Reflection about teaching and technology

If district will make available new technology, anything they want, I will welcome it and learn how to use it. One thing that is extremely important for our development as teachers is the ability to keep an open mind and continue to learn. If learning or willingness to learn stops at any point in time, we will be terminated as teachers. There will be no place to go. The key in becoming a better teacher is to keep the fire going, and to learn with and from our students.

When we embarked our dreams and hopes in this interesting journey of becoming a teacher we had an idea about what we will find ahead. After a year and a half, a main placement, and a dyad experience we know even more.

One thing I know for sure at this time. There are no magic answers, there are no easy or quick avenues for success, and no certain recipes for teaching. All we have is what we learned so far, what we think that could be done to help our students, and faith in our original believe that we could make a difference.

Daniel Cristea

Cohort 12

B EDUC 425 and 437

Reflection about teaching 1

The reality is that in current economic environment teachers need to be ready for anything. We will encounter heartbreaking situations where we might feel hopeless facing hardship and even pain in our students' eyes. If we could only help the students forget for a moment, if we could only reinstate their faith in a better day, if we could only help them feel safer and more secure for a moment, we did our job. It boils down to what a teacher effectively can do alleviate hardship. The answer is not easy but we have to do our best.

I do not know if there is an ideal classroom out there. All I know is that today I have to do a better job than yesterday, gathering enough student feedback and data to know that my next class will be better tomorrow.

Daniel Cristea

Cohort 12

B EDUC 425 and 437

External blog

Building Trust Between Schools & Parents

By Deborah Meier on October 13, 2011 9:30 AM | Recommend

Dear Diane,

I've so many different topics I want to write you about! Watching a YouTube video Mike Klonsky sent me about a current demonstration in Chicago brought back a flood of memories from the late 1950s and '60s when my children's schooling began and when I was subbing throughout Chicago's South Side. Speaking of memories, Fred and I spent last weekend in St. Louis (I was speaking to a group of teachers at the Seventh Annual Educating for Change Curriculum Fair, and Fred to visit family). Both of us have roots in St. Louis and it brought back my Midwestern years—and it turns out that many of his relatives were school teachers, too.

Our anecdotal memories are useful, especially given how hard it is to believe school data—between cheating, manipulating, and obfuscating, which have for many years been standard practice. I have a lot of anecdotes to demonstrate this claim!

Both experiences reminded me that I was perhaps lucky to have entered the profession at the same time that my three children entered Chicago's public school system. My experiences in both roles led me to admire those who stuck with public school teaching as well as despair at the way the system didn't work for those children most at risk in life.

It gives me, Diane, a somewhat special perspective on teaching and parenting. It was hard not to switch back and forth during the many years in which I experienced schooling in both roles. It complicated my responses to the fallibilities of both.

There is no easy answer. Like everything else, there are trade-offs. But I am more convinced than ever that working out that relationship is central to our task, ABOVE ALL for kids whose own families failed or were intimidated by the same K-12 schools. One aspect of it, perhaps the least important, is getting the governance issues right. If you go onto the missionhillschool.org website you'll see what, given the opportunity, we designed for our governance purposes. Our division of "policy" vs. "practice" decisions is full of gray areas, but our solution is very replicable.

But the harder part is to figure out how to create a relationship built on trust between school people and families—one by one. Most of all it takes a great deal of patience and time. It can't happen in a single year ... in the most difficult situations anyhow. It may even take four to five years sometimes. But what a difference it makes! In its absence it even drives the most-advantaged parents to act stupidly. One family conference of 10-20 minutes each year and a brief report card do not create trust. But trust between teachers and parents where race and social class differences are as extreme as possible makes this trust "almost" impossible. Parental distrust is a wise given in most such cases. Besides, we're both appropriately over-sensitive!

At the schools I was most involved with we attribute a lot of our success not to our brilliant teaching, staff skill, etc., etc. (all of which I vouch for), but to what parents and families offered us in support of their youngsters. It was as true for 5-year-olds as 15-year-olds. Maybe, in fact, it's more important in high school when young people are testing authority at home and at school—and must do so as they grow into their own adulthood. If parents and schools are sending mixed, and even outright hostile, messages about each other, it isn't helpful to most kids. And while teenagers may claim to want teachers and parents to get out of their way, they need them more than ever. But they need them in different ways.

"Fortunately" my own children each had their own crises somewhere along the way, too, and it helped me think through how other parents might be feeling. Helpless. It's not good for kids to have helpless parents or teachers. So we initiated prolonged conferences between teachers, family members, AND the student several times a year. In fact, as often as needed. It changed the dynamics in critical ways. If there was more than one teacher involved, we sometimes added school adults as well.

When problems were acute, we arranged for follow-up meetings on the assumption that Plan A might turn out to be wrong, and we might need to go on to Plan A-2 or Plan B. We had a trained social worker who helped parents, teachers, and students learn how to conduct such gatherings, and to be available when needed, including providing useful external resources.

Once a parent—like me—finds that such meetings are useful, they will show up. For me, "showing up" was a ritual, a way to reassure the teacher that I cared rather than to learn something useful. We got 100 percent attendance at Central Park East and Mission Hill. Of course, that also meant we had to be flexible about when and where we met.

But, once again, it requires time, time, time, on top of all the other time-consuming professional tasks (like time to meet with colleagues, keep up with the field, read over and respond to home and schoolwork, plan ahead, etc.).

When will we ever learn that it's time worth spending, especially if it's successful outcomes—authentic achievement, not test scores—we are seeking?

Deborah

P.S. Two books worth reading: Lynne Yermanock Strieb's Inviting Families into the Classroom and Juanita Doyon's Not With Our Kids You Don't.

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 2011

A GREAT RESPONSIBILITY

October 14, 2011 Rev50Mstr Leave a comment Go to comments

“As a moral community, a profession ‘is composed of people who … seek, through practical inquiry of their lives, both alone and together, to clarify and live up to what they mean by being a professional”. – Buchmann writes this on p. 539

As I sit here, exhausted, sleep deprived and living on sheer adrenaline, I find peace in the quiet hum of my laptop and a blank uncluttered page. A mini-epiphany seemed to reveal it’s self for me this afternoon about life that seems so hurried and chaotic, an insurmountable mountain, with a black abyss, with only the tiniest glimmer beckoning me along the trail. I am a student of teachers, and a teacher of students, yet what does that mean? For me it is like possessing a dual personality within this one body. It is at once like having one foot wanting to run through the forest in order to reach the mountaintop. Yet the other foot wanting to be still, longing for the opportunity to sit and reflect upon a journey that at times feels like it will consume me. It often feels like the top of my head has been peeled open, not unlike that of a water vessel, where those teachers of teachers pour the knowledge, at times so quickly it feels chaotic, the transfer reaching the flood stage where I fear it will overflow the banks.

Therefore, as I sit here reflecting tonight, I savor the opportunity for the momentary silence, it is as a sunbeam in the midst of a storm, reminding me that balance will soon be restored. This tiny respite, a tiny jewel that I covet, allows the swirling storm in my head to become calm, still, and for a moment, I can see my reflection in the still pond that flows gently and deep. It is here I can breathe, exhale, and momentarily feel free. Free of judgment, free of what I should think, what I should say, how I should ask, and what is okay to ask. There is no judgment, only me, a place where I can filter what makes sense and resonates with me, and what feels wrong and will not be a part of me. It is here, as student of teachers and teacher of students, I can also find, contemplate, and mull over those things that as student of teachers, remind of what it means to be mindful as a teacher of students.

My essential questions, the way I teach my class, the manner in which I interact with my students must come from authentic self. Yet as a student of teachers, I also know that a teacher of students must never forget how it feels to be a student. For me it is a risk to share, to convey my thoughts and words when prompted, only to have them harshly challenged and too quickly dismissed. The need for another to insist there must always be a black or white answer, rather than a differing perspective. These are the things that make me feel uncared for, unsafe, and unwilling to connect. They are also the things that tell me to be mindful of one’s words as a teacher of students, lest we are the one that causes those in our care to stop risking. Risks that are required to truly learn those things that stretch us, pull us out of our comfort, and into the great unknown. We must feel safe, respected, and that we belong, to be learners, humanitarians, and students of learning.

Why do I write this, at this time, at this moment….because I am finding, as I reflect, that there are those teachers of teachers that allow me to risk or alternatively to be unwilling to risk. The one who can in their own gentle, peaceful way, offer me the quiet reflection, a safe place to question and always take risks. Where differences are welcome and ‘depends’ is always the word because each student is unique. Then there are others, with chaotic lives, wildly impassioned, and with seemingly disordered thinking, that for students like me create chaos in an already chaotic life. Where passion drives their instruction to the point that their students fear risk, told their voices are without merit and unfounded opinion, failing to remember they do not know their students walks in life. That multiple perspectives should be celebrated, not used to humiliate, and berate. I must always remember this….for all voices have merit, all voices have reason, and while they are different it does not make them wrong.

I am finding each day, that Sir Robinson’s lectures, one from the 2006 Ted Conference and the second from the 2010 Ted Conference, resonate with me more each and every day as I walk my path toward becoming a teacher of students. Sir Robinson used W.B. Yeats’ poem, quoted below, in his closing remarks for the 2010 presentation. The last words he spoke, after reading the poem, were “And every day, everywhere, our children spread their dreams beneath our feet. And we should tread softly.”

“HAD I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,

Inwrought with golden and silver light,

The blue and the dim and the dark cloths

Of night and light and the half-light,

I would spread the cloths under your feet:

But I, being poor, have only my dreams;

I have spread my dreams under your feet;

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.”

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939)”He Wishes For the Cloths of Heaven”

From the Collected Works of W.B. Yeats

As teacher’s we have great power, and with that power, must come great humility. Yes it is a hard job, there are a great many demands, sleepless nights, and obsessing over how we could have reached our students or known our students better. When we stop wondering, are no longer willing to give more than we possibly have left, or settle for complacency we not only do a disservice to ourselves and our profession, but to those small lives that are placed into our care. We are with them for a fleeting moment in their lives, yet those moments can light the ember that becomes their burning passion long after they have left our care.

Sharyn Gabriel, Ococe Middle School, Big Ideas Fest 2010

http://youtu.be/6_kwEBNx6tk

TED Ideas Worth Spreading

The Machine is Us/ing Us (Final Version)

Videos Assignments

How is it possible that students who never spoke English language before, developed the ability to learn so quickly?

Age and interest in learning is one factor. Another factor is access to the Internet and research tools that complemented their curiosity to a point of asking questions and finding answers about Einstein's theory of relativity.

In our classroom there is at least one student with previous low exposure to English language, due to English being the second language. Clearly, advances in technology can accelerate the learning process based on visual stimulation generating positive results in student's involvement and interest. How to facilitate this within a classroom with different knowledge levels and focus abilities remains a different question.

Reactions to "required readings" and videos

b. Advances in technologies and the Internet have revolutionized and will continue to revolutionize every part of our lives. Jobs such as social media strategist, app developer, mobile web engineer will require a new way of thinking about how to approach the educational process and learning.

Since learning become more and more accessible to more and more areas of the globe, student development and skill range will develop exponentially creating a new wave of competition on the job market of the future. Corporations have already started recruitment in areas that go beyond national borders creating new dynamics and evolutions for the future job markets.

Many people think that due to the increased strategic importance of education, major changes in educational policy, how we test, how we measure achievement, how we teach and learn will change dramatically. To what extent these changes will prove themselves applicable and viable remains to be seen. One thing remains certain, generalizing national standards could have positive effects for applying what is working to achieve rapid and quantifiable results.

My reaction to readings and videos is one of direct appreciation. These are educational experiments and ideas that prove themselves applicable and demonstrate that technology will create new dynamics and opportunities for learning. What is working in India might work in other place of the World, including in the United States or England. Other ideas might not work given the particularities and the complexity of learning environments and cultural factors. Yet, one thing remains certain. Those who try first certain ideas will have a competitive advantage. The more we understand how learning process happens, the more we will be able to find the appropriate answers, and for that, any applicable idea should be taken into consideration.

"Working the Gap" - B EDUC 425 and 437

“Working the Gap”, the gap being “ the enormous space between what is and what could be.”

In my efforts of creating a positive environment for all students I will carefully observe all the signals coming from the classroom, analyzing, evaluating, and finding the best options for customizing teaching according to what students’ need to learn, observe, and understand.

Ayers, used to mention bridges that will fill up the gap in students’ understanding. Connecting these bridges will be essential to fulfill students’ and parents’ dreams, skills, experiences, and knowledge. How to do that will be not an easy task especially for a group of five graders that do not realize yet the importance of being fully immersed in the learning process.

Clearly, I will have to learn to connect bridges for each and every student, to engage, interact, and transfer positive energy to each and every one of them in order to capture their interest and involvement. In the next five years I will have to learn ways to give them a reason to follow along, taking into consideration the environments, cultures, ways of thinking, and norms that affected their development and learning ability at a given point in time. Each teacher who will deliver appropriate instruction will have to understand, adjust, and continually evolve professionally to a point where quality instruction within United States and international standards can be achieved.

What could and have to be is an educational process that will prepare students for sustainable careers, personal growth, and learning skills that will allow them to survive in the current global economy. Critical thinking, initiative, problem solving abilities, creativity, imagination, and more than anything, the ability to continuously learn, will be very important.

Working the gap between what is and what could be will be influenced by a combination of factors involving policy makers, experts in the field of teaching, and the ability to use current advances in technology to make teachers voices heard and quality teaching generalized as a standard. Practitioners’ experience from schools should be combined with data and information received from across the globe to understand what is working and what is not.

Daniel Cristea