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I’ve been asked to plan and organize the counselor’s sessions for the upcoming InterMountain Educator’s Forum June 11-13.  Even though this event is a couple of months away, I’m excited about the sessions I’ve been able to pull together so far for the three days.

For starters, we’ve got Dr. James Mason from Oregon DHS coming to present to us on Monday morning.  Dr. Mason has done extensive work applying cultural competency models to schools and other organizations.  I heard him speak last year at the Violence Prevention Summer Institute in Corvallis, and was very impressed by the ideas he had to share with us.  When I found out I was going to be organizing this gig, his was the first name on my list for guest speakers.

Also on the agenda, we have our school resource officer coming in to give us a presentation on drugs/gangs identification and awareness and issues in school safety.    I’m also working on presenters for the following topics:

• Sexual predator issues for k-12 students
• Signs of child abuse/neglect at all age levels
• Grief counseling
• Student behavior management
• Experiential education
• School counseling and guidance curriculum

It should be a great three days.  I will post more information as it gets closer to the date.

On a tech note, I’m experimenting with Google Docs to put the agenda and the flier together.  That way, I have the same document to print out to give as a hard copy, as well as retrieved via the web.  I’ll let you know how it works, but so far so good.

Pete Reilly has written an insightful and touching story about his experience with some kids that didn’t fit in with school.  I especially appreciate the compassion and understanding that he showed with these kids.  This story stuck with him through the years and shaped his approach to education today.  Pete reflects on the influence they had on his teaching:

They weren’t going to “play” school like the others. They weren’t going to “pretend” this was important to them. I could count on them reflecting back to me the best and worst of my teaching. If I was at my best I would see them engaged fully. Anything less, anything that was not relevant, not well planned, not taught well; and they would find something else to keep them busy. Generally, something that got them in trouble.

Thanks for posting that, Pete.  Sometimes we learn just as much from our kids as they do from us.

‘Grammar Girl’ a quick and dirty success - CNN.com

I haven’t put this one on my iPod yet, but apparently Grammar Girl is quite a hit on iTunes, at one point claiming the #2 spot in popularity on the podcast subscription site.  Recent articles on her blog include the use of “bad” vs. “badly”, and how to appropriately correct somebody’s grammar. 

This is the brainchild of Mignon Fogarty, a technical writer from Arizona who says she got her idea in a coffee shop one day last Spring.  She put the podcast together in July, and the rest is history.  She’s been so successful, in fact, that she has put out similar podcasts for manners, money management, and Second Life survival. 

You can find the iTunes subscription link here.  I’m going there right now to check it out.

Anybody making use of Grammar Girl in the classroom? 

Technorati Tags: Grammar Girl, podcasting, iTunes, iPod,

A few days ago, I posted about Dan Myer, a young math teacher in California who has been using a unique way to test his students.  He’s provided a follow-up to that post to show us how that method has worked in real life. 

He first presented them with their grades from each assignment, and asked them if those scores coincided with that of their own.  You see, he’s had them take the extra step of keeping track of their own scores also.  In a few cases, there was a discrepancy that was quickly fixed.  He claims that this produced some buy-in from the students.  In a subsequent comment in this post, he explained:

There are a lot of necessary barriers between teacher and student but this is one I’m happy to do away with. I don’t bring their grades down from a mountain top engraved in stone. These are our grades.

Next, he had them guess how they were doing as a class on each assignment.  To their credit, they were able to correctly identify the top seven categories.  He announced that they would be spending some time as a class working on the remaining six categories that needed more work.

He then put their assignments on the board.  You see, each student has a different assignment based on their individual needs.  Kids buy into it because they are able to use these assignments to practice for the next mini-test.  They can raise their grade, regardless of how they did on the previous test. 

Granted, this method requires a bit more work on the part of the instructor.  Mr. Myer acknowledged that the Audit time was a “terrible day for free-time, but a proud day for assessment.” 

Here in Oregon, it would interesting to track these students and see how their learning in the classroom matched up with state assessment scores.  My guess is that there would be a high correlation in these areas. 

Technorati Tags: math, assessment, teaching, education, learning

Scott McLeod at Dangerously Irrelevant has published the results from his recent Education Blogosphere Survey. One hundred and sixty “edu-bloggers” participated; I was one of them. A few interesting observations:

• 80% of the respondents cited either “increased learning and growth” or “Community / connection / interaction” as the most valuable thing they got from blogging.
• The most difficult thing about blogging? Finding the time to write or having fresh content, 61%. I don’t know about the content, but I think most of us can relate to the time factor.
• On average, the participants subscribed to 89 different feeds in their blog reader. Somebody actually had 587.
• Several participants left some insightful comments. Here’s one regarding the benefits of blogging: “It has made me feel like a member of a much larger and much more resource rich educational community.” I really resonated with that one.

You can download a PowerPoint file with the results summary, or an Excel file for your own data-mining entertainment. This was a great idea for a survey, and I would like to see this survey expanded in the future.

Technorati Tags: blogosphere survey, educational technology, educational blogging, teachers, survey

Dan Meyer is a third-year math teacher in the San Lorenzo Valley School District (Calif.).  He has come up with a method of assessing math students that encourages students to buy in to their own success.  This method also rewards them for their knowledge of subject matter, regardless of whether the light bulb clicks on at test-time or afterward.  He has written a mini-thesis of sorts, as well as a short online movie presentation, both of which clearly and succinctly outline his method.

I’ve seen alternative assessment methods presented before, but never in a way that tied in so clearly with student success and enthusiasm for subject matter.  If I were a middle school or high school math teacher, I would take a serious look at this and consider adopting it for my own classroom.  I wonder how this could be adapted for other subjects and implemented k-12? 

HT:  Dangerously Irrelevant

Technorati Tags: math education, teaching, learning, student success