Chapter 1

Teaching in the Undertow: 

Resisting the Pull of Schooling-As-Usual 

Image from
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/images/  
PS: NOT the author

In Chapter 1, we are introduced to the author: a white male South Carolinian teaching 7th & 8th graders on Chicago's south side. Thrust into an environment of control - "don't do this" and "don't do that" - then-idealistic Michie instead endeavors to focus on what his students and he CAN do. This Atlantic Coast native recalls his mother's words: "Be careful of the undertow." Michie connects her advice with his own suggestions for getting through the rough currents at school.

Please feel free to post comments by clicking the "(n) comment" link below. You'll find a few questions there to help guide your reading, thoughts, and posts. I look forward to your input!

First meeting cancelled

Due to impending inclement weather and the potential for dangerous driving conditions this afternoon, today's New Teacher Learning Team Book Club meeting is cancelled. Books will be distributed at our next meeting, Feb. 13, and the schedule will be adjusted accordingly.

Be safe and stay warm! :)
MJ

Welcome Back!

You made it! You survived Fall semester! We hope you are rested and already excited to incorporate new and innovative ideas into your classroom activities to help each child succeed!

On that note, we're also getting ready for a new style of meetings for our New Teacher Learning Team meetings. During Spring semester we usually bid farewell to Dr. Wong's excellent video series and start meeting in a Book Club format. You'll find our schedule of meetings in the sidebar, at right.

This semester we'll be reading a book by Greg Michie called We Don't Need Another Hero. At only 130 pages, it offers a quick yet informative read for busy teachers about the experiences of an eudcator in an urban school setting who strives to focus on what student truly need during this era of high-stakes testing.

Books will be distributed during our first meeting, on January 30. If you can't make it to our meetings, you can always follow along here and add your comments below each post. If you'd like a book but can't make our first meeting, send me an email through your school account and I'll drop one in an inter-school envelope to you.

Cooperative Learning Resources

First of all, let me just start by defining one often-overlooked point regarding Cooperative Learning:

• Group Work = pushing a few kids together and assigning a task to be completed together, assuming that kids already know how to work together.
• Cooperative Learning = teaching students to perform specific functions/roles within a carefully-selected assemblage of students whose collective mission is to complete an instructional activity, learning important social skills at the same time.

There is very little research that supports the validity of using “group work” (as defined above) in a classroom. Mountains of research supports cooperative learning. You’ll find much of it – along with ideas for implementing true cooperative learning in your daily activities – in this excellent post by Larry Ferlazzo: The Best Sites for Cooperative Learning Ideas.

Cross-posted from http://tech205.blogspot.com

Homework Incentives

As always, we started this afternoon's meeting with Peer-To-Peer Problem-Solving. Tonight we discussed answers to a great question from a middle school teacher:

How do you get kids to turn in their homework?

We discussed several ideas that might help, at many grade levels:
* Popcorn parties are a quick, easy, and relatively inexpensive way to encourage kids to turn in homework. If kids turn in all their homework during a given time period, you break out the popcorn at the end of the time. Instruction doesn't have to stop during the party - kids can eat popcorn while they're working on the assignment, reading the assigned passage, etc.
* Stickers: Kids LOVE stickers! Our group shared that kids from pre-school through high school will do just about anything for stickers from their teacher. When I was teaching middle school, kids would peel stickers off of their recorded homework assignments after they were handed back and stick them onto their book covers like fighter pilots chalking up kills. Stamps work, too, as do handwritten words of encouragement from their teacher.
*Free Time! Every moment of a kid's school day is structured and controlled - at least from the kid's point-of-view, anyway. So, why not offer the incentive of having some less-structured time to talk about... whatever it is that kids talk about?
*Movies - Is there an curriculum-relevant and age-appropriate video clip that would support your instruction? In a perfect world, kids would watch intently and gather knowledge, thanking us teachers for enriching their minds. Okay, now back to reality - Maybe kids can earn a movie-day once a month or once a quarter, etc.? It would be great if the movie was relevant to your curriculum, but you know what they say about beggars and choosers...

Larry Ferlazzo has written a number of posts and even a book about student motivation - and how teachers can promote self-motivation in their students. I would highly encourage new teachers follow Larry Ferlazzo's blog for lots of tips and resources as you develop your career.

Do you have an idea to share about incentives? Feel free to add it by submitting a comment at the bottom of this post!