Getting Energized!

As a seventh and eighth grade teacher going for her masters in middle level education, I have been learning about, hearing about, and talking about integrated units for a long while. A few of my team teachers and I have even tried some interdisciplinary work from time to time, but never anything to the extent of the most recent unit I just finished with my students. Our "What's Your Source?" unit sprung from our students' interest in energy.

I teach language arts and social studies on a two teacher team. At the beginning of the year, the math and science teacher I teach with asked the students what their interests were in science. They came up with a pretty extensive list, and on that list was energy. Realizing that this is a topic that needs to be taught in seventh and eighth grade, as stated in our district's science curriculum, we decided to create an integrated unit with the focus of energy. As we got further into the planning of the unit, we realized that it would also make a really great service learning unit, so we added an energy fair where the students would be able to teach others about their energy source focus as the culminating project.

My team teacher and I changed our schedule around a bit so that we had around an hour or two every day for integrated block. During this time we led mini-lessons to teach the students some skills they would need to be successful in this research project and allowed the students time to work with group members on research and reporting. We also had language arts and math classes everyday, but whenever appropriate we would teach about topics that led right back into the energy unit. I taught about citing sources and creating bibliographies in LA, while my team teacher taught about creating graphs and charts in math.

The students used an online wiki journal to log their research with their group members. We also posted checklists for assignments and a calendar with project deadlines on the wiki. This was a great place for the students to share the information they found, as well as read what others had been learning about different energy sources. Much of the research was done online and through the school's library, but we also had many guest speakers that volunteered their time to talk with our students about their particular energy focuses. We were able to get professors from Colby and Maine Maritime Academy to speak to us about coal and tidal energy, we visited a local solar installer's house to take a look at his solar hot water collectors, we had someone come speak to us about the windmill that was just recently put up at the transfer station in our town, and many more volunteers as well. My team teacher and I were truly amazed at the number of people who were willing to volunteer their time to come teach our students about varying energy sources.

As the project was coming to a close, all the research was done, the students had reported on the history and the economics of their source, they had created a public service announcement and a 3D model of their source, and much more, they invited whomever they wanted to the energy fair where they displayed all of this work. Many of the students invited past science teachers, family members, and friends. A few groups of students invited the principals and even our district's superintendent. One student even invited WABI TV 5! We had a great turn out and the students were able to share their knowledge of the energy sources with the public. Even the news casters showed up. Click the link to check out the report...
Pittsfield Middle School Students Get Energized

The Future of Education

One idea that continues to make its way back into my mind is the direction of education in general in the United States and around the world. I feel that many of the middle level documents and publications we have studied this semester allow for, and even ask for, the innovative way of teaching that people are looking for these days.Three of the most important things I am taking away from this semester have to do with the future of education.

1) Keep in mind the media portrayal of the educational system in the US. I think it is important to be outspoken as to how things are actually working, and what isn't working in our system. I continue to wonder how many people making the rules are actually playing the game, or have played the game in the past, when it comes to educational policy

2) We have learned so much about technology, but I think a lot of the time we still have trouble using it to our advantage when it comes to education. Don't get me wrong, I think we (especially in the state of Maine) have come leaps and bounds in the last few years. But, I think we still have a long way to go. I have made it one of my priorities to help my students use this tool of communication to connect them to the world outside.

3) Talking about technology leads me right into getting creative when it comes to teaching. It's going to be hard, but breaking the bounds of the routine and getting creative with the ways in which we actually hold classes and teach will be very important for the future of education. Reading through the history of middle level education this semester really got me thinking about how long people have been trying to make important changes in our field. It is not easy to change anything in the world of education. We can't stay stagnant, however, and I will refuse to be a part of the pendulum swing. Even if change for the better doesn't come quickly, I think it is important to continue trying new things and to be accepting of change.

This semester really made me realize the struggle I have with public education. I have made it a personal goal to stay in public education, even though sometimes it can be very difficult as a teacher who sees the need for creativity, and innovation, and change. I think keeping these three ideas I have learned throughout this semester in mind will help in the long run.

Centering on Students

I sit here reading the article "Centering on Students in the Middle Grades Curriculum," by Gayle Andrews the morning after a staff meeting focused on data collection and formative common assessments. I can't help but feel a little conflicted about our focus on common assessments and data collection, especially after reading this article. The article focuses on some changes that Andrews has considered since she originally co-authored the book Turning Points 2000. The changes hinge on the fact that world around us has changed considerably as well. Education has not only begun to shift into a national issue, it has begun to shift into a global issue. With movement around the world, and communication becoming easier and more prevalent, students need to be educated in a more global context.

In the article Andrews mentions turning the backwards planning model that was explained in Turning Points 2000 on its head. She cites extensive research that has been done with student-centered planning and integrative curricula in her explanation of the benefits of this type of curriculum. The research points to an increase in student motivation because the problems they are exploring are real and relevant to their lives. It points to more positive teacher and student relationships with a decrease of behavior problems, as well as more of a feeling of professionalism in teachers. With the little I have done using these types of approaches, I have begun to see that these results do ring true. Students become more involved when they have a choice about what they are learning, and when these choices center on issues that concern them. They explore the concepts presented to them while practicing, and hopefully mastering, the skills that are being taught.

I fully understand and agree with most of what Andrews presented in this article. I worry about the fact that every time I go to a staff meeting (most Mondays) we add a new common assessment to our plate in order to collect data so that we know exactly where all students stand with every piece of our prescribed curriculum. I worry about testing so much that I won't have a chance to teach. And finally, I worry about who these test are really for and what they really tell us about each individual student. Andrews begins the article with the question, "In a world increasingly focused on accountability, extensive federal and state legislation, policies, and mandates seem to clutter the educational landscape and obscure and perhaps overshadow the students who should dominate it. A certain irony, then, lurks behind a critical question guiding this article: Can our curriculum be student centered and leave no child behind?" I believe it can. Actually, I am beginning to believe that the more student centered our curriculum gets, fewer and fewer students will be left behind. The task then becomes to convince the powers that be of this same belief.

Student Teacher

So last week my seventh and eighth graders and I added a new person to our team. Ms. Nelson, my new student teacher. What a crazy week it has been. Here's a little bit about what Ms. Nelson has been hit with since she came to middle school from her first student teaching placement in a second grade classroom. She started on a day when we had an assembly in the afternoon so the schedule was pretty messy. The assembly was put together by our Civil Rights Team and it was centered around the notion that words do hurt.

The second day my new student teacher saw the interruptions that a teacher must deal with at their best (or worst, as the case may be). She saw a bus evacuation drill that interrupted two separate class periods. She also got to see the student mock election, which was wonderful, but also interrupted a couple of the class periods we had. Finally we had a half day on Wednesday and it was devoted to community service projects we are doing in our advisory groups.

This was a very chaotic week in itself. To try to introduce my classes and what we are working on to this student teacher proved very difficult. I am glad that we are starting to get back to normal this week, that is, as normal as middle school can ever actually get.

Teaching Technology

If you've been watching or listening to the news lately, you already know that public schools are "failing our nation's students." A couple of weeks ago I heard a new way in which we are "failing" these students. Again, if you've been watching or listening, you probably also heard about the tragedy at Rutgers College a few weeks back where a student committed suicide due to a crime committed in a digital nature. This is not the first time a young adult has taken their life due to a digital issues. From what I heard on National Public Radio, schools across the nation are not doing a good enough job teaching young adults and adolescents to be good digital citizens.

I have a few things I'd like to mention about this. The first is that, in my opinion, being a good digital citizen is a lot like being a good citizen in general. It includes being conscientious about the feelings of others, being open to new ideas and people's differences, and thinking before you speak, act, or click post. Our school just recently had a speaker from The Civil Rights Team Project come work with our students to teach them more about how hurtful words can be. He also spent a staff meeting with us teachers to talk about cyberbullying. One thing that he said about cyberbullying that really resonated with me was "cyberbullying is like bullying on steriods." The severity of the bullying, and the speed with which it can move from person to person or group to group, really can make cyberbullying horrific.

As a teaching staff, we took a look at some of the reasons why cyberbullying can be so harsh. One reason is because there is a disconnect between humans. The computers can serve as a wall between people. Kids feel empowered to say things that they would never say to someone's face. Check out this video from The National Crime Prevention Council that give a good depiction of what cyberbullying would look like if it were to happen face-to-face.

Ad Council And National Crime Prevention Council Launch New Cyberbullying

This ad is meant to make you feel so uncomfortable that it might even make you chuckle a little bit. It is so ridiculous to think that someone would ever speak like this to someone else in front of a crowd, and that people would just sit back and listen to it. But, when you think about it, this is exactly like cyberbullying. People say things they wouldn't normally say and share things they wouldn't normally share in real life.

I do feel confident in saying that at my school we are continually trying to educate ourselves and our students in terms of bullying and cyberbullying so that our school can be a safe environment for everyone. We are also putting into place a new 10 week program, led by our librarian and our technology coordinator, that focuses on teaching students the importance of digital citizenship. This is why, when I hear things like, "schools are failing our students in terms of digital citizenship," my hackles raise. Maybe some schools are failing our students in terms of creating safe digital environment for students, but mine's not!

Corporate Reform Action Pack!

This was too good to not link to. Just add it to the list of hilarious sarcasm necessary to get a chuckle out of our present situation in public education.

Running into the Wall

I have run into the wall many, many, MANY times in my five years of teaching. While I'm trying to get some work done, or while students are researching information, we run head first right into it... the internet firewall. This actually just happened today. I have students researching the candidates and the referendum questions for the upcoming mid-term elections. They were looking around at different websites, and many of them found video and audio clips that they wanted to view or listen to. Most of these turned out to be blocked by our school's firewall. I understand the need to have some regulation on sites like YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook, but I wonder if completely blocking the students' access to them is the answer. Many of these sites can be used as learning tools, but when they are blocked from access the student certainly doesn't see them that way.

While we were researching as a class today my students were surprised that most of the candidates in this election shared links to their Facebook or Twitter accounts. They were shocked and thought that it wasn't very professional or "sophisticated", as one student told me, for these public officials to be a part of these types of social networking sites. They get told so often to beware of these sites, or that these sites are bad and they shouldn't be on them. The fact that they can't be on them at school because they are all blocked tells them that these sites are not an educational tool, when in reality, if used properly, they can be a wonderful educational tool. I think it's becoming more and more apparent that if we are to help teach them how to be good digital citizens, we need to allow them the tools to practice these skills.