A few more great microteachings today.  I liked the conversational style that people used today.  Also saw the feedback from my group's teaching last week.  A few people said they had trouble hearing me.  I felt I was trying to project at the time, and I wonder how you speak louder.  There comes a point where, because it feels like I'm shouting, I switch over from conversational mode to short instructions.  Another thing to think on and practice...

We also talked about the Spirit Catches Me.  I read it it on my kindle, which I find an easy way to read, but a hard to way to call specifics back up...

It was pretty cool to hold a human brain today.  My dad taught at a medical school all of his working life.  His subjects were gross anatomy and neuro anatomy, but never once did any of us kids go in with him on a working day, so I had never seen a brain before.  When my sister was in college, he arranged a summer job for her where she helped write brochures encouraging people to plan to donate their bodies to the medical program after they died.  He also used to come home on dissection days and head straight to the shower to wash away the formaldehyde smell....  so today reminded me a bit of his teaching days...

Talked tonight a bit  with my husband about how to praise the learning vs the accomplishment - something we struggle with as parents. I think it is tricky to do well -- when praise is very specific, e.g. "What a graceful tail you've put in your letter 'a'", I think   the praise-receiver can hear "the rest looks lousy."  Something I'll keep thinking about...

my 1st microteaching...

Cohort18 rocks!  Shannon and I presented the bike lesson we worked on with Navreet today to a fantastically supportive 6th grade class.  I believe my hand shaking while speaking to the class has greatly minimized in the last month, though I see from the first minutes of the video of the lesson that I also make some mighty big, emphatic hand gestures. 

I know that at home I tend to lecture ... I tell my daughter lots of things when it would probably be better for us to discuss.  Shannon & Navreet let me have the more conversational part of the lesson, and I wanted to work at having the class discuss, rather than me lecture.  I was also determined to venture into the center aisle of the room while talking.  I've watched some people come to the very 1st class comfortable doing that, and others start to do it, but I hadn't yet ventured there.  I did a bit of both, and the world kept on turning, so maybe I can do them both again :-).

1st microteaching day

Today's micro-lesson teachers did a great job!  It makes me appreciate anew the group, time and space  management skills that teachers have:  to listen to each kid, redirect or correct as necessary, encourage emerging ideas, keep the conversation on track and headed towards the goal, all while walking around the room, passing things out and picking things up, watching the clock and mentally re-adjusting the plans for the day as lessons take shorter or longer than expected, etc, etc. Wow.

Also liked the group opening exercise of looking at grid of 16 squares (4x4) and counting how many squares there are.  It was a simple and effective example of how you can come to different answers after time and conversation than you come up with at first glance.

Signs of abuse class

Tried some iPhone apps for food logging, but in the end, I prefer a plain old spiral notebook.  I'm using my fitbit (and its tracker app) to log activity.  I love my fitbit! 

I thought today's class on spotting and reporting possible abuse had a lot of good information.  I find it helpful to have the perspective that you, as the teacher reporting suspected abuse, are not irrevocably separating parent and child, but rather starting a process that may get a family resources they need, or may even go nowhere because your worries turned out to be wrong.  I hope we get a chance to talk about The Spirit Catches Me, because I thought that the author's position was that the doctors should have worked harder to understand Hmong culture and should not have reported the family to CPS.  But after today's class, it seems to me that a lot of that burden rightly belongs with CPS.  If a Hmong child came in with lesions from coin treatments, what would be the tipping point between  an acceptable number and too many?  Surely other perspectives (such as those brought by the social workers and staff of CPS) help make sure the right thing happens.  

I appreciated too that a lot of the signs of abuse might also bring special ed staff into the discussions and evaluation.  Again, there is a safety net in having multiple teachers actively evaluating why a student might be struggling.

Back to blogging :-).... This time for BEDUC 423. 

For my birthday last week, I got a smartphone for my big present, and I've had fun all week finding apps.  Today I added Evernote for the Arts class and MyFitnessPal for 423.  We're going camping this weekend so the exercise won't be a problem, but the food tracking will take some discipline...

Poverty, Scholarship, College, and High School Project musings

I have a cousin in Virginia, now in her sixties, who is a kindergarten teacher.  About 15 years ago, she and her husband wanted to up their charitable contributions for tax reasons, and they decided to set up a scholarship fund for her former students.  When they were seniors in high school, the former students could apply for the scholarship (which was about 5K), and she picked one lucky winner.

I always thought that was a nice way to stay in touch with a few students.  As we’ve talked in class, I’ve wondered if it would be a way to motivate any students?  How about if the fund were created in 5^th grade, and anyone who applied for a scholarship was guaranteed to get one?  If you were in 5^th grade and you knew there was a bit of money set aside for you in a fund somewhere, growing with interest, would you be more determined to get to college?  Could a teacher or school or organization raise enough money each year to keep a fund like that going?  Will the nature of college change so that such scholarships don’t make sense?  Has anyone ever tried something like this on a larger scale than my cousin’s?

As I wondered about this, I liked the idea, but thought it would be a lot of work to figure out if it made sense and was feasible.  But then I thought it would be a pretty cool project for a high school class to work on, and perhaps the class itself could be eligible for the 1^st round of scholarships.  Of course their research would be the first step, and there would be a ton of legal stuff in the next.  And that got me to thinking about how cool it would be if the local fro-yo shop could have a high school class design their advertising campaign, and so forth.  These seem like cool projects, but are they ethical or are they violations of child labor laws or school  policy?  Could local businesses somehow pay the class or school?  How would you take the first step?