Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Monday, December 14, 2009
Classroom Management-
"It is probably one of the things that's least understandable and most complex about teaching," said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers. "This is the hardest skill to master."
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-classroom-control14-2009dec14,0,5354521.story
As a 34 year veteran of a middle school classroom on Long Island, classroom management is the key to success in the classroom. You cannot succeed academically if there is chaos and disruption day to day in your classroom.
A lot of classroom management comes from how students perceive their teacher as the leader, the adult in charge in the room. What tips can we offer teachers in managing their classrooms folks?
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-classroom-control14-2009dec14,0,5354521.story
As a 34 year veteran of a middle school classroom on Long Island, classroom management is the key to success in the classroom. You cannot succeed academically if there is chaos and disruption day to day in your classroom.
A lot of classroom management comes from how students perceive their teacher as the leader, the adult in charge in the room. What tips can we offer teachers in managing their classrooms folks?
2010 -What now?
Seth Godin , the inimitable writer, blogger and innovative thinker has posed a question to ponder as we end this dizzying year 2009. What now? Where do we, as a people, go next in this new year, 2010 of political , social and technological change in our country and the world? How will we change the situation we are experiencing on so many fronts?
Teachers, retirees,unretirees-how can we all positively affect our worlds? Inquiring minds want to know...
What now?
Teachers, retirees,unretirees-how can we all positively affect our worlds? Inquiring minds want to know...
What now?
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Monday, October 19, 2009
What are unretirees doing?
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Are you retiring this year and thinking ahead to how you will use your time? Are you planning endless days of lounging on the beach or visiting exotic locales?Many of my fellow NYSUT unretirees like Betty Ann Cassero, Bill Caffrey,Virginia Ettrick, Regina Broten, Linda Deasy and Sue Amato jumped out of the frying pan, so to speak and into the fire.
They are working with collegiate students at the community college and state university level , undergraduate future teachers, and retired members of their union local.
Keeping busy and engaged after working with students in k-12 over the course of a career is important to veteran teachers. Unretirement means many things. It can mean a relaxed lifestyle with "working" taking on a different meaning.
Meeting students in a collegiate setting once or twice a week is different than an everyday commitment. Helping student teachers hone their skills in the face to face classroom by observing them with real students is different than working with individual student teachers daily.
Helping fellow colleagues organize a retiree chapter of their local, Amityville Teachers Association, keeps retirees informed of the latest benefit and legislative information. It also helps unretirees contribute to the larger conversation involving retired members and their role in the union activities of New York State United Teachers and the American Federation of Teachers.
Still other colleagues are including into their daily schedules volunteer fundraising activities with the Susan G. Komen -Race for the Cure or American Heart Association.
You’ve made the decision that this is your last year in the classroom. You now have endless possibilities before you.
What are your plans? What will you be doing? Will you become a snowbird with your better half? Half the year at home or in some sunny clime? Will you be the caregiver for your grandkids when they get home from school in the afternoons? Have you planned to travel whenever and wherever the mood strikes you? What will you do? Inquiring minds want to know!!
Thursday, October 8, 2009
You Can Do This!
Veteran teachers ! Are you on the integrating technology into my classroom bandwagon yet?
Veteran Tier 1 teachers in New York State are a dying breed! I don't mean that literally, though some would disagree. I mean there are fewer NYSUT Tier 1 veteran teachers in active classrooms within the state.If you began teaching before 1973 and did not leave the workforce for an extended period, you are a member of this retirement tier.
Veterans can tell you of all the acronyms and testing programs of earlier years, the PEP, PET, Compact for Learning,Madeline Hunter, Middle states accreditation, the list goes on and on.
The new, new thing however is integrating technology into everyday classroom practice. Smartboards, e-mail notifications, online learning, pd use, laptops for students, Sharepoint,Activboard and more, teachers are being asked to use technology on a regular basis. Veteran teachers have sometimes been described as less than enthusiastic with using the new technology tools.
How about blogging or contributing to your union newsletter? Are veteran teachers using this technology or social media strategy to voice their opinion?
This school year, administrators and teachers are trying to craft strategies to minimize loss of instructional time should students become ill with the H1N1 virus. What is your school district doing to prepare for an outbreak?Will school districts look to e-learning as a viable means to deliver instruction? If so, will Moodle be their LMS? Will Moodlerooms be their training, hosting and support partner? This is a shameless promotional plug btw!!
How are our veteran teachers holding up on the technology front? Are they members of The Future of Education website contributing to the ongoing discussions, webinars and online meetings with educators and authors?
How about maintaining membership in ISTE 2010, -International Society for Technology in Education Conference, formerly known as NECC, the National Education Computing Conference.
This annual conference welcomes educators from around the globe as they share proven ways technology use can assist in delivering instruction in the classroom. Have you investigated your local public television resources as an entity offering information about instructional technology?
As the instructional leader in the front of the room, how are you coping with the demands of integrating technology into your classroom? Are you improving your computer skills? Are you helping your students use technology to extend the learning in your class?
You can do this! Your voice is sought after as the school doors opened this year. Newly hired teachers and principals asked for your assistance on a whole host of procedures and practices that were used in past years to smooth the first days of a new school year. Using technology regularly is now second nature to many of your students. They've forgotten more about technology than you'll ever know! They are digital natives. They don't know of a time in their lives when they didn't use the internet or a computer.
Your level of knowledge as the instructional leader is critical to your success in adding technology to your teacher toolbox.The Power of Educational Technology blog is an interesting commentary on one veteran teacher's journey into using technology in her classroom. There are also state accrediting and research organizations examining the standards teachers need to meet to successfully integrate technology regularly in their everyday classroom practice.
Revitalizing the Veteran Teacher slide show. What do you think?
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Never Retire
The title of this blog entry, "Never Retire", is in tribute to the late NY Times columnist, William Safire. In his last Op-Ed column for the NY Times in 2005, Safire extolled the reasons why citizens of a certain adult age should never retire. At that time, Safire, then 75 was writing his last column for the paper and going on to another chapter of his still busy life.
He wrote,"never retire, but plan to change your career to keep your synapses snapping - and you can see the path I'm now taking. Readers, too, may want to think about a longevity strategy."
I'd like to extend that exhortation to my professional colleagues in NYSUT, UFT, AFT, NEA and public educators everywhere who have retired from active service in the classrooms of America. As lifelong master learners, teachers who have served in the nation's schools have a lot to offer learners in this next phase of their lives.
As all of my veteran teacher colleagues know, new technologies and strategies are at the forefront of education now. There are NCLB concerns and professional development activities schools must meet for students and faculty.There are new health concerns facing schools and administrators are trying to ramp up new techniques to head off large school wide absences. How will schools meet these challenges?
One way to meet this challenge is to develop a cadre of teachers to deliver instruction in an online environment. These online instructors could provide additional resources for schools in meeting:
- NCLB and Testing requirements for k-12
- Meeting instructional needs in event of Swine Flu outbreaks
- Meeting Professional development obligations for faculty (NY state)
- Preparing students for Regents preparation or credit recovery
- Shortage of experienced math, science and language instructors
"Retired" teachers have time. They have the ability to devote significant time in developing courses for learners. Many of my "retired" colleagues continue to teach courses in local colleges, teacher centers, other education providers and for their union colleagues.
Last year some of us took a hit in our 401B accounts or were newly inducted members of the sandwich generation. These sandwich members were caught between paying college tuition, supporting new graduates while they look for employment in this economy and managing their own elderly parents who may have meager means to pay for their own care. Some are caregivers to grandchildren. Some newly retired lost their spouses through death or divorce and the economics of their life has changed. Money in is fixed. Money out continues to rise.
So for my colleagues in" retirement", here's an option for additional compensation : learn how to design and facilitate online instruction, sharing your wealth of expertise from the confines of your boudoir, your den or poolside at the club.
Two myths I'm going to dispel over the next weeks are that veteran teachers are technophobes with nothing to offer the 21st century classroom. The second is that online learning is inferior to f2f instruction. I beg to differ.
In 2005 I retired from the Amityville School District in New York and my local union affiliate, the Amityville Teachers Association . In 2005 I "unretired" and co-founded an online learning company, Moodlerooms.
Please join me and add your voice to this blog. Let's have a conversation !
Monday, August 3, 2009
ID- Instructional Design-Do you have one and if so, what is it?
It's that time again! School is about to be in session and teachers are organizing their materials, gathering their thoughts, preparing for the upcoming in-service meetings, thinking about lesson plans and trying to squeeze in their last bits of summer fun.
Whew! Just the thought of juggling all of those proverbial "balls" is giving me a headache! As a 34 year veteran of the Long Island, NY middle school classroom, I know just what teachers are feeling right about now all over the country and I don't envy them!
I "retired" in 2005 and in my "unretirement", co-founded an e-learning business called Moodlerooms. We offer training, hosting, support and customization on the open source Moodle platform (Learning Management System). If you want to instruct others in an online course in k-12, higher ed, corporate training, government,faith based or small business, Moodlerooms is the vehicle.
Instruction..., that's been my raison d'etre for so many years, I can't abandon it it now in my un-retirement. Veteran teachers, never die , they multiply! I just read a recent article in the eSchool News, "Let retiring Boomers transform schools", which made the case for not letting a significant knowledge base walk into the sunset with their considerable skills unavailable to new teachers and their former students.
So how do we tap into this gigantic pool? How can they help our newly hired teachers?How can we use this pool of talent to retain and sustain new teachers as they hone their skills in America's classrooms? This article, though focused on the STEM areas, does emphasize 21st century skills of collaboration in the classroom; students and teachers learning from each other.
This collaboration could begin with the most basic of tenets in the classroom; that of instructional design. ID or instructional design is normally not a familiar term in schools of education or in school settings. Teachers are more familiar with terms like:
In a f2f classroom or an online learning environment, the greatest objective or outcome of instructional design is to serve the learning needs and success of students through the effective presentation of content and the fostering of interaction among the course or classroom participants.
In an online environment instructional design is transparent. You can monitor and track competencies. You can "see" the interaction of participants. In a regular brick and mortar classroom, instructional design is not transparent or may not be there at all. The class participation or collaboration is not seen, outside of the view of the instructor.
Objectives, aims, curriculum mapping, standards,ayp, NCLB or other educational jargon rule the day in regular f2f classrooms. There may not be one design platform used to achieve specific learning outcomes in the f2f classroom in a specific school. Teachers are given guidelines, state standards and information to use to achieve their learning goals for the year. There may not be a trackable system in place in a brick and mortar school to monitor the achievement of these targeted goals for each teacher in that school.
Why am I writing about this now, at this juncture of my life? Good question and one that I'll continue ruminating about in this blog, the UnRetired Teacher.
Whew! Just the thought of juggling all of those proverbial "balls" is giving me a headache! As a 34 year veteran of the Long Island, NY middle school classroom, I know just what teachers are feeling right about now all over the country and I don't envy them!
I "retired" in 2005 and in my "unretirement", co-founded an e-learning business called Moodlerooms. We offer training, hosting, support and customization on the open source Moodle platform (Learning Management System). If you want to instruct others in an online course in k-12, higher ed, corporate training, government,faith based or small business, Moodlerooms is the vehicle.
Instruction..., that's been my raison d'etre for so many years, I can't abandon it it now in my un-retirement. Veteran teachers, never die , they multiply! I just read a recent article in the eSchool News, "Let retiring Boomers transform schools", which made the case for not letting a significant knowledge base walk into the sunset with their considerable skills unavailable to new teachers and their former students.
So how do we tap into this gigantic pool? How can they help our newly hired teachers?How can we use this pool of talent to retain and sustain new teachers as they hone their skills in America's classrooms? This article, though focused on the STEM areas, does emphasize 21st century skills of collaboration in the classroom; students and teachers learning from each other.
This collaboration could begin with the most basic of tenets in the classroom; that of instructional design. ID or instructional design is normally not a familiar term in schools of education or in school settings. Teachers are more familiar with terms like:
- lesson plans
- objectives
- aims
- curriculum mapping
- observations
- NCLB
- AYP
- Analyze
- Design
- Development
- Implementation
- Evaluation
In a f2f classroom or an online learning environment, the greatest objective or outcome of instructional design is to serve the learning needs and success of students through the effective presentation of content and the fostering of interaction among the course or classroom participants.
In an online environment instructional design is transparent. You can monitor and track competencies. You can "see" the interaction of participants. In a regular brick and mortar classroom, instructional design is not transparent or may not be there at all. The class participation or collaboration is not seen, outside of the view of the instructor.
Objectives, aims, curriculum mapping, standards,ayp, NCLB or other educational jargon rule the day in regular f2f classrooms. There may not be one design platform used to achieve specific learning outcomes in the f2f classroom in a specific school. Teachers are given guidelines, state standards and information to use to achieve their learning goals for the year. There may not be a trackable system in place in a brick and mortar school to monitor the achievement of these targeted goals for each teacher in that school.
Why am I writing about this now, at this juncture of my life? Good question and one that I'll continue ruminating about in this blog, the UnRetired Teacher.
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