Welcome to Teachers At Risk
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Jan
31
There are lessons to be learned about dependent underachievers in the most unlikely places
Filed Under "At-risk" students, Behaviour Management, Special Education, underachieving students | 3 Comments
If you’re anything like me, you’ve probably noticed from time to time that there are lessons to be learned about all sorts of things in the most unlikely places. Today, while I was dividing and repotting my orchids because they’d finished blooming and had really outgrown their pots, (see photo) I realized that they had a lesson to teach me about my dependent underachievers.
You see, if you give orchids too much care and fuss over them a lot, they don’t thrive despite your best intentions. In fact, the more you fuss over them the worse their performance will be. Orchids given too much tender loving care in the form of too frequent watering, too much direct sunlight, too much warmth, too much of anything really will stop growing and just sit there and do nothing. My dependent underachieving students are a bit like my orchids- too much TLC from people around them and they stop flourishing and just sit.
The best thing I can do for my orchids and my dependent underachieving students is to step back a bit and give them enough space and just enough support to enable them to blossom on their own.
Jan
30
It matters how you finish
Filed Under "At-risk" students, Dealing With Stress, Goals, SOS for Teachers, motivating students | 2 Comments
After watching this video, I’m embarrassed to complain about anything. See what you think.
I intend on showing it to my students come Monday and ask them to reflect on the message it has for them personally. I want to hear what they think after watching and listening to the video. I’m thinking that it will give them lots of food for thought.
I want to thank Jason for bringing the video to my attention via a twitter post. Thanks Jason.
Just click on the arrow.
Here’s some more info about NIck
After watching this I’m embarrassed to complain.
Jan
29
Being a good reader may depend on how your brain is wired
Filed Under "At-risk" students, Reading, Special Education | Leave a Comment
The latest research into reading ability suggests that whether you’re a good reader or not may depend on how your brain is wired.
New brain-imaging technologies and a spate of recent studies suggest that reading aptitude is better understood as a spectrum of abilities related to biological architecture than as a universally acquirable skill.
A study that followed 7-12 year old kids for three years found a correlation between the connections between neurons or the white matter in the brain, specifically in the thick band of neurons that connect the brain’s hemispheres, and a persons reading aptitude.
The piece of the brain that’s important for detecting moving objects and patterns wasn’t functioning as well in the kids who were poor readers
Researchers suggest that these findings could lead to discovering ways that could be used to help support poor readers by having computers or other text imaging devices compensate for neurological difference.
If this is the case, (researchers are careful to note that the results are very preliminary) then the way we would support poor readers would change since a person’s reading aptitude is actually a function of his or her brain architecture and not a function of acquiring reading skills.
Does this mean that weak readers could use some sort of devise to help them read in the same way that students with weak vision use their glasses to help them see or kids with poor hearing use hearing aides to help them hear? Kind of an interesting thought. I wonder if Apple is following the research or maybe even maybe thinking of funding it. Imagine the potential. There are so many kids who are poor readers.
The other thought I had about the research when I read it was that it was done on kids between the ages of 7-12. We know that the brain continues to grow and develop well into the late teens and early 20′s. Would the quality and quantity of the connections between the neurons of a more mature 20 year old brain still account for poor reading the way it did in those 7-12 year old brains or is something else at work as well. Could it be that kids have pretty well given up on reading by the time they are 20n and their brains have matured enough so that they can be stronger readers? I guess we’ll just have to wait for more research to be done to now those answers.
Jan
27
Maybe teachers should get the same treatment as doctors. Fair is fair, after all.
Filed Under Blogging in and out of the Classroom, The Way I See It | 6 Comments
uploaded by pfala
While waiting for dinner to cook tonight, (my husband was doing the cooking, and I was doing the waiting) I came across the following article in the paper and thought maybe we, meaning teachers, should get the same treatment as doctors. Fair is fair, after all.Here’s what the Ontario government agreed to give 33 000 family doctors.
Doctors will get a bonus to take on new patients. For instance, if a doctor takes on a complex patient, such as someone with chronic illness and multitude of health problems, they will get a $350 one-time payment
Now, I thinking that if the government agreed to give doctors 350 extra dollars as an incentive to treat complex patients, maybe the government should give teachers an extra 350 dollars payment to teach each complex student , students with learning disabilities, behaviour problems, ADHS/ADD etc., etc., etc.
The more I think about the idea, the more fair it seems to me. I teach about 30 complex students a semester so that would be 30 x $350 = WOW!!!
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