Monday, April 21, 2014

This PD Video Triggered Flashbacks of My Own PD Nightmares



This mind-numbing video of professional development from Chicago has been making the rounds recently, and for me it brought back a flood of memories of awful PD my colleagues and I endured. Usually the least effective workshops were created and run internally, but that didn't necessarily mean external "experts" were much better.

In this case, at least the expert is modeling the methods they're peddling (which would be fine if such methods were any good to begin with). I can remember several examples where new methods or technology were simply talked about, looked at and then we were left to find out how to apply them to our classrooms on our own. The resources from that kind of PD ended up stuffed into the back of a closet, never to be heard from again.

Unfortunately, this is an example of why teachers are so disengaged from PD. When I would seek out relevant PD on my own, I was usually told that I couldn't take any professional days for them. Then the days that were built into the schedule were full of drivel like this. I would laugh when an administrator would try to teach us to be more engaging and to use exciting new methods by lecturing to us off of a PowerPoint for half a day. The absurdity of it all!

Seek out your own PD and take the time you need to dive into it, if you can. If not, take advantage of what's increasingly available online (often for free) and find a way to fit it around whatever new acronym your school has chosen to follow this year. Your teaching will be better off because of it.

Monday, April 14, 2014

A Song About My Time in the Classroom

Creativity and problem solving were the keys to my day-to-day life as a teacher, and I poured myself so fully into that life that I had little time or energy to put into anything else.  In my life outside the classroom, I still have the need to create and put that drive into a variety of projects, including writing and playing music.  I started that project over a year ago, but it took until recently for me to write anything about my time in the classroom.

When the inspiration came, I wanted to tell the story of my students, not any particular one but an amalgam of those I met over the years. The result is this acoustic, country-tinged ballad entitled Janie's Song. Lyrics are below.




Janie was the new girl, she had trouble making friends
At that age, there's no easy kind of change.
She was bullied every day, before we cared what that was
livin' with a most familiar pain
Janie was the only child from a single parent home
Just her and mom alone against the world
She saw this as a dead end town, next generation stickin' around
stickin' to the same script as before
I've been in your shoes--
Singing awkward off-key teenage blues
And your good heart my be denied
You'll come out stronger on the other side
Leave this far behind you in a couple of years
I guess all that I'm tryin' to say, is Janie, wipe away those tears
One day she put her head down, wouldn't talk to anyone
I whispered "you can always trust in me"
The burdens these kids carry around would break the backs of most
And your heart will not allow your eyes to see
Janie came to me and cried, said she might take her own life,
"Nobody here would miss me if I died"
I would miss what you could do with the good heart that's inside of you
You're just a seed and the flower's still to come
I've been in your shoes--
Singing awkward off-key teenage blues
And your good heart my be denied
You'll come out stronger on the other side
Leave this far behind you in a couple of years
I guess all that I'm tryin' to say, is Janie, wipe away those tears

Friday, April 11, 2014

April 2014 Reader on Educational Games


Improving the World of Educational Gaming [Kotaku] - I agree wholeheartedly with the author here--the simplest improvement we can make is touting the educational aspects of everyday games while doing the opposite for educational games.

Trip Hawkins’s next act: If You Can, a startup for social emotional learning games. [Slate] - We have barely scratched the surface of the potential of these tools. Here's an example of a game taking a step in the right direction.

How a High School Teacher Is 'Gamifying' World News [Mashable] - Holy cow, I love this idea. If I was still in the social studies classroom, I would have loved this. It's important to note that educational gaming doesn't have to mean technology or video games; in this case, it's about gamifying the learning process of a While Side note: I experimented with fantasy sports in the math classroom years ago.

Immersive Video Games: The Future of Education? [Mental Floss] - Echoes a lot of what I wrote years ago for the Educational Games Research blog.

All the World's a Game: Interactive Map Gives Kids the Travel Bug [Mashable] - I always wanted to get that giant Hammacher Schlemmer world map, the one that would cover most if not all of one wall in your classroom, but this is way, way better.