RHS's Mission Statement- have you read it?

RHS's mission statement is: "The Redfield School District will promote and maintain high academic expectations for students to become life-long learners and encourage them to become responsible citizens in their community and world." Are we doing this? It seems the goal is pretty lofty. Can a school, alone, create a good citizen? Haven't I heard somehwere that it takes a village to raise a child? Where is our village? Is this creation of a good citizen up to teachers and administrators only?

The Great Reading Debate- Are High Schoolers Reading Enough??

The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) recent published a report (To Read or Not to Read- a whopping 98 pages in length) and the statistics that they discuss can be viewed as disturbing or are they?

Read the blogs that I have read and decide.

Stephen Krashen- His take on the meaning of the findings of the study
John Schaff- What it means for SD
JBD- What this means for education
Ted and Ian- What the study did not take into account

So should the educator, the student, the administrator or the parent put much weigh on this issue? Is America reading less or is what America reading changing?

Blog Book Review

Honors Students- this month's (Nov) book review is a blog about your book. Here are some of my expectations about what this bookblog should contain. First take a look at the site below to learn more about what a book review is and what it should contain. These are not all inclusive and you don't have to include everything; just remember that this is a review not a book summary. Pay special attention to the first websites.

Rodman Philbrick's reviews

LAVC library page

Remember that blogs are not meant to be long discourses on a topic. Include links to sites that discuss the book or to places that provide access to the book. Maybe you could even add a review to Barnes and Nobel or to Amazon.com. Be sure to link to your review.

The big debate about learning and grades

I have been debating the issue of the the importance of grades with other educators in both high school and university for about two years now. And it still continues...
Are grades all that important? They are just letters assigned to assignments, test or projects that reflect a one time occurrence.
Where does actual learning come into play. Any average-skilled cheater can achieve A's or B's in class and learn very little but how to cheat a little bit better.
Is learning important to students at all or is school all about grades. I understand that GPA and class rank, ACT and SAT scores, and other grade related information is important, but shouldn't the emphasis be on what students have learned and how they can use that learning.
What good is an A in calculus if you haven't learned the skills needed to pass a college algebra course. It is no hard to get an A- with a little skill, help from the teacher or classmates and some effort anyone can do it. But it is the application of those supposedly learned skills that really brings the learning done to light.

Colleges and universities must now offer remedial classes to get high school students caught up in the skills that are lacking, especially in math, reading and writing. How can a student who received a B in writing courses in high school, need remedial classes when in college. Were is the learning that was supposed to take place? With grade inflation and water-down curriculum, no wonder learning is not occurring.

I realize that change must begin from the top (the real work world and then colleges) and trickle down, but when will that happen? Is the education world so caught up in NCLB legislation and teaching to the test that we have forgotten about real learning? I am afraid that this debate will be around long after I have left the teaching world.. How sad!!!!

Fascination with blogging

I am fascinated by how some of the students I have introduced to blogging have used their blogs to talk about issue important to them.

Read Jamie's blog about the future and Rachel's blog on what the future holds.
I find it heartwarming that juniors are thinking about such issues when so many students are stilled worries about where the party is this Sat. and who is dating whom.

As a teacher, I find students' blogs amazing.

The Crucible Project

Now that all of you honors students have a handle on blogging and searching for websites and pages dealing with the issues surrounding the play and Miller's reasons for writing it, it is time to move on to the next phase. In your blogs spend some time writing about the common characteristics of all of the other American witch hunts. What was happening in the country and the world at the time of the witch hunt, and what were or are the common characteristics of each group that was hunted? What were the outcomes? Were the positive or negative?

Then go to my wiki and get started on adding your educated opinion on the questions asked in this assignment. All work needs to be done by Friday the 16th. Good Luck

Transliteracy

An interesting idea showed up in a blog that I read periodically- the idea of transliteracy.

According to the Production and Research in Transliteracy group blog,
Transliteracy is the ability to read, write and interact across a range of platforms, tools and media from signing and orality through handwriting, print, TV, radio and film, to digital social networks.

So it would seem that the traditional definition of literacy has to change. In the past, I defined literacy as the ability to read and understand what has been read with the idea that I was talking about books, newspapers and other print sources. But with the focus of our government on have all students proficient in reading, math, and other classes, maybe the idea of literacy needs to be changed.

What is literacy and at the same time, what is reading? Has the idea of reading changed? Has the boom of technological gadgets, programs and Internet resources changed the way that teachers, parents and students need to view literacy and reading? What changes need to be made to ensure that all students become efficient consumers of the technology available, but at the same time, become literate? These are the questions that need to be asked.

The Power of the Video on a Cell Phone

I have recently read several articles about the after effects of students placing vidoes that have been taped in school classes without a teacher's knowledge . Some were benign (usually just about classroom behavior or a joke), but some were really scary and hard to watch (teachers yelling, screaming, swearing, harassing kids).

Students often complain about the rules regarding cell phone use in school (cell phones are to be off and out of site at all times during school hours), but I feel some level of comfort knowing that the rule is in place.

I would be very offended if a student secretly filmed my class and then posted it on the WWW. I am not worried that the they contents of my class are worthy of WWW posting, but videos, like speech or text, can be edited or taken out of context and turned into something humorous, embarrassing or violent.

I fear that someone would watch an edited version of a class (as someone's idea of a joke) and take what was portrayed as serious and that I would find myself in serious situation.

Banning cell phones seems extreme, but it is done not only to keep them from distracting and disrupting class, but also to keep them from becoming a tool to embarrass or hurt an unknowing teacher.
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