• Welcome to Teachers At Risk

  

• Elona Hartjes

• Recent Comments

  • Megan Huntley on Listening to Music Helps Students Be More Productive in The Classroom
  • Megan Huntley on Listening to Music Helps Students Be More Productive in The Classroom
  • Larry Ferlazzo on Sometimes motivating students is as easy as asking a question.
  • kontan on Helping students find their way to success
  • Elona Hartjes on Helping students find their way to success
  • kontan on Listening to Music Helps Students Be More Productive in The Classroom

• An honour

  • Edublog Awards

• Some Blogs I Enjoy Reading

  • Doug Belshaw
  • dy/dan
  • Edu Blog
  • Eduwonk
  • Kevin’s Meandering Mind
  • Larry Ferlazzo
  • Leading from the heart
  • Open Court Resources
  • Special 2 me
  • Teacherscreech
  • Thoughts On Teaching

• Some Podcasts I Enjoy Listening To

  • A Buddhist Podcast
  • Ideas
  • Tapestry

• Some websites I find useful

  • Clearview Education- Resources for teachers and teaching
  • F.I.L.M.
  • Special Education Today
  • Supportive Behaviour Management
  • Teachers Net
  • Twitter for Teachers Wiki
  • We The Teachers
  • Worksheets Library

• Toronto Reading Council

  • Toronto Reading Council

• Meta

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

It hardly seems possible.  School starts back on Monday.  The two weeks of the Christmas holidays have just flown by.  I’ve enjoyed not having my week days defined by the ringing  of  bells every 75 minutes.  I got caught up on my reading by listening to ebooks (sneaky eh!), and I finally got to watch all three seasons of The Tudors thanks to my iPod.  I took it along with me whenever I anticipated having to spend time waiting.  The hour and a half wait at the Doctors office last week just flew by as a watched the downfall of Anne Boleyn.  My blood pressure was just where it should be.  What a wonderful way to bring history to life.  I’m not sure how accurate the TV program is,  but it certainly is  engaging.  Too bad there’s so much adult content. I could never show The Tudors to a class unless they put out a heavily censored version.

These last two weeks, I’ve been practicing  just living in the moment,  not worry about what happened in the past or worrying about what might happen in the future- like Monday  morning at school, like exams in three weeks, like the EQAO math test my students will write, like report cards at the end of January , like my next MEd course that starts on Tuesday , like…..As you can see, I still have some work to do about the ” not worry about the future” part of living in the moment.  I need some hints.  Has anyone found a way that works for them.  I think living in the moment would help keep things in perspective and reduce the stress load immensely. I’d really appreciate any advice.  Living in the moment is my one and only new year’s resolution.

photo of Peace Tower in Ottawa  thanks to jpctalbot

photo uploaded by The ChristianAlert.org

I’ve spent a lot of time over the years in my role as a special education teacher trying to get students to stop engaging in behaviours that are destructive. This year I had my students read and reflect upon The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens in an effort to show them what choices they can make to get more positive outcomes for the future. I tell them if they don’t like the consequences of their actions, they need to change what they do. But, I’ve found that often they don’t necessarily know what behaviours to change or how to go about changing them. That’s where character education comes in.

I’m always looking for ways to support my students who have behavioural issues, so when I come across a new idea, I’m really interested. Recently, I came across a school wide behavioural program called Positive Action that is being used in Hawaii with 5th graders that shows much promise. The character building program continues through each grade and gives students a framework to guide their behaviour. It focuses on what to do, not just what not to do. Students learn to make better choices for better outcomes. Students who participated in the Positive Action program had fewer behaviour issues in school which resulted in better academic achievement. That’s definitely a win-win situation for teacher and students. I was surprised to learn that so many ten year old children engage in so many risky behaviours. I’m a high school teacher, and I know that teenagers engage in all kinds of risky behaviour, but I had no idea that kids as young a ten did. I wonder how many of you will be surprised as well. I wonder what my district is doing to help 10 year old children make better choices for better outcomes. What is your school district doing?

The 5 W’s and 1 H of a Classroom blog?  OK, OK, I know that the 5  W’s and 1 H of a Classroom Blog isn’t the most creative title for a post, but sometimes tried and true is OK, and all teachers know there’s nothing more tried and true than the 5 W’s and the 1 H, so here it is.

Although my students are pretty digital savy seeing that most spend hours and hours online visiting Facebook, YouTube, playing online games and text messaging, I can’t assume they know about  blogs and blogging so  I show them the following video.  I love it.  They love it. As you’ll see after viewing it, Common Craft , the company who makes these educational videos, believes in the KISS principle. I believe in the KISS principle. Keep It Simple for  Students. What’s not to like!  Common Craft also has videos on TeacherTube-great when YouTube is blocked like it is at my school. Grrrr!!!!

See, wasn’t that a great video, especially for students who are visual learners or for those struggling or  reluctant readers in your class who loath the printed page.

My students are usually quite excited when I introduce the idea of a class blog.  They like the idea of  writing blog posts and having others read what they’ve  written. To  be more precise, they like  not having to write something using pen and paper, and they like knowing that someone other than their teacher will actually read what they’ve written.  In the two years that I’ve had the class blogs,  only one student has asked me not to publish some of his work.   I’ve got no problem with that. At least, he was thinking and writing.

I suspect that the kids also like the blog because when their work gets published it  looks so professional-just like the articles in the papers, magazines or even in textbooks. Some of my students have really messy handwriting and are embarrassed by it,  and some of my students  find the process  of forming letters difficult to do so they write as little as possible.  When they type their work and use the spell checker, their work looks the same as everyone else’s when it gets published.  What they’ve written doesn’t look stupid, so they don’t feel stupid. They don’t have to be embarrased. That’s definately a good thing with reluctant and struggling students.

At first, I was a bit apprehensive about having my students contribute to a class blog.  Some of them can be very creative in a michevious way- if you know what I mean.  I told my students that  I didn’t want to have to take early retirement because something went wrong.  I can honestly say there haven’t  been any problems.  More about that later.

I wasn’t only concerned about  inappropriate material appearing on the class blog, I was also concerned about student safety. I didn’t want the class blog to put my students in harm’s way.   We’ve all read the horror stories about online bullying or harassment or even worse.  Fortunately, it was easy to put all the saftey  measures in place to protect my students so there have been no problems in the past two years.

In subsequent posts, I”ll share with you how I made the class blog a safe and inviting place for my students, and why I chose the particular blogging  tool I use for my class blogs.  Oh yes, I’ll also share the letter I sent home to parents to tell them about the class blog. I got wonderful positive feedback from parents about the blog.  I’ll tell y0u more about that later too.

See you then.

photo by anyjazz65

Someone once told me that when we’re  faced with difficult situations,  we’re really being given an opportunity to learn something. I got that opportunity last week, and it reminded  me of something I all ready knew, but had just forgotten.

Katie, not her real name, stormed into my grade 12 class late, sat down at the computer and pulled out her cell phone and started text messaging.   I looked at her quite surprised.”What’s with her?”, I thought. Cell phones aren’t allowed in school and she knows that.  I asked her  to put the cell phone away, and after she finished her text message she did  and then promptly  pulled out a chocolate bar and started unwrapping it and eating it.  Katie also knows that  eating in the classroom is not allowed at our school.  I asked her to put it away, and she did -after taking another bite. Then she took a bottle of water out of her bag and began opening it over the key board. I asked her to put that  away too.  She replied that it’s only water, implying what’s the problem? I have no problem with students drinking water  in  my classroom, but not at the computers.  Water could spill on the keyboard  and ruin it.  She  took another sip of water and then put the bottle back in her bag.

I turned to help another student  wondering what was up with Katie today but not taking the time to ask her.   The next time I checked to see how she was doing,  I noticed she was using her cell phone again. That was the last straw! I mean really- enough is enough. This time I asked her to go  to the office and speak to a VP about the cell phone.

Katie flat 0ut refused to go. She told me she wasn’t going to the office   because she had a lot  of work to do.  That was true. She’d  fallen behind because she’d skipped  20 or so  classes out of 50 so far.  As if Katie’s behaviour wasn’t enough,  a couple of  boys in the class started to encourage me to let her stay in class to do her work. “Come on miss”,  they said “Let her stay and do her work. Look she wants to do her work”  Great, I thought.  Just what I need at this point- a mutiny.  Now what?

It was my move. I  told her to go to the office, but she refused again.    I told her that if she didn’t comply with my request, I’d call  the office and have an administrator  escort her out.  She still refused, so I called the  office and explained the situation and an administrator came and that was that.

I just realized as I’m writing this that although I wondered at the time what had got into Katie and why she was  so defiant, I hadn’t thought to ask her . Maybe if I had  asked her  what was going and why was she acting like that, I might have avoided all the drama. But, I didn’t think of it at the time.  I was just annoyed by her behaviour.

At lunch that day, I shared my frustration  with a friend about what just had happened in  class.  I told him that I’d had it with Katie. His response was that I should soften my heart.  “Soften my heart”, I thought,  “What was he talking  about!” She had just ruined my class in a big way.  I wasn’t open to softening my heart.  On the contrary.  I was up for  hardening up my heart.  Thank you very much!  I was busy making all these plans about how I would treat her in professional manner when she returned to class, but no more than that. My anger continued to boil while I’m sure my blood pressure was reaching new heights.

Later on that evening while  I was continuing to  harden my heart , I began to think that maybe my friend was right.  Maybe I should soften my heart toward Katie.  That might not be such a bad idea after all.   My hard, hearted attitude wasn’t really helpful. I was still upset. My hardening heart  hadn’t  brought me any peace, on the contrary. The more I thought about Katie, the more upset I got.  By the time I got to work the next day, I decided that I would  soften my heart toward Katie. I decided that Katie must be hurting big time for her to act like that, and that a hard heart wasn’t going to help her or me for that matter.

I’d momentarily  forgotten the lesson that I’d learned a long time ago that when kids act out like Katie did, they’re really asking for help. They don’t need more hardened hearts. There are probably enough of those in their lives already. I’m going talk to Katie’s counsellor and see if she can get the support she’s crying out for.

Next Page →

• 

• Dislcaimer

  These are my personal views and not those of my employer.
• Search for:
• 
  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

• Archives

  Select Month 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

 Subscribe in a reader