lunchbyteblog

today, our APUSH students began blogging for the first time. i admit, their first blog post was a little constraining. i was asking them to answer an APUSH essay question. but i feel as if this situation was controlled enough to give them guidelines. we went over some general thoughts about blogging and then i turned them loose. so for 35 minutes they wrote about the political views of jefferson and hamilton and they tried to prove a point. then i stopped them. we moved on. but i told them that they could revise as many times as they liked. i am going to "grade" the essay on what exists when i visit their blog. so they can go back and edit it all they want. i am also giving them "points" for having a peer and an adult comment on the essay. i figure they've got to develop an audience so why not begin to build that in with their first post? i know that they won't be able to type their ap essays. i also know that they won't be able to revise over t

"I have to be honest. After 17 years of teaching, I can't tell you how to teach. I can't even really describe what is the best way to do something." These are the words I wanted to say to our student teacher (ST) the other day. But I didn't say them. I mean, I kind of said them. But not really. And of course, we all know what good teaching looks like. We can tell who the "good" teachers are and who the "bad" teachers are can't we? We knew when we were in school. You remember then? "Man, this teacher is bad..." we thought to ourselves. District administrators think they know who is good. They have these neat reports to go on. They have TEST SCORES for crying out loud. Parents surely know. They can see reports and TEST SCORES online and in the paper. Sometimes parents even complain about their kids' teachers to other parents. Surely we all know what good teaching looks and sounds like. But ST and I were having

Today, the staff of our school was having one of our first PLC meetings of the year. We were running through the business at hand, discussing some of the things that we have needed to get together and discuss. It was during this meeting that one of our new teachers, a lateral entry teacher, asked an innocent enough question. She asked simply, "I've got projects coming up next week and I was wondering if you guys would help me out by grading them in your classes, too?" Now let me state a couple of things about our school before I go any further. We think of ourselves as a project based school. Our students are constantly working on projects and problems of some kind. We were featured in an ASCD production based on PBLs! Secondly, we just finished a round of projects with the freshmen where all the teachers who taught freshmen spent part of their day grading freshmen projects. Thirdly, I work with an awesome bunch of people who will do anything to help kids become b

try not to pass out from the shock. it's a blog update. of course, the passing out would require that someone was actually reading this blog at some point. i imagine you all eagerly checking lunchbyteblog every day, anxiously waiting another post. you must be forlorn by now. resigned to the fact that this blog has become something promised but never delivered upon. i follow in the footsteps of chinese democracy, duke nukem forever, and indiana jones and the crystal skull. hopefully though, this update won't suck as much as those bits of vaporware when they were finally and sadly released. what makes the long hiatus all the more confusing is that, for the longest time, i have considered myself a writer. i spent time in college studying writing. i wrote for the college paper. i have, over the years, written thousands of poems and have written quite a few in the time spent away from this blog. but i have written nary an update. that changes today. for my "return t

I haven't written anything in a while so I thought I would give everyone a quick update. As usual, there is a lot happening. My school is in the middle of our recruitment period where we travel around to all the middle schools in the area and give our spiel to the 8th graders who are going to be making their decisions about what high school they would like to attend. This is uncharted territory for me and I'm trying to learn on the fly what appeals to the mind of an 8th grader. We are giving them an honest look at what goes on in our school and trying to help them make informed decisions. I try to make the presentation funny and I try to appeal to their sense of different. I think that we have a different school and that our kids stand out because they have unique ways of looking at the world. Those are the kinds of kids we are attracting and the kinds of kids we want to continue to attract. We want students that are going to try to make a difference in the world. I

wouldn't it be great if public schools had the funding that they needed? as i sit here writing, i'm working on several grant proposals and trying to dream up ways to raise money for our school. we are a public school in north carolina and, like in most states, our state is facing a huge budget deficit for next year. rather than address a tax code that hasn't been changed since the great depression, our legislature is currently considering cutting state employee pay. the future is not very bright for more funding for public schools. so, we are looking for alternative sources for funding. in schools, a little bit can often go a long way and we already fund raise for quite a few of our programs. we also are constantly on the look-out for grants and other programs that can infuse a little bit of cash into our coffers. as a new school (this is our 6th year of existence), we are always in need of money to help us with our ideas. we get excited when we get a new couch or s

I am sitting in a classroom listening to music. This music is coming from a mix of radio stations that i have created and is being streamed over the internet to the laptop in front of me. The laptop, in turn, is connected to an old marantz "stereophonic receiver" and the receiver is connected to four speakers that are allowing the rest of the class to listen to my music. I am a teacher and the other people that are in the classroom with me are students. They are all facing computers that line the walls of the classroom. Some stare intently at the computer screens in front of them. Some students are typing, some watching videos, some manipulating things on the screen with their mouse. Some of the students are listening to music of their own through various electronic devices and headphones or earbuds. These are the students that think my music is old. These are the students that may have questionable taste. As I sit here, I am thinking about the future of education.

just came across this article in my inbox this morning. this is what i've been advocating for: http://www.mlive.com/news/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2011/01/should_michigan_schools_replac.html what do you think?

As I write this post, most of the school districts in our area are out for a "snow day." We have already been out for three days and it looks like we probably won't have students at school tomorrow either. Both teachers and students like "snow days" at first but what we don't like is having to come on a Saturday or losing some of our break to make these days up. I'm wondering in this day and age why we even bother to reschedule classes that are canceled. With the advent of the internet and web 2.0 tools, is there even a reason to reschedule a day that has been missed because of weather? Couldn't we and shouldn't we be able to place assignments on classroom websites and let students work on these assignments at times that fit their schedules? We could post videos to youtube, have discussions on edmodo, and twitter and text our students all from the comforts of our homes and the students could respond in kind from their homes. Many schools hav

the new year is here and with it, some brief thoughts on education. #1. we really need to rethink schools. from the ground up. the physical design, what the day looks like, what the teachers are doing and what the students are doing. the more i think about it the more i believe that what is really going to make a difference in education are the schools that innovate with regards to all of the above. it's not evolution we need, it's a complete revolution. #2. for the above to happen, public education needs more $ and a commitment from the local community to make the change happen. if we keep trying to do education on the cheap then we are going to have schools where students are barely prepared. yes, i can teach my students about our national government but taking them to washington, dc and letting them watch it happen and being able to talk to the people who are making it happen is a totally different animal than hearing me talk about it. trips cost money, speakers cost