Almost an administrator?

I am getting close to the end of another degree. I can see the "light at the end of the tunnel" - as it were. Now, the thing is...as I finish this degree and attempt to actually earn the type 75 certificate I'm finding that the hoops one needs to jump through just in order to find and register for the state test I need to take is the most bothersome and ridiculous part of this whole process.

Its too darn hot

The heat in the school this year has been almost unbearable. I can't believe that on September 24th it was over 90 degrees in the building. I come home and I'm so darn tired after being so uncomfortable and hot all day all the while attempting to keep uninterested and hot and uncomfortable students interested, I feel like I need a shower immediately.

Back in school

The year is off to a good start. My kids are pretty good. I'm glad to be teaching honors biology again. My chem classes should be pretty good too. The only thing I'm worried about there is the fact that our district has now made the decision to encourage (demand actually) more of our students to take rigorous classes like chemistry, and the result is that many students that are severely lacking in their math skills are now enrolled in my class. This has resulted in the first three weeks of class being devoted to teaching math skills and just standard algebraic manipulation of various formulas like D = M/V. In previous years, I've just been able to teach the application of those math skills rather than having to reinforce the math skills themselves.

This change has been made all in the guise that having more students exposed to math based curricula will cause them to perform better on the high stakes tests such as the prairie state achievement exam (PSAE) and the ACT which are the indicators for how well our district will do with the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) act.

Yes, ACT themselves have data that show students that have taken chemistry and physics perform better on the test. So there is a correlation. Sure. Kids that take chem and physics do better on the ACT. But is it the exposure to the curriculum? Or, is the fact that students that are just plain smarter, have a better aptitude, and/or have a better attitude about their academic responsibilities are, in general, the students that take physics? I think we can all agree that students such as that perform better on the ACT as a result of those qualities right? So we have two independent variables here. One is exposure to curricula, the other is the general aptitude of the student. The dependent variable is performance on ACT. Who can say which independent variable is the actual causation of dependent variable (increased performance on the ACT).

Well, we're gonna find out. Because there's a whole lot of kids with lacking math skills and lacking aptitude enrolled in my class. Let's see if we can meet Annul Yearly Progress (AYP) now.

The best thing in life

is to be a parent. I am so enamored with my children, and I just so love my summer time with them. This is the great thing about being a teacher. Being Dad can be tough, when both girls are whining and being uncooperative, but then there are moments when I wonder if life could be any better.

School is almost over

So here I sit waiting for my students to take their exams, and that's it until my summer. I wish my students studied more. I know my honors kids do for the most part, but the "regular" level students just don't seem to study much. Its really evident when I give end of semester exams. Students that study do better. Students that don't, don't do well. And I'm leaving them behind. Right.

Today I teach my kids about web 2.0

I will attempt to describe to my students the emergence of web 2.0- the web that we write as well as read. Hopefully, I can describe this to them in a way that is relevant, useful and pertinent to their lives in the here and now as well as future. Blogs, RSS feeds, flickr, citizen journalist, wikis are among the terminology to be described. Perhaps I can also explain the possible future of the evolving personal information construct.......

The human condition as it applies to teaching

The world (including the world of education) has moved on, and yet the inertia of the human condition (people are afraid of or unwilling to risk change) has prevented many teachers from moving with it.

I wonder how resistant teachers were to using chalkboards when someone first suggested hanging a piece of slate on the wall?

I wonder how well some teachers refrained from smacking kids when corporal punishment was determined to be amoral/unethical/illegal?

I wonder how resistant some teachers were to the application of revolutionary educational theory when Piaget did his work with human cognitive development and Skinner suggested the application of Pavlovian behaviorism (psychological posotive reinforcement) to learning?

I think almost every teacher in the nation would agree that the above "revolutions" are commonly practiced today.

I wonder how long resistance to the intergration of modern, appropriate, effective and useful technology (use of proper research strategies using the web, web 2.0 [the read/write web] wiki's RSS and RSS aggregators) into common pedagogy will last?