? Is that asking too much? Maybe THAT is why we haven’t heard anything about the EOC, since it won’t affect elementary or middle school students?

The other subject areas know what is going on. Just not ELA. And today, TEA announced that the STARR test will replace the TAKS test for K-8 students. I wonder how much I’ll hear about that?

And on that note, I think I’ll save the rest of my snark for later.

Hands on

Fri, 22 Jan 2010 01:40:02 +0000

As the title of the blog implies, there is more than one way to skin a cat. And there is more than one way to teach English.

I think in analogies. I teach in analogies. For me, it’s all part of the “Riley Show”.

I have costumes – I wear red stockings when we read about the Wife of Bath. I wear a fake seagull around my neck when we read Rime of the Ancient Mariner. I wear horns and a tail and poke students with a pitchfork when we read Paradise Lost. I have students try on a chain mail shirt when we read Beowulf.

I teach kinesthetically – I show them how to remember that Ireland is *not* a part of the UK. They learn how to figure our 1st, 2nd, and 3rd person voice. I show them how to “neuter” words to turn them into contractions. Yes, I teach high school English, but it can be done.

I don’t expect everyone to teach just like me – it would be pretty boring to have crazy hype teachers all day long – but I do expect some passion out there. I expect teachers to take pride in their lessons.

We had a PLC meeting today about reading, and even though we are not all doing the same thing, I think that everyone got some new ideas and tools to teach. I was able to take an old lesson plan and spice it up thanks to some of the other teachers present at that meeting. It’s just so… invigorating to see plans come to fruition.

Still Wobbly

Wed, 20 Jan 2010 19:39:56 +0000

We only accept new students twice a year, so the start of a new semester is always exciting for our campus. I was really excited – I even had my lesson plans ready to go for the next three weeks. And what happened?

Chinese food. Bad Chinese food, that is.

Monday night, my husband and I got food poisoning. I spent all night (read: no sleep) being sick. I could barely use my cell phone, but I managed to call a co-worker to get a sub for me. Around noon, the fever got to me, and I started to get delirious, convinced my principal thought that I was merely hung over, since it was a three day weekend.

I took today off as well, and am supposed to be absent tomorrow for a textbook committee, but I just can’t bring myself to go. I’ve already missed two days – basically the first day of school, and I think my priority right now is with my classroom.

I hate missing school and I have never missed the first day of classes before.

I’m still a little wobbly, but I’m way better than where I was this time yesterday. I question whether I should have went ahead and gone to school today, but I don’t think I could deal with it. I’ve slept most of the day, and am still hesitant about eating solid food.

I don’t know where I get it from, but I have a serious guilt complex when I miss work. This time? Not so much.

I really have no idea what my classes have done the past two days – I suppose I’ll just call those two days a loss and start tomorrow with my original lesson plans.

I’ve said it before…

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 23:32:14 +0000

And I’ll say it again: It’s not fair to regulate what an 18 year can view on the internet based on what is appropriate for a 5 year old. Not only is it not fair, it’s not allowing teachers to reach some of our TEKS (state objectives). I am sick and tired of having people who have no idea WHO I teach, WHAT, I teach, or even HOW I teach it.

Babynames.com is now open at school, but I have serious problems when I teach Paradise Lost and Dante’s Inferno. My head spun when I tried to have my students go to www.hellpizza.co.uk to examine the pizzas and try to identity the allusions in the pizzas (did they come Inferno, Paradise Lost, or the Bible?) – the students were blocked. We weren’t given a reason why – just the white screen on censorship.

And please don’t tell me to write a Help desk ticket – I’ve done those before, and (if they ever get allowed), the teachable moment is gone. even if they get it approved for the next day, I might already be in another unit – I *am* on an accelerated schedule, you know.

I was told by one person that I should have my web page requests turned in at least 32 (preferably 48) hours before I want to to use. Cute. There are two issues here sparky, that I’d like you to consider:

1. When my students do research, I have no idea what webpages that they will stumble upon and read. Sure, you could say that I could take all of the extra time to determine a set number of appropriate webpages and only allow students to go to those webpages, but that is ridiculous. Since when is it appropriate for teachers to constrict learning? That’s like saying we will ONLY use the textbook to learn from. No workbooks. No experiments. No demonstrations. No field trips. Nothing. Just the textbook. Also, it’s not in line with the College and Career Readiness Standards. Do you think NetTrekker prepares high school students for internet-based assignments in college?

2. There is NO WAY for teachers to determine what webpages are restricted to students, so even if I wanted to comply with #1, there is really no way for me to, unless you want me to send IT a copy of every webpage that I use instructionally?

Argh. Anyone out there have any tips dealing with the censorship of the internet?

#edchat

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 01:19:43 +0000

So tonight, instead of working on my M.Ed. portfolio, grading, or getting my sub plans ready for Thursday, I’m twittering on #edchat.

I can’t keep up.

At least I hope I’ll be able to expand my Twitter contacts from tonight.

The only bad thing about being at a 1:1 school is that I work too much. Used to be, I’d leave school work at school. But now? It’s an all consuming hobby. Maybe this just means I have to get a *new* hobby.

Textbook committee Thursday, next week teaching curriculum projects to the last group of ELA teachers in the district, but the important thing is that I have EIGHT (8) MORE DAYS UNTIL THANKSGIVING! w00t!

I’m teaming up with the tech guy on campus to create promotional videos for the school to recruit new students. Granted, it’s a little late for it now, but at least we’ll have something for next year. We may be able to ge a few out in time for this year, but my students have a really hard time following deadlines. Take a look at my gradebook and see how many zeros I have!

I’ll be a fun, learning process. Glad to be with L. making this movie. I just have a hard time with the tech side of things sometimes – I know just enough to get myself into trouble.

For the record: I love TweetDeck – just wish I had it on campus.

Finals!

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 01:44:10 +0000

I’m at the end of the grading period at my school – PSAT tomorrow, TAKS next week, and finals next week.

I’m pooped.

Things haven’t been as crazy as last year losing all the time to the hurricane, but I feel like we’ve lost so much time to technology errors that I’m still behind this year! We finally had a meeting with ALL of the IT people at our school last week because we were having so many problems and IT wasn’t able ro replicate them. So you know what that means: operator error.

Yeah, right.

We’d fill out a help desk ticket and the ticket would go straight to our campus IT guy, who doesn’t have any real authority to do anything. When we would call in or have someone call in the complain for us, we’d get the pat answer: Impossible. That isn’t happening.

When they finally showed up on our campus to troubleshoot, they insulted the teachers and students. For instance, one girl couldn’t log in the computer network. IT accused her of forgetting her password. In October. When it’s been the same password she’s been using all year. One girl couldn’t login and IT told her that her fingernails were too long and she was mistyping her password. One girl was using Word and her computer kept shutting down her computer. She was accused of setting up a hot key that would automatically shut her computer down.

Personally, I’m too stupid to copy a few folders on the network drive. Friday, I helped a student move her documents from her desktop to her network drive so she wouldn’t lose anything. I moved them over for her, and everything was there on Friday. Monday when we came back, the folders were there but nothing else. And it was there Friday. But I can’t move a folder over.

So, we had a large meeting Friday were we all got to voice our concerns. My concern was that the IT offended the students to the point that they kids refused to go see them and refused to let us know if they had an issue with their computers.

Things seemed to be better here, but I’m not holding my breath.

I’m on the textbook review committee – so far we’ve only met once, but I’m looking forward to getting to know other teachers on other campuses and seeing what they think. I don’t have a favorite right now, but after my cursory glances, they all kind of look the same. No matter what, I don’t think that the textbook will change my classroom.

And on that note, I’m off for a walk with my husband and the cats.

I don’t have time to write an e-mail

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 22:57:33 +0000

I love computers. I love e-mail. But, I’m a little tired of having to DOCUMENT everything that goes wrong with my computer. If I don’t, then no one ever hears about the problem and it never gets fixed. However, documenting these issues takes time. Whenever I write a work order request, I give the time I started it and the time I finished it because I feel it is important to note how much time I have spent away from the classroom. I think it would be shocking to see how much time I spend in a week dealing with things that keep me from active teaching.

Active teaching. There’s the rub. I*can* have enough time to write a lengthy e-mail or document a problem if I am not up and engaging my students. Sure, I can give them a worksheet or a “scavenger hunt” or some other busy work to keep them quiet while I try to explain that I am not able to permanently rotate a PDF file, but is that how my time is best served?

I hate it when I have to spend my morning time with IT trouble shooting – it puts me in a bad mood all day. I haven’t been able to sip on coffee with my friends in the morning. I haven’t been able to check my e-mail in the morning. My computer desktop looks like Hiroshima was just dropped because I am hesitant to save elsewhere – and now my computer is going to be reimaged tomorrow.

Great.

I think that teachers who *are* able to write lengthy e-mails during class on a regular basis should be asked about it. I think that is should be pretty obvious when teachers are Facebooking instead of actually working. That’s not to say that I never get a break – they come and go.

I have been so fried at school lately that all I want to do when I get home is loaf. Maybe I should stop taking this laptop home – it’s too easy for me to see it as a symbol of all that I have to do at school. I don’t like using the phrase “they don’t pay me enough to _____”, but they don’t pay me enough to work twelve hours a day.

And with that said, I’m off to clean the kitchen.