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• Elona Hartjes, MEd (Candidate), Ontario Certified Teacher

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As a kid I grew up in a small community where everyone knew everyone’s business. You had no privacy. I hated that. I didn’t want anyone knowing my business, especially as a teenager. I decided when I grew up I’d go live in the big city so I could be anonymous , and that’s just what I did. I loved it. No “busy body” neighbours noticing where I went and what I did. I have to tell you least you get the wrong idea here, when I look back I realize as a teenager I led an extremely boring life. I was the poster child for Miss Goody Two Shoes. That wasn’t the point. I didn’t want anyone noticing what I was doing boring or not. I hated being under the microscope.

The thing I realize now is in a small community or village the fact that everyone knows what’s going on and could tell your parents or the authorities if you did something out-of-line made people stop and think about what they were doing. The eyes of the village made people in the village  accountable for their behaviour. I just realized after watching video clips on the news of  the recent riots in Vancouver cell phone cameras are now the eyes of the villagers seeing all and making people accountable for their behaviour.  The eyes of the cell phone cameras  caught people behaving in unacceptable ways in Vancouver and these people are now being held accountable, much to their surprise and chagrin.

Cell phone cameras are making people accountable for their behaviour. Maybe people will think twice before acting in unacceptable ways because there’s a good chance they’ll get caught . Maybe cell phone cameras are a good deterrent. That’s  a good thing.  What do you think?

 

Photo thanks to information nation

Keeping students  on-task  is a challenge all teachers face.  I know I’m always looking for strategies to help me.  Lindsey Wright shares some of her ideas for keeping students on-task in her post below.  Thanks Lindsey.

 

Lindsey Wright is fascinated with the potential of emerging educational technologies, particularly the online school, to transform the landscape of learning. She writes about web-based learning, electronic and mobile learning, and the possible future of education.

Some educators specialize in teaching at-risk youth, while others may have only a few members of a particular class who they would deem at risk. How is an at-risk student identified? The most obvious criterion for at-risk students is their grades. If they begin a new school year or term with low grades, this may be a sign of a child whose focus is not on education. A sudden drop in grades can be another indicator that a child’s focus has shifted away from education to make way for other matters that may seem more pressing to the student. Consistent tardiness or absenteeism are also common indicators.

 

If you teach at an online school you are in luck, as this is an issue that you probably only rarely encounter, if at all. However, if you teach in a tough school, many of these signs are likely all too familiar. In fact, all, or the majority, of your students may exhibit these behaviors. Students whose main focus is not on education during school hours are notoriously difficult to teach. Their minds wander, they pass notes, they act out inappropriately, and generally disrupt the learning process. In these situations it is easy to quickly become frustrated. Despite your best intentions, on some days it may just seem as though it is impossible for the class to make any progress.

 

However all is not lost. There are actually a variety of ways you can minimize in-class interruptions when working with at-risk students. For instance, many such students are living in poverty. Sometimes they act out at school or find it difficult to concentrate simply because they are hungry. If you can ascertain that a student cannot concentrate in the morning because they haven’t had breakfast, you might consider checking into getting the child enrolled in a breakfast program so they can start the day off right. Alternatively, keep a few healthy, nutritious snacks on hand if there is a particular child you know will be coming to school hungry. You might slip an apple or a granola bar into their desk before the day begins, giving them a chance to fuel up and be ready to learn.

 

If there are hungry students in your classroom, and it is causing disruptive behavior, take the opportunity to teach the children about proper nutrition and how it can affect their overall health and energy level. Many students bring home what they learn and lessons about proper nutrition may start up a dialog in a student’s home that results in better dietary habits for the whole family.

 

Another useful technique for redirecting inappropriate behavior is to relate your lesson plans to something that the children you are teaching will find familiar and interesting. You might teach a lesson about physics by using dirt bikes as an example, or explore the connections between a social movement and a popular television show. However you decide to bring it about, showing your students there is a connection between what they are learning in school and the world that surrounds them outside of the classroom can be a valuable way to redirect their focus and keep them concentrating on the subject at hand.

 

You can also change disruptive, off-task behavior by catching a typically misbehaving student doing something right. If you notice that a child who generally has difficulty focusing in class pays attention well during a particular class segment, recognize that achievement, while overlooking a minor infraction of the classroom rules. The positive reinforcement will often be very powerful for at-risk youth who frequently do not receive any kind of positive feedback from anyone in their lives. A few kind words from you can help change that child’s pattern of behavior, perhaps even outside of the classroom.

 

Teaching at-risk youth is always a challenge. Their focus tends to wander because they may have other, more pressing matters on their minds. However, you can take this off-task behavior as an opportunity both to get to know the student better and to help turn their distraction to collaborative learning effort. By setting aside a little class time for fun, making certain that the child’s basic needs are being met, using positive reinforcement and relating lessons to real life experiences, you can help at-risk students succeed in school and in life.

 

 
Last month Elona wrote a post about the closing of school libraries and the cuts to librarians. It is no secret that library programs are the next to be cut. Over the past few years, arts programs including music and drama have been cut drastically to the point that they are entirely absent from some schools. Next they cut classroom aids and teachers that they deemed unnecessary.

How will our students become the next generation of successful adults if we continue to cut their education down to the bone and strip them of all sources of creativity?

With the librarian program cut it is more important than ever for teachers to take an active part in teaching literacy to their students. Reading is not only important for reading comprehension and literacy, but also for creativity, imagination, knowledge and language. The brain is an organ that needs to be exercised regularly. Reading is a great way to do this.

This is why it is so important to help our students learn to enjoy reading. There are tons of ways to help students become better readers. Correne Constantino uses graphic novels in her classroom to get students into a story and work them up to a full text version. Elona told me she has a colleague who obtained funding to buy each of his students their very own new book from Amazon. It’s the little things like this that help students become lifelong readers.

 

Laura works for Concordia University in the Master of Education department. She values reading and communication as the building blocks for education as a whole.

 

Image by librarianishish via Flickr

I’ve had to think about student YouTube-use management strategies in my class ever since the Board unblocked YouTube. From the moment my students discovered YouTube was unblocked, they kept sneaking onto it instead of focusing on the online assignment I’d given them. (I’ve written about my frustrating experiences here , here and  here.) Notice, I said my students “kept sneaking” onto YouTube. I can use the past tense because now my students don’t do that anymore- well almost not anymore.

What made the difference? I now give my students independent time on the computer for the first 15 minutes of the class to explore any topic that interests them. Students are free to access any site they wish during that time. My thinking here is that my students can meet their emotional needs (the need for undue attention, the need to feel important, the need for fun and the need for freedom) at the beginning of the class using their free time on the computer and then settled down and do the work I assigned to meet the needs of the curriculum for the last 60 minutes of class.

I can imagine that some of you at this point might be thinking that taking 15 minutes of class time to let my students explore what they will online is wasting time. Well, it actually isn’t. Let me explain. I teach struggling, reluctant students. Many of them are “at-risk” academically and find school offers them little. Usually my students will trickle into class for the first 15 minutes. I have to be pleased they come to class at all. I make my classroom as inviting as possible so students will come to class on their own accord. Mostly, it works. I don’t have many skips at all. Honestly, I’d rather they come to class a bit late than not at all. Since I’ve started letting my students explore their interests online at the beginning of class, they are coming to class earlier and earlier. They don’t want to miss out on the fun. Yes, the fun for most of them is YouTube. However, some students do choose other sites such as Wikipedia or coolmath games. We usually do have class discussions around what they choose to see. Mostly the discussion starts with me asking why they find the particular video they’ve chosen so interesting. I don’t ask this question to criticize their choices of videos, but to help me better understand my students. Believe me, I’m learning a lot about the culture of 14 and 15 year olds, and to think I have YouTube to thank for that. Who knew.

The other classroom management strategy I use to help my students focus on the assignment I give them is to block YouTube after the 15 minutes of free time. A large padlock appears on the screen indicating time is up. Students aren’t resentful that I do this. They get it. They know our tacit or perhaps not so tacit agreement. First I give them freedom and fun, then they settle down and do their work and give me completed assignments. We’re both happy. Our needs are met.

I’d like to thank Liz, teachermom, Sam and Melanie for leaving comments about their classroom experiences with students using computers as learning tools.   I appreciate their suggestions and  insights on the topic.  I do appreciate all the help I can get.

 

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