It’s been a busy week, but one of my favorites! Since changing roles in the world of education, I have been homesick for the individual conversations with students and the daily rush of watching them enjoy learning in the classroom. Thankfully many of the teachers here have invited me into their classrooms to co-teach several lessons integrating the SMARTboard and Smart Notebook lessons we’ve been working on! FUN, FUN, FUN! So, today’s quote from another of my favorite bloggers Vicki Davis (Cool Cat Teacher) is very timely! She writes:

“Educating children and teens requires passion. I believe that a good teacher has one thing undergirding everything in their classroom… an honest, genuine love for their students. Because students see frigid indifference and they tune it out. They see enough frigidity in this tough, cold world. What they want to see are warm bodies with open arms who will push them to excellence beyond what they realize that they can do. Teachers and administrators who will push their own envelope of knowledge before they ask students to do the same. Teachers who don’t just “bide their time,” call in sick to staff development, and complain. I’m sorry, folks, but if somebody invited me to a pity party … I’d skip. No one wants to be around the hopeless, indifferent frigidity of a person who has given up the dream of making a difference! Educating is truly the greatest calling on earth. Instead of just putting money in the bank, you are carving meaning into the lives of students and leaving a mark on your own soul. If you truly love your students. If you truly give them all you have and come home at the end of the day used up on your quota of words and wondering how you will even move from one room to the next. If you teach with all you have and all you are. If you care so much that you lay awake at night thinking and praying about how to reach that one student who is not just getting it…then you have achieved greatness.“

Today we attended the preconferences for LearnNC. The first 2 hours were spent exploring the LearnNC site, including some new applications they’ve added. There is a great new section for ESL curriculum, links, and assistance. I could spend hours playing with the thousands of great links they have collected. There are several new search strategies I was unaware of to find lesson plans and sites for specific grade levels and topics. Can’t wait to show the River!

As we approach one of the most hectic times of the quarter, I want to pass along a blog entry from another of my favorite education bloggers, Vicki A. Davis (AKA Cool Cat Teacher). Unfortunately, you’ll have to read it from home due to the county blocking of blogspot. This post is a must-read for stressed out teachers! AMEN!

I have recently read two articles that have impressed me as far as their attitude concerning the importance of the classroom teacher. Although, as good 21st Century educators, we should be actively moving toward more of the “Guide on the Side” as opposed to the “Sage on the Stage”, we are important Guides! If we were to invest in a tour of the Grand Canyon, and our guide was not knowledgeable, could not answer our questions, and took a “Well, you’ll figure it out” attitude we would want our money back. And more importantly, we would have missed the opportunity to learn about a wonderful national treasure! How true for classroom educators infusing technology as well. In his article, “What We’re Here For“, in the October issue of Teacher Magazine, Doug Noon sums it up like this:

“There’s a myth out there that goes something like this: When it comes to technology, children need no teachers. Show them any high-tech gadget and they seem instinctively to know how it works, even if they’ve never seen it before. This instant familiarity has convinced many educators that, when the topic is computer instruction, we teachers should simply provide the hardware and get out of the way. But if we did that, our students would learn very little.”

He goes on to say:

“If the job of a teacher is to help students orient themselves to the world, then that responsibility has to include the world of computers. Proficiency on a video football game doesn’t make kids Web-savvy any more than it qualifies them for the NFL. Even though students dive right into technology, they still need to be taught how to swim. “

The other article that has stayed at the forefront of my thoughts lately is entitled, “An Open Letter to Elementary School Teachers” by Kenneth J. Willers, an article written for techLEARNING. It is a wonderfully empowering piece in which he states:

Students don’t need a $50,000 computer lab to learn how to create a Word document or a PowerPoint presentation. Students may not even need a computer teacher to teach them these skills. Imagine if we created pencil labs so we could teach all the students how to use a pencil. We laugh at this image, but we have done the same thing with computer labs. Students need to learn to write, so we give them a pencil, we demonstrate how to hold and move the object, but we do it in the context of writing the alphabet, words, sentences, or paragraphs. The pencil is merely a tool used to advance the language arts curriculum and/or learning of the student. The emphasis is never placed on the tool (pencil). When it came to technology, rather than providing access to the tool, schools got caught up in teaching the tool. The structure of technology placed too much emphasis on the tool, as if teaching students “computers” was the goal. Students may have acquired the skills to use a computer, but skills taught outside of instruction defeat the goal of curriculum integration. Besides, we don’t teach computers, we teach language arts, math, science, social studies, religion, etc…”

So, here’s to teaching “literacy” (as David Warlick would say) using technology tools seemlessly in our classrooms!

Another one of my favorite blogs to read is that of Wesley Fryer! In a recent post he comments on the need for “messy assessment” as opposed to the multiple choice, one-moment-in-time testing that is the source of a great deal of stress in our classrooms today. He comments:

“Time remains one of the biggest obstacles and challenges to improving the quality of education in many places, I think. We don’t need more testing and more rigor– we need more instructional flexibility and support for our teachers, combined with high expectations for student achievement measured in “messy ways” as well as traditional tests. We need to encourage teachers and administrators to embrace complexity and messy assessment– rather than force-feeding students content under a false, transmission-model of education which flogs students instead of empowering them. Testing and standards alone can’t improve education– we need to address the problems with rigid and traditional curriculum and empower teachers to teach with passion and creativity.”

Interesting….