Help Curb Teacher Health Insurance Rate Increases. Please.

Pardon this interruption in posts - I needed a place to share some information. Not that I've been posting lately, so it will probably go unnoticed. But I am sharing some information on Facebook and needed a web address to refer friends for more information.

 If you are joining me for the first time, and if you teach, feel free to look around. I'm proud of the very few posts I have here - and need to return to posting.

But this is why your are here. The information about Arkansas teacher insurance rates. You can read an additional article here. The following is information sent out to members of my classroom teachers association. It is helpful in contacting the correct committee members.

 On Monday, September 9th, there is a hearing in Little Rock to look into the increase in health insurance costs for public school employees. I've been asked for suggestions as to how to write the chairs of this committee to voice your opinions and concerns on this matter.
Teachers across the state are horrified by this increase, and there will be teachers from across the state at this hearing to show support for finding a solution to this issue. For those who are working and can't make this MONDAY meeting in Little Rock, writing an email is a powerful way to letting your voice be heard. I strongly urge you to take the time between now and Monday to do this.
Hints about how to write your representatives:

1. Make your point in your subject line. Sometimes they don't have time to read more than that. 

1. Make it short and sweet. Mine is too long--which is nothing new. A few sentences about how this will affect you, affect the paras/staff in your building, affect your disposable income during a weak recovery from a recession--short and sweet. 

1. Please don't just copy and paste mine. They see right through that, and give it little credit. 

To fix this problem before it goes into effect in January, we need to have legislators that are willing to help and a governor who is willing to call a special session.
 PLEASE HELP!
The chairs/vice-chairs of education and insurance standing committees are:

• Senator Jason Rapert, Chair, Senate Committee on Insurance and Commerce, Jason.rapert@senate.ar.gov 

• Senator Keith Ingram, Vice-Chair, Senate Committee on Insurance and Commerce, friendsforkeith@gmail.com 

• Representative Tommy Wren, Chair, House Committee on Insurance and Commerce, tommy.wren@arkansashouse.org 

• Representative Robert E. Dale, Vice-Chair, House Committee on Insurance and Commerce, redale70@yahoo.com 

• Senator Johnny Keys, Chair, Senate Education Committee, Johnny.Key@senate.ar.gov 

• Senator Joyce Elliott, Vice-Chair, Senate Education Committee, Joyce.Elliott@senate.ar.gov 

• Rep. James McLean, Chair, House Education Committee, james.mclean@gmail.com 

• Rep. Ann Clemmer, Vice-Chair, House Education Committee, avclemmer@sbcglobal.net

If you are willing to write a short email, please tell these members how this will affect you and your family. If you don't teach, please remember that when the best teachers, the ones with education and drive to excel in their professions, when those teachers find that they can make considerably more money and better benefits almost anywhere else, where do you think they will go? Do you want your children taught and cared for only by those who couldn't get a better offer? 

We teachers appreciate the support of our friends, students and their families. Thank you for reading this. Maybe we can make a difference.

When blogging is MY project

I admitted to some confusion or lack of ability to organize my thinking on project based learning in my last post. Then it suddenly hit me. I am in the middle of my own project!

When I attended the blogging workshop at the beginning of the summer, I started a blog in class. The title I gave to the blog, Book Curious, suggested one focus (books) and I envisioned one audience (students). But another assignment that day was to write our first post - "About Me." As we were presenting our blogs to the class, I realized that I had addressed a completely different audience (teachers) in my post (1).

After the training, I thought about the blog I had created, and realized that I had more to say than the original focus of my blog. I decided to create a second blog at home, which would focus on technology and education issues, and be directed at teachers. I revised the book blog to reflect it's clearer focus. (2)

I began to think about what I should write. I realized that the blogging workshop had some really great ideas, ones that I would like to use in class this year. But I also am working towards more lesson planning with the other 7th grade English teacher, who had not attended the training. SHE was attending other trainings this summer that I couldn't. What we needed was to share information. And suddenly I had ideas and a purpose for writing - at least on the teacher blog. (3)

I decided to blog, at least to begin with, about the trainings that I was attending over the summer break. It would combine some how-to entries, some links to further information, and some notes and reflections to remember the training. (4)

With my first entry, I realized that I wanted to include a graphic showing a web page, and identifying portions of it. I emailed a technology teacher, who told me how to make a screen capture, how to open it in Powerpoint, label it and draw shapes, and export it as a .jpg file, which I added to my post. (5)

Subsequent posts taught me that graphics help relieve the eye after so much text. I embedded videos, photos, and a slideshow. Many of the images I included did not load in a way that I thought was pleasing visually. So I checked the HTML code, found the image size measurements, and made changes. But I didn't want to distort the image, so I had to increase or decrease the measurements in the same proportion. (6)

Although it doesn't always seem like it, I learned to revise for grammar, spelling, and length (yes, some of these posts were longer.) I researched sites that I was recommending. I prioritized writing ideas, set goals, set (and broke, I admit) deadlines for completion. (7)

How would I feel if my students did this?

Are you kidding me?

Look what I've accomplished:

(1) completed class assignments, evaluated product, identified strengths and weaknesses.

(2) devised a solution for biggest weakness (lack of focus), identified audiences and purposes for writing two blogs, independent practice of skills taught in class to create second blog, edited first for focus

(3) established purpose and ideas for writing, researched information analyzed notes for instructions and resources

(4) explored different forms of writing, according to subject matter covered, analyzed notes for instructions and resources

(5) identified problem/need, researched solution, self-taught new skills (Synthesis level of Bloom's includes integrating training from several sources to solve a problem) - not to mention collaboration and reading of practical, instructional text

(6) still evaluating, assessing effectiveness, now I'm crossing curriculum to math (I've already asked the 7th grade math teacher when and how she teaches proportions, thinking I can use it in a blog lesson at the same time of the year)

(7) revised for content, usage, and mechanics. Published and sought (some) peer review.

I wrote this a couple of days ago, and was actually thinking of erasing it. It seemed so obvious both that I had done these things, and that they had educational value, especially if I can get students to do some or all of them, too.

But I'm going to go ahead and publish it, exactly because it wasn't obvious to me, especially while I was doing it. I did exactly what I would pray my students would do, with no requirements or trainer-given assignments other than the first two. I did it, determined what and when and how and how much. It became relevant to me, and truthfully very rewarding.

Now, I'm an intrinsically motivated person who loves learning so much that I would probably engage in a lesson on mold growth. I love it. I'll have students who don't. But if I could get 5-10 to do just half as much, and share it with their classmates, then I could see some very exciting things start to happen in my classroom.

What is your "project?" Did you ever think of turning it into a student project?

When learning is a project

If you've recovered from the clip of Matt Damon, let's get back to my summer workshops (if you haven't recovered, you have my permission to revisit the video and hit Replay as often as you feel necessary. As they say in some workshops, "Pull your own happiness wagon.")

The next workshop I attended was Connecting Students with Project Based Learning, again taught by the lovely and accomplished Oretha F. Here is the workshop wiki that she used (lots of good links, as always) and a little video she started us off with.



I have some intermittent notes, that I will share along with highlights from the wiki. The video above emphasizes three things in project based learning: critical thinking, collaboration, and communication. I'll give you another number to remember: two. The biggest keys to true project based learning are Choice and Time. "When your students' projects all look alike (all posters, all reports, or all powerpoints), then it's not true project based learning. It doesn't include the deep thinking involved in choice."

Of course, there were some questions - like how do you keep your sanity as a teacher when students are truly given choice? How do you manage a classroom and maintain control? I'm not sure we had comprehensive answers for that, but some thoughts might be that you change your definition of control. You establish rubrics, not just for what a finished product will look like, but also for time to complete stages of projects, for what content is important and what learning you (the teacher) need to see.

The article "Why Teach with Project Based Learning?" from Edutopia is an introduction to several articles and videos that they have on their site. It includes a 9:00 minute video that was interesting, but I found frustrating at times (it suggested dropping standards - not an option I'm given - and it concentrated heavily on science). But there was especially one paragraph that I liked.

Because students are evaluated on the basis of their projects, rather than on the comparatively narrow rubrics defined by exams, essays, and written reports, assessment of project-based work is often more meaningful to them. They quickly see how academic work can connect to real-life issues -- and may even be inspired to pursue a career or engage in activism that relates to the project they developed. [italics added]

The idea of activism, of participating in the wider community, of developing a sense of social justice and involvement is one that has been recurring to me for a few months. I think this is a good way to engage students in an English class. They see my class as "boring" and just reading, writing, grammar. I think that the key - relevance - is found in how we use this area of study in the real world. And that all boils down to communication. I hope to explore that in class this year.

An example we were put through - Oretha gave us a "quiz" (like an anticipation guide) on child labor. After about 3 questions, and revealing the answers (without discussion), students could be given informational texts on sweatshops, child labor, child soldiers, child marriage.... They can also be shown images (we were shown this one of a child soldier) and engage in a Write Around (conversations on paper - one person writes their own thoughts for a period of time, then passes to next person in group. Read theirs, and comment or repeat your thoughts. Students really look forward to getting their papers back and reading others thoughts.) Now, what did you do? You just tricked a bunch of students into reading informational text with interest, thinking about it critically (in order to evaluate it, summarize, or assimilate it into new arguments) and write persuasively. That's a good day's work!

Anyway, there's lots to explore at Edutopia. Look around.

From notes:

"Applying technologies of our daily lives...."
Implications of this:
* Students will need technology skills
* Students will be expected to solve real world tasks with tech tools
* Technology will be the "toolbox" for project based learning
* Students will be evaluated on what they can do as well as what they know

There was a powerpoint with information that I made a note to try to get. It concerned the new Common Core Standards, but I believe they were in technology, not Language Arts. See, I'm used to the older thinking of keeping standards separate. But if I'm correct, the new standards are much more cross-curricular, with literacy standards in history and science, and possibly vice-versa. I need to get up-to-date, because I think it's a brilliant concept.

Most of the rest of my notes are comments on links we saw. We also spent some time looking at projects that she had with her from classes (newsletters, brochures, and especially the collages - that she modeled for students with a simple 2 row set of pictures, and they outdid her with complex, beautiful digital creations, all about books). Here are highlights (may be on the wiki, may not):

Technology and Common Core - link to a wiki for another workshop that she is teaching. I thought it might have the powerpoint that I mentioned above. On quick investigation I didn't see it, but saw other things to explore.

Project Based Learning for the 21st Century - the Buck Institute for Education, with lots of examples, videos, etc.



Designing Your Project is a planning site that will lead you through the steps of planning a project based lesson. The first step? Begin with the end in mind.

DoSomething.org - a social activism site with videos, news, and projects (not necessarily classroom ones). The description says, "Using the power of online to get teens to do good stuff offline."


Outta Ray's Head is a lesson plan collection. It started with one teacher, but has had many contributors add to it. His goal was that "lessons would be complete with a rationale for why I used them, and the handouts and evaluations" rather than just general descriptions. Some good projects under literature and poetry.

ReadWriteThink is an excellent resource, a joint project of the International Reading Association and the National Council of Teachers of English. Explore to your heart's content from the main page, but here is an example of a project that uses adjectives to explore character traits, and another project that allows students to create social network-style profile pages (like for a literary character).

That's the notes, and links that I wanted to remember to explore. The truth is, this is such a vast topic that I still end up leaving a training a little confused. No, maybe confused isn't the right adjective, maybe it's overwhelmed. There are so many options and things to consider that it is hard to say immediately, "Aha! THIS is how I'm going to use this." We spent the afternoon, however, working on lesson planning, and I came a bit closer to a beginning of the year project that I have wanted to do for a while now. If I get it into shape, I'll post it here.

I'll leave you with this final question: How can technology support teaching and learning in your class today? If you can't clearly answer that question, then don't use it.

Then someone comes along and says it better....

To see him deliver a speech at the national Save Our Schools rally, click here.

Re-grounding myself in the why

I've actually debated whether or not to write this post, first because it is a departure from our training theme (Heavens, no! Not that!), and second because it just almost hurts to think of all this. It makes me tired, discouraged, sad. But we (teachers) are thinking of it anyway. We can't avoid it, really. So it's got to help to say it out loud. Right?

I'm deciding whether or not to see Waiting for Superman. That shouldn't be hard, just a yes or no decision. I'm curious about it - it's gotten so much attention. But I know that at least part of it is going to upset me, make me really mad, and maybe even give me a depressing sense of futility (about how my profession is perceived, not about students). And I'm asking myself if I want to go through that?

I'm not sure you realize, if you aren't a teacher, how much is being said and printed and recorded that is, at best, rationally critical, and at worst downright persecutorial about teachers and their failure in the American education system. I say American, because that's the system I know, but I recently asked a fellow blogger in Scotland if he feels a similar censure and he readily admitted it.

One teacher expressed it in some remarks he prepared for a panel discussion in California about the series of articles run by the L.A. Times** last year. He called what's happening lately an all-out media war on public schools and especially teachers. And it seems to grind on and on. The L.A. Times and Superman were last year, but my Yahoo news page keeps popping up headlines. In a 48 hour period this week, one news blog ran 10 news stories, 5 of them negative stories about education. Here's the sample:

A story about a teacher who anonymously blogged her uncensored thoughts about student attitudes last year.

A report that says that education (college) is basically futile for immigration students who can't use it to find better jobs anyway.

A poll that shows Americans' lack of confidence in public education.

A story examining teacher motivation in a couple of nationally reported scandals about cheating on state exams - yes, that's teachers (and administrators) cheating, not students. Be sure and check the link in the beginning of the story to the Atlanta scandal.

An article showing that school policies to curb violence and bad behavior in schools aren't working.

Click on these only if you want to read the articles. Because I've finally come to some conclusions about something.

I can feel as bad as I choose to feel about all this. There is plenty of legitimate bad news, and lots more blamecasters and naysayers that will weigh in, just because they can. It is bad.

But it's also good. Really good. There are lots of good teachers out there (yes, even in public schools), doing strong and exciting things. Most of these articles are chasing data that measures what we have done, sometimes not all that recently. Teachers know that things are changing so quickly now, in the world and in our classrooms, that we are already facing issues that the media won't be reporting on for another decade. Like how well we start transitioning to teaching a 21st Century understanding of literacy. Or how collaboration in the classroom may be the skill that is most needed by students for future professional success - and teaching it or measuring it will be a challenge.

The difference in how I feel will be what I choose to concentrate on. I believe I need to be aware of what is being said and what are the debates. But for me, spending too much time with it is like looking through a telescope - I focus in on one aspect (and the negative is easiest) without remembering to look at others.

So my reading must include articles like these, shared by our district's literacy coach:

Teaching Secrets: Managing October Exhaustion This article acknowledges that we all "hit a wall" at times, and has some really good suggestions for rejuvenating ourselves. I don't do all of these, but even just reading them makes me feel better. [and I owe this article for the title of my post today.]

How Teachers Fail -- and Thrive I read this in a workshop when I was struggling with just this issue - facing the failures that are an inevitable part of teaching. I was so relieved that I wasn't alone in feeling this.

Add to this reading about the things I want to teach, and new and better ways to teach them, and my reading plate is pretty full. The positive, more optimistic writers keep me going, while the critical stories make me want to go back to bed. Since that isn't an option, I guess I need to concentrate on reading the former.

One last thing. I've been doing a lot of thinking lately about why I am a teacher. I'm 4 years into a mid-life career change, without the comfort of feeling like I have mastered the game. I don't feel that I'm an "A" teacher (yet). I was always an "A" student, so this is unsettling. Why, then, am I still so committed, so engaged; why do I love teaching?

You know what I've come up with? It's a little weird. I want to be a producer. I want to produce something, a service, a lesson, that I give directly to the consumer, to borrow some social science terms. I've read about how popular and marketable degrees in business are, and I've thought about people I know who join large businesses as some kind of middle management. What do they do? I'm not trying to offend anyone, I'm just saying that what their work consists of doesn't seem to be anything that I would feel reward in doing. I can't fathom working for something like the stock market, where little pieces of paper (sorry, data) may be money, sort of, some day, in an abstract kind of way. What good does that do? Do they know the faces (or even the siblings) of the people they affect in the world?

I do.

I may not know all the ultimate outcomes, good or bad, of my teaching. But for those 10 months, we have a direct exchange, my students and I. I know the value of what I'm trying to pass to them. They show me varying degrees of appreciation or respect. It is direct, rewarding, and relevant to my life and theirs.

Hmm. Relevance. That's a word that we get hit with a lot in teaching. We're told that it is vital that we make lessons relevant for students. I guess that's also a real-world measure. I love teaching because it has relevance for my life and for me. Other jobs wouldn't, or not in the same way.

So Superman will have to wait (pardon the pun). Right now I just don't want to go there. I want to concentrate, as I have been for a couple of weeks, on the students I'm going to meet in 2 weeks, and how I'm so excited about new things I want to do in class (like student blogging, and iPad lessons).

________________

**I chose one link, hopefully a fairly balanced one, that gave a quick summary of the L.A. Times series. But the series was big, and the response was massive. If you don't know about it, and want to, Google "L.A. Times," "value-added," and "teacher" and you'll get pages of articles, some supporting the paper's choices, some arguing, some ridiculing. And the comments are a revelation.

But can I take it with me?

As I worked on the last few posts, I would occasionally grab my iPad2 (summertime's new toy) and either try to continue working on it, or just surf around and want to look up something that I remembered. Sometimes it worked out, sometimes it didn't. This, plus some well-placed advertisements on the websites I was visiting, made me aware that not everything works on tablet or mobile phone devices. ruh-roh

Our school, my department actually, has just gotten a classroom set of iPads to use with students. That was one reason I got my new toy, so that I could prepare lessons with it (you believe that, right?). Since my phone is 5 years old, and my son owns the iPod Touch, the iPad is the only mobile device I could check. But check I did.

In Blogger, I discovered that I could read my blogs, even watch videos and surf links with it. But posting was another story. Either the cursor or the keyboard doesn't like to show up in the post box. I found many, many frustrated questions about this in the Help forum, and the consensus was that Blogger, being a Google product, does not like to make apps for products of its rival, Apple. I don't have an Android OS phone to check this, but if it is going to work at all, my guess is that it will only work there. Another, smaller, complaint was the appearance. I have 2 blogs. The one I designed using a Blogger template shows up better (the background photo is replaced by a simple, complimentary-colored background). The blog I added a custom background image to looked awful. It was smaller and tiled in a strange way, scrolled with the page, so you saw lots of fractured images, instead of a background. Minimally functional, but pretty ugly.

For the mind-mapping software, we have 2 yeas, and 2 nays. Cacoo diagrams can be viewed on the iPad, but not edited, because editing takes Adobe Flash Player, something the iPad doesn't support. Bubbl.us cannot even be viewed, for this same reason. I'm not sure if this is a failing for them, or for the iPad. Many before me have commented that it should run Flash.

Mindmeister and Popplet both have iPad apps. Mindmeister has a free iPhone/iPod Touch app (that says it runs on iPad), and a $7.99 paid app - ouch! - one of the most expensive I've seen. Popplet has Popplet Lite (free) and a paid app for $4.99. To quote the write up in the App Store, "Popplet Lite will be free forever, but is limited to just one Popplet." They also caution that you cannot transfer a Popplet saved in the free version to your paid app. But this shouldn't be a big problem, because it is free forever. I guess it might not have some of the export options, though. Without the app, the website doesn't work because it, too, uses Flash Player.

But let's end on a happy note. Protopage comes up in Safari on the iPad just fine, with the RSS readers all working away. This is good to know, since it can still be used as a student start page whether on desktop, laptop, netbook, or iPad.

Brilliant!

Classroom websites using Protopage

I must confess to some past and current confusion on the subject of classroom webpages. When I started teaching, the first website service that I heard talked about within the district was PBWorks (formerly PBWiki). Wiki pages were being used both in my PD sessions, and by my instructors for their own classrooms. Then, within a year, I started hearing about teacher training for the 1:1 netbooks, and the teachers were using Protopages. Soon after that, I heard about Moodle, and that was just sooo much better than wikis or protopages. Moodle was where it was at.

I waited to see what was going to be next.

I'm still waiting, but I also realize that I don't know enough about any one of them, and I"m never going to if I don't start using them myself. I re-arranged my schedule to take classes on Protopage and PBWorks this summer. I opted not to take the 2-day Moodle training at this time. I figured I needed to know the ins and outs of the simpler systems before I tried Moodle, which I understand to be more feature rich, but also to have a steeper learning curve.

I'm taking things at my own pace.

[And I won't even go into the thought that everything I've learned about blogging means they, too, can make great class webpages.]

Here's something I didn't know about Protopage. It is set up as an RSS reader service. This allows you to get automatically updated information from many different sources, and Protopage has done a lot of the technical work for you. All you do is set up a page and start adding widgets.

Tips for Creating a Protopage

Protopage has its own minimal Welcome protopage, with some instructions for customizing your page, if you like. You can also click on the Help/Support tab at the top right of the page (once you have one) and it will click through a set of Basic and Advanced slides to teach you about different features. Pretty straight forward.

What confuses me is exactly how other teachers are using their protopages, because I certainly didn't see the RSS Reader function being a big selling point for classroom teachers. And I don't think it is. I think the linking, bookmarking and image posting is most helpful, with the Tabs feature helping you divide functions, assignments, categories, etc. But the sticky note feature also seems to be incredibly powerful with students, using it as a message board for students to post their notes and read others'.

I guess it goes back to what it says on the logo. A classroom protopage, properly named, could be a great Start page for your class, a portal to all your online endeavors, like blogs, wikis, webquests, bookmarks, email services, other classrooms, just about anything. This image will give you an idea of some uses (if you need it bigger, click on it, and use View/Zoom In on your browser).

This is Oretha's homepage. Yes, she does have a 1:1 classroom, and I can see how posting daily assignments would work, especially if you have the protopage set as the homepage in each netbook browser. Students would just open the browser and get to work. If you look around, she has a tab for a Technology Survey (that page has links for each of her classes to take an online survey she created in Survey Monkey). She also has a window that shows her wiki page (she has both). On her wiki she posts classwork and homework assignments (updated daily) and can upload documents and files that students can download. I haven't seen a file-sharing feature in Protopage - or Blogger for that matter - yet.

Other examples:

An elementary teacher with a lot of information and links.

Here is a site for a school director of Math and Science. Talk about a lot of resources all in one place.

Protopage seems like a website that you can customize over time; easily deleting expired daily items, but building a vast library of resources over years.

One thing that came up in class - you have to log in to make changes to a protopage, but once logged in, you can change anything on it. If you are interested in getting kids to participate, it might be best to have a teacher/master protopage that YOU create and control, then a separate protopage for each of your classes that has a log in that can be shared. You could put a link to that page on your master site. This would allow students to post sticky notes (that they can label with their first names) and comment on a discussion, without allowing them to delete all your hard work. And a page for each class doesn't require students to register separately. If not by class, you might set up a page by project.

It's not a comprehensive post about protopages, because my understanding is still limited. I don't yet know what I'm going to put on mine. But if you check back in the fall, I'm sure I'll have something.