February 2011 Update

I realize I have not posted much in the past few months, but you can 't blame me because I'm a new teacher still learning the ropes, and I'm really really busy.  But maybe that's a good thing.  I am not one to accept failure.  I enjoy a chance to take on many challenges.  The level of focus required helps me stay sharp.  However, the last few days have shown to  be a valuable critique on my teaching style.  And that is that I rely too much on myself and not on a curriculum. 

The only advantage to this s that since i have so few students, I can meet them right where they are and help them build skills specific to their needs.  On the other hand, I have to be present in order to implement it, the students don't quite know what's coming, and everything becomes too subjective. 

How do I overcome this critique?  Well, it is easier to add flexibility to structure than to add structure to chaos.  So I'll find a social skills curriculum and accommodate it to my students.  A LOT has happened this year, and it seems to have been a long year already.  But I know that when June comes, it will feel as if the year has ended far too quickly. 

Conferences

In spite of snow days and reschedulings, I finally made it through my first round of parent-teacher conferences. Now, I know I only had a couple parents to talk with, but I am very fortunate to be working with some great parents this year. Parents who want the success of their students, and parents who have the mindset to work with the teacher (me) for that success. It i reassuring for me when parents walk away from a conference with a smile on their face, and giving me permission to challenge their child to reach the expectations I'll be setting for them.

I know this is not always the case, but for now, I am glad that it is.

Visualization vs. Application

As an athlete, one of the strategies coaches would tell me was to visualize myself making the play in games.  This is an effective tool since it brings a certain level of familiarity to a stressful task/performance and alleviates some of the anxieties associated with it.  

This strategy has followed me through life, and I found myself with a clear vision of what I wanted my first teaching experience to be.  

However, as an athlete I knew that once I stepped onto that field, events would not transpire the way I had envisioned.  If we get everything we want, then life becomes a meaningless pile of accumulated uselessness.  If being a Special Education Teacher was easy, then everyone would do it.  But it is not easy, and I knew that.  I knew it was going to be difficult, it is a lot of paperwork, that sometimes you get on the good and the bad side of parents, and that sometimes you struggle with students' learning or behavior.  I worked as a para-professional for over five years, so I knew all this coming in to this year, and yet I was still caught off-guard.  

I can't say that it is any one thing that has caught me off-guard, but the combination of things.  What has been unexpected to me, is needing to become a 1:1, and in-turn feeling like I've had to put the other students on cruise-control and ignore them in order to work with one.  What I did not account for was not having a time during the day to plan or collaborate with others in my department or building.  I do not want to fail my students, but I am only recently feeling like I'm coming out from being behind the 8-ball.  I am finally getting the help that is necessary for student success. 

I am not making excuses, and when I threw an interception in a game I didn't complain about it, but made sure that the guy was tackled so I could get to the sideline, evaluate, and fix the problem.  It is not what has happened to this point in the year that will dictate the way this year progresses, but the way My team and I are able to respond to these adversities, critiques, and obstacles. 

Something that is coming up, is that I am going to have to alter my leadership style to a certain extent.  However, I will save this topic for another post.  Thanks for stopping by.  Feel free to comment or follow.

Intricately Simple: Behavior Modification

I have been teaching for four weeks now, and have been referred to as the behavior expert several times.  Maybe this is because I am the Life Skills Teacher, or maybe it is because of how I have been able to have relative success with the severe behavior students that I have in my class.  Either way, i think it is a flattering, but presumptuous term for me.  I do not consider myself to be an expert on anything at this point, but I know that I enjoy the challenge that behavior modification presents. 

To oversimplify behavior modification into one sentence, I would say that it is to hold out until you get the behaviors you want from the student.  

There are a varying number of factors that play a role in implementation:

1. Why is the student engaging in the behaviors?
2. What causes the behaviors?
3. How long has the student exhibited these behaviors?
4. Were these negative behaviors reinforced intentionally or unintentionally in the past?
5. Where did the student learn these behaviors?
6. Can the student be redirected, or do they need to be removed when the behaviors arise?
7. Are the behaviors a result of their OCD, or are they in somewhat control?
8. And the list goes on.

Behavior modification required one to be fearless in the face of raging students, and patient enough to outlast the tantrum until the student gives in to the expectations that were set in front of them. The biggest detriment to behavior modification is inconsistency on the part of the staff member implementing the program.  You must be willing to wait for EXACTLY the behavior you want, and nothing less.  This is not easy, but it is simple thing to do.  If anyone has watched HITCH, the 90-10 Rule is a great illustration of behavior modification. Hitch is soft and steady in his tone, but rigid in his expectations. 

Enjoy:

As I mentioned before, behavior modification is intricate, but simple.  So stick to your guns, hold the line, and never back down!

Staff Meeting

I got the privilege of being at the focal point of this morning's staff meeting.  I have a difficult student who was turning into an Urban Legend because none of the staff or students have had a chance to see or meet him.  My class has taken on the characteristics of a petting zoo where people wanted to come and see what the fuss was about.  However, I would not have people in my classroom when a student is having trouble expressing themselves.  In the staff meeting I was able to field some answers regarding possible concerns about student and staff safety with an aggressive student, and what to tell students regarding this particular student. I've gotten good feedback about how the meeting went, which is good.  I'm just glad I was able to convey an understanding that this particular student is not a "bad kid", but a child who is missing the appropriate means of expressing himself. 

Sir! Yes Sir!

The problems I had last week with a student, have not disappeared, but they are more in check today.  Today is done, and my most difficult student was not my most difficult today.  Why?  The answer to this is easy.  He did have a Behavior Intervention Plan, he does have materials to work on, and he does have a schedule in place, but he did last week as well.  What is the difference?  The strategy of implementation.  I was able to have a very simple question answered after the students went home on Friday.  This question was a matter of strategy when dealing with this particular student.  Do I give him time to adjust, or am I a Drill Sargent on the expectations?  The answer made me happy, because it was to be a Drill Sargent.  Today was MUCH better than last week! 

Week One in the Bag

One of the biggest things I can say about taking over a classroom for the first time is that communication is everything!  I am expecting to have a completely different week next week because of a single understanding that I have now, as opposed to before the school year began.  That understanding was simply how hard to push a very... very difficult student.  in my eyes, the plan can be flawless, but without a clear strategy, there is no clear understanding about implementation.  My question was whether the behaviors he was presenting was a matter of him needing time to adjust to an increasingly familiar place (new school), or if it was a matter of direct, immediate, and absolute behavior modification from the outset.  in other words, do I give him space, or do I become his drill sargent.  Drill Sargent I can do... Letting a student (regardless of diagnosis) bite me and scratch me to the point where I'm bruised and bleeding I do not do well.  Next week will be a better week.  A long weekend, a renewed strategy, and hopefully one more body to help manage the other students in the afternoon.  Next week can only be better. 

Education Reform, Like Democracy, Starts at the Bottom

Certification Update: I am currently waiting for my Institutional Recommendation to be mailed out to me from the University of Phoenix.  Once I have that in hand, I can apply for my Arizona Teacher Certification and my Washington State Teacher Certification as well.  But I'm just waiting. 

It is in this period of waiting that I have been thinking about this process I have undergone in order to become a teacher.  Do I think that an individual with ONLY a Bachelor's Degree should be able to teach?  Absolutely not!  DO I think it is necessary for someone to be unpaid for up to 7 months (much like my scenario) in order to become a teacher?  No.  I think that there can be a differentiation in the paths taken to become a teacher.  In the same way that businesses look for education OR experience, I think your time working in schools should factor into your certification process.  I have seen too many kids in college who want to be teachers go from school to more school to teaching without working in the schools.  In this scenario, I think it is important to have an internship period where the student is immersed in an education setting.  This would work ideally for students who are able to do their certification in a one year program.


What is the result I'm looking for?  I have a friend who had to turn to working construction to support his growing family.  I had another friend who did the quick school route and burned herself out in a year and has not returned to teaching.  I have another friend who used up all his financial reserves to make it through the education portion of teaching.  These are quality people, and they would be great teachers if the process prepared them to be more than just broke.  This year, one of the counselors at the school I was working in introduced me to a kid who was going through his certification classes, because the counselor knew I was doing the same thing.  This kid walked into the school library all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.  He had a kid at Disneyland smile on his face, and he walked in like he stepped into Yankee Stadium for the first time.  I was busy working with my student who has Cerebral Palsy, and  when asked for advice, I said simply, "work in the schools." 

HYPOTHETICAL MOMENT: Let's say you have a teaching certification program, that schedules its classes in the late afternoon to evening, and requires its students to work as aides and para educators in the schools in the area during their time in the program.  What happens to those students and those schools?  Let's start with the students.  The students will gain a better understanding of what they are getting themselves into.  They will also learn first-hand how to create APPROPRIATE relationships with the kids they work with.  The kids in the schools will LOVE to be around younger people, and they will be surrounded by COOL people in college; something to look up to... someone to want to be like.  The schools will have an influx of youthful energy that not only wants to be there, but is constantly learning how to do their jobs better, and educate better.  When these students have been working in schools for one or two years, then they should not be forced to be unpaid for 3 months, plus a summer vacation, plus their first month working as a teacher... they will be better equipped to step into a classroom, and they will have had the opportunity to build a relationship with a school, faculty, student body, and district. 

Now, prior to this year, I will have worked in schools for 5 years.  Not only do I know how to work with kids and their parents, but I also understand the ebb and flow of student learning throughout the school year.  I explained this in an interview I did this year.  A Seasoned educator knows how stressful the beginning of the year in only to hit your groove in time for Thanksgiving and Christmas Break.  Then you have to redo your class expectations in the New Year, and you start to get grooving again in time for Mid Winter and Spring Break.  By the time your routine is down pat, then you have kids checking out mentally because it's almost Summer.  Then you have to hope that the teachers before you taught the students what they will need to be successful in your class next year, and that the students retain any of it. 

Education reform is to be done from the bottom up.  The trouble is that it is becoming a political platform for those at the top. 

First Interview in the Bag

I feel very fortunate to have had an interview before finishing my student teaching and before getting into the unknown limbo that is the summer months.  On Tuesday I had my first one, at Twin Falls Middle School, which is in the Snoqualmie Valley School District.  It was for a position in their Life Skills Class, which I think is like a self-contained Special Education classroom. I don't know if I rocked the interview, but I feel pretty good about it, and the program sounds like a good situation for a new teacher starting out.  I was able to learn that the class consists of four students with Autism Spectrum Disorder; two of them spend most of their time in the general population, and the other two spend most of their time in the Life Skills Classroom with their one-on-one aides.  In all honesty, I hope that this position works out; it is a brand new school (build in 2008) in a district that has just passed a technology levy. 

On the other hand, there is a position that I also applied for in the Tahoma School District, where I have been working the last couple years, and am currently finishing my student teaching.  The position will split its time between the Personal Academic Instruction program on the Satellite Campus and the new Special Education Math classes at the high school.  Tahoma is a great school district, and on of the better districts in the area.  For this reason, I know that if I am able to somehow get into this district, it will be a hige blessing. 

I hope to be able to land some more interviews, especially if Twin Falls or Tahoma do not work out.  It would be nice to know what I'll be doing in September before the end of June.  I'm just ready to get moving on this teaching career that I've been working towards for over four years.

Teaching Style: Stick to my Guns

I have been told by people that I would make a great teacher.  The question in my head is are they just being nice? And why would I?  Consider the following post a mission statement of the kind of teacher I will be.  I am smart enough to know that this post can be taken in a negative way.  I do have a stubborn streak in me, but I am willing to indulge both sides and points of view as long as others are willing to see mine as well.    Please read the whole post and even the other post that is referred to at the end, it will give you a clearer idea of how I am focused on student success.  The following is a discussion question for my LAST MAED class! 

Provide an example of ineffective instructional decision-making.  Using your example, describe what you would do to make it effective.

I would have to say that I experienced this in a situation I had earlier this year.  I have only been working with SpEd kids since 2005, and as I've learned more and more and worked with them more and more, I have had a knack for not diagnosing their disabilities, but creating a plan of action to head them towards their IEP goals.  I had an administrative/logistical mind.  Anyways, a new student arrives to the self-contained SpEd class at the HS, and I am hired earlier this year to help work with him; me and another lady.  We don't have much info on him, and he's from out of the district.  We did not have a lot of information on him, and the information we did have on him, I was unwilling to take as completely true; if the program he was in was so good, his single-mom would not have moved him to my district for our schools.  So, we were told that he does not walk, he may not walk, and he has a short attention span.  The scientific side of me wanted to test to see if these statements were true, but only one was.  That statement was that he does not walk. 

So what was at the root of this student's disabilities, and what will it take for him to be successful?  The teacher I work with (who is younger than me, but I didn't see that as an issue) felt that the important thing was to get him heading towards his academic IEP goals.  She and the other lady that worked with the student spent time trying to get him to write, and count, and stay on task, but he would not; he would hit them and pull their hair.  I didn't see this student as a case for academic growth... not yet.  He was a behavior student, and I treated him as such.  They told me he does not walk, but that didn't mean he couldn't.  We started going on walks in Oct, and I wouldn't let him fall to the ground and crawl like he's been used to.  By November he was walking upstairs by himself, after Christmas he was walking down and upstairs by himself.  In January he was out of his braces and in tennis shoes, in February we were walking around the track, and before I left in March to do my student teaching we were walking with 15 and 20 pound weights.  Now he does not bring his wheel chair to school, and rides the bus in a seat, and the other lady still working with him said he's much easier to work with. 

Where is the ineffective instruction decision-making?  It was how to get this student to be successful.  The teacher disagreed with me, and she and the other lady tried to get me to deviate from what I was doing with him.  I'm not trying to say I was right and they were wrong, but I think my process was more effective, because I saw behavior issues that they did not, and I chose to address those first. 

Here's a posting I put on my blog from back in January: http://lifeonsped.blogspot.com/2010/01/he-just-responds-to-you.html

UPDATE - Shifting Expectations of the School Institution

I wrote this in a discussion with my classmates who were discussing the need for parental involvement; where it happens, and where it is hard to get it.  This was my response, which referred to an earlier post.

Classmates,
There is a reason I got into education, and there is a reason I want to get into education administration; the system is flawed. Now, every system is flawed, cracked and can be taken advantage of. However, I think that as society has shifted, education has not shifted fast enough to keep up, and that is normal of government-run institutions. As teachers, we, more than anyone, know what it takes to get student achievement. However, I have heard things that teachers need from outside sources, and I think we need to figure out what it will take for US to create a better system. I want to point you guys to a blog posting I made: http://lifeonsped.blogspot.com/2010/03/shifting-expectations-of-school.html

This illustrates an idea that I was kicking around with my CT the other week. If parents in trying areas have so much trouble helping their children, why not put the help where it is needed... with the students. following the atwork.wa.gov twitter account @janekuechle. She saw my blog posting and was hung up on my comment of "ineffective social programs". I'm not a politician who want to push an agenda of what level of government involvement is needed. My focus is solely on the children, and if we can redirect resources to create more effective programs that are run through the schools and follow the children, then that will help the overall state of our nations education. I know many paras (myself included) who worked two jobs, because they couldn't live off of just working in the schools. If you create social programs, dinner programs, tutoring programs that follow the student, and flow through the school, then people can make a better wage for themselves and families. Teachers can pick up extra hours without having to be a coach or leave their classes if they don't want to. Kids can be off the streets where it is safe, and be surrounded by positive influences for mor than 6 hours of the day. Parents do not have to use tech babysitters like TV and video games, and kids do not need to turn to gangs in order to find a sense of community or brotherhood or family.

I don't think parental involvement is likely to make a drastic change. Parents either care, or they don't about their child's education. If was can keep the kids fed, appropriately socialized, active, and tutored from kindergarten until graduation, then we will have changed the face of education in our country for the better.

Changing Demographics = Changing Expectations?

My classroom discussion for this week is: What influence do differing demographics have on the following: Planning, Instruction, Classroom management, Assessment, Achievement, and Expectations?

This was my response: Before I start my response to this I want to share a link:


The link is a clip from a Family Guy episode. The humor is a bit rough, but if you can get past it, you can see why I thought of it as soon as I read the discussion question. In this episode, The [talking dog] has a job teaching in an affluent [white] neighborhood. He loves it; he makes corny content-related jokes, and does cooky performances that the class loves. It is a teaching utopia. Then he gets transferred to an inner city class where they make a reference to the movie "Stand and Deliver." He tries to do the same things he did in the previous class, and comes in excited to teach, but the kids, and their lives break him down until he comes in unshaven and looking like a hobo. This is a satirical clip, but it isn't until he drops his expectations that he creates some kind of connection with the students. I bring this up for two reasons: 1) we need to meet students where they are, and SHOW them how to get to where they want to go. I've watched kids give up under the weight of a teacher's unattainably high expectations. 2) We need to be flexible and creative in how we connect and engage our students. What works with one group may not work with another, and it could be the same class taught in the same day, but kids are different. I am not one to force kids to feel like a cog in the machine... those are the grown folks that go postal on their work places.

After sharing this with my wife, she asked me WHY expectations would be different?  One of the things that can be assumed is the idea of a normal family environment for students.  She pointed out that kids who live in rich neighborhoods may not have close relationsghips to their parents because they may be out working all the time, they may not have a healthier diet because a Venti Soy Chai latte in the mornings in not nutritional either.  The point I want to get across is this: as educators, we need to meet where they are... exactly where they are.  Id doesn't matter if they are different race, economic level, or academic ability.  Students will not achieve under low expectations, nor will they succeed under expectations that are too high for them to relate to. 

The bar cannot be set across the same level for all demographic setting.  If failure to one person is success to another, the bar cannot be set the same for both.  If minimal requirements for one is to just show up and for another it is to get a B, then the bar cannot be set the same. 

This is not a matter of where kids are, but how to get them to where they want to go. 

The Needed Male Influence in Special Education

I wrote this posting after sitting through an Autism Workshop class on a waiver day titled, "Teaching Independence Through Structure."  What is most striking about the workshop is not anything in the content, but something that I already knew about working in Special Education.  Of the roughly SpEd staffers in this district at the workshop, only about 5 of us are male.  Of those men, 2 are paras, I am student teaching, 1 is the Jr. High Behavior Intervention Specialist, and the last 1 is the district Physical Therapist.  


Hmm... So I was sitting in a workshop that was discussing how to use structure to help students with Autism.  Structure; that thing that that I'm really good at, and that comes naturally to me.  Do is come naturally to me because I am a male?  To a certain extent.  I do not want to start making gross generalizations about gender roles, but this made me wonder is a male-dominated Special Education scenario would have an Autism workshop teaching how to be more nurturing. In my short experience, I've been utilized by SpEd classes and departments to create and/or add structure to a student that they recognized as needing it.  


Is it possible for a SpEd student to be nurtured into independence?  Does a breast fed child want to eat solid foods?  Is weaning a child a nurturing moment, or is it a necessary step in child development?  I cannot answer these for sure.  There are opposing opinions when we talk about getting a child to sleep through the night.  Do we let them cry it out until exhaustion makes them pass out again, or do we soothe them every time they wake and stir.  Or is it somewhere in between?  


I am not making the argument of nurturing or structure being better than the other.  I believe that true growth can come when students get a variety of opposing influences in their life.  Is this possible in Special Education, when the department in any given district is around 94% female?  Not that there's anything wrong with women in SpEd, but there is not enough of an opposing force.  There are the occasional tougher ladies, but there is still a motherly quality in the way they are tough.  There aren't any fatherly influenced in SpEd, however, nor are there any big brothers, uncles, or male cousins in SpEd departments.  Why is this?  


I am not an Alpha Male, but I feel like I need to  be one in order to offset the influences in the students I encounter.  I have to become someone I am not and tap into the very dormant Choleric side of my personality in order to help my students grow.  Why aren't there any Alpha, or even Beta, Males helping the growth of our SpEd kids?  The one time I almost burned out as a SpEd para, I was getting a "Superman Complex".  I was not able to fully concentrate on any particular student I was working with, because I had to continually swoop in to save whoever was having trouble with another student in the department.  Having to leave all the time told the student I was with that they were not as important, and I had to leave them alone without their accommodations or modifications.  


Why would any man want to be the odd-man-out in a SpEd class/department full of women where he has no one to talk with or relate to?  I had a 90-Day evaluation this year where it was assumed that my trouble relating to nothing but women was because I didn't have any Black people to talk to.  I was given a suggestion of the only two other Black staff members to talk with.  Feeling like the odd-man-out was not a racial thing for me, but a gender thing.  I am not throwing out the Race Card in this situation, but it shows how someone can be misunderstood and have their growth hindered when they are subjected to one perspective.  

Shifting Expectations of the School Institution

After a brief conversation yesterday with my Mentor Teacher (MT), I discovered the purpose of my teaching career. Granted, teaching kids is always the reason teachers get out of bed each morning, but there has to be some over-arching drive to anyone's professional career. Film makers want an Oscar, music artists want a Grammy, executives want to become CEOs, but what do teachers want? The education system is too flawed to be content to just assimilate into it with the only conflict arising from teacher salaries and state testing. There is more needed to fix the education system than just paying teachers more.




Anyways, I was talking with my MT and she was talking about her philosophies on teaching, and the things she'd like to see. She told me her conservative nature that wants more natural competition brought back into the education system. However, it is her liberal ideal that I want to talk about. My MT said, that she wishes she could funnel all those funds that go towards those inefficient and ineffective social programs and put them into the schools. This additional funding would not be for academic programs, but social programs that are based around the student that would be with them throughout the school year. The school would live up to its expectations as an institution designed to better the lives of its students. The school will now be able to provide breakfast, lunch (during the school day), and even a dinner for those students who qualify and do not eat one a regular basis. The school can be the state-provided daycare for single parents, teenage mothers, or struggling families who have trouble getting by. The school will also become much like the combination of a Sylvan Learning Center and a Boys and Girls club after school hours. It can now provide activities and programs that are not school related, tutoring services, trainings programs, recreation spaces for kids to be safe in until they have eaten, done their homework, and need to go home and sleep. The kids are now not on the streets or in the woods causing trouble, and they will now have no more excuses to be unsuccessful now. This way the students are fed and have academic help, and all their parents have to do is be home at the end of the day to enjoy their children.



I do not have the logistical, practical, or other answers to make this work tomorrow, because this was a quick conversation, and I think that this is just in the brainstorming stages right now. However, there is great potential in this idea. There is a school facility everywhere throughout this nation, and there are kids in every school (even the rich schools) who need a little more than what is offered during the school day in order to be on even ground with their peers. This way, social services can concentrate on medical services and getting people working, and not whether or not the children are eating properly.



What are some of the negatives about this idea? I am very excited about this idea, but I will try to see both of its sides. The main problem with it is the amount of added administrative and bureaucratic overhead that will be needed to reallocate the funds from one set of organizations to the schools. How much of the extra funds will go to the added administrative and staff overhead needed to operate the additional services? Yet, I still strongly believe that if these kinds of questions can be answered, then this idea had great potential to be effective. This is something that I feel will be a productive time use of my time to develop and work towards.

Don't Fight The Tech

I found humor in the errands I ran yesterday. Twenty years ago, if I said I had returned rented movies, bought some coffee grounds from the grocery store, and put gas in my car, you would assume that I would have had to interact with at least one human being. That was not the case yesterday, and it was the reason why I laughed at the stage society is in. I returned two Redbox movies to a vending machine, purchased my coffee at QFC's automated checkout stand, and paid for my gas at the fuel pump.

I do not want to make this posting about how technology separates us from human connection, because I do not think that is the case. In fact, technology expands our sphere of influence. One of my best friends is in Georgia, but staying connected is as easy as pushing a couple buttons, or talking on the phone. Whenever we see one another, which is only a couple times per year, we don't miss a beat. When I want to unwind at the end of a day I can play games online with others from around the world; its similar to a pick-up game of basketball from my couch.

This is the world kids live in today. Information is dispersed at the speed of thought. Mass amounts of information bombards kids' minds, and, at any given moment, they need to sift through it and make sense of it all while determining their own place in the world. How do we educators compete with this, and capture the minds of our students?

I propose that we do not compete with it. If technology has provided us a way to be entertained easier, to be informed easier, and to keep in touch easier, then why don't we use it to teach easier? Where does it say that teaching is static, and that it's only effective when it remains unchanged? Classes are now online, we can broadcast ourselves, we can podcast ourselves, and we can discuss in real-time at any time. Twitter, GoogleWave, iTunes, YouTube, Wikis, Forums, etc... The list is endless. How else do we expect to illustrate to students that learning is an ongoing process and can happen anywhere when we restrict it to in class or at their home desk? Why wouldn't they be able to jump on their phone, or entertainment device, at any given moment and have something class-related at their fingertips?

Problem: Student is absent during the explanation of a new unit or during a group exercise. Possibilities: Video/Audio Podcast of the lecture, Flip video or tweets from the student's group members. Sick student can participate in group discussions via webchat or web video, Twitter, or some other means. End Result: Student still receives participation credit, and is still part of the group exercise, and will not need to make up the project after school. This can be difficult to do for science labs, but I would allow it for only one missed lab per semester or year.

Problem: Student is stuck on a problem at home, and needs help in order to complete an assignment. Possibilities: Online whiteboards, GoogleWave, online forums, etc... The teacher could schedule a time a few nights each week to field questions, or respond to a request for help via Twitter. End Result: "I didn't understand it when I tried to do it at home," become irrelevant. Help is now always available to students, and they can have open discussions and brainstorm through the online forums.

There is no a single problem in education that can be fixed only be adding technology into the equation. Technology is just another tool that can be used the right way, or the wrong way. People have trouble understanding how to implement it, but I would venture to guess that these are the people who use pliers to tighten a screw or a monkey wrench as a hammer.

With proper respect and boundaries established, the days of a teacher lecturing at the front of the class, and punching a clock are coming to an end. Why correct endless essays by hand when you can do it in WORD, show the corrections and save paper by sending it through email? Why not improve upon the example you learned under? I have seen the tip of the iceberg of what technology can do for the education process, and the students therein. I am excited about what tools have yet to be developed. I am excited about educating and impacting lives. I'm definitely looking forward to moving education forward.

Needed: New Expectations

If you were to make a graph of the appropriate closeness of a teacher to a student, it would be inversely proportionate to the academic abilities of the student. Therefore, the more academically capable the student, the more relational distance to their teacher. This could be partially due to the number of students in general education classes, versus a resource room versus a student in a one-on-one situation.

Consider how much a teacher knows about a student's family of home life. The ONLY pet-peeve I have of general education teachers is when they assume that all students are coming into their classes from the same starting point; that the only determining factor on student success is how the student has chosen to participate in class. Last year, I overheard a teacher complaining about one of my alternative education students in the Teachers' Lounge that this student was choosing not to focus or accomplish any work in class that day. I told this teacher that the student had been kicked out of their house the previous night and came into school that morning after sleeping on the train tracks. The teacher had no response, and I don't blame them.

After getting over my initial annoyance with the teacher, I realized that the education system is not conducive to teachers getting to know their students. The expectation is to teach the content, raise the test scores, enforce the school policies, and not sleep with the students. How are teachers supposed to touch the lives of their students when the high schools resemble university lecture halls more than classrooms? A teacher may connect with 5-10 of the 150-200 students that come into their classrooms throughout the day. You place more than 25 kids in a classroom, and the teacher becomes a ring leader in a circus managing what is going on in class instead of guiding the education of children.

We have placed the weight of raising test scores on the shoulders of teachers who hope to create a love of learning in their students. We expect teachers to raise our kids for us; to teach them what they need to know instead of how to find it for themselves. Teachers are expected to teach effectively without giving an education. The expectation needs to shift to think of them as educators who give students the tools to learn and succeed at life. We want teachers to give children the fish of data without educating them as to how to fish for knowledge. We want our children to be able to duplicate so they can pass the next test or quiz, but we do not want to open the world to them and let them discover, explore, and create.

I do not believe that class size is the answer, nor do I believe that it is a matter of funding. The expectations of what learning is, and what educators need to do, needs to shift. We have turned the school day into the drudgery of the work day. Students have become more of a cog in the social machine, when they need to learn who they are and how to grow into contributing citizens. I am not from the school of thought that believes ALL kids should be successful on the same level. I hated having a losing season, and still getting a trophy for participation. If students are always given false success, then they grow to believe that they deserve it, and the sense of entitlement grows inside of them. Students need to experience the joys of achieving real success, which means thet need to learn the lessons of real failure. Students will not be educated if we do not shift our expectations to cultivate learning instead of test scores.