#AprilBlogADay to Continue

Denise Krebs

#EdBlogADayThis month I’ve enjoyed writing one blog post a day. I didn’t really think I’d be able to keep it up, but I have so far! Only five days to go.

We had a Twitter chat today and decided to keep this community of the #AprilBlogADay challenge going next month. We will continue it in May with another added option.

You can write a blog post a day, as we did in April.  Or, you can read and comment on someone else’s blog post each day. I will take the latter challenge.  It will be called the #EdBlogADay challenge.

You can join the Google+ Community.  
You can sign up on this Google Form.
Follow the hashtag #edblogaday in May. #AprilBlogADay in April

Day 24 – #AprilBlogADay #ILoveMySchoolBecause

Denise Krebs

I have a once-in-a-lifetime experience of teaching school around the world from where I came from and where I’ve always taught.

This past week I was a co-leader of a committee for Earth Day celebrations, which would kickoff our K-12 anti-littering and recycling campaign. It was my first time leading a committee here at my new school, and it was also the largest event that my partner and I had ever pulled off on our own or together.

Partners
Partners in Goodness

I love my school because we are Muslim, Christian, Hindu or other, but we respect each other and learn from each other. It is a special joy to be able to wish others an Eid Mubarak, and to have others wish me a Happy Easter, for instance.

I love my school because, though we speak many languages–Arabic and/or English in school–we manage to communicate. That was our experience as we planned for Earth Day. Teachers and parents were on our committee. Sometimes parts got lost without translation, but everyone managed to pull off a very large event with each doing their part, plus some. Actually, the whole staff was involved in one way or another.

Our School, Our Earth
Grades 6-8 put their handprints as a promise to save the earth.
We enjoyed a most elaborate and healthy “green” buffet.

IMG_20150423_111856[1]
The Earth is My Home, I Promise to Keep It Healthy and Beautiful.
IMG_20150423_071507[1]
Middle School Art Students Decorated
 

Day 23 – #AprilBlogADay – Transparency

Denise Krebs

How transparent should our profession be?

This question is good. I’ll just take a stab at it, but…Disclaimer: I really don’t know.

Anyone of you reading this blog, knows lots of teachers who are transparent. They blog and tell the world about their hopes and dreams, successes and failures. I feel I’ve been quite transparent, but there are always a few things I hold back.

I know of some schools that are fairly transparent. They share hopes, dreams, and successes. They tend to skip the failures, though. They are constantly considering stakeholders. Perhaps they can’t be completely transparent or the parents and community may lose trust.

On the other hand, if those schools aren’t trustworthy, maybe the stakeholders should know. That is a reason for full disclosure and transparency.

Education–at a state and federal level–is not so transparent. Too many politicians involved, and I don’t believe they allow themselves to be transparent.

This lack of transparency reminds me of a story. When I was a new reading specialist, I attended some professional development and Title I meetings that were also new for me. I’ll never forget the meeting, in that spring of 2002 when a district leader was explaining the new education law, “No Child Left Behind.” There was chart after chart showing trajectory lines for each grade level. The line went from 2001, where our children scored in their last Stanford Achievement Tests, to 2014, when they would all score at the 100th percentile.

What? That’s what I thought. It’s a tiny bit like Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon, “where all the children are above average.” But this wasn’t that the children would all become above average, but they would all be in the 99th percentile.

I wanted to be transparent, and stand up and say, “The emperor is naked!” Yet, we all sat there and pretended he was wearing a lovely suit of clothes.

Well, over the years the scores did go up. We soon adopted a new test instead of the norm-referenced Stanford Achievement Test. We now had a criterion-referenced test, and theoretically all the children could get 100%, but, for various reasons, they didn’t.

Now, the laws have changed, but we still have high stakes testing, just with different names like SmarterBalanced, which I guess is neither, and PARCC. Maybe we should have been more transparent about high stakes testing when we first got the hint that they don’t assess anything worth assessing. Then we could have stopped paying testing companies to make more of them.

After this post, I still don’t know how transparent our profession should be. I would suggest that we trust the educators more than the politicians, because educators seem to have more clarity on that issue.

What do you think?

Going Out With Flair

Denise Krebs

I read a blog post yesterday by Sean Farnum, “I Like My Year End to Be Too Busy.” He jam-packs the last month of school with engaging and connecting activities and projects to keep his students learning and wanting to come to school. He even jokes about postponing the end of the year because there is so much going on. I complained of spring fever this week, so this struck me as something I might do with my kindergarten students.

Later in the day, just by chance, I found some ideas for us on this Tweeted Times paper by Katie Ann.

Here are Three Ways to Conquer Spring Fever With Fun and Connections. We’ll be trying all of these.

  • Before May 1 introduce ourselves to some New Zealand 5-6 year-olds at Mr. Kemp’s school.

  • Pernille Ripp’s seventh graders are making plays that we can watch and review. 

  • Make Earth Day every day in May and June. We will be sharing our Earth Day experiences with our Iowa pen pals. Plus, we’ll be continuing our campaign of “Our School, Our Earth,” so we’ll have lots to do.

If you are a teacher of young ones, you can do these things too. Or, if not these, how are you going to conquer spring fever with fun and connections?

The Skill of Listening, Happy Earth Day, and Day 22 #AprilBlogADay

Denise Krebs1 Comment

Listening, speaking, reading and writing = language and literacy.

I have been teaching English language learners for a little over a year now. It was a big change from teaching older native speakers English and social studies.

I teach lots of speaking, reading and writing, but I have been neglecting to teach listening as a skill. Usually, students practice listening to each other during show and tell, and to me when I’m talking or reading stories. They listen to and sing along with songs, but really I have not helped them to practice and have success in listening.

Thanks to the British Council and the U.S. State Department, we have excellent resources for learning to teach English! Face-to-face classes and workshops, webinars, online classes. I’m learning so much. (See at the end of this post just a few of the resources I got today.)

Today, however, I attended one of the best webinars. It was on teaching listening. I will be a better teacher tomorrow because of it. I just wanted to share the resources for other ELL teachers and anyone who wants to teach listening skills.  The webinar is led by Kevin McCaughey, a Regional English Language Officer in Kyiv, Ukraine. It was a great presentation with a wealth of practical activities, and beautifully designed for the Earth Day audience enjoying it today.

Here is the PDF article, “Practical Tips for Increasing Listening Practice Time,” if you’d rather read the content (but don’t miss Kevin’s warm delivery, and with singing too.)

Do you teach listening? How? To whom?

More Resources

etseverywhere.com – Free ELT audio from Kevin McCaughey
elllo.org – Free, fun, natural and meaningful listening lessons from Todd Beuckens. Elllo on Twitter.
American English – “A Website for Teachers and Learners of English as a Foreign Language Abroad” by the US State Department

Day 21 – We Must Stop Pretending

Denise Krebs3 Comments

This is a combo post. I couldn’t relate to the #AprilBlogADay topic today, so I am finishing up my 5 Ugly Falsehoods About Education, which I hope can be removed from my classroom.  And classrooms around the world, for that matter.

When it comes to education, we must stop pretending…

  1. That the teacher is the most important person in the room.
  2. That children should keep quiet, listen and sit still.
  3. That children will work harder for external rewards, than for the intrinsic value of learning what is important to them.
  4. That children who are obedient  and compliant are somehow better than the rebels.
  5. That a numerical grade is the best way to report the learning of a child.

Thanks for the inspiration from Scott McLeod, who started this challenge to #MakeSchoolDifferent, and from Joy Kirr, who tagged me.

 

Day 20 #AprilBlogADay – Now

Denise Krebs

What are you working on NOW? What are you trying to get better at?

True confessions! This is a bad time to ask this question because I’m mostly working on the basics, like trying to help students listen to each other and me. Spring fever has hit us hard. We still have seven weeks of school, yet I feel like teachers and students are tired and unruly, ready to be finished. I feel students were doing more learning and higher level listening, speaking, writing and reading in January than now.

So, I am working harder than ever, just trying to stay above water.

In fact, here’s a picture of me swimming.

Blue Blotch by Pixabay artist geralt

Topics for #AprilBlogADay.

Day 19 – #AprilBlogADay – Tech

Denise Krebs

Tech in the classroom – Should we? Why? How? 

Yes, of course we should use technology in the classroom. If we need it, we should use technology. Technology is great when it improves the way we get things done. Writing with pencils is definitely better than using a lead stylus on papyrus, a quill dipped in a bottle of ink, or chipping away at rocks to make a mark.

I wrote a post a couple years ago because I was asked by a junior higher, “Why do we join so many websites?”

“Too Much Technology?” I asked in the post. After reflecting on it, though, I came to the conclusion that I was not asking too much of them. All of them needed practice and skill development to use the various tools in our classroom and online. The fact that digital natives still need practice to develop skills is reason enough to use technology in the classroom.

How we do technology in the classroom depends on our situation and what’s available. When I taught junior high in Iowa, we were blessed to have enough Mac Books for all the students. We used technology readily and regularly. Now I teach Kindergarten, so we don’t use technology like I used to. We do, however, have a Mimio board, and we blog to connect with pen pal friends in Iowa.  Oh, and we use pencils too.

Here’s another related post: “What Does Technology Have to Do With It?”