Co-teaching Seminars This Week

Here in St. Louis (Clayton, actually). Checked in, shuttle driver took me to Whole foods – did groceries, going to polish my co-teaching presentation before bed. Tomorrow St. Louis, Tuesday: Springfield, MO, Wed: Kansas City, MO, Thurs: Minneapolis, MN, and Friday, FARGO!!!

Co-teaching Coaching Last Week

Last week I was working with Permian High School and Odessa High School in Odessa, TX. I love being in the classroom. Both high schools are making great gains in their co-teaching efforts. Not only did I get to work with some awesome teachers and administrators in Odessa, Texas, I attended a Permian High School Football ’send-off to the state championships’ bon-fire. I also attended an Odessa High Pep rally. They both made it to this past weekend championships in El Paso and they both won! Experiencing West Texas Football and West Texas friendly hospitality is truly delightful. The week flew by.

Linda Lamirande of ESC 16 in Amarillo, Texas told us about the Disabled and Captioned Media Program, or DCMP. The program calls itself “a unique educational accessible media resource serving the United States and its territories.”

They provide a collection of free-loan accessible media, guidelines for educational description and captioning, and a variety of other services designed to support and improve the academic achievement of students who are blind, visually impaired, deaf, hard of hearing, or deaf-blind.

Best of all, its FREE!

In the current economic environment, dropout rates tend to rise and we, as teachers, struggle to find ways help our students succeed. The issue of students dropping out of school continues to be a problem for schools, society, and our students.

A practice guide is available from the Institute for Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, titled “Dropout Prevention (September 2008).” The intention of the publication is to help educators develop effective dropout prevention strategies.

This publication is a useful addition to the growing research on the dropout issue and how school systems and education advocates can prevent students from dropping out.

Children and Personal Safety: My Passion

I have been teaching martial arts to children for years. At one time, I felt compelled to write an article titled, “Girls do Ballet and Boys do Karate” because of my frustration with the stereotype pervading children’s activities. Both girls and boys need self-defense skills. The reality is, however, that martial arts and self-defense are still not given enough credence by the general population. Martial arts schools continually lose students to other sports (or video games).

Then there are those that believe you can take a one night workshop and learn to defend yourself. All those quickie courses do is give people a false sense of security. It takes practice and repetition to learn self-defense well enough to use it in an attack.

Both my children took martial arts from Kindergarten through High School. They weren’t given another option. I realize that they could still get attacked, but I know that as their mother, I did the best that I could to make sure they had self-defense skills, understood what message body language sends to others and know all that you say in the video above. I pray they never need to use those skills, but I know they have them just in case.

A colleague of mine, Robert Siciliano, speaks with passion about a
topic I, also, am passionate about.

In my seminars, I often talk about the special difficulties faced by middle school students and the issues that middle school teachers must be aware of and deal with. As an advocate of positive discipline, I appreciated Shaun Martin’s thoughts on offering specific praise to our middle school students.

Martin, a history teacher in Baltimore Maryland, explains that general praise like, “Good job!” has very little meaning for students of middle school age. Instead, teachers should offer praise that is meaningful to students. Specific praise such as, “You showed your work on number three perfectly!” and “Awesome work! You punctuated every sentence correctly.” offer students precise information and give value to the praise.

To read Shaun’s complete article, visit http://classroom-management-tips.suite101.com/article.cfm/how_to_praise_students_in_middle_school#ixzz0Ejt9hoNr&A .

Every teacher is involved with increasing fluency and reading skills in their students.  Reading A-Z is a commercial website that offers downloadable and printable books, lessons, and other resources in support of a variety of learning styles and teaching approaches.

They also offer a selection of over 30 books and resources that teachers can download for free!  Just click on the logo and enter your email address to view and download these free resources. Enjoy!

I recently suggested that a colleague use a Jigsaw approach to cover reading material with his college students. After hearing about how successful the strategy was for him, I realized that the Jigsaw is one of those easy and effective teaching strategies that is also vastly under utilized.

While I do talk about Read the rest of this entry »

Art teachers Ondre Pettingill and Guy Wymore, from Rockwell Charter High School, talk about the value of technology tools like the Elmo projector. They also validate the value of doodling and drawing to focus attention when Ondre shows Read the rest of this entry »

Rita Bowers, a teacher at Ranches Academy in Eagle Mountain Utah enjoyed the sequence strip idea that I shared so much that she agreed to tell us what she liked about it and how she intends to use it in her classroom.

I’ve been using sequence strips with students for years. When I used to do Read the rest of this entry »

THE GARBLED GRAMMARIAN SAYS …