Blog Assignment #14

Public Speaking
How are you with speaking in front of others? What about students? How would you do in front of a large group of colleagues? Being a teacher you will find yourself constantly speaking in front of others. Whether it's a simple lesson, a faculty meeting, parent conference, or something more elaborate, you need to know how to conduct yourself as a professional.

Stanford University gives a list of how to overcome any anxiety related to public speaking in this link. Read the link and write a post on which strategies you could use to help you overcome any looming fear you may have.

     I actually do not have a bad fear of public speaking. The worst problem I have is talking too fast and jumbling up my words in the process. Going off of the list given I seem to have already identified the problem I have. By reading this I learned I should take more deep breaths during my speech to help calm me down and give me a moment to think what my next words should be. Practicing my speech or lesson should also help me work out word flow. I plan on practicing these techniques so once I do become a teacher I will be better prepared.

C4T #4

How To Get Boys Reading Perhaps

     For my C4T #4 I have been assigned to Pernille Ripp's teaching blog. The post I commented on this week was titled How To Get Boys Reading Perhaps. In her post, Mrs. Ripp gave tips on how to get young boys interested in reading. She admits she has problems still getting her classroom guys to want to read but she has found a few tricks to get them interested. 

• Have honest conversations. She says listen to the boys when they want to express their frustrations about reading. Maybe you can use it to teach a lesson or learn something to help them out.
• Read their books. She suggests finding books they might like. Sports, science fiction, and fantasy are pretty common.
• Loosen up. Mrs. Ripp suggest thinking outside the box. She says they don't always have to read chapter books. Graphic novels or comic books help too.
• Let them read wherever they want. Her students read wherever they can find a spot as long as it doesn't distract someone else.
• Geek out with them. She said they get excited when a new book in their favorite series comes out and they celebrate it.

     She has so many more good suggestions, these were just a few I found to be useful and creative. I thanked her for taking the time to make that post. I agreed we needed to find a way to inspire more young boy to read. I gave her a book suggestion my brother loved when he was young. I told her I would have to try out some of the suggestions she gave.

Don't Take A Break From Learning Just Because It's The Holidays

     Mrs. Ripp made a post titled Don't Take A Break From Learning Just Because It's The Holidays.  This blog entry addressed a problem every teacher encounters at least once a year, maybe more. When the holidays get near (especially Christmas) students energy levels increase drastically while their attention span plummets. Mrs. Ripp talked about how she fought and ignored the approaching holidays for so long until she realized things run smoother if she joined in the festivities. Here are a few things she uses to help get some work accomplished during this time.

• Create more hands-on learning. She asks her students what they want to do with all of their materials they've learned and lets them create something awesome.
• Recognize the holiday and don't ignore it. She listens to holiday music, do a holiday card exchange, share holiday tradition stories and blog about them, and learn culture holiday traditions.
• Do more challenges. She created different events like spaghetti and marshmallow tower challenge and flipstick olympics to help students continue learning even if it isn't curriculum.
• Read more. Reading aloud is calming to everyone.
• Give back when you can. She has her students write to Helping Hands and holiday cards for the nursing home nearby.

     I thanked her for taking the time to write out this blog post. I told her the "holiday craziness" isn't exactly something college prepares you for.  It's nice to have a few tips on how to handle the "Christmas rush".  I will be teaching teenagers so I'm not sure how much different it will be, but then again we are all children at Christmas time!

PLN #2: Final Post

     Symbaloo is a tool I have grown accustomed to using fairly often. I really enjoy the simplicity of this tool. It allows me to keep all the websites I can use in my classroom in one place. By using this it allows my computer to run faster without so many programs and keeps this neat and organized. Being a high school history teacher I will need to keep my classroom flowing so as to keep the student's attention. Also there are so many websites and videos that I want to use in my lessons and this will help me keep them all in one spot. I plan to keep this as my homepage so I can come back to it at anytime.

Project #12

Blog Assignment #13

Shane Koyczan: To This Day...for the bullied and beautiful by Erin Crane

I honestly cannot describe Shane Koyczan’s poetry video about being bullied. The way he used his poetry to perfectly convey what kids go through in schools was breathtaking. Shane started off talking about the way his decisions would get shot down as a kid. Decisions like “What do you want to be when you grow up?” “What do you want to make of yourself?”. He would answer honestly and be told he either could not do it or needed to aim higher. They didn’t want to know what he wanted to be, they wanted to tell him what not to be!

He moved on to talk about the titles and nicknames he was labeled by his peers. Some purposely hurtful, some not. Children don’t always see that the words they use hurt other people (adults have this problem too). He talked about how the name “porkchop” leaves him no longer able to eat the food, and another little girl called dog for her early childhood still doesn’t see herself as beautiful. Words are scarring.

He started bringing in the way he kept self-motivated after these things. A boy adamant on calling him “Yogi Bear” demanded he do his homework. Shane did it, but with all incorrect answers. The boy was confused as to why he received a 0 on the paper that Shane got a 28/30 on. Shane responded with “smarter than the average bear…”! He used his brains to outsmart them. A great example to fight violence with nonviolence.

Listening to him go through his bullying trials in school, turning it into poetry, I was shown a boy who made his bad circumstances into greatness. He chose to take those experiences and use them to better himself. This gave me insight into how “just words” can truly affect people’s lives and ways that I hope, as a teacher, I can help students to shape it into something beneficial.

Jose Antonio Abreu: The El Sistema Music Revolution by Lance Wilkinson

In his TED Talks presentation, Jose Antonio Abreu shares a powerful message on how Music can invigorate the lives of students and instill a desire to learn and succeed within them. Most of Mr. Abreu’s opinions on how Music should be instilled in students’ lives applies to general education as well. Mr. Abreu is the founder of the El Sistema Music Revolution, a Youth Orchestra program in Venezuela. This orchestra program instills a passion for music in students of all economic backgrounds, taking care to make sure every student that applies himself or herself has the same accessibility to perform as any other student.

A key aspect of the El Sistema program is that everyone’s dreams should be realized. By showing students that they have a chance to do great things, the El Sistema program invigorates their lives with a desire to succeed and learn. At first, the El Sistema program did not have an excess of supplies; however, limited resources does not mean that standards should be limited. By belief in his students, Mr. Abreu and his students developed the El Sistema program into one of the greatest Youth Orchestra programs in the world.

Funding for Fine Arts is always at risk. Mr. Abreu promotes the opinion that Musical training develops not only self-confidence and inspires purpose, but also teaches interdependence and cooperation. These are 21st century skills that not only apply to Music, but to Education in general as well. Mr. Abreu also emphasizes that everyone should have access to Musical programs; not just the elite. This concept applies to Education as well. Every student deserves a quality education, not just those who are privileged enough to have one.

Mr. Abreu showed that the El Sistema program affected individuals at Personal, Familial, and Community-Based levels. An engaging Education program should also reach students at each of these levels. Mr. Abreu stated: “The worst thing about poverty is the lack of identification.” Engaging Music and Educational programs give these students the confidence and skills they need to identify themselves. Finally, as Mr. Abreu stated, Music and Education should be put at the service of society. A good Educational or Music program can change a student’s life. As Mr. Abreu said, and this statement can be applied to a good Educational program as well: “The spirit of music overcomes the spirit of material poverty.”

Arvind Gupta: Turning Trash Into Toys For Learning by Wesley Etheridge

In the video, Turning Trash Into Toys for Learning, Arvind Gupta discusses how imagination can turn the simplest toys into learning tools. Gupta's story is interesting. He's went to school in India to become an engineer in the early 1970's. However, at the age of 24 he realized he wasn't born to make trucks. He found his passion when he joined a village science program. In the small village he moved to, he realized he enjoyed creating toys much more than creating trucks.

Gupta enjoyed taking trash and making toys out of it. One of his first creations was simply made of cycle valve tube with sticks inside. This created all kinds of shapes. With this simple "toy" he was able to teach children about angles and shapes, but the greatest part about this toy according to Arvind Gupta was its flimsiness. This allowed the students to use their imagination and creative abilities to experiment with all sorts of shapes and sizes. For example, the children could create little houses with these shapes. Every one of Arvind Gupta's toys were interesting to me, but the one that interested me the most was the motor he made from a 5cent battery. Imagination is a key for learning anything and Gupta's toys enhance every students imagination.

It was great to see how trash could be used to teach. I love the way Gupta feels about students breaking toys. He says, "The best thing a child can do with a toy is break it." Gupta shows that the only thing that can limit our teaching is lack of imagination. Also, his experiences show that children can learn on their own through just about anything. There's no doubt that Gupta is a firm believer of project based learning, and after his personal experiences how can you blame him. I agree with Gupta, imagination can lead to unlimited learning.

C4K Summary for November

Week 12
This week I visited Jay'Lee's blog. She wrote about the sport Rugby. I told Jay'Lee that I have never seen a rugby game because we don't play it down here. She described it in her blog post, and I told her it looked fun. I've heard from people that the sport was actually pretty dangerous since it has no protective gear. I think I'll stick to the sidelines.

Week 13
My last C4K belongs to the class blog of Mrs. Yollis. The post I commented on was titled Our First Ed Camp. I spoke of how interesting the camp sounded, but I had never been to one myself. I commended her for finding a creative way to get students interested in learning. I sure wish I had one of these as a kid.

Project #15

This lesson plan lasts for three days and is geared for high school students. The driving question for this project is What was the Old South like? What was our country like before the Civil War? I will split the classroom into two groups, "Union Army" and "Confederate Army". The groups will then research using iPads and laptops to find opinions on slavery for their side in the 1800's. Each group will elect a leader (Ulysses S. Grant, Robert E. Lee) to present their group's formulated opinions on the topic of slavery. If one side can be swayed, there will be no Civil War, if they can't, we fight! Students may make a presentation that the leaders will use to help sway the opposing army.

Blog Assignment #12

What Can We Learn From Sir Ken Robinson? by: Erin Crane, Wesley Etheridge, Lance Wilkinson

Changing Education Paradigms

In the first video Ken Robinson opened our eyes to the injustice that is taking place thanks to the current system of education. Ken states that todays education system was designed for another time period. The current education system was created in the intellectual culture of the enlightenment and in the economic circumstances of the industrial revolution and you can see evidence of it through every aspect of the system. Schools are like factory lines. Ringing bells have conditioned students to know when to change class, schools have separate sections for each individual subject, and students are classified by their age instead of their academic level. A result of the system is we have "smart" people and "non smart" people, or at least thats how people are viewed. The consequence of this has been many brilliant people questioning their intelligence. ADHD has risen with the growth of standardized testing and Ken Robinson doesn't believe it's a coincidence. Sure some people may have ADHD, but is there really anything wrong with students being outgoing and energetic? We agree with Robinson that the issue is boring teaching. In the book Breakpoint and Beyond we see that the more a student is "educated" the more their capacity for divergent thinking decreases. If we really care about our students we have to change. Change may be scary, but it beats the burden of staying the same.

How to Escape Education's Death Valley

In the second video we learn that Death Valley isn't dead, it's dormant. Underneath the surface there is potential. Ken Robinson gives us a tremendous amount of advice that can lead American schools out of the "Death Valley" they are currently in. The three things that are important for human flourishing are the keys to improving the culture of education. The first thing is we must remember that human beings are naturally different and diverse. Ken Robinson is quick to point out that No Child Left Behind (NCLB) is irony at it's best. Education under NCLB is based on conformity when it should be based on diversity. Students are diverse and they prosper best under a broad curriculum. The second thing that is important is curiosity. Our job as teachers is really easy if we can spark curiosity. Once curiosity is sparked children are natural learners. Great teachers mentor, stimulate, provoke, and engage their students. Ultimately, education is about learning. The whole point of being a teacher is getting students to learn. If our future students don't learn it's our fault. In our current culture, teachers are more concerned with test results than curiosity. Testing has a role in education, but it shouldn't dominate education. The infatuation with test results could be the biggest problem with our current system of education. The third key to human flourishing is creativity. Human life is inherently creative. Imagination and creativity is a unique trait of human beings. It's our role as educators to awaken these powers in our students. The problem is in our current culture of education students are becoming standardized. Everyone of us who will become teachers has the ability to change this culture of education. The question is do we care? If we do care about our students we will break away from the current system.

How Schools Kill Creativity

In the final video Ken Robinson discusses some issues he has with the current culture of education dealing with student's creativity. Robinson states that creativity is just as important as literacy. The problem is schools are instilling fear in students. Students are so afraid of being wrong that they get in a quite bubble. People who are afraid of being wrong will never come up with anything original. Children naturally aren't frightened of being wrong, but after years of schooling this capacity is diminished. We have to change this by creating an atmosphere where students can be who they are. Sir Ken Robinson also asks why certain subjects (like Math) are treated with higher regard than others (like dance). Not every student is going to be a college professor. Intelligence is diverse, dynamic, and distinct. In todays society a degree in a popular course of study doesn't equate to a job anymore. We must rethink the way we educate. We must consider the whole being of a student, not just certain areas.   

Project #10

Project #12 Part A