morning news

This is something that, as a participant, we tried back in 1983 as a class. It was a one-time thing that we did with the given technology of the day. We wanted to get an idea of what newscasters and anchorpeople did on the air as part of our current events studies, so we did a news program with local news, sports, and weather. We added our own little twist to it so it looked a bit more like Saturday Night Live than a real news broadcast, where the "audience" would throw paper and other harmless stuff at the news or sports anchor while they were trying to read their script, just to have some fun with it, and that we did. It was a learning experience that we managed to turn into fun.
Today's technology would make it so much better. Classes can actually utilize YouTube to put their "news" on the Internet and view later on, even a year or two after the fact, like an archive of sorts. I believe it would be exciting for the kids in high school to go on YouTube and view themselves as sixth-graders doing a news broadcast and looking at the posted replies. It is also a way for kids in other states and countries to view the same thing and see what you do in your school. That's just my viewpoint, anyway.

project learning

This is what it is all about. By the seventh or eighth grade year, students should be actively engaged in this form of learning. You might ask why. I believe that students will get more out of their education by seeing and experiencing first-hand how subject material comes to life and is used. One thing that really comes out of project learning is the life experience that comes along with the learning. Another important benefit is that, through the experience of projects, the students can "fail" without actually failing. That may sound a bit funny, but we can't expect that all projects that are undertaken by the students will be successful. However, if the students do everything that they are supposed to do and perform well, the "failures" that they may experience won't be crucial. In fact, it would do the students well to occasionally "fail" a project. Now I'm using quotes around the word fail because they are still learning. It's not like they are designing the new engine for the space shuttle and if they mess that up, okay, that would be a critical failure and lives would be lost. By experiencing their mistakes through project learning and actually learning from these mistakes, those mistakes won't be made when it actually counts in real life. Project learning is like a simulation machine for life; if you screw up, it's okay---no one gets hurt but you see where you made your errors so you don't make that error next time. Life is not a multiple-choice test, though sometimes it seems like it when we're faced with options and more than one answer seems likely. I'm pretty sure I would get a failing grade if that were the case. Let me get back to the word "fail" again for a moment. I don't want to come across as believing that the students will fail. I want to come across as being the one to say, "Okay, so this didn't go as planned; let's back up and see what went wrong and correct it." By doing this, the students get to deal with temporary failure, but eventual success. After all, isn't this what we want the students to do?

a bright idea

This sounds like a facetious title, but actually it's not. Gathering just from the news story, Vine Street School here in Bangor conducted a project recently that integrated math, social studies, and phys ed. What the students did were, in groups, chose (or were assigned, not sure) countries which they were to study, the history and culture and the like. This was the social studies portion. Then, they "represented" these countries in their own Olympics that ran concurrently with the Winter Olympics recently held in Vancouver, British Columbia. This integrated the math and phys ed portions. Whoever dreamed up this idea is an educational genius. The kids got actively engaged in the study of their prospective countries and had fun competing in their "Olympics", which allowed them to perform some physical activity and get much needed exercise, especially during the months where kids generally don't get that exercise. You think we can come up with some similar ideas for integrating subject areas and genuinely show how what we study in school is applicable in the outside world? This is how we should be teaching our students, not putting a bubble sheet in front of them and making them take multiple-guess assessments and using that to measure their performance. They won't be taking these exams when they're in the real world solving real-world problems.

ending high school after 10th grade???

NO, NO, NO!!!!!

Okay, so that's my emotional moment for the day. There is a program that is going to be implemented by a number of states, Maine included, that is going to give students the option to graduate from the 10th grade and advance to, at least, community college. I don't see this as a good idea because I don't think a 16-year old is mature enough to advance to a college setting. Yes, there are those special cases where the "geniuses" manage to finish high school by the age of 10, 11, etc. We should take a look at how these people are doing now, financially, psychologically, and most importantly, socially. The four years that I had in high school provided me with friendships that will last a lifetime, but it also provided me with the challenges that all high schoolers face and the time and opportunities to deal with them. A two-year high school education will not provide this. If this is about saving money, it's a bad idea. Yeah, so maybe Algebra II isn't for everyone; the experience of at least three years of math (personally, I believe in all four years) opens up options that wouldn't otherwise exist. What are some of these students going to actually do once they've graduated at the age of 16, when they are just at the age where they can be employed? Hey, while we're at trying to make their lives a bit better, why don't we lower the drinking, smoking, and voting age to 16? In essence, I'd be willing to bet that no less than 60 percent of the students that graduate after 10th grade will wish they had stayed the course in high school, if only to fortify the friendships they have started to forge. Maybe high schools should weigh the options of providing college-level courses just to keep these students challenged, but within the same physical setting. If these students are geniuses who are not benefitting from the high school setting, let them advance. I just don't believe we should be having 50-100 graduates (ballpark figure) a year who are only 16 and haven't got a strong social background. Keep the four-year program in place, or minimum of three if the graduation requirements can be met.

discipline problems

Okay, so I looked through the article on classroom management as it pertained to discipline in middle school, as opposed to elementary and high schools. I'm sure someone has had to have figured this out by now, but the reason why there are so many discipline and behavior problems in middle school is because kids are at the age where they are coming into their own as individuals, and they want to assert themselves as authoritative figures among their peers. By acting out or generally getting into trouble or causing trouble, it's the student trying to make a statement to his or her peers that they are in charge and won't be told what to do. It does usually backfire on them in the end, when they run into disciplinary problems, both in school and at home, but most of these students are "living in the moment" and do not weigh in the potential consequences of their actions.

This is a situation I ran into quite a few years ago, back in my own "wild" years. I was hanging out at the bowling alley when a couple teenagers were having an animated "discussion". It looked like they were going to get into a big fight, and I had earned my own authoritative position at the bowling alley, so I could mediate and prevent a brawl if I had to. I told them if they wanted to fight each other and have it out, I would take them next door and let them do it, with no witnesses, and the winner would have to take me on next. I don't know if it was the lack of witnesses or having to face me that discouraged them, but they broke up their disagreement and went their separate ways (at least for the time being). Anyway, the point is that some of these kids will only act out and misbehave with witnesses around for proof of their bravado and masculinity/womanhood (depending on who is involved, of course). If there is no one around to see, they're not so tough and acting so big, and this is a general rule of thumb, at least in my experience. Now I don't know if this approach would work in the position of being a teacher (a bit of a rogue approach), but it seems to me that if the student is taken out of the position of being able to show off, they aren't going to do anything stupid that would get them in trouble.

kaiser report

The fact that today's youth uses media more than ten years ago does not surprise me. We are in a rapidly expanding technological age, and the next new best thing will be available tomorrow. My kids are going to go out and get it; I don't know exactly what it's going to be, but they will have it. I wasn't a big text person until I got my current phone that has a keyboard on it. I still refuse to curtail my texts with incorrect spellings, but will occasionally use abbreviations such as btw for by the way, or my favorite to my wife, ILUVVM (I love you very, very much). I will never say "u r" for "you are"; if you get in the habit of doing this frequently, what's going to happen when you're trying to create a legitimate document for viewing by professionals?
Anyway, I'm digressing. This increase in media use started in the 1980's (maybe before) and I remember it. In 1984, I got my first television in my bedroom, where I watched my afternoon soaps (no comment please....I was 13 and was intrigued) and my favorite programs at night. I had a stereo next to my bed where I listened to music for the first hour of "bedtime". Of course, it's all different in today's society. Kids go to bed with their Ipods and their cell phones to text their BFF (I just had to use that one) to find out the in-school gossip of the day.
Is it going to affect performance in school? Absolutely. Will it be positive or negative? Both, I would say. I say positive because the media that children have access to will make doing homework/research so much easier. Instead of flipping through pages of an encyclopedia and finding the right volume, an Internet search for a subject is right at the student's fingertips. I also say negative because, with all of the potential distractions that these media present to children, it will be difficult to keep the children on task. However, if properly used, the media acts as a great benefit, making it a "necessary evil".

Positive Discipline

I found that a lot of this would have been useful when I was in school, anywhere between third grade and high school. Peer mediation would have been the best; it would have resolved a lot of problems that I ran into over the course of my pre-adolescent and adolescent years, but in a small school, it would have been difficult to implement.
The one thing I didn't care for was in the TAB portion (Take A Break) and ZAP (Zeroes Aren't Permitted). Both concepts are good, but I didn't like seeing the student being called out in front of his peers. The one teacher who took the student into the hall for a brief discussion, I believe, handled it properly. I think that calling a student on the carpet in front of his peers is only raising the risk for more aberrant/rebellious behavior. The other concepts were good and I liked those, including a fix-it plan, written apology, and a form for the student to explain what they did wrong and how to correct the behavior in the future. Granted, calling them out publicly might embarrass them enough to discourage bad behavior in the future, but it could also make them rebellious for the same reason. The other corrective ideas can be done privately and kept between the teacher and the student, or the student and the affected party (such as another student).