Moving/School Transitions

Education, Intl. Life, Singapore American School No Comments »

Moving can be overwhelming. Moving and changing jobs can be even more overwhelming. However, moving into a new school job is just a matter of learning how the systems work. Schools are schools and kids are kids, so things of the important nature that apply in one good school apply in another good school. I am lucky to be in this line of business.

Singapore American School transitioning for new teachers is fantastic - one of the best that I have Singapore American Schoolpersonally experienced. They bring new faculty in and put them in a hotel while they work on finding the perfect place that will be their new home and learn about the new place they will live. They really meet your first needs of Maslow’s Heirarchy. Then after 10 days of addressing our basic needs we spent a week at school - learning about the systems, technology training, meeting important people, getting into our classrooms, ect.  Next week we meet all the returning teachers and work on the learning processes our students will be involved in. And school starts a week after that. Wow - we will be ready for our students and able to meet their basic needs! Thanks, SAS!

The Monsoon is here

Intl. Life  Tagged 1 Comment »

On July 26, 2005 Mumbai was hit by a rain that flooded the city and took many lives. We had only been in India 3 days. Our apartment, on the 7th floor, was flooded due to how the drains were constructed - as Rose puts it - upside down. So we should have learned something from that but the rains go away and they really go and I guess you forget.  The monsoon has come early this year and last night it really came down. This morning we awoke to 2 inches of water throughout our entire apartment. The worst part if that the packers had spent the entire day boxing our living room and half of the boxes were damaged. So now, we have an additional day of packing. It is fore casted for the rains to slow down on Monday and Tuesday when they carry the boxes out. Keeping our fingers crossed.

Academic Rigor and the Middle School student

Education  Tagged , No Comments »

What is academic rigor? Why are the 2 words put together? Academic as defined by Encarta has to do with the scholarly and intellectual. Rigor is severity or harshness: unrelenting strictness or toughness in dealing with people or things and an unwillingness to make allowances. So what does it mean when you put the 2 together? Why would we want to put severity on being scholarly? Who would be motivated to learn something where there was inflexibility in how it is done. And who would decide how this is done – to me? To our students? I had lots of questions after our recent MS Faculty meeting on areas we would like to improve at our school.

I am torn by the dialog around academic rigor when it comes to the Middle School Philosophy. I really would like to see students who are rigorously engaged in their own life learning. What I think is a better definition would be academic vigor. But how would we do this? We must take into account the adolescent learner.  I found lots of summarization about this topic from http://ceep.crc.uiuc.edu/poptopics/middle.html.

Developmental needs of young adolescents

Reed and Rossi (2000) conducted survey research with 321 rural (n = 101), urban (n = 119), and suburban (n = 101) sixth-, seventh-, and eighth-graders in an attempt to identify their developmental needs and wishes. These researchers reported their results and organized them into three categories. The first category was the “search for personal identity,” which included wishes such as wealth, fame, material goods, popularity, concern about conflicts in social relationships, wishing people would be nicer to each other, and better family relationships. The second category was “life in school,” with high academic achievement being the most common wish. Students wished that they earned all A’s. Students also expressed a desire to be a part of sports teams, and urban children generally wished for better resources during after-school time. The final category was related to “life and health” (not dying, staying healthy) and real-life societal and global issues such as world peace.

Reed and Rossi (2000) suggest that service learning is one way to integrate some of these early adolescent wishes into the curriculum. They also suggest that teachers create themes and integrated curriculum that emphasize conflict resolution, justice, identity, and violence prevention. They suggest that because many middle school students express concern about homelessness and violence, for example, conflict resolution training could be incorporated into service learning activities designed around service to homeless children and their families. Also advisor-advisee sessions (small groups of students meeting with one teacher throughout the year and discussing issues of personal concern, engaging in team-building activities, etc.) can provide a setting for implementing activities related to these concerns.

This web site presented more information on academic rigor and the middle school student:

According to the National Middle School Association (1995), effective middle schools curriculum should be exploratory, integrative, and challenging. Belair and Freeman (2000) state that “early adolescents succeed more and learn best when they are required to be practitioners of knowledge rather than just receivers of knowledge” (p. 5). The challenge to those who believe in the middle school movement is to prove that academic rigor and responsiveness to the developmental needs of middle school students are not mutually exclusive.

In another position paper, Anfara and Waks (2001) discuss middle school curriculum philosophy and the contrast between academic rigor and developmentally appropriate practice for young adolescents. They state that middle school students need experiences that allow them to apply knowledge. They also suggest that information should be presented in a way that stresses the relationships between subjects. They believe middle school students need to see the applicability of knowledge to their own lives. Presenting knowledge for its own sake as a short-term goal does not work with middle school students because (1) this approach offers little context to students, (2) the material has little motivational power, and (3) difficult curricular content must be watered down to be comprehensible, robbing it further of its usefulness.

Anfara and Waks (2001) conclude that a subject-oriented middle school is not appropriate. In their view, emphasizing academic rigor makes middle schools into watered down junior high schools, which were not successful models in their view. As mentioned in the research section below, these researchers believe that middle school research that does not lead to convincing results with regard to academic achievement is flawed, perhaps because the actual middle school model is rarely implemented correctly. They argue that developmentally appropriate academics can be rigorous and measured without relying on achievement tests grounded in isolated academic disciplines. They want educators to stop the pendulum from swinging back to subject-focused middle schools and junior high schools from the current middle school interdisciplinary curricular approach.

Finally, in a paper that describes one school district’s effort at middle school curriculum reform, Thompson (2000) concludes that the public and some educators misunderstand the standards movement. She feels that critics of the middle school philosophy conclude that because project-based integrative learning does not look like traditional (didactic) teaching, it must not be rigorous. In Thompson’s view, critics of middle schools appear to want to see more lecture-based learning (e.g., would prefer to see students learning about buoyancy from a textbook and lecture-and-discussion format rather than through a demonstration done in a swimming pool or other body of water). An important current challenge for middle schools is to align curriculum in ways that are integrative, exploratory, and engaging, while simultaneously helping students score well on standardized tests (Thompson, 2000).

I believe it is also important to be passionate about learning ourselves as teachers and model this. Students should see our love of learning all the time, that we should be a over zealous about it. I think we also need to remember our mission statement - a place where kids are pursuing their dreams and enhancing the lives of others. Look at our mission awards and think about how easy it was to place kids in the Academic area of our awards. What should we really be trying to improve as a Middle School?

Working with Colleagues in International Schools

Education, Intl. Life  Tagged , , , No Comments »

I was honored last night by many of my colleagues at a goodbye dinner. It was hosted by the IT Director of the American School of Bombay and many of the people that I have worked with closely were there. It is times like this that I feel fortunate for the life that my husband and I have chosen to live and to be able to work with such great people. Quality people. People that I want to be friends with for the rest of my life. Many of my friends and colleagues that have chosen the path of teaching overseas are people who thirst for knowledge. You will find many of them learning languages, trying local cuisine, traveling to new places, exploring a new exercise program like yoga and creating music and art pieces. These teachers are lifelong learners. They want to improve themselves and this carries over into the classroom where they help students improve on a daily basis. I love the people I work with. I am finding that it may be easier to say goodbye this time around. It could be because this is the 5th time we have done this but I really think that it is because I believe I will see many of these amazing and talented people again. Or at least I hope so. I also know that I have a new situation coming up at Singapore American School to make new connections with more amazing international teachers. WooHoo!

Dealing with Stuff

Intl. Life  Tagged , , No Comments »

We are moving again.  To Singapore. The process of going through our “stuff” has begun in preparation for the move. My husband and I have done this 8 times – 5 of them to new countries. We should have this down. However, once again I ask myself, where did we get all this stuff? How do we deal with it all and not have to deal with it all over again? So the first thing I wanted to deal with was all our paper work. I went to a couple of sources to find out – Ehow.com, Goodhousekeeping, MoneyCentral. That last link was focused on what papers to save in a natural disaster situation. It stated that most all documents are reproducible but you need to think about which documents would be a pain to replace and try to put systems in place to not have to go through this.  It states that the more of your financial life you have online the easier it will be to recover documents. I do so much online so I am getting rid of lots of our old paper work.  Here are some things that I got after right away:

  • I sent an electronic documentation of all our accounts and passwords  to my hotmail account and to my husbands. It will be there forever. I just have to remember to keep it up to date.
  • Scanned all those vital documents - passports, birth certificates, marriage papers and sent those to my hotmail account too. However, I will keep a copy with us a send another with our things in the states.
  • Every year I scan all the documents that are needed for our taxes – so now I just keep the last 3 years worth. I should probably send these to my hotmail.
  • Family photos – most are online, but I have scanned many but not all. Many years ago – I sent all our negatives to our storage area. Mmm – I wonder how those fair?
  • Family videos – This one is difficult and my plan is to get all in a file format and saved to a hard drive. (need to purchase this)

Being an expat in a country like India also adds some different levels to dealing with my stuff. Have you seen http://www.storyofstuff.com?  I highly recommend you watch this if you ever wondered about your stuff.

So another Learning along the way for me – now I have to go through more of our “stuff”.

Yes, I should blog

Education  Tagged , 2 Comments »

I keep reading it over and over again…the benefits of blogging. I should be doing this as a tech coordinator/teacher/life-long learner.  So as if I need some convincing I think I just need to write why this will be good for me (I like list or bullets):

  • From my former Principal, Cathy Funk, has said often, “If it something that is hard for you to do it, you should do it!” Putting my learning and writing out there is intimidating for me but I know that I will grow from this.
  • A way to organize my thoughts around learning. I believe blogging, on a regular bases, will help me to clarify my own thinking.
  • Learning something new every 6 months - Writing. It is hard for me but I believe what Mr. Campana, 8th grade Social Studies teacher at ASB, tells his students, “You need to practice writing and the more you do it the better you will get.” What better place to do this?
  • Opening up my learning to more people for feedback, challenges, and even accountability. I have a great source of people I have worked with over the years.
  • Gain confidence to reply to others blogs

Things to do to help me accomplish success on this blog

  • Currently reading the book by Will Richardson - Blogs, Wikis , Podcast
  • Working with the 8th grade on their Justice Project Blogs - http://www.asbindia.info/ms/justice/
  • Let others know that I am doing this
  • Comment on others blogs
  • Commit to working on this once a week

I almost think that I am late in getting started in this but it is part of my learning along the way.

Dianna

Giving Students Control

Education  Tagged No Comments »

stc.jpgSomething I have been learning along the way is to give students more control. Especially in our 1 to 1 tablet environment. Of course we leverage the students knowledge here at ASB with technology use and have them help us learn but I have seen some great things happen when you give them control to run things. At our 1 to 1 conference the Student Tech Crew was an integral part of the management of many different things. With some guidance and helping them to understand the outcome students can make things happen. However, it still means the adults need to be involved. In an interview in the School Administrator of Feb. 2008 between Daniel Pink and Thomas Friedman, Pink describes the teacher’s role today, “Sifters, sorters, connectors, “yes but-ers.” When students ask for your opinion a “no” answer will stop them dead in their tracks, a “yes” answer will empower them but a “yes-but” answer will help students reach their potential. Because we are able as teachers to sift, sort and help them connect information that will help the students move forward and surprise you. The MS Student Tech Crew had an idea to get information about tech use out to the MS community. They created a Tech Weekly magazine through collaborating in Google Docs. They got my opinion and through some yes-buting the first edition was well received!

Presenting What you Know

Education No Comments »

“If you want to learn something, you need to teach it to someone else.” Or create a presentation or workshop to your peers. We just finished a wonderful weekend hosting the first One to One Laptop Conference for International Schools at the American School of Bombay in Mumbai, India. It was called ASB Unplugged and was focused on helping other international schools develop, begin, plan or start the conversations about a laptop program at their schools. It was a success on many fronts. The faculty from ASB presented many of the workshops based on their experience form the past 7 years of being in a one to one environment. While putting together the presentations for the workshops we reflected, discussed, researched and reevaluated the program we are delivering. We learned a lot about what we do here.

Blogger vs EduBlogger

Education No Comments »

So I started a blog at http://prattd.blogspot.com/ a while back and my librarian friend suggested that I go to EduBlogger that it was better. I am really interested in EduBlogger because it runs on Word Press and we have recently installed this in house and have been looking at this. Now it seems that EduBlogger has other options to help schools. I will keep researching.


WordPress Theme & Icons by N.Design Studio. Hosted by Edublogs.
Entries RSS Comments RSS Log in