Month: June 2008

I just finished the first full week of the summer break.  If you want to call it that.  Monday, was the ACP Kickoff meeting — ACP is Assessment of Course Performance and is our district finals.   I spent some of that afternoon working on second semester curriculum.

Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday morning was two and half days of staff development which I am getting $200.00 for.   By the way, that’s part of a whole different post.  It was interesting, a whole set of dog and pony shows about STEM.  Unforturantely I am way past the dog and pony show.

Friday morning was: take dog to the vet (which I have put off for months because I’ve been too busy at school) to get pheno barb levels, appointment with doctor, planned for after the school year because of time constraints, and then spent the majority of the day working on the ACP.  I’ve also spent a few hours through the week working on curriculum.

Saturday I also worked for the district, on the ACP, and then went to a Memorial for a friend who recently passed away.

Needless to say, not much of a vacation so far, but I have had time to organize things.

I’m in the ACP Kickoff meeting and just found out our first deadline is June 25.  Also, just found out that none of my partners showed up!  Oh well.

But right now, I’ve scheduled every single moment for ACP’s and leaving that with the coordinator.

Interesting piece — the program at our school is much smaller, but still alive. Several years back when we had a larger immigrant population,  I taught English for Math which is mentioned as a beginning, non-credit course.  Very interesting.  In fact, I’ve had several of those students in Computer Science this year.

Quoted from http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/spe/2008/immigrant_students/:

Local News: Immigrant Students | Dallas Morning News | News for Dallas, Texas

A big challenge facing North Texas’ public schools is immigration — particularly teens from rural Mexico.

People often think that teachers have an easy schedule.  In fact, my own husband thought that until he witnessed my first year of teaching. 

A lot of assumptions are made.  First, the day.  I get almost 30 minutes for lunch — I have to wait for the students to leave and be back as they return, so that cuts into that lunch time.  Second, unlike my previous office job, I can’t take an extra minute or two, or even be late.  If I am not in the room, no learning goes on.  Sometimes they will have a security person sit in my room while I take care of something for an administrator (like fix a printer), but I really am not supposed to leave. 

Bathroom breaks are hard too — we are supposed to maintain order in the halls, so we really can’t go then.  And we really aren’t supposed to go during class time.  There really isn’t any one to relieve us.  Oh, we do duck out, but there is a bit of risk. 

What about turning in attendance, paperwork, etc.?  I don’t like sending a kid, because they are supposed to be working "bell to bell"  And I do try to make that happen.  Again, I get fussed at everytime I leave for something like that and an adminstrator comes by the room.

So in addition to this post, I’m also going to blog about this summer, so you’ll realize that getting a part time job really isn’t an option.

I’m lucky as I have the senority and the experience to do some district jobs — writing curriculum and finals, which will pay a little of $4000.  Not bad, but not a lot either.

So I had one day off this week — first thing in the morning, I went by my doctor’s office to get blood work done.  Not something I can really do during the school year, as there just isnt enough time — our official hours are 8:00 – 4:00. 

I also did two hours of work on our curriculum.

I love this article as it supports my feelings about computers. I believe strongly that when you have a computer in the classroom, you have to have a teacher who is skilled in classroom management.  I believe that you have to give the students more work than they can possibly do, but it has to be work that they can complete and be successful at.

I really do feel that the one laptop per child program will fail unless there are adults to monitor and direct.

Quoted from http://www.slate.com/id/2192798:

Why giving poor kids computers doesn’t improve scholastic performance. – By Ray Fisman – Slate Magazine

Why giving poor kids laptops doesn’t improve their scholastic performance.

 

I’m going to be the teacher tech next year, which means I get an period to work on it.   During our FAC (Faculty Advisory Committee) meeting I made a statement about doing the job, which resulted in another teacher telling me I should get students to help me.  Well, I’m not wild about that, but between the principal and myself, we’ve come up with a neat way of handling it:

Here’s what I sent to him:

I propose that we set up 4th period as an Independent CS Study class.   This would be my "teacher tech" period.  That would give the students assisting technology credit.  We would be flexible as to when we take lunch, based on the needs of the job.

Instead of a formal lesson plan, submitted each week, I would submit a weekly report each Friday, which would be a summary of what each student and what I did that week.  We would also present formally once a month to an administrator, preferably Dr. Crawford at least once each semester (using the model that I worked under at TI).  We would also have a portfolio which must be up to date at the end of each six weeks.  I would like another formal presentation at the end of each semester.

Each student would be responsible for certain duties:  for example, one student might be in charge of the athletic portion of our website.  That student would post each sport’s schedules, do tech support for the athletic director and any of the coaches as needed. 

In addition to the tech and website responsibilities each student would have a personal project that they would be working on.  These projects might take one or two class periods, several weeks, or maybe an entire semester.  I expect each student to initiate these projects.

As a result, the students in exchange for working for the school, the student would receive technology credit, a portfolio, and recommendations from both myself and Dr. Crawford for future employers.

The more I think about it, the more I think it is a really cool idea.