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Author Archives: ehartjes2@sympatico.ca (Elona Hartjes)
Helping students find their way to success
Some students do not have the work habits that make it easy for them to be successful in school. In class, I talk a lot about the characteristics of successful people and the role that perseverance plays in their success. Unfortunately, perseverance is not the only thing some of my students lack. They lack another important characteristic that successful people share. They lack the emotional support they need to help them be successful. Some students don’t have anyone there for them when the going get tough or even to help them celebrate life’s successes great or small. That’s where I come in. I try to give them the emotional support they need to help them find their way to success at school.
Sometimes students will work on projects and assignments but for any number of reasons don’t submit the assignments for evaluation. They seem to run out of energy, interest or whatever and just give up. I’m always encouraging them to submit things so I can give them the marks they’ve earned. I’m constantly telling them if they don’t hand things in it makes it very difficult for me to find marks to give them. I don’t find it useful to tell them that if they don’t hand work in they’ll fail. They’re used to hearing that. They’re used to failing. I take a different approach. I tell them they have to help me find the marks they need to pass them. Yes, of course it would be nice if my students just wanted to learn for the sake of learning, but that’s not the way it is for some students. I have to start where from where my students are.
I used to get very frustrated when I would see my students working on assignments in class and then not submit them for evaluation. In fact, it used to drive me crazy. I’ve learned to observe and record their progress during the time they work in class so that if for some reason they don’t submit an assignment, I still have some sense of their progress and can evaluate what I have seen. Believe me, there are many reasons why assignments don’t get handed in. Not completing them is only one reason.
It’s important to know that some of my more reluctant/struggling students are not interested in getting high marks. They feel they’ve aced the course when they get 51%. I know because they’ve told me this. Of course I encourage my students to do more than the bare minimum and will often tell them they’ve made a good start. Then, I encourage them to improve their work by suggesting if they just changed this a bit here or expanded on that a bit there I could find more marks to give them. Believe me. It works.
I’ll admit this whole idea of finding marks to give students for assignments they have or have not submitted can seem a bit strange. But, and this is a big but, I teach students who are at-risk academically, and I need to think creatively to find ways to motivate them and give them the support they need so they can find their way to success. That’s what makes teaching so rewarding.
Posted in "At-risk" students, assignments, Behaviour Management, creative ways of finding marks to give students, emotional support for students, Engaging Assignments and Activities for Students, Evaluation, giving students emotional support, helping students succeed, lack, marks, motivating students, my , perseverance, perseverance in school, positive climate, Special Education, submit, success, supporting at-risk students, The way I see it, underachieving students, work habits
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Laughing out loud or how the internet helps me maintain a balance in life
In my last post, I suggested that students spending 53 hours on the new media, mainly the internet, was too much of a good thing. I argued that spending that much time on-line would lead to a totally unbalance life. Tracy and MIrjan’s comments caused me to pause and reflect on my own life and the balance I strive to achieve. Let me tell you, it didn’t take long for me to start LOL.
Here’s why I started laughing out loud at myself.
- I love to read books, magazines, newspapers, cereal boxes etc. Now I download books, newspapers, and magazines from the net and read them on my laptop, netbook or iPod.
- I’m always behind in my reading. So many books and so little time. Now I catch up on my reading by listening to ebooks I download. (No more excuses about using the elliptical trainer boring)
- I love doing jigsaw and crossword puzzles. Now I down load jigsaw puzzles and do them on my laptop or netbook.
- I love listening to the radio. Now I listen to it on my laptop, netbook or iPod.
- I love trivia so I was always consulting my set of encyclopedias. Now I ask google my questions and download the answers.
- I love to knit but find it difficult to find patterns I like in my local yarn shop. Now I find patterns I like on-line and download them. Many of the patterns are free.
- I find shopping mostly a frustrating experience so now I do more and more of my shopping on-line.
- I love learning new things so I’m forever downloading podcasts and videos.
Are you laughing out loud with me yet?
Those are just the things I do on-line that aren’t work related. I spend hours on line looking for ways to engage my more reluctant/struggling students. I’ve downloaded all kinds of teaching tools and learning tools. I spend writing this blog and reading many others.
Tracy suggested I consider the new media in all its forms as part of students’ lives and not something separate from their lives, something that takes away from their lives or something that creates a huge imbalance in their lives. I guess I’d have to say that the new media is a really big part of my life, a really valuable tool that helps me keep my life balanced.
LOL!!!
Image thanks to mahalo
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Posted in balance, Blogging in and out of the Classroom, Computers In The Classroom, Digital toys, download, ebooks, finding balance in life, iPod, laptop, laughing, LOL, loud, mahalo, maintaining a balance in your life, netbook, patterns, The way I see it, Web 2.0 tools
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The 53 hours a week teens spend on media use is way too much of a good thing.
“Young people now devote an average of 7 hours, 38 minutes to daily media use, or about 53 hours a week — more than a full-time job.” Whoa!!!! according to the report, “Generation M2: Media in the Lives of 8- to 18-year-olds,” which is based on a survey of more than 2,000 students nationwide.
No wonder some of my student seem dead tired in school. School itself is a full time job. Now that kids are spending more time with media these days than time on school, it’s a wonder students have time to do any homework at all. I guess should be impressed with the marks they do get! Research determined that marks for heavy media users are lower than marks for light media users. although, more research needs to be done to determine if there is a definite cause and effect.
Years ago I remember reading that when kids spend 24 hours a week on a part time job their grades go down significantly because it’s too much for kids to manage. Fifry three hours a week on media must be way, way too much. When do kids sleep? No wonder some of my students aren’t coping. I don’t think I could do my job very well if I spent 53 hours on media either. I tell my students school is their job, and they shouldn’t let anything interfere with their job.
Kids spend most of their time on their cell phones checking out Facebook,MySpace, texting, playing video games, watching TV and listening to music. They actually don’t spend much time actually talking on their cell phones. Those 53 hours kids spend on media takes away from family time. Communication between parents and kids is almost non existent. I can remember before my son, Chris, got his license, I had to drive him every where. Bus service was almost non-existent in our community at that time. We used to talk about things while we were together in the car. I can remember thinking it would be great when Chris gets his license and can drive so that I won’t have to take him everywhere. It turned out to be great on one hand, but wasn’t on the other. Since he drove himself to whereever he had to go, we didn’t have that time together in the car to talk about things. I came to really miss that time. I felt I’d lost something precious. I would imagine now if I were driving Chris, we might not have those conversations because he would be wrapped up in his iPhone or Ipod or iSomething or other. That would be a shame.
Parents of course can limit the time kids get to spend on media. Some parents block incoming messages during homework time and after 11:00 pm. that sems like a good idea. I just had a thought. Teachers in schools have been encouraged to use web based tools as productivity tools to teach with and as a cognitive means to support learning. If using web based technology really catches on in schools so that all teachers use it in their classrooms to teach and to have their students create and demonstrate learning, how many hours a week will kids then spend using media 63, 73 ???. It’s kind of scary. Is that a good thing. I’m not sure.
Photo thanks to azureon2
We’ve forgotten to ask a very important question.
You know what? I think we’ve forgotten to ask a very important question. We’ve been asking what can the education system do to help prepare children for the 21st century. There are lots and lots of debates and suggestions about what skills and tools our children will need to meet the challenges that arise as the 21st century unfolds. Just Google and you will be overwhelmed by it all. I think, though, we’ve forgotten to ask another very important question. What are parents doing to prepare their children for the challenges of the 21st century?
A study
published last month in the Journal of Marriage and Family and funded by The National Institute of Aging, looked at the relationships of 633 Philadelphia-area parents, aged 40 to 60, and their 1,384 children, aged 18 to 33. The authors found that many of the grown children were having trouble weaning themselves off the parental teat: 76 per cent got domestic help monthly, 79 per cent got money most months and 93 per cent got a check-in chat or other emotional support weekly.
How is all that support helping young adults become independent? Are these parents doing this to fulfill a need they have? How independent can you be if you are still depending on Mommy and Daddy? Are these young adults like Peter Pan and never want to grow up?
Educators are trying to find ways to help students become independent thinkers and risk takers so they can meet the challenges of the 21st century. Our report cards even evaluate kids on things like initiative and work habits. Initiative and works habits are valued at school, why not at home? It seems teachers and parents like those in the study are working at cross purposes .
Why are some parents encouraging their children to remain dependent and helpless? How is this going to help their adult children cope with life? This major enabling sounds like a recipe for disaster. Are the majority of young adults going to think the 21st century is a century of entitlement- theirs. ? Are parents encouraging their children to become narcissistic? That doesn’t bode well for the future.
I suppose you can argue that life is more complicated now and our children need our support longer, but
If you spend 10 formative years at your peak capacity depending on other people, that has to set up a habit of how you behave in the world,” said Joseph Allen, a clinical psychologist and co-author of Escaping the Endless Adolescence: How We Can Help Our Teenagers Grow Up Before They Grow Old.
I am concerned. Am I missing something here?
Posted in "At-risk" students, 21st, 21st century- the century of entitlement, cent, century, children, forgotten, grow, grown, independent, promoting a culture of narcissism, start-up adults, The way I see it
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The problem of using common sense to regulate teacher conduct
I was reminded again about the problem with common sense when I read that the Alabama House of Representatives had blocked a teacher code of conduct from becoming law. Opponents argued that the standards were too vague. Supporters argued that they weren’t because they were based on “common sense and something all parents, teachers and legislators should support”.
Common sense is not common. It is very subjective. Let me explain. I teach in a high school with a student population of about 1 700 students. You could easily hear over 60 languages being spoken as you negotiate your way through the halls from one class to the next. Many new immigrants settle in the area served by our school. These immigrants bring with them “the common sense” that served them in their homeland. It may or may not be the “common sense” of the community they live in now.
Some students in my class have told me that teachers ought to be able to beat their students when students misbehave. That made common sense to them. That’s what teachers did “back home” and it worked, they tell me. Kids behaved themselves because they could be beaten if they didn’t. A few parents have even given teachers permission to beat their kids if they misbehave. Thank fully, the common sense that dictates corporal punishment for student misbehaviour is not common to everyone.
I don’t mean to imply here that it is only the case that some immigrants have different “common senses”. That’s certainly not the case at all. I just wanted to make the point that common sense can vary from culture to culture, from community to community and even within a community. There’s nothing common about common sense.
In Ontario, the Education Act, law, sets out the code of conduct for teachers regarding students and for students regarding teachers. The code of conduct is not left to common sense. It doesn’t seem to me there are any major problems with the code. If anyone knows of any, I would appreciate hearing about them. I don’t want to go into a lot of detail here except to say that teachers who break the code of conduct suffer consequences for their actions. Sometimes that means they have their teaching certificate withdrawn; sometimes they are required to get appropriate counseling or training.
I think it is useful to have a code of conduct enacted in law because it forces everyone to be on the same page about what is expected from teachers and from students. It doesn’t matter what a person’s “common sense” tells them. It’s what the code of conduct as law says that counts. I think this gets around the problem of different “common senses”. What do you think?
Photo thanks to didbyatgraham
Posted in Behaviour Management, common sense, discipline in classroom, motivating students, teacher behaviour, The way I see it
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Whose fault is it when students fail to achieve?
Whose faul
t is it when students fail to achieve? Some like the eight out of nine school trustees in the Houston Independent School District think that it’s the teachers’ fault when students fail to achieve and plan to fire them. Others think that it’s the parents’ fault when children fail in school because of poor parenting skills or because parents don’t spend enough time with their kids. Still others blame the media or the students’ peer group or the kids themselves for their failure.
I’ve been teaching academically at-risk teens for well over 25 years now, and I can tell you the reason why kids fail at school is a complex one. Kids fail to achieve in school for any number of reasons. It’s easy to point the finger of blame at teachers, at the administration, at the school system, at parents or at kids themselves when they fail to achieve to their potential.
The school trustees who think it’s the teachers’ fault when students fail to achieve are misguided. Yes, perhaps some teachers need support to help improve their teaching practice. I’m not denying that. But some parents also need support to improve their parenting skills, and some students also need support to help them take ownership for their own learning. The education system itself needs some major changes so that schools offer the programs that better meet the needs of all students. Kids also need to realize they have to take responsibility for their learning.
We probably all have heard the statement ” it takes the entire village to raise a child”. Well, it takes the entire village to educate one as well. We need to stop blaming. Blaming doesn’t help. Instead we need to ask what can the villagers do, what support can they give to all the stakeholders so that kids can succeed at school. After all, the village will benefit if it’s kids live up to their potential. The way I see it is that the village supports kids when they are young, and then the kids support the village when they grown up. It’s a win-win situation.
Posted in "At-risk" students, helping at-risk kids, motivating students, reasons for students failing, student success, The way I see it
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It takes a lot of teacher effort to make math easy.
Over the years, I’ve found that it takes a lot of effort to make math easy for my students. End of semester exams are fast approaching, and I am doing my utmost to prepare my students. I’ve created some new review material for my grade nine math students that I hoped would help them better understand the unit on slope, intercepts, lines and the equations y = mx and y = mx + b. That’s pretty abstract stuff for some of my grade nine students, especially the ones who didn’t actually pass math in grade eight but because of social promotion are now in my grade nine math class.
It’s been a challenge all semester long to keep these kids engaged enough so they can learn. I feel as if I’ve been dancing as fast as I can. I have found using the LCD projector or even the overhead projector to teach the lesson and take up work useful. I don’t know exactly why kids pay more attention when my lesson is projected on a screen than written on the blackboard. Maybe the screen reminds them of of a video monitor? I don’t know why, but since it works I keep doing it. Has anyone else found this to be the case?
The last couple of days have been pretty hectic. I’ve been pushing my students to do their best, and to be honest, it’s exhausting. At the end of class today, I was beginning to think that maybe I was pushing myself too much, too. I had spent most of Saturday creating review material and most of Sunday refining the exam so that my students could demonstrate their learning to the best of their ability.
My husband, not a teacher, was watching all this and told me that I was handing my students their lessons on a silver platter. He felt I was doing too much. I told him that I wasn’t handing them their lessons on a silver platter. I was differentiating instruction. I thought that was funny. He didn’t. I guess it’s an inside joke.
Today at the end of class as I was gathering up my materials, just dying for a cup tea to sooth my throat, one of my students came over and told me something that had made all that work on the weekend and all those other weekends this semester worthwhile. He told me that he liked the way I taught because I made math easy. He had never found math easy before. If he didn’t get it, I would explain it in another way. I need to remember those words when I get discouraged or feel overwhelmed. Yes, making math easy takes a lot of work, but it is so rewarding. Now, for that cup of tea.
Happiness spreads like a virus
That makes sense I thought as I read this from Positive Psychology News.
research shows that within a social network, happiness spreads among people up to three degrees of separation. That means when you feel happy, your friend’s friend’s friend has a higher likelihood of feeling happy too. And, it applies in both real and virtual worlds.
We all know people who are mostly happy and others who are mostly unhappy. I try to avoid people who are always unhappy. They really drag me down. Being with people who are mostly happy is energizing, while being with people who are mostly unhappy just sucks the energy out of me. Who needs that!
It’s encouraging to know that happiness can spread like a virus and affect people we aren’t directly in contact with. I kind of like the idea that when I am happy my students can catch my happiness and spread it to others they know, etc., etc.
As far as happiness in the virtual world, I can see that happening too. I find that when I read blogs like Mathew’s or Tracy’s or listen to a podcasts like Jason’s or watch the TED videos that have a positive, happy tone, I can’t help but feeling happy. I’ve never meet any of these people in person, but it doesn’t matter. I’m still happy after our virtual meeting. Imagine all the happiness that gets spread this way.
I imagine that all the doom and gloom we hear in the media affects us negatively and spreads to our social network, too. Scary. I wonder if I should stop being a news junkie and listen to jazz more often. Listening to jazz makes me happier than watching the news. In fact, I’m listening to jazz.fm as I write this post and I’m feeling pretty happy. That, is a good thing.
Posted in happiness in the classroom, happiness is like a virus, jazz is happiness, the effects of happiness, The way I see it
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The ABC’s of copyright and fair use
One of the best things about the internet is that it lets me be creative. People have posted all kinds of things on line that I can use to create lessons that engage my reluctant/struggling students. I must say though that I have been more than a bit confused about the whole copyright and fair use issue. However, thanks to Mathew, I have a much more accurate idea about the concepts of copyright and fair use.
Mathew’s video “Steal This Preso (K12Online09) Now Live!” not only gave me crucial information about copyright and fair use, it was also fun to watch. Now I know what I can and cannot do so I won’t be guilty of copyright or fair use infringement. Thanks, Mathew.
Photo thanks to fuzzcat
Posted in Computers In The Classroom, copyright, fair use, fair use and copyright in education, The way I see it
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