Nice videos made by Mrs. Yollis and her 3rd grade students. She is a fantastic teacher who integrates technology and shares what she does really well. If you are an elementary teacher, her classroom blog is a great one to subscribe to with your RSS reader.
Yes, you can use photos of students successfully in online spaces without showing faces. There are a few nice sample teacher permission slips here to take a look at. Taking photos is so easy today. Even studens can take them for blog posts. Cropping off or blurring faces if necessary is also easily done.
Teachers expert in inspiring long-term, personally meaningful and interdisciplinary projects or thematic instruction regularly exceed the standards, but that realization is lost on facilitators.
New teachers have little or no experience with classroom centers, independent work, student projects and the sorts of agency that allow children to enjoy the “flow” experiences that build upon their obsessions and lead to understanding. Even when teachers are not lecturing from bell-to-bell, the classroom agenda is top-down and leaves little chance for serendipity or student initiative.
Great teachers know their students in deeper ways than any data can provide. They ask kids about their weekends. They chat about what kids are reading and console them when their hamster dies
They learn continuously for themselves and their students. Teachers share their love of reading and are patrons of the arts. They are active citizens and engage students in current events. Outstanding teachers are not afraid to appear silly or create a whimsical classroom environment. They play in the snow with kindergarteners like Maria Knee.
great teachers need to be passionate, competent and interesting humans beyond the scope and sequence of the curriculum.
oday, new teachers truly are facilitators. They are “trained” to manage classrooms and deliver the curriculum handed to them.
Speaking these words can be a way to commiserate with colleagues, or they can become “in jokes” among friends. These exchanges can be OK when we are face-to-face with others, as we have body language and voice inflections to help us understand the meaning and context behind the statements. Online is a different situation, however.
Suddenly my Twitter stream was a teacher’s lounge.
if we have an online presence, we must be responsible in what we say or write. This seems simple, doesn’t it? Nevertheless, we forget that we are not in the company of friends when we say or write the things we do. Almost anyone can read our words, and they might misunderstand our intent.
Teachers are engaged in practices like these because they are pressured and afraid, not because they think the assessments are educationally sound. Their principals are pressured and nervous about their own scores and the school’s scores. Guaranteed, every child in the class feels that pressure and trepidation as well.
I am troubled that a company that has a multi-million dollar contract to create tests for the state should also be able to profit from producing test prep materials. I am even more deeply troubled that this wonderful little girl, whom I have known since she was born, is being subject to this distortion of what her primary education should be.
Real learning occurs in the mind of the learner when she makes connections with prior learning, makes meaning, and retains that knowledge in order to create additional meaning from new information. In short, with tests we see traces of learning, not learning itself.
Parents can expect that the other three will be neglected as teachers frantically try to prepare students for the difficult and high-stakes tests.
They see data, not children.
The promise of the Common Core is dying and teaching and learning are being distorted. The well that should sustain the Core has been poisoned.
Whether or not learning the word ‘commission’ is appropriate for second graders could be debated—I personally think it is a bit over the top. What is of deeper concern, however, is that during a time when 7 year olds should be listening to and making music, they are instead taking a vocabulary quiz.
Data should be used as a strategy for improvement, not for accountability
A fool with a tool is still a fool. A fool with a powerful tool is a dangerous fool.