Turned a corner!
I’m charged! Those of you who have been reading my blog know that I have been struggling with my high school groups. Well today we turned a corner. Now it was a small one but it’s a step at a time and we’re taking them! First, the
teacher wants to meet with me for some planning time.Hooray! Now you know how little of that there is in our schools today so that’s the first step. The teacher also made a comment on Getting Heard.
She’s seeing the value. She lists her view of the benefits and drawbacks of blogging. The good news is she’s looking forward to round 2 of blogging. Another step. Then this from Sammey:
My thoughts on blogs
Hi my name is Sammey. My thoughts on blogs is that it help me to spell much better.Because I did not know how to spell that good. And I use to hate towrite but now I kind of love to write. And I like to write more becausepeople write me back. And it helps me to get my thoughts out about all the things that I need to say.
That’s the second step. That’s one that made me soar. You’d have to know Sammey and seehow difficult writing is for him. He was working away and wanted this post just so! Then Keith is getting all kinds of comments, especially on his ‘Tookie Williams’ post on his blog.
The step to note here is that he is handling some of the off the wall comments better than we educators do. These comments have brought about good discussions. We did have to delete some comments that really just didn’t need to be out there for public view. Another comment will be deleted but we are still discussing it. It probably won’t be there long but I left it for a
little so you could get an idea of what I’m talking about. This just reminds me of the importance of being aware of what’s happening on your student blogs. That’s the key. Then make the class part of the discussion about how these situations will
be handled.
This class is composed of an ever-changing group of “at-risk” students where “ups & downs” are the standard. They’re
not the typical group that gets to participate in many class sessions that would be open to the public. We’re figuring out a lot as we go.
The most frustrating part for me is that I can’t write about everything I’d like. Some of the struggles, problems, happenings are just too sensitive. We never get as much done as I’d like. My clue to be patient, not my strong suit. I look forward to turning some more corners, knowing full well that along the way some days are going to be better than others. But I have to tell you that it feels good to think that we might be able to include kids like Sammey and Keith in this learning process.
Mrs. Baros (Special Ed teacher), Mrs. Tincher (Instructional Technology Specialist) and I will be teaching United States History to the next group. I hope some of the same students will be in the class. I’ve got lideas brewing on how to develop the blog into the class. Anysuggestions would be most welcome, especially from you high school teachers.
My other group, Teacher Cadets, wrote some heart-warming posts about teachers who had made a difference in their lives Check out the student links on the class blog. I have two students in this high school class who attended J.H. House. The teachers they
noted were from there. I started soaring again!
December 10th, 2005 at 4:00 pm
I think weblogs are valuable tools and had my students using them on bloglines as a simple way to get started. I was very nervous about monitoring and such.
When I attended a seminar by David Warlick (www.landmark-project.com) he pointed me to wiki pages. After trying both blogs and wiki pages, I am very impressed with wikipages, particularly because of the monitoring and history capabilities. I blogged on this yesterday at http://coolcatteacher.blogspot.com/2005/12/wiki-wiki-teaching-art-of-using-wiki.html.
Your site continues to impress me, I’m glad I subscribed.
December 23rd, 2005 at 1:27 pm
Thank you for the nice comments. I enjoyed reading your blog.