Jul

3

Understanding Asperger’s Syndrome better

Filed Under "At-risk" students, Special Education | Leave a Comment 

I think this first person account of what life is like when you have Asperger’s  Syndrome is one of the best I’ve seen because it reminds me

  • that it’s OK to be different
  • there is a positive side to having Asperger’s
  • you can use your strengths to be successful
  • teachers can really help stop the bullying

I really like the optimistic tone. The glass is not half empty. Thanks to   @teromkotero for the link  via  Twitter

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Jul

2

Why do some students succeed despite their personal circumstances?

Filed Under Goals, motivating students | 3 Comments 

lader

Use your strengths to help you succeed. That’s the advice I give my students when we’re talking about their  future once they finish school. I let them define what success is,  and then we explore ways they can achieve that success. My students have many strengths. Unfortunately, many of these strengths aren’t appreciated by the school system. To give these kids hope, I tell them about all sorts of people who struggled through school or even dropped out and went on to be successful people.  Some of my students who are extremely bright and could do well in school don’t because their personal circumstances  aren’t conducive to success in school. They lose heart and give up. When I read about Khadijah  Williams I was blown away. What is it about Khadijah that allowed her to rise above her personal circumstances and end up getting a full scholarship to Harvard? What is it that enabled her to be so successful while others in similar circumstances are not?  There are many bright kids who could earn scholarships but don’t. Who or what is making that difference?

Here’s a brief summary of Khadijah’s  personal circumstances.

Williams was born to a 14-year-old mother who was estranged from her family. While Williams was growing up, her mother led her and her sister Jeanine through a series of homeless shelters around California, never staying long in any one location. Sometimes, they would have to dig through dumpsters for food, and spend their nights on the filthy streets.

Because the family moved around so frequently, Williams never had the chance to stay at one school for long. Over the course of 12 years, she attended 12 different schools, often leaving in the middle of a term when a homeless shelter shut down or refused to accommodate the family. But as early as third grade, when Williams placed in the top percentile on a state exam, she realized that she had a gift. Her brain would be her ticket out of the slums, and she didn’t want to squander the opportunity.

In fact,  Khadijah has decided to mentor other students

I think about how I can convince my peers about the value of education, … I have found that after all the teasing, these peers start to respect me . . . . I decided that I could be the one to uplift my peers . . . . My work is far reaching and never finished.

Why didn’t Khadijah loose heart and give up? Why did she find ways to help herself be successful and now want to help others? Why?

photo by aloshbennett

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Jun

28

New technology equals new excuses for why students can’t submit work on time

Filed Under Evaluation, Web 2.0 tools and technologies | Leave a Comment 

clock1Necessity is the mother of invention. I’m used to students giving me all kinds of excuses for why they can’t submit their assignments on time. Recently, I’ve heard

  • my printer isn’t working
  • my computer crashed
  • my printer’s out of ink
  • my cat peed on it
  • my dog chewed it up
  • my baby brother flushed it down the toilet

Well,  maybe not “my baby brother flushed it down the toilet”, but one student, Lydia,  did tell me that the sink in her kitchen  got plugged up,  overflowed and  ruined her project.   Apparently, Lydia  just loved doing her homework lying on the kitchen floor in front of the sink. She was doing her work there and got up to get  something from  another room and that’s when it happened.  The sink over flowed soaking her assignment with dirty water ruining it.   Go figure!

This year,  I’ve been getting some new excuses all to do with USB drives.   I can’t hand in my work because

  • I lost my USB drive.
  • I forgot my USB drive at home.
  • My brother has my USB drive, and I can’t find him.
  • I can’t find my project on my USB drive.

I advise my students to send me their work via email as a back-up in case something happens to their USB drive. No one has come up with excuses involving email, yet.   Maybe they don’t know about Corrupted-Files.  For a small fee,  students can download a corrupted file and then email the corrupted file to their teachers.

This download includes a 2, 5, 10, 20, 30 and 40 page corrupted Word file. Use the appropriate file size to match each assignment. Who’s to say your 10 page paper didn’t get corrupted? Exactly! No one can! It’s the perfect excuse to buy yourself extra time and not hand in a garbage paper.

I guess it’s just a matter of time.

photo by rberteig

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Jun

24

The power of report card comments

Filed Under Evaluation, motivating students, underachieving students | 2 Comments 

report card

It’s the end of semester, and I’m writing report card comments again. Ever since that conversation with  Darryl,  I’ve come to respect the power of report card comments.

I’m just trying to remember how  long ago I taught Darryl.  It was probably about 19 years ago, my first year at the vocational  school.  Darryl was in my grade 12 math class. It was one of the more lively classes I’ve taught over the years-  if get what I mean.  Darryl, n0t his real name, really gave me a run for my money.  While I was teaching the lesson at the beginning of the class, he’d pull out a small copy of the bible and read it.  When I asked him to put it  away,  he’d cause quite a commotion.  It was the bible after all.  How could I complain about someone reading the bible he used to ask me. The class love it.   (I actually thought at the time that was an ingenious way to get the teacher.)  He persisted.  I persisted.

I didn’t know it at the time, but Darryl had  been the student council president the previous year. Everyone love him. The sun shone brightly on him, so when complained to the office they wondered what was wrong with me, the new teacher at the school. I found out that Darryl  had actually graduated the year before but had come back to upgrade his marks.  He was a very popular student and at the beginning of that first semester,  he had more credibility with the office than I did!

Darryl and I  finally got to the point where the bible was put away while I  taught the lesson. Things seemed OK for a while, but when we got to algebra he started skipping class regularly.  He’d skip class  and  then come for help during his lunch which happened to be my prep time. I thought that strange but  decided that I’d help him even though he skipped class. Don’t ask me why I did that. To this day, I have no idea. It doesn’t make sense.

The relationship between Darryl and I  continued to be a bumpy one.  When it came to  the end of the semester, Darryl failed the final exam and the course. I entered the  mark  on his report card  and wrote the  comments  just like I do at the end of every semester and really didn’t  think any more about it.

A couple of years later as I was walking down the hall, I was surprised to see  Darryl.  He was visiting the school and saying hi to all his friends.  When he saw me, he came over and started to talk to me.  He was all excited because he had just started an apprenticeship as an electrician.   I was surprised and very pleased for him but wondered how he got the apprenticeship. Didn’t he need senior math to do that? While I was wondering about that, Darryl told that what I had written on his report card had made all the difference.  After reading what I had said on his report card,  he  decided go to another school for a fresh start and take  the math class again, and that time he  passed .

For the life of me, I couldn’t remember what I’d written on his report card that had made all the difference.  I was actually quite embarrassed because  I couldn’t remember, but  I just had to know what that profound thing was so I asked him.  This is what he told me,  “You said I could do it if  I really wanted to.  It was all  up to me.”

That was it  “You can do it if you want to.  It’s all up to you.”  I was really surprised. Of all the things I had said all semester to encourage Darryl, it was the comment on his report card  that made the difference.  When  Darryl told me how this comment affected him, I realized the power of report card comments.  Ever since then  I try not to waste the power and the opportunity writing them gives me.

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