• Welcome to Teachers At Risk

  

• Elona Hartjes, MEd Candidate, Ontario Certified Teacher

• Recent Comments

  • Ebony on Parenting angry children and teens training program
  • Tracy on Poor teachers dramatically reduce students’ life-time earnings
  • Jessie on Listening to Music Helps Students Be More Productive in The Classroom
  • garrick on Listening to Music Helps Students Be More Productive in The Classroom
  • A Bad Student on What’s going on with my underachieving students?
  • Theresa Thinnes on Teacher safety can’t be taken for granted

• An honour

  • Edublog Awards
• 
• A Public Service by Dentist Advisor

• Meta

  • Log in
  • Entries RSS
  • Comments RSS
  • WordPress.org

 

 

 

 

 

 

TheDeliciousLife

I can’t believe I’ve been writing my blog for five years now.  The time has passed so quickly. When I first started to write Teachers at Risk, I didn’t really know what to expect or what I was going to say beyond a few posts. I wouldn’t have even started blogging if it wasn’t for my son and daughter, Chris and Lisa. They encouraged me to start blogging and helped me get started and when I ran into trouble technically, which was quite often in those early days. Lisa was especially patient with me at the beginning. For that matter, she still is. My learning curve was very steep. Thankfully, blogging has become much more user friendly now than when I started.

I guess one of the reasons I started the blog was because I wanted to mentor other teachers. Much to my delight, other teachers started to mentor me by leaving comments sharing their experiences and insights  in response to what I’d written. I’m exceedingly grateful for any comments readers take the time to leave even when the comments challenge what I’ve said. I see myself as a life-long learner and  comments of all sorts facilitate that. I’d like to thank all of you who have left a comment on my blog or sent it to me my emailed.

I have to thank Chris for giving me the idea for the name for my blog. I was talking about at-risk students, and all I was trying to do to help them and Chris said something to the effect that I was always talking about students at-risk and what about teachers. They were at risk, too. Who was helping them. That was it. Teachers at Risk became the name for my blog.

I have to admit I wondered how people would find my blog to read it after I clicked on the publish button. Chris told me they would. I just had to be a bit patient. He was right. I can remember being so excited when the first 80 people visited my blog. This past year, over 120 000 people visited my blog. I find that amazing.  I mean I write about teaching students who are at-risk  academically. It’s  a very narrow niche  and yet…

I also used to worry about making errors in my posts.  I used to agonized over punctuation and grammar. Then one day I just decided that I’m human and if I make an error, so be it.  That decision was so liberating. I think people can and do see past any errors in punctuation or grammar I might make.  I’ve only had one person comment that  I was setting a bad example by making an error.  What can I say.  I’m not perfect.

I’ve written here before about all the exciting things that have happened to me since I started writing my blog. I wonder what the future will bring.  I can hardly wait.  Please feel free to leave a comment.  I love the insights people share.

I think I’ve finally figured out why some of my students in my grade nine learning strategies class continually insist on sneaking to other sites like YouTube when they’re supposed to be doing their assignments using sites like Prezi, VoiceThread, Animoto, Voki, Wordle, or Bit Strips.  Not only are these students off task when they go to other sites instead of the one they’re supposed to be on, they crank up the volume so loud other students hear the sound and crowd around the monitor to see what’s so funny and soon no one is on task. I’ve tried blocking sites to keep students on task, but they just find other sites to go to. It’s been driving me crazy. I’ve been wondering why these students choose to be off task and disrupt the class day after day despite our little talks in the hall. I can’t really ban them from computers because I so “cleverly” integrated computers into the course so they need to be online to complete their assignments. I felt really defeated because I want to use computers and online applications in my classroom but using them was causing me such grief. I was beginning to wonder if it was counter productive to have my students use computers and online technology in the classroom. Then suddenly, it dawned on me. Some of my students are behaving the way they are while using computers because they are trying to try to meet their emotional needs in mistaken ways.

Ages ago, I learned about Glasser’s Behaviour Choice theory.  The idea is that students act certain ways to try to meet certain basic needs.  Sometimes these students try to meet their needs by inappropriate behaviour. These needs are are

• Survival- the need for for, shelter, clothing
• Power- the need to feel important
• Love/Belonging- the need to feel accepted and loved by others
• Freedom- the need to choose what we want to do with our lives
• Fun- the need to find enjoyment in life by learning and playing

For example, a child might try to meet his need to feel important by getting undue attention.  When my students are off task and go to other sites online and turn up the volume so that everyone crowds around them, they’re getting undue attention from other students and from me.  They might be thinking they’re only important when they  keeping me busy and keep getting the attention of other students.   That scenario seems to fit a couple of kids in my class.

Students could try to meet their need for power by going off task repeatedly and promising me when I try to redirect them that they will stop going off task and stay focussed but don’t, and I have to continually refocus them.  They may think that they only belongs if  they can be boss and prove I can’t make them do anything. I see that explaining some of the behaviour I see in my class.

Some of my students have profound learning disabilities that makes school difficult for them, and they don’t do as well as some of the other students.  They often feel stupid even though they have average or above intelligence. Since they have difficulty learning or demonstrating their learning,  learning isn’t much fun and they meet their need for fun by amusing  themselves by going to other sites like YouTube which they find entertaining.  When I ask my students why they go to other sites, they  tell me the other sites are fun. I can see why they think that  that because these fun alternative sites don’t expect anything from them like the sites I assign that support the curriculum. For at least one student,  learning how to take tests or write a strong paragraph can’t compete with  the fun of listening to various body sounds (farting sounds)  on www.soundboard.com. No, I’m not kidding.  A student, a grade 9 student, went  to that site and played back farting sounds to amuse himself while while other kids worked quietly on task- quietly, that is, until they heard the farting sounds.

Students could meet their need to chose what they want to do with their lives by refusing to do the assignments in class because they don’t want to be in a special education class. They want the freedom to choose what to do, and they don’t have it. They don’t want to be in my class so they choose not to do the work.  I’ve  heard students tell their friends my class is another English class even though it isn’t.  Students will even ask to keep the door shut because they don’t want their friends to see them in the learning strategies class because it’s a special education class.

When I think about some of the behaviour  goíng on in my class ín light of  Glasser’s theory, the behaviour makes sense to me. I now understand why some of my students act the way they do when they are completing assignments online.

Since I use computers  in my class, students are not sitting in the usual classroom configurations of rows or  tables.  They’re  sitting at computers facing the outside walls of the classroom. They don’t have the opportunity to  interact with me or their classmates in the same way as before I had computers in the classroom, so they have to figure out how to meet their emotional needs in the new context of a classroom with computers.  Students are trying to meet their needs in this new context  in inappropriate ways and this leads to a less than a positive learning environment.  The challenge for me is to help students  meet their needs in positive ways using appropriate behaviour in this new context. .

Any ideas?

 

photo thanks to sanjoselibrary

What’s that old adage “Be careful what you wish for. You just might get it”. I’ve been wishing the school would unblock YouTube so I could use it freely in my classroom. A couple of days ago my wish came true, and my nightmare began. LOL

I’ve been complaining for a long time about the fact that the school board was blocking YouTube. What a pain, I thought. There are so many educational videos on YouTube that I wanted to use in my classroom. I do use SchoolTube but not everything is on it. I’ve been downloading YouTube videos at home, converting them and then loading them onto  my netbook  so I can show them at school. What a pain. As if I didn’t already have enough to do. Oh yes, a password was available for my use, but I would have to go and ask an administrator for it in person.   He would write it down a a slip of paper, and I was left with the impression that I was supposed to guard it with my life. The password would change periodically, so  I would have to go find an administrator and ask for the new password. Let me tell you, I hated that. It felt demeaning. Recently, the board made the password available on line so I didn’t have to go find an administrator  to give it to me. That was much better. Then just a couple of days ago, my students discovered that YouTube was no longer blocked. The school had unblocked You tube.  The kids were ecstatic.

My teaching practice is information computer technology rich.  I use information computer technology to teach, my students use it to learn and to demonstrate their learning.   Now that my students can access YouTube freely, I’m constantly having to redirect them away from YouTube and back to their assignments. It is so frustrating. I’m not sure exactly what I’m going to do.   I think I’m going to have class meetings tomorrow with my students and have them come up with a policy about watching You Tube in class. I’m sure we can figure it out. Got any ideas you might share with my classes?

Here’s a link to another post I wrote about YouTube in my classroom that talks about  a  strategy I found that works.

School starts next week, and it’s time to dust off my tool kit I use to engage my reluctant and struggling readers and writers. I need to remind myself that there are lots of reasons why my students are reluctant to read and write- learning disabilities, competition from other activities, lack of interest, school not valued. Some of my students have told me they don’t read and write outside of school. Of course they do. They just don’t realize it. I have to make them aware that they read and write outside of school everyday. I need to help my students make a paradigm shift and so they can realize when they text message, email, surf the net or are on YouTube they are reading and writing all the time. My students are very comfortable online. they spend hours and hours on line. I try to use that to my advantage when trying to engage my more struggling and reluctant students.

Good pedagogy states that I should start where our students are. Where are my students? The BBC reported recently that today the average kid spends 44.5 hours a week on-line. Imagine. I can hardly believe that, but when I asked my students whether they thought the statistic was accurate they seemed to think it was pretty accurate.
given that my students practically live online, I decided to build a Web 2.0 tool kit to use in class.

I’m going to share with you a slide show I used at a presentation last year to introduce the Web 2.0 tools I use and why I use them. I also give an example of how I used them. Hope you find the slide show useful.

Next Page →

• 
• Tweet
• Search for:
• 
  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

• Archives

  Select Month February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006 August 2006

• Dislcaimer

  These are my personal views and not those of my employer.

Improve the web with Nofollow Reciprocity.