I had no interest in an iPad until....

To me, they seemed useless.  I have an iPhone and a Laptop computer.  Why would I need another accessory?  I did get to check the one out in class, and then we watched Steve Jobs hype up the new and improved version. Still, I wasn't convinced.  Why would I need one?  Then I went on vacation over spring break, which included a stop at a local mall. A mall with an Apple store.  Hmmm.   Ok so I decided to check them out, since they were displayed for all to play with. My husband is even less of an Apple fan, and we both walked out wanting one.  The capabilities of the iPad were, for lack of a better term, really cool!  Especially some of the apps that are available on my phone, but the screen size of the iPad makes the apps much more appealing.  Will I be running out soon to get one?  Not sure.  But the iPad 2 is definitely a strong possibility in the near future.

Sometimes students remember you

So this only sort of has anything to do with media in the classroom, but I figured it had a lot to do with teaching so I would blog about it.  Admittedly I am a bookworm, and also a nerd.  In high school I was fortunate to take an English elective of science fiction. Lots of interesting discussion about technology in that class.  Anyways, a couple weeks ago I was in my local Barnes & Noble looking for a short story we had read (mind you this was fifteen years ago...so I only had a memory of the storyline and not the story).  After googling everything I could think of, I gave up trying to find the name of the story.  Then I thought about looking up the teacher on my school's website.  He is still teaching and I decided to email him.   Imagine my excitement when I received a reply the next day that he A. remembered me, B.  knew exactly what story I was talking about and C. gave me the name of the short story and the book it was in!
Does the story end there? Nope! He informed me that the book was out of print (enter sigh here) and that he did not even have enough for the class copies to be taken home.  However, since he only used so many for both classes - he was willing to send me a copy!  (insert Jenn jumping up and down like she just won on The Price is Right). Today I received the book in the mail and I will be debating reading vs. sleeping tonight. 
In conclusion, I thought about my own teaching and figured that somewhere down the line a student might actually contact me, like I just did, and tell me that they loved my class! 

Un-College

            To be quite honest, I love the idea of the un-college.  To work with mentors and get real life experiences while working on higher education goals makes sense to me.  As I have thought about my return to college as an adult to finish both my undergraduate and graduate degrees, I thought up a list of things that Un-College students would benefit from (that would not apply to traditional college students). Here they are in no particular order.

1.  No erroneous college fees and administrative costs.  You are not paying for an athletic fee that you will probably never use, or paying other fees that you do not even have the faintest idea of what they apply to.

2. You will probably not incur student loans.  The price is right and there probably aren’t any highly priced textbooks that can be sold back for a whopping ten dollars. 

3. This mentor system intrigues me.  Not that I didn’t have a great set of professors guiding me through school; but there are the few that aren’t as helpful.  This system seems that it would bring in the people that want to help the student.

4. College Requirements: I had an associates and one year of bachelor’s under my belt when I decided to return to college six years later to complete my degree.  The logical answer to how long it took would be about 1- 1 ½ yrs to complete a four year degree.  Wrong.  It took three more.  So much had changed with education degree requirements that I had to take multiple classes to finish up.  I don’t see this happening with Un-College- especially since the program usually takes about three years to complete. Oh and my question still remains unanswered-if teachers needed to know all of the new things I learned, did they have to go back to school too?

5.  Most of the school is online or while you are out in the field.  In the education programs, I am shocked to see how late students are volunteering/observing/teaching in a classroom.  Some get to this point and decide it isn’t for them.  Sure classroom experience is great, but it is no match for the real world.  Un-College promotes this.

So was this blog a rant about my experiences, or a plug for Un-College? I’m not sure.  I just hope it works out as well as it seems. 

Mr. Teachbad and Staff Meetings

I enjoyed reading the blog of Mr. Teachbad, and I was initially shocked that there was a teacher who had this much courage to publish their true feelings and ideas about the current school system that is their current employer.  At some points, I have had similar thoughts and frustrations, but I think teachers have a fear that anything they talk about will put their job in jeopardy. 

            One of my favorite posts on the blog was the fake news report about the teacher who called in a bomb threat to interrupt a staff meeting.  I had attended a few meetings while I was in student teaching and also while I was a substitute teacher.  While I did not call in any threats to make the meetings end; I definitely can appreciate the humor in this post.  Before I went to one of the meetings, I envisioned teachers working together with administration to come up with ideas to help the students in the school.  Some meetings started off with teaching comments; although many were not positive.  It seemed that the meetings were a place for teachers to vent about their day, what students acted up and how they were frustrated about ‘that kid’.  

            There always seemed to be a ‘that kid’ in each school or grade I taught/substituted in.  I often fell into the trap of putting these expectations on to the student, and would find fault in anything I could.  One evening, I thought about this and that I had been sucked into the self-fulfilling prophecy of finding fault that had already been shown to me even before I met the student.  After dealing with my guilty conscience, I went back in and decided that I would not listen as much during the staff meetings unless it had to deal directly with what was on the agenda. 

            So I guess I agree a lot with Mr. Teachbad on staff meetings.  Perhaps some teachers try to spice up the meetings with student gossip, but this defeats the purpose of the meetings (if there is any to begin with).  I would hope that a staff meeting of teachers could instead focus on classroom teachings and work on ways to help students instead of just gossiping about them.

Aimee Mullins

            I have seen Aimee Mullins on television programs prior to watching her on the TED talk, so I was interested to see her incorporate her views on her ‘disability’ with ideas about education.   While she does not directly discuss specific themes about school or education, I found that her life experiences serve as a model to both teacher and student about the limitless possibilities we have with our lives. 

            Her discussion about the students inquiring about her legs was most interesting.  I can imagine a teacher cautioning the students to not gawk at her legs.  Ms. Mullins clearly asks the opposite of students as she wants them to explore and learn from her different pairs of legs and engages the students in a discussion about different abilities and how her life is not limited by having prosthetic limbs.  I had heard about this experience previously and thought it interesting that students would ask if the legs gave her superpowers instead of asking what limits the legs put on her.

            I thought about this conversation and how technology has given Ms. Mullins more options than limits in her life.  The same ideas could also translate into the classrooms for students who struggle with disabilities, and even now some students are able to benefit from technological advances to help them with schoolwork that once proved daunting.  I have seen students use small word processors to help them write papers with minimal spelling errors if they have reading or writing learning disabilities.  These processors also give the student who cannot write a ‘superpower’ so that they can produce the same or better assignment than a classmate without a disability.  I would hope that technology continues to produce tools that all students can use to heighten their abilities in the classroom.

Education Revolution - Sir Ken Robinson

Sir Ken Robinson; Bring on the Learning Revolution

            I know this sounds corny, but I wanted to thank Sir Ken Robinson and basically hug him after this talk.  It was amazing to hear and I was laughing out loud for most of it (making my husband wonder whether I was actually doing homework). 

            For a while now, I have been having a personal crisis with my teaching career – of course in my last couple semesters of my Master’s program.  Go figure.  It is not that I do not want to work in education, on the contrary I love working with students and watching them learn and enjoy learning.  I remember days of student teaching and substituting and running home excited to tell my husband or someone else that I helped a student learn something and that the student enjoyed the learning experience.

            My problem seems similar to Sir Ken Robinson’s.  It seems that our education system has not worked for years, even decades by now.  I continuously think about how many researchers have found problems with the educational system, even as early as the Industrial Revolution, and still we have yet to change anything with that system.  Students continue to trudge through school and learn in the same ways.  Ideas abound about how to change the educational system, but it seems that we have become so comfortable with the system that we hesitate to change anything about it. 

            So what do we do?  Is there to be a revolution, as Robinson suggests?  If so, I would love to see the ideas for it.  I admit, I used to be more of a traditionalist but experience has made me into more of a progressive thinker.  We cannot continue to educate students the same way because our world is changing constantly.  This revolution will take a lot if it does happen, and there will be much resistance I am sure.  I want to teach in a school that creates a positive student experience where the entire school community truly cares about the student as a whole and not just test scores and performance.  A more holistic environment for students, one that cares for their minds and bodies, and one that is not controlled by corporate interests.  I would hope for the future that we move from the ‘fast food’ model of education, as Robinson talked about, and towards a model that is more student centered.

Ken Robinson; Schools Kill Creativity

Ken Robinson – Schools Kill Creativity

            When I watched Ken Robinson speak about how schools kill creativity, I consistently thought of personal examples from my own education and observations that I have made in schools that are consistent with his thoughts on the subject.  While I do not think that school systems and teachers stifle creativity intentionally, I think that it is more of a product of the educational system as a whole and what expectations we place on students.

            As a child, I was in a gifted program in my school and this teacher praised creativity throughout each lesson.  We met as a class twice a week for about a half hour and it was my favorite class.  Thinking back, I remember only having about eight classmates and I assume that there was testing involved to be included in this class.  I always wonder why we were the only ones who had the opportunity to learn from such a wonderful teacher and what my friends back in the classroom missed out on (or vice versa).  I had some great teachers and some not-so-great ones, but I always wonder about the impact of using creative lessons used in gifted classes for all students and encouraging student individuality in all classrooms.

            I would love to invite Mr. Robinson to speak to some teachers I have had the opportunity to observe, if only to tell them that stifling creativity doesn’t help students very much at all.   For example, in one classroom where students were given a choice of birds to pick for a report only two students could pick the same bird and one student was actually discouraged from picking one certain bird and was assigned another (the species name evades me, but it would have been common enough for the student to research). 

            My favorite point is how Ken Robinson speaks about how children are educated for skills only and not what they enjoy.  One need only to look in any field and find grumpy workers who chose their career based on skills and earning potential and not what they had a passion for.  I have heard many a co-worker speak of what they enjoy but drone on in a boring existence just to earn a paycheck.  I would like (in a perfect world) to educate students and encourage them to follow their passions and find something that they would enjoy doing; not a job or even a career, but something that fulfills them.  On that note, I need to discuss this talk with my friend. While she doesn’t have the largest paycheck, she is more than happy teaching belly dance lessons, creative writing courses, working as a theater stagehand, selling craft items and writing novels.  It seems like a life that isn’t financially secure, but she keeps busy all the time and enjoys every minute.  This is the kind of student I want to educate.