One of the great currently in my life uses the phrase, "you get a lot more out of people by giving them honey instead of vinegar." I have just realized that this is my 8th blog, and I am not sure how much honey I have been putting on the educational system. I have been voicing opinions on subjects, but they have not had a lot of positive overtones. So, this week will be a step in a different direction.
Rural school in New Mexico goes from poor academic performance to great in 3 years. George Bickert the principal built his success off of building relationships with kids. Lovin' on them with hugs, high fives, and early morning basketball games. He believed in his staff also. The other thing he did was threw out boring assessment names like "curriculum based measures" and replaced them with Math Monster and Cougar Readers.
D.C. schools are also trying this. They understand that if you look at any company or situation you can choose to point out the bad or the good. They are choosing to campain and promote the good.
I am here looking for current, positive news and striking out. So anyone commenting on this blog, please insert some positive news on the education systems in place.
One positive thing that I have seen in schools is students ability to pick up sarcasm! Our students are amazing at picking up social sarcasm. Sarcasm in a fun, joking sense. Try it sometime. Many times I use sarcasm instead of getting mad and frustrated at a student. Instead of blowing up and telling a student to stop playing with his pile of pencil lead that he has been collecting all month, I will say, "Jim Bob, if I see those out on your desk again, I will sell them on EBAY and use the money to advertise and promote to your mother a campain to ground you for the rest of your life." The student smiles, gets the point, no one is frustrated and we move on. I have found that students rise to our expectation. If they are low they will meet it, if high, they will also.
Give me some posiitve highlights for the last 2 weeks.
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Here is a positive activity that happened with my students. I was absolutely surprised and amazed at the podcasts I had my students create. I tried one of the many new technology ideas I have received in graduate school in my after school program. I decided to have students research planets and create a podcast. With very little direction, they started. Using the Internet they found information on their planet of choice and wrote a one-minute presentation from the facts. They recorded their speeches using the computer program Garageband. They found images of their planets using Google Images. With a little help from me, we posted them to our wikipage. All students, grades first through fifth, have created a podcast. Naturally the older students have more information but they are all equally wonderful. The whole project was much easier then I anticipated.
ReplyDeleteI hate to say it but I gave myself 30 minutes to search for a positive article (other than yours)on education and came up empty. So, I'll also share from my last 2 weeks. We have lost a lot of teaching time to tests this quarter. I asked my 90 seventh graders if they would be willing to do extra homework this weekend in order to have time to complete our last project. I got a unanimous yes. Time will tell if they actually do it, but I felt heartened that they believed they would.
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