lunchbyteblog

This morning I found this article in my reader: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/10/why-kids-should-grade-teachers/309088/3/?single_page=true I agree with the article.  I have publicly espoused this view for many years.  I said as much more than 20 years ago, almost 25 now, when I interviewed for the NC Teaching Fellows Scholarship as a young and naive high school senior.  If you want to know what's happening in a classroom, ask the students.  They know. Students are captive audiences day in and day out.  They know the inner workings of a school or a classroom intimately.  We should ask for, and value, their feedback. We haven't quite hit on a good way to evaluate teachers.  States want to use test scores to say how effective teachers are.  This is a cheap way to evaluate teachers which is why state legislatures often like this method.  However, a test score will never show how a teacher changes a student's life.  A...

I had this brief moment of reflection just a bit ago.  I was thinking about the things that I had asked my students to do today and I realized that most of the things they were doing couldn't have been done in school even just a few years ago.  Things are changing quickly and I hope I am able to stay on top of the wave of educational technological changes. As I write this, it's 10:20 in the morning and I'm in the middle of my freshman level World History class.  There are students who are finishing yesterday's assignment: a video from PBS where Bill Moyers interviews Salman Rushdie.  These students are thinking about radical religious views and how fringe elements in religions change the public perception of those religions.  This follows up a #PBL project that we just finished where I asked students how religion causes people to hate. Other students have finished the video and are working through 2 assignments on the Sas Curriculum Pathways site.  They a...

     Today, my Honors US History students finished their 2nd true #PBL project.  Their task was to design a museum exhibit around the idea of the "Great American Road Trip."  In other words, they were to look at times that Americans had taken to the road.  I gave them 15 topics to choose from and they spent about a week researching these topics, taking notes, writing quiz questions, and putting together museum exhibits about the topics of their choosing.  They set up their exhibits today and I had people from the community, district office, parents, and other students come by and look at the exhibits and rate them with a rubric.  Tomorrow the students will take student generated quizzes on the information that they deemed the most important about their projects.      My takeaways from my 2nd #PBL project: Involvement of "outsiders" is a must.  Students have to know that it isn't just me looking at their projects.  Thi...

     I would say to teachers, don’t be afraid.  Don’t be afraid to think differently, don’t be afraid to try new things, don’t be afraid to fail; miserably.  Pick yourself up and go at it again.  It won’t always work the way we believe it will when we are planning it out.  Our students have to know that as well.  We learn from our mistakes.     I wonder if we interviewed the teachers that taught us, would they say that they were worried about the future?  Would they say that things were changing fast?  That they were worried about the ability of schools to keep up with a changing society?  Would they say that they were worried about us taking care of them in their old age?     And yet, here we are.  In spite of ourselves.  Giving it a go.  We have become productive citizens.  I believe that our students, today’s students will too.  We have to believe in them. ...

I've been doing some writing as of late, so I figure I might as well post some of my musings here.  Feel free to agree or disagree.  Comments are always welcome. I tend to think of teachers in the same way that I think of doctors.  Doctors treat patients who may or may not follow the advice of the doctors.  Teachers are like that, we have very little control over our student’s lives while they are away from us.       Most people remember their teachers, both the good and the bad.  We all had good teachers that molded us as human beings and made us want to be better.  We all also had “bad” teachers.  The difference is that we can go to other doctors for second opinions if we do not believe our doctors.  Or we can switch doctors entirely.  Students often do not get a choice as to what teacher they get.  That’s why it’s imperative to have good teachers.  Most people respect teachers, but also recall the ba...

So, is it wrong that it's summertime and I don't want to post anything about school?  To me, summer is a time to get away from all things school.  It is a time to recharge our batteries, experience life on our own terms.  It is a time to quit thinking about school and start thinking about our friends, and our families.  It's a time to explore, to be the people we dream ourselves to be. I decided all of this while I was sitting here at my desk in the basement of the house.  The last 3 days have been record setting days of the heat variety.  I have done my best to avoid the hot parts of the day and have embraced water in whatever version it happens to present itself.  Last night we even had some rain and I have to tell you that I danced in it for just a bit.  All the gardens in our neck of the woods needed some rain.  My spirit needed some rain.  Hopefully there will be more rain this afternoon. But thinking of the rain and the local gar...

Today, we had day 1 of our PBL training.  It was the kind of staff development that makes you think. And that's a good thing.  I won't get into much of it here today because I'm waiting to see what the next two days will bring before I talk too much about it.  I also won't get into much because my colleague @sraspanglish has beaten me to the proverbial punch with her great post on day 1 of our Buck Institute ( @biepbl) training.  You can read her post here:  http://sraspanglish.blogspot.com/2012/06/buck-institute-day-1-deliverable.html She did a great job showing the cool kinds of #pbl training that we are receiving and the thinking processes involved. I won't post my project here because, to be honest with you, it pales in comparison to the exciting project she has described. Also, because I can't seem to wrap my head around what I want the students to do. I'm going to let this one stew for another night while I collect my thoughts.  But a qu...

Now that summer is here, I've been thinking about this blog more and more. I've been unhappy with it and its scope for quite sometime. So, I've decided to do something about it. The tweaks are in the works. The blog will still be mostly about education, technology, and the happenings around our school. But, I will also post about other things from time to time. All work and no play makes me a dull boy. And might also make for a dull blog. So, I'm going to try and post more often and it might not always be about education or technology. I hope though, that it does make sense and causes people to think. Check back with us when you have the time.

My twitter stream has been filled most of the morning with the hashtag #beyondthetextbook and it has been an interesting conversation. I thought while I was thinking about it I would write a couple of short notes about the conversation. #1. I am all for losing the traditional textbook. As it stands now, most of my classes don't use the textbook very often. I don't think that US History has used their text at all this year. World History has done some work out of their book here and there. AP US has nightly reading assignments from their book but I could just as easily give them readings from somewhere else. But there are problems. Internet access is absolutely critical to losing the text. In the classes that I teach that use the computer lab, I almost never refer to the book. But in the classes without access, the students use their book more. It would either be a text of some kind or internet access. If I ran off all the things that I wanted my students to read then...

As you may or may not know by now, our district has an ipad pilot program going on and my classroom (as well as several others) is a part of this program. The district began this pilot by asking teachers to apply for a classroom set of ipads. Several teachers at our school decided to apply together and we were chosen as one of three classrooms to receive a set of ipads. Now, after a few months of using the ipads, I feel like I might have a bit of insight into the nuts and bolts of ipads in the classroom. So here are a quick few thoughts on the good, the bad, and the ugly of using ipads in a high school social studies classroom. We'll go in reverse order to end on a high note. The Ugly: Ever had one of those days where nothing goes right? If you are planning on using ipads in the classroom then prepare for several of those days early on. There will just be times where the technology doesn't work the way that you think it is going to work. We had days where only half of the...

One of my colleagues asked me about this blog a day or so ago. He wanted to know if I had moved it to another place. My response was "no, I've just been busy and haven't thought about it very much." Time flies these days. It's hard for me to fathom that three months have passed since I last updated this blog. But I promise, posts are on the way. I've much to talk about but first I have to finish reading senior papers. That should be done soon and then I'll be back. I promise. Until then, keep on rocking in the free world...