Teacher Movies

I saw a couple of teacher movies this summer and it made me think of my favorite teacher Mr. Voorhees. He was a math teacher. He has retired recently. I have made contact with him this past year and it was a thrill. He was always demanding, funny, engaging, and supportive. He believed in me. I will never be able to thank him enough. It makes me realize that the teaching profession has a lot of power. Teachers have the power to change someones life. We should not take this lightly.
I have seen all of these movies and would recommend any one of them. I have not put them in any particular order.

Mr. Holland's Opus
Freedom Writers
Lean on Me
Stand and Deliver
October Sky
Akeelah and the Bee
Dead Poet's Society
To Sir, With Love
Finding Forrester
Tuesday's with Morrie (TV Movie)

Diigo

I just found out about http://www.diigo.com/ . It is very much like http://delicious.com/ in that it is an online bookmark system. However, diigo has the added benefit of being able to highlight something in the favorite site that you have saved. What a bonus. A further bonus is that it will simultaneously save your favorites at diigo and delicious.
Just yesterday, I created a new free diigo account and had all my Delicious sites exported then imported to diigo. It was about 10 minutes worth of work. Now I can use my diigo account, yet keep my Delicious account active.
Lucy Gray taught me this. Thanks.

Here are my two sites. Feel free to check them out.
http://www.diigo.com/user/dsladkey
http://delicious.com/inbox/dsladkey


Dave

Wordle.net

I found a cool site on a blog the other day. The blog is called Practical Theory by Chris Lehmann. Click here to get to it. It is called Wordle. It is at http://www.wordle.net/. It makes a cluster of words that you place into the site. You can change the colors and make a new layout if you want. I love the result. It is very easy to use. Here is a wordle I did recently regarding a 350 mile, 6 day bike trip that the Naperville Central Fellowship of Christian Athletes took. Click on it to see it better. If you want more information about the bike trip see http://www.redhawkfca.org/.

Let me know what you think,

Dave

Enjoy the Journey

I saw a child today taking a walk with an adult. The child would walk for a few moments and then stop to look at a something in the grass. Then, the child would walk a few moments more. And again the child would stop, and this time sit down. The child was enjoying herself so much. It was really refreshing to see a someone enjoying the journey so much. The child was not so focused on getting there. She was focused on enjoying now. We have much to learn from this little child.
I was thinking that we often do not enjoy the journey. We almost always desire to get to our destination as soon as we can. That means most of the time we are not enjoying ourselves because we are hardly ever at our destination. How about we start planning take some time to reflect and enjoy our journey. I know that I need to concentrate on this because I am far too often in a rush. I will work on thinking "Slow down and enjoy the moment".
Dave

School is a Place to Learn from your Mistakes

Our principal has recently made a mistake. He plagiarized a speech he made to the senior class during the commemoration ceremony. He openly admitted that is was a mistake. He did not acknowledge the person who wrote the speech before or during the speech. He said he had intended to ask permission, and just never got around to it. I know that this is a grievous error. However, I know the man behind the mistake. He is a man who works hard for our students. He is a person who honest and upfront when dealing with issues regarding our school and himself. I believe him when he says that he meant to ask the person who wrote the speech. It doesn't make it OK. It just means it was a mistake. To me it means a punishment (like a suspension) and then let's move on. Let's all learn from the mistake. It is a teachable moment. It means that we as human beings can grow from the things that we mess up on. School is a place to learn from your mistakes. Right now, our principal is being "reassigned". This is unfortunate in my opinion. I think that the punishment is a little too severe for the crime.

There are a few mistakes that we can't allow to continue in our schools;
1. Repeated violations of integrity.
2. Physical and emotional abuse to our students.
3. Neglect of students.

Most mistakes are just are opportunities to learn. Isn't that what we do in our class? If a student makes a mistake in my class I often take this route with them. I talk to them individually. I give them a consequence (if needed). We reflect and then we move on.

I am going to remember this when I deal with my students. I must think..."School is a Place to Learn from your Mistakes".
Dave

Repetition

How can we get enough repetition in our classes?
This years Super Bowl commercials paid $90,000 a second to try to get you to buy their products. What is their goal? To help reinforce their product to you by repetition. They are trying to get enough repetition and not bore the audience. It must work. Because a lot of companies paid the 2.7 million dollars per 30 second spot.
We need to translate this to HS math. If I have an important point to make in class, I need to find creative ways to have it emphasized. Maybe I need to have the students discovery the idea. Then I will have them see it worked out with another student at the board. Then I might have a video of the same topic. Then I could give some practice on their own. It could be that they use individual white boards to go through the problem. I love Senteo clickers for the Smartboard so maybe I could use those to get the point across.
The average person needs 10-12 repetitions to learn a new concept. I think I need to remind myself and my students that it is OK to repeat a topic in different ways. This is comforting to students that they don't have to pick it up the first time. They are not slow for needing a few repetitions of the same topic.

Yearbook Time

I take it as a compliment when a student asks me to sign their yearbook. I try to write carefully that I really appreciated them in class. I don't always have the time to write as much as I want. For instance, I was about 1 minute away from starting my class when a student walks in and asks me to sign their yearbook. It was a senior and this was their last day. I thought, this is important. I took a moment to sign the yearbook and then was a little late getting my class going. That is OK. I feel that our students want our acknowledgment of them. For some of our students this is an easy way to have us recognize them. I find that some students that were complete goofs in class, ask me to write in their yearbook. I find it odd, but, I take this as a compliment. They must have thought my class was OK, otherwise they wouldn't have asked me to sign the yearbook. So we need to remind ourselves that our students want our support. Yearbook signing is one way to give it to them.