Right now, I am at my Student Teaching position at an alternative school in western Michigan. I have been prepping for a writing unit I will be starting next week called “This I Believe!” Right now, my students are listening to music rather loudly, and one of them was making dinosaur noises in the back that were actually pretty impressive. The class is Yearbook, so they have pages they’ve been assigned to work on all trimester. Today has been a pretty laid-back day, like the rest of the week, because we are finishing up a unit project in class. We were supposed to have an ice storm today, and I was hoping for a Snow Day, but no such luck. No school in the middle of the week would be sooo nice. I’m looking forward to the weekend already!
Tag Archives: education
boring work stuff…..
Feeling frustrated at the amount of work I have building up as our main admin server has died and will take 5 days to install a replacement….. but the good news is we haven’t lost any of our work due to a very good back up!!!
Comments Off
Filed under Feb 29th Blogs
Fed up being the scape-goat
I’ve been in work for 14 1/2 hrs preparing for an Ofsted visit to check how well our Academy is serving the needs of our students. I usually start work at 6.30am and leave school at 6pm each day to try and make sure I do my absolute best for my students. I also give up some of my weekend to the detriment of my young children.
I appreciate that I am not the only teacher who does this, and there are those who even do more. I know that I have a serious responsibilty in preparing my students to be productive members of our societies and community, and to help them achieve their aspirations. I do this gladly as I chose to be a teacher.
However, I object to the fact that education is used as the scape goat for all of society’s ills. I am annoyed when they announce on the news that apparently schools are “now going to teach …..” when we’ve already been doing that. Where are the responsibilities of the Parent’s and local communities to also teach their youth how to be good citizens. There needs to be a triangulation of support for young people so that we can support the Parents , and they can support us.
However my biggest objection is when Mr Michael Gove, our current edication secretary, dares to claim that
1. I am a danger to the educational well-being of ict students as I only teach them the national curriculum and not how to programme a computer. This is when we don’t even have enough money to buy new ict resources so we can deliver the exciting and progressive topics that I would love to deliver.
2. Apparently I only work 32 1/2 hrs a week and have long holidays. Gove thinks I should actually work long enough to get the job done. Dear Mr Gove, please could you give my academy some more money so we can afford to employmore people and I don’t have to do 3 people’s jobs so I can ensure the student’s don’t suffer.
Thank you for giving me this opportunity to Blog. I hope I can now persuade our local LEA to release the block on Blogs so that I can demonstrate this in school.
Filed under Feb 29th Blogs
Technology integration in an elementary school
Today at Churchill School in NYC, I have:
Done OT exercises with a 5th grader on an ipad using Dexteria app
Made videos about tigers and komodo dragons with 5th graders
Modelled a debate with another teacher about which USA region is more amazing
Done reading games on the ipads with 3rd graders
Determined how far European explorers travelled using ipad app called Finger Measure
Found out about Asia with a 3rd grade class using World Book Online
and searched for information about Dr. Seuss with 1st graders on Brain Pop Jr.
Comments Off
Filed under Feb 29th Blogs
4AD are celebrating Leap Day!
4AD are having a Leap Day challenge morning! Ms Donnelly has written numeracy and literacy challenges for the children to do this morning. We are finding all the different ways we can make the number 29, writing word problems that all have an answer of 29, writing lists of 29 things, writing short stories that are just 29 words long and many more! We will be sharing some of our work later!
Comments Off
Filed under Feb 29th Blogs
4AD are celebrating Leap Day!
4AD are having a Leap Day challenge morning! Ms Donnelly has written numeracy and literacy challenges for the children to do this morning. We are finding all the different ways we can make the number 29, writing word problems that all have an answer of 29, writing lists of 29 things, writing short stories that are just 29 words long and many more! We will be sharing some of our work later!
Comments Off
Filed under Feb 29th Blogs
Year 9 options!
I’ve been at my son’s school this evening helping him to choose the subjects he will be studying for the next 3 years and possibly beyond. It’s quite a challenge/worry/responsibility helping a 12 year old shape his future!!
Comments Off
Filed under Feb 29th Blogs
School Forever <3
On the next leap year, in four years, I will be a senior in high school. An extra day of the year should be devoted to something special. I would use this day to get a good educational experience. I will study hard so I can get a good job and get into a good college. I hope this day will be special.
Comments Off
Filed under Feb 29th Blogs
Gifted Education Awareness Week Ireland
This week is Gifted Education Awareness Week in Ireland. I will be distributing to schools an information leaflet on the educational needs of gifted children. Gifted children are often unrecognized in schools and myths such as ‘gifted children will do well anyway’ mean that their specific educational needs often go unmet. It’s not THE most serious issue in the world, but for each individual child it is. I’m hoping, along with my colleagues in the Gifted and Talented Network Ireland – Dr. Catherine Riordan and Karen McCarthy – that we can raise awareness in Ireland at least and help these children have better school experiences. I also have school to attend and teach (love teaching) and some work to do in my school archives of which I am in charge. Then I’m going to come home and hang out with my boys. My wife proposed to me today!
Comments Off
Filed under Feb 29th Blogs
Ideas overload
I will be trying organise and internalise all the great ideas and discussions that came out of the Link2ICT conference http://ow.ly/9lJnJ
Comments Off
Filed under Feb 29th Blogs

