Showing posts with label professional development. Show all posts
Showing posts with label professional development. Show all posts

Saturday, February 23, 2013

Engaging Texts

I have this idea that life is interesting.
And I should talk, read and write about it.
Maybe that's why I blog.
That's also why I spend my weekend looking for interesting pieces in print to share with my students.

Its called engaging texts.

I know that because I went to the mandatory common core professional development period this week.
I sat with the math teachers and read an article about how the great mathematicians were inspired to study mathematics through their love of gambling. I was engaged.  I love gambling.  I'm not sure how the probability of drawing an ace out of deck of fifty-two cards relates to  the magic fairy delivering a winning hand  at the video poker machines at World Resorts International but I read the passage with the math teachers and developed a "winning response" to the assignment:  Develop a question that requires thoughtful reading and text based evidence in the answer.

By winning I mean, the facilitator read my question aloud.  Which means I "won" more than the negative forty dollars I "won" at World Resorts International last Saturday night.  (0>-40)

Of course the real discussion didn't get read aloud.  That was the discussion that started with, why are we doing this? and ended with the plaintive I would really like them to know something about the history of mathematics  but who has time for that when we have to cover the whole curriculum before the test?

Which, coincidentally was exactly the topic of this week's (not) interesting piece of print I tried to share.  (My life is filled with text to self connections, even though the PD facilator told us that  terminology is no longer cool- we no longer care about whether a text relates to our lives).

We read an article written by a high school student about the Advanced Placement exams killing all the joy of learning with their formulaic approach to covering a specific curriculum and the cut throat need of the students to "score well" in order to obtain admission into an"elite" college.  It wasn't exactly analogous to our lives, since AP doesn't figure largely (and by not largely, I mean none at all) in our course offerings.  But the sentiment exists.  We don't teach learning about those gambling loving mathematicians because we are so busy trying to get one more topic in before the Regents Exams.

It wasn't a grand success.
Bernie thinks an engaging article is about food.
Nina thinks I should just bring in the food.
Laurence wishes the school offered AP courses.

I ask. "What would be an engaging text?"

"One that comes with a diamond ring."  I'm told.

I will look for a more "engaging" text this weekend.
Hope springs eternal.
I have this belief life is worth reading, writing and talking about..

Saturday, September 10, 2011

Metaphoric students and moving balls

New school year- again. Here comes the Common Core Curriculum, new teacher evaluations and another year of trying to survive the anti-teacher education climate.

But our principal was a physical education teacher. So we began our professional development series with a team relay race that required us to move various-sized balls in tubes, across the gym.

On Tuesday, the new organization sheet had me as the high school special education teacher. On Thursday when classes began, I was told to teach sixth grade Social Studies, oh and maybe Technology ( but not in the tech room).

The old me would have had a fit. The new me---
Well it was kind of was like a treasure hunt game. First I had to figure out what periods I was supposed to teach those classes, remember my assignment was high school special ed, then I needed to figure out what room to teach them in and lastly (the most tricky part) I was supposed to find the students. (Just for the record, the students were, not even one time, in or on the way to the room where the secretary told me the class would meet)

But I am a good treasurer hunter, and a fair "winger" of unplanned lessons.
I read the Social Studies class the book Squids Will be Squids, by John Sciewska.

Then I asked: How can stories tell us about their author's culture?

And many kids gave good answers, but one said, good stories relate important information about culture through the use of metaphors and similes.
(Maybe I should wish that the principal doesn't actually figure out that I should be the high school special education teacher!)

So that is what the "moving the different balls through the tube relay race" was all about, it was a simile or maybe a metaphor, on how working as a team we can "move" children. (If you are a not a NYC teacher, you may not know that in any year the sole purpose of a teacher is to "move" a student from the category of proficiency s/he placed in the previous year to the next higher level)

BTW- I figured out early in the race to maneuver my body so my back was to the other contestants, place my finger securely on the open ends of the tube and pass it on before anyone noticed.
Hey - after thirty tears of teaching I was not about to crawl around the gym floor chasing metaphoric students or runaway balls.

And, Michele Rhee, Atlanta and Philadelphia administrators- I am not drawing any conclusions about the relationship between standardized tests and "moving" students progress and cheating!

But remember- that at least one very bright sixth grader thinks that an author's story relates information about culture through the use of similes and metaphors.

Monday, November 2, 2009

Futility

Ah-November. Teacher-parent conferences, behind us, Thanksgiving getting closer Veteran's Day even closer but first there is Election's Day Professional Development to get through. I used to categorically hate Professional Development- for some reason it reminded me of the Mark Eden Bust Development ads that used to appear in magazines with names like "True Romance or True Confessions." (Okay, now I think I really dated myself) The Mark Eden Bust Development product was some plastic contraption that promised to build the pectoral muscles of the user and thus enhance the appearance of her breasts. What then is the connection between professional development and advertisements from the back of the trash magazine from pre-silicon days?

Did someone say "futility?"

I am working on my bad attitude. Especially since these days I'm one of the people who plan professional development.

So let me stop complaining, close off the blog and try to figure out how to make formative assessments interesting.

Or work on my pectoral muscles, these days its not size that matters, but direction (as in not straight downward).

Did someone say "futile"?