WOW! Is My Fellows Year Really Almost Over?

It's hard to believe how fast this year has gone by. I remember thinking this summer how I couldn;t wait until I could come intot he school year, make mistakes and learn how to become a better teacher. I thank God for my expereince at Rock Bridge this school year, the faculty that surrounded me, the wonderful mentor teacher who kept me sane and taught me so much and most of all the amazingly wonderful students that I had the privilege of serving this school year. I am currently in the process of writing thank you notes to all my studnets this year thanking them for my great expereince for helping me become a better teacher and also apologizing because I know I wasn't the best that I'm going to hopefully become.

On to technology:

Initially when I worte my technology plan I thought I was going to do a themes activity that called for my students to research a region of teh world and create a presentation explaining how our World Studies themes have aided in the development of that region from its incipiency until today. At that time I did not know that that was a componnet of our 2nd semester comprhensive final therefore I could not do it. Instead I tried a similar activity with my African American Expereince course. My partner and I came up with an idea to have students do a virtual scrapbook presentation. Groups were comprised of 3 individuals who read different independent reading novels with similar themes. I wrote about this assignment in an earlier blog, but I was not completely satisfied with the outcome. I decided to give it one more try and in teh same course I had students do one component to a Civil Rights Museum. Though I did not do the assignment with the original technology plan in mind, after revisiting all the objectives and purposes I realized they were modified in a way that aligned with my orginal intent for my World Studies assignment. The groups honed their research skills, learned to use various search engines, utilized various programs in Microsoft Office such as Movie Maker, Power Point, etc., and constructed knowledge in a fun, entertaining, and interesting way through technology.

Each group was assigned one important person, event, or organization from the Civil Rights Era, researched it, and created their own individual section of a virtual museum. The assignmnet was to be interactive and incorporate quotes, symbolic artifacts, music, and a variety of pictures. The plan was to put all the projects together to create an entire Virtual Museum of the Civil Rights Movement.

The assignment did not work out as planned again because the directions were not clear. Though I had the vision in my head, it was not successfully conveyed to the students. I do believe that I will attempt to do this next year and hopefully we can produce something that is worthy of it's own wbsite, with links, and other interactive facets.

Overall I am pleased with the amount of technology that I used in the classroom this school year. This course pushed me to use my resources and to think of ways to effectively use technology to "spice up" my lessons. I feel that I will definitely continue to try to implement technology into my activities and assessments as I become more comfortable with technology use.

Vignettes

VENT

I can definitely feel the time crunch as the end of the year approaches. This has been the shortest school year I’ve ever experienced. Fellows coursework and comps papers are becoming more stressful as deadlines approach and classroom work is becoming very demanding and time is running out. Being on the “other side” of education has been very eye opening this year and I’m thankful for all my experiences although, at times, I feel a bit overwhelmed. Sorry for the vent, but I had to get it out.

YouTUBE

As of late, the greatest news that I’ve received concerning the use of technology in the classroom is that Rock Bridge Fire Walls have been changed to allow teachers to sign on to YouTube with our CPS password. There are many great educational resources on this site and it will greatly benefit the students and classroom instruction. I used You Tube once in the classroom already in teaching a short WWI parable called “The Last Flower.” I also have been proactive in attempting to consider the possibility of using it when I plan my lessons for my African American Experience course.

RESEARCH

As the year ends I have also been making sure that my students are honing their research skills. My World Studies class is researching the extent and evolution of non-Western countries’ self-determination from the age of imperialism to the falling of the Berlin Wall. The first time I wrote about research skills in the classroom I explained how we gave students key words and sites to visit. Our focus now is to see how well students can research on their own. The supplemental instruction is focusing on how to determine a valid site from one that is useless or unreliable. I feel that allowing students to research in this way will better benefit them for the classes they take in the future, and for my seniors, it will aid them as they enter into a world that will not make the many facets of research so plain and straight forward.

Bombarded with Thoughts of Technology

It seems like everywhere I turn there is something being said about technology. During our Western Civ unit, we ended with the Industrial Revolution and it talked about how all teh new technology boosted Europe to become a super power. THis opened the door for the Age of imperialism. this is a relevant point because those peoples who were imperialized were those who "fell behind." They lacked the advnaced technolgy to keep up with the changing world.

Connecting this to today's world, I know we have all seen by now the video/powerpoint about the impact that technology has on our world today. The video with startling statistics about the number of users on teh internet, the fast growing cyberworld, the ages of these children using the net, and how technology is changing the way we do business globally, how it effects domestic affairs and what it means for the work force and receeding economy. Thoguh it is exciting that technology is surrpunding us, making us a more efficient, connected, and lively world it is also places fear in many people's hearts. In doing reserch today on the importance of classroom questioning to promote critcal thinkers in teh classoom, the concluding chapter in Ivan Hanel's "Highly Effective Questioning: Developing the Seven Steps to Critical Thinking," he took a "timeout" to revert from strategy implementation to talk about why teaching students to be critical thinkers extends beyond making them good test takers. he explained that "It is only because of the increased need for critcal thinking that the pedgogical role of questioning is so germane." Furthermore, he begins to talk about world competition and also the replacement of human beings with machines.

These statements reminded me of the industrial revolution and the age of imperialism all over again. Technology is forcing us to ensure that our studnets are beceoming life long learners that are adaptable to the ever-changing world. If we fall behind, premonitions of China or India becoming teh next world superpower will come to fruition and leave America wishing and hoping that we used technology to our advantage to remain in the position we are in. We can not remain stagnant in out technological race or our students will be replaced by machines and we will possibly fall victim to some modern day form of technological imperialism. I'm not crazy, and George Bush if you're reading this, this is not by any means a prophesy or threat to the nation. LOL---- little technology lingo meaning Laugh Out Loud!!

Survival Mode

School is winding down and it seems like it went by soooooo fast! I haven;t been able to use much technology in teh classroom lately and in realizing this I began to think how I can weave it into my next unit on 20th Centuryfrom around teh world. I was not able to introduce my discussion board forums as a method of questioning and dialogue during this previous unit so I plan to get it off teh ground after Spring Break at the start of "20th Century." I have expanded my idea to not only have the students in discussion board groups responding to questions and to one another, but to hav them start their own forums based off the historical events that we learn about during the unit. I wnat them to do some type of interactive online notebook (if I can figure out a blog site that can get through the firewalls), and have the students share their thoughts, ideas, and new found understandings ofthe material.I think blogs are a good way to have students become more active participants in tehir success because it causes them to think more deeply about the information and mold it in a way that makes it more personal to them. If anyone reads this and has other ideas I can use, please feel free to respond.

Technology Issues Can Cause a Lot of Down Time

It's crazy how fast the year is passing. My students and I are now in our second unit of teh semester in World Studies which is Western Civ. In order for the studnets to understand how western worldviews developed, my partner and I decided to take two full class periods explaining teh five western worldviews: Superiority/Domination, Representative Government, Humanism/Seclarism, Rationalism, and Individualism.

After introducing the worldviews to the students they picked groups of 4 and each group pulled a worldview out of a hat. Which ever W/V they picked, their group was supposed to create a video skit of a modern day situation depicting the worldview. The student creativity was amazing. A I walked around and saw the different planning sessions it amazed me how the students coud creatively dispaly their understanding of very hard topics to concepts to grasp.
We provide the students with 3 digital camaras and others helped out by bringing cameras of their own. It seemed that we had everyhting under control.

The skits were great, they were recorded on teh cameras and the student videos were ready to go. We continued the unit by using Greece as a microcosm for understanding how the Worldviews develoed by using primary source documents, video, and even having our own olympics to further show the worldviews at work. We focused on one W/V each day and the groups who created video skits for that particular W/V served as the intro to each day. There were about 3-4 videos we had to show for each W/V and this is where I proved to not be very technologically savvy. The videos took a while to load. I had to learn how to transfer the video onto teh comp, what types of file to save the videos under, and how to pull them up for the studnets. THis took a long time because as I mentioned my technology skills are not up to par. This created a lot of side talk, frustration on my part, and a lot of anxious students.

I will still have to sa that there were nothing but positives that came out of doing this activity. The students were able to use technology, I was able to learn a lot about cameras, video, and computer files, and the skits wer wonderful. Though technology can malfunction and cause a little frustration, implementing it into the classroom always makes the activities ten times better.

An MLA Nightmare

Teaching sophomores how to research is such a hard task. As teachers, we take for granted the fact that we’ve been doing research papers for years and we and it is innate within us to cite sources, and end with a works cited page that shows the standard MLA documentation. This week I found out the hard way that sophomore students are not yet equipped with this tool and need much guidance. If plagiarism were a sin my whole class would be going to Hell on scholarship with gasoline underpants. They had to do a research project on a Chinese dynasty that was set up for them with guided questions to answer. Though the students did an excellent job of regurgitating information in essay form they neglected to give anyone credit for their amazing thoughts and ideas.

I think this is the first time this year that I had to completely re-teach something because I did an absolute poor job because I assumed the students were aware of a skill that they had never been taught. I took this as a lessoned learned because I had to reflect on myself as a student and when I was introduced to this skill. I had realized that even as a college student I never really grasped how to effectively use internal citation and I never (still to this day) knew how to use correct formal documentation in my works cited page as I have to look it up on MLA online every time I do a paper. I could I expect my students to perform a task I continually need help with myself.

Aside from the MLA issue, the students have truly gotten a lot better with their researching skills. Their key words they use in different search engines have become much more specific and relevant to the topics that they are studying. The sites that they use for sources are a lot more credible and they can, for the most part, decipher between relevant and irrelevant material, leading to a much more analytical focused paper.

In my African American Experince class we are teaching a unit on teh African American oral tradition. One aspect of oral tradition that I will be presenting will be on the history of rap music and the roles that it has played and the purposes that it serves for African Americans. Once again I am not the most technologically incluined but I felt that it would be best to let rap tell its own story through lyrics of integral records over teh course of its 25 year history. I was fortunate enough to have a fraternity brother who had a huge library of hip hip music from the birth up to more recent tracks of today. He showed my how to loop the music, fade in and out from song to song so I could get the portion of each song that I wanted to help best tell the story. Being able to mix the songs in chronological order, cutting the lyrics and picking up with another song that completes sentences, allowed students to show the interconnectedness of hip hip music and its ability to tell teh story of a people. Presenting various eras of hip hop will allow the students to better understand how rap music serves as a form entertainmentas well as a vehicle for social political consciousness. Because the studnets are immersed in hip hop culture daily in tehis age of technology, using this type of technology to burn, and stream music to use as a teaching tool will have the students feelt that they are learning culturally relevant material in through a meaningful instructional method. I'm looking forward to presenting this information because I can show off my music "cutting" skills and teach the students something they will be highly intriugued by.

Media Scrapbook

For my African American Expereince class I decided to have the students do a media scrapbook as a lit set assessment. The students read different novels about inner-city life. I picked the groups so that the 5 members of each group read a differnt novel. Their duty was to creat a visual representation (media scrapbook) of the common themes, and messages that ran through their novels. They were only to use technology to accomplish this task. The visual wsas to serve as the voice for the group and therfore no students were allowed to speak during teh presentation. The scrapbooks turned out really well. Some students used power point others Windows Movie Maker. I was surprised th way they were ab le to streamline videos, incorporate music, voice overs, and the creative graphics they used to tell a story of iner city living. The students were able to see the power that music, words, and colors, have on the construction of media and teh messages that are conveyed.

The project helped teh students better uderstand the inner-city experience and the social implications atttached to this lifestyle. Through their creativity, they were able to bring into the classroom, through a short 4 minute presentation, social stigmas, hurt, pain, suffering, determination, perseverance, pressures, and strengths and weaknesses of inner city living as shown through their novels. Because students can relate well to music, pictures, and short quotes, better than novels at times, through the use of technology, the presentations allowed students a second chance to receive the messages that they may have during teh reading of tehir novel, and bring to understanding other aspets that they may have missed due to a monlithic reading. I hvae to say that my co-teacher and I were very pleased!

The Simplicity of A SMART BOARD

It surprises me the level of excitement that students have based on the sole fact that you are using a SMART BOARD in class. I am still very technologically illiterate and up to this point, I have only used it for on a very basic level. We have always had a data projector in the classroom and we used it for power point presentations, but it constricted us to simply using the direct instruction method. The students automatically become jaded to the thought of using power points because teachers often use this as their basic means of instruction. Though we use the smart board in the same manner, it seems to illicit a different response. It allows the students to become active participants in the direct instruction method. We can call on students to simply draw, underline, add to, or subtract from our power points with the color pens and they seem to love it. They are engaged a lot longer and they seem to not mind taking the notes because the “add-ons” allow them to better remember each slide.
I have also utilized my Smart Board over the past week during writing instruction. We do not know how to use the writing instruction program yet but the smart board was still able to make it successful. As we continue to receive more training on the use of our smart board it will allow us to have more intriguing and effective lessons.

SNOW DAYS!!!!

I remember when I used to love snow days. School was out, I could sit back and relax for a whole day, and do a whole lot of nothing. In high school, my friends and I would try to drive to each other's houses whether we were out for snow or ice, not caring that we were putting our lives in danger. We were often unseuccessful, but hey, we gave it a try. Snow days in Kansas City means that there is no physical way possible to get to school. I would say that the KCMO district is almost like MU it's rare that it shuts down.

Now I'm on the other side of education, I hate snow days!!! They get in teh way of the wonderful plans you had for the students, set your schedule back, and interrupts preparation time for the semester final (now that Columbia has the semester ending before the break. Snow days in Columiba dont seem to make sense to me sometimes. I know that it's not a reflection on the district, but the city as a while because of the ineffective method of getting the streets cleaned. It seems to me, as I look outside, that I definitely should have been able to go to school today. I tried to give the city the benefit of the doubt and think that possibly the storm was supposed to pick up while we were in school but then the weather man negated that thought and said that the storm and cool air were not going to be around this part of Missouri until 6:30 tonight and that we'd be above freezing for most of teh day. I give the district extra credit for being proactvie and cancelling school early on Sunday night, but I it seems that we could have been on snowroutes and been in school yesterday as well.

I guess I'm just complainig because I got up so early to get ready for school, excited to see my students and now I cant see them and i can't go back to sleep either. Honestly, I gues I'll just get a few things accomplished, God knows (and the Fellows do too ) that I have so many other things that need to be done as well. I guess I've vented enough about my hatred for snow days and the inconvenience they cause because now I feel a littel better.

All This Technology, What to do with It?

Teh technology grant that my partner and I wrote was finalized last week and we received our SMART BOARd, 8 lab top, and a digital camera. We immediately put the SMART BOARD to use, but we do not know how to utilize it to its maximum potential. All we've done thus far is a really cool comic strip to make India come to life, and used it to enhabce a couple of power point presentations. We are going to do more training to learn its capabilities so we can use it as a resource that benefits our studnets in ways that they could not have been had we not received this new technology.

It was humbling to receive lap tops for students' personal use in the classroom but we dont have a good plan to facilitate their use. The room is overcrowded because we share it with another team and it's hard to find space for the to be displayed. We built shelves for storage, but we have yet to utilize them.

Because we have this new and exciting technology, we are at a huge advantage and will begint to implement more activites that encourage students to fine-tune their use of technology. The digital camera, computers and the SMART BOARD will allow us so much versatility in assignments and activites, but we have to follow the Emints model of lesson planning to ensure that we are making the best use of our resources. It is disheartnening to have so much technology in our eduatcional aresenal and not know how to use it. We are in the process of working with our IITS speialists in the building to help with the logistical part of our resources and we have vowed to each other to implement more technology in the curriculum as our expertise on the subject is expanded.

RESEARCH ASSIGNMENT

So my students have had their first real taste of the use of technology in the calssroom. Last week we bagan our researching for our final assessmnet on Africa. The students were supposed to research one region of Africa and gather information on the region before and after imperialism. They were to analyze the impact of European Imperialsim on sub-Saharan Africa.

Sounds like a simple task to me...I could not have been so wrong. Many of the students did not have the computer savvy that I assumed they had. We started from ground one as far as research is concerned. I gave them the websites to visit, what was and was not a good site, and how to document their sources. Though it was a very hard task the students got through it. They took away many key skills that will benefit them throughout the rest of their hihg school career. I haven;t received all of their research information as of yet but hopefully my lie about plagarism and how it is an offense that can send them to jail prevented them from doing it. LOL...They were so scared. English teachers may be mad at me for this one, but I also showed them how to put thir sources into MLA format using "easybib.com." I don;t see this as cheating, I just see it as them using a source, research tool, that will make their lives esaier.

World Studies in High School

I almost feel jealous of my students. I teach World Studies at Rock Bridge and the place that my students sit now, is completely different when I sat in a similar seat in Kansas City six years ago. The way we teach and the material we use for world studies is amazing. Not giving myself praise, but praising the writers of the curriculum and the visionaries who put into motion a push for common assessments that are performance based. I feel like the method the Rock Bridge High school uses allows us as teachers to learn so much about our students. The assessments are creative, challenging, and fun (at least the end result usually is for the students). We finished a unit on the Middle East two weeks ago and are now diving into a unit on Africa. Exploring these different regions of the world chronologically through historical documentation and various forms of literature, we are making the world make sense to our students. We are not teaching them random fragmented pieces of information, we are giving them meaningful material that they will be able to use to help them understand modern day issues and to show them that they are in some way connected to the on-goings around the world. I really enjoy teaching World Studies because I too am learning more every day about the world and my students personally.
Making students socially conscious shows that we are not just into teaching for the sake of teaching, but we are building up good knowledgeable citizens who can take the information acquired and help to make a difference in the societies in which they live. Rock Bridge students are placed at a great advantage because of the required “Studies” program.

Two weeks ago I received some great news. There was an announcement that teachers had the opportunity to write educational grants for pretty much anything they though would be beneficial to the learning of out students. After thinking long and hard, my partner teacher and I realized how beneficial it would be to have a SmartBoard in our classroom. We figured it was a shot in the dark but we tried anyway. We wrote the grant and re-read it over and over, and in my opinion, if I would have been in charge of giving the "thumbs-up" or "thumbs-down" it woudl definitely have been the latter.

The idea of having the Smart Board made so much sense to me and I knew how I would use it, but the grant proposal was missing something. Then I remembered Grapplings Learning Spectrum. I sat my partner down and reminded him that technology is not only supposed to aid in learning but it is supposed to transform learning. When I took our time to think uip all the possible ways that the smart board would allow us to further our contructivist approach to learning the proposal was phenomenal. Reading all of our plans to use it in teh classroom made me so extremely excited and I knew that though receiving a Samrtbora was unfathomable in teh beginning, we had a great chance with this student centered poposal.

We received the news early this past Monday saying that we had been approved for teh Smartboard and after all the training sessions are attended, it will be given to us within the following month. It's ironic how a guy growing up in a district (KCMSD) with limited resources is able to start a chool year technologically illiterate, design a plan to incorporate technology into his teaching, and also be blessed beyond need with instruction changing technological resources ll within a two month time frame. God is doing some great things for me and I'm glad I am favored in his eyes. Because of this blessings he has placed on me, my students will reap benefits even greater as I put my blessings to use.

I THOUGHT I WAS GOING TO GET FIRED!!

My experience thus far at Rock Bridge has been very positive. The students are wonderful, my co-teacher is great, and the school environment is pretty close to ideal. Everything seems to be going my way, until one day it happened. I got the scare of my life. I'll just tell the story the way that it happened.

My co-tecaher and I love what we do and we are determined to make learning interesting for our students. The are doing a Middle East unit right now and we thought we'd spice up the interest level by doing a skit depicting the realities of developing a civilization in ancient Middle Eastern times. With me being the narrator and Greg the "Middle Eastern Man" we thought that the skit would be a sure fire way to help the students understand the material while being entertained at the same time.

Greg should have won an academy award for his performance as The Middle Eastern Man. He came in wearing standard nomadic clothing (graduation gown as a sock, no shoes, and a t-shirt around his head. He praised the God of the light, and the god of teh spiders, the god of water and everything else to show this idea of their polytheistic belief and how it was the people's duty to keep the gods happy. I beat chalk erasers around his head to depict a draught and dust storm and immediaely after drenched him with water to show flooding. This was to illustrate the unpredictabulity of the environmental features. We once again prayed to the gods for giving such fertile land and the opportunity to settle although everything was not perfect.

As expected the skit seemed a success, but after one more scan around the room I found a young man silently crying to himself. Tears falling drop by drop onto his notebook. Rationality came to me. This kid is from the Middle East, what have we done!! Did we make clear that we were talking about ancient Middle Eastern development? Did we do anything stereotypical? They did wear head wraps back then, didn't they? All these questions ran through my mind.I wrote him a note telling him I hope he didn;t think we were being sterotypical and explain to him the purpose. I asked him to meet me outside. He left the classroom at the end of the period without one word spoken to me.

i talked to his counselor and told her the situation. I couldn't believe, me, an individual from a marginalized race, did not take the 5 or 6 seconds to explain the purpose of the activity and that i didn't want to hurt anyone's feelings. I know what it's like to be laughed at because you practiceisn;t what people "the norm." I figured that the activity was inconsiderate and didn;t think about the feelings of ALL my students all the way through. I was sure to be fired once the principal heard about my inconsiderate actions.

I found in the end that I was having first-year teacher paranoia. The student indeed knew individuals who were stil polytheistic and performed those same practices today and the activity did not hurt his feelings, but the fact that those people he knows are looked down upon because of their practices. He told his counselor that he nderstood the activity and he that we were his favorite teachers. I was quite relieved at finding out this information.

I definitely learned a valuable lesson. Although this situation did not blow up in my face, I need to remain cognizant of the lessons and activities I do in school. It is important to make sure that I do not offend anyone ith any of my instructional techniques.

Educational Duality

So I've come to realize that this Fellows thing is gonna be a lot harder than I anticipated. Don't get me wrong, I love teaching and I love learning, but doing them both at the same time is pretty hard work.

Teacher by Day
I have the pleasure of teaching Sophomore World Studies at Rock Bridge High School this year and I ABSOLUTELY LOVE IT!!!! My students are open and receptive to me, they have a hunger to learn, and they are still very impressionable, making classroom managemnet a fairly simple task. I love the fact that I'm teaching a subjet that calls for me to humble myself and ask for help from many directions. Being a "self-centered American" I nver took the time to learn much about anything that seemed of little importance to American society, but having to learn and teach about the world's contributions to the development of society I have come to have a deeper appreciation for and understanding of the world around me.

Student by Night
A person who is serious about their profession is adament about becoming a master of his craft and that is what I am hoping to do through the Fellows Program. I have to admit thought that being a student has never been this hard. Giving and grading homework for my students and recieivenig and completing homework for my professors makes me a very tired young person by the end of the week. But I would not rather be doing anything else in the world though. I thank God for my weariness because he sees me worthy enough to bless me with a mind for success, a love for kids, and a never ending drive to fuse the two together to become the best instructor I can possibly be. I thank God again for all the blessings, and I'll continue to pass my weariness along to him so that he will continuously rejuvenate me tthat I may continueon the path of fufilling the purpose he has for my life.

Too Much Time for Worrying!!!

The firt day of school is quickly approaching but in my eyes it couldn;t come soon enough. I've been stressing myself out over everything.

Do I have everything I need?
Will the students like me?
How well will they take to such a young teacher?
Am I smart enough to do this job?
Are there things that I should be thinking about that I'm neglecting to do?

I know that I studied for four years for this first day of school and I'm gettting tired of planning for it...I just want it to happen. I'm excited and I watn everything to be perfect, but I'm letting my nervousness overshadow my excitement. I've planned lessons and ICEBREAKERS, changed them, re-planned, and changed back to the original idea so many times. After talking to many other Fellows, My mind has been placed a ease. They dont know if they have everthing they need, they dont know if the students will like them, they're young teacehrs just like me, everyone questions their content knowledge, and of course there are thigns they should be doing that they have no idea they should be.
The beauty of all that is that we're not expected to have ALL the answers, we're supposed to be nervous, and in being in a professiont hat strives to cultivate life long learners, we should worry about our content knowledge because we will be growing right along with our students.

I'm excited to see how my first few days of teaching will pan out, and I 'm looking forward to meeting more of my students and embarking on our first years of high school, together. They as students ad me as a teacher...WOW, Me, A TEACHER!!!