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• Elona Hartjes, MEd Candidate, Ontario Certified Teacher

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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.

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

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

I try to engage my struggling, reluctant students by using a variety of online applications as teaching tools for me and as learning tools for my students.  There’s so much available online now that I can use. Finding engaging teaching and learning tools is not a problem. Finding the time to learn how to use all these tools in the classroom is a problem sometimes.

Bitstrips which is a user- friendly, online comic strip maker is an excellent teaching tool and learning tool. I’m presently using it to have my students demonstrate their learning.

I’ve asked my grade nine students to use Bitstrips to create a graphic-non-fiction booklet about the teenage brain based on the PBS video Inside the Teenage Brain. The the  booklet  would be for grade seven students to read so they could understand  how changes in the teenage brain might affect them as they enter their teen years.

I teach my grade nine students  about the teenage brain, and how it  is responsible for the characteristics we associate with teenagers- sullenness, difficulty going to sleep, difficulty getting up, engaging in risky behaviour, just to mention a few behaviours.  Students enjoy learning how their brain affects their behaviour because they finally can understand why they behave the way they do, and why adults react to them the way they do.

I planned the unit on the teenage brain  mindful of two things.  First,  my students enjoy spending  lots and lots of their free time online watching videos of one sort or another and little time reading, and second my students enjoy novelty. When I introduced the teenage brain assignment, my students  were quite keen on learning why they  behave as they do, and when I asked them to demonstrate their learning by creating a graphic-non-fiction booklet, they seemed to relish the idea.  If someone had complained about creating the booklet using Bitstrips, I would have entertained other options.  But, no one did, so we were good to go. I suspect  my students would  rather create a graphic-non-fiction booklet than write an essay to demonstrate their learning.

I introduced the teenage brain unit by asking them to do a placemat activity to generate the characteristics of  teenage behaviour.  After we talked about teenage behaviour, I asked them why teens acted the way they do.  Hormones is the answer I got.  I told them it was more than hormones that caused teenage behaviour.  It  was the teenage brain itself that caused teenage behaviour.  The teenage brain is different from the child’s brain and different from the adult’s  brain.  The teenage brain is unique, and they were going to find out why and how. I had their interest!

After our introductory discussion, I outlined what they would be doing during the unit. They would be learning about the teenage brain and how and why it affects teenage behaviour. They would be

• watching the  PBS video  Inside the Teenage Brain;
• taking notes from the video and a transcript of the video using the note-taking  graphic organizer;
• using the note-taking rubric to be mindful of  note-taking expectations;
• using the story board to plan the graphic-non-fiction-booklet;
• using the rubric for the story board to be mindful of the storyboard expectations;
• using the Bitstrips application to create the graphic-non-fiction booklet;
• using the rubric for creating the booklet to be mindful of booklet expectations.

I asked my students  to take notes during the video using the  Inside the Teenage Brain note organizer I created just for this assignment. I’ve  noticed  my grade nine students take notes better if they aren’t faced with an empty 8.5 x 11 in.  lined page. I think they’re intimidated by an entire empty 8.5 x 11 in.  lined page, so I  create graphic organizers to help them.  I’m hoping that given more practice note taking and more confidence, my students won’t need these graphic organizers or if they do, they can learn to create their own using Word.

I’m using this kid friendly  note taking rubric I created for the note-taking assignment.

Since many of my students have difficulty taking good notes while watching a video, I provided a link to the  the transcript of the video so they could read what was said during the video  and add to their notes.  Then I met with my students and we evaluated their notes using  the note-taking rubric to discuss strengths and next steps.

My students have almost  completed their note-taking activity and are ready to go on to planning their graphic-non-fiction booklet using the Inside the Teenage Brain Story Board legal size .

I haven’t had my students complete a graphic-non-fiction booklet before, so I’m not quite sure yet how many frames or pages would be reasonable to expect from my students. I’ll discuss this with my class,  and once we’ve decided on a range of possibilities, we’ll create a rubric to use as a guide for the booklet.  I’ll share all this in my next post.

If anyone has any hints about creating graphic-non-fiction booklets, I’d sure appreciate hearing them.  Creating a graphic-non-fiction booklet is all new to me.

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