This Blog unfortunately is being rewritten on a Google Doc in hopes that I can copy and paste it into my weebly blog page. I will not be able to trust weebly again. I wrote my blog tonight and did a damn good job - outlining all the videos and how it tied into my teaching. It was only one and half hours of typing but still. When I went to click SAVE, it erased the whole paper. GONE.
So, I will try to remember what I wrote and it may not be half the work I had produced previously. Sour grapes, sorry. Seely Brown main idea: 21st century challenge is preparing our students for this world of constant change. We need to rethink HOW we learn, WHAT we need to learn, and how MEDIA has changed the game. My favorite part is when he said, “There is no better way to learn than having to explain it to someone.” Howard Gardner main idea: outlines specific cognitive abilities that will be sought by leaders. Disciplinary Mind, Synthesizing Mind, Creating Mind, Respectful Mind, and Ethical Mind. Dan Pink main idea: Motivating students is not a way of higher rewards or larger incentives, in fact that can lead to poorer performance. Motivating students is intrinsic and comes from within. Students must do what excites them and what makes them feel like they are making a difference. Sir Robinson was OFFLINE all Sunday evening so I could not watch him. I loved the man I consider a genius - Louis Mobley. He taught his employees to think creatively and not just “read financials”. His school was built on six insights: traditional teaching methods are useless, “unlearning”, we must become creative, you can’t learn it, hang out with creative people (my favorite), creativity is connected to self-knowledge, and he gave his students permission to be wrong! I have tied many of these men’s methodologies into my teaching - maybe just not near as well as they have done. As I try to incorporate the 4 C’s, just as all these men have, I am learning that there is so much more for me to grasp. I incorporate critical thinking in my lessons as much as I can but sometimes, I just have to get a kiddo to understand that when C and H are together they make only one sound. What I can honestly say I understand and have demonstrated to my students over the years is that it is OK to be wrong. I ENCOURAGE it. This is how we learn. Mistakes get a big WOOP from me! Arms waving and everything. Mistakes are actually opportunities.
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I incorrectly assumed that there would not be a huge host of seminal authors in regards to my Driving Question. There are thousands of articles and even more "pieces" to be found on the internet. One could look in the Napa Marketplace Magazine for goodness sakes, and find things written that pertains to my DQ. My unsurety here as I write this is, "Are these truly seminal authors?" My DQ for those of you who can not and would not want to keep up with the many times I have changed it, is this: How can we support learning and well-being during Covid for our students with mild/moderate disabilities?
A few of the chosen ones: 1. Brooks SK, Webster RK, Smith LE, et al. The psychological impact of quarantine and how to reduce it: rapid review of the evidence. Lancet 2020;395:912-920. BIG IDEA: Understanding the psychological impact of quarantine. Further, " ...officials should quarantine individuals for no longer than required, provide clear rationale for quarantine and information about protocols, and ensure sufficient supplies are provided." MY THOUGHT: Of Course! 2. Betty Pfefferbaum, M.D., J.D., and Carol S. North, M.D., M.P.E. Mental Health and the Covid-19 Pandemic. New England Journal of Medicine. BIG IDEA: the major stressors that undoubtedly will contribute to widespread emotional distress and increased risk for psychiatric illness associated with Covid-19. Further, ...conflicting messages from authorities are a big factor. MY THOUGHT: YES! I agree! 3. Huang, R.H., Liu, D.J., Tlili, A., Yang, J.F., Wang, H.H., et al. (2020). Handbook on Facilitating Flexible Learning During Educational Disruption: The Chinese Experience in Maintaining Undisrupted Learning in COVID-19 Outbreak. Beijing: Smart Learning Institute of Beijing Normal University. BIG IDEA: Online learning strategies. Further, this handbook is from China and perhaps it is not scholarly enough but it is extremely enlightening. MY THOUGHT: Always so much to learn from other countries. 4. Garbe, A., Ogurlu, U., Logan, N., & Cook, P. (2020). Parents’ Experiences with Remote Education during COVID-19 School Closures. American Journal of Qualitative Research, 4(3), 45-65. BIG IDEA: This study aimed to investigate parents’ experiences and struggles during school closure using an online survey. Further, and surprisingly, many parents were satisfied! MY THOUGHT: There is a lot to learn from this. “What the best and wisest parent wants for his own child, that must we want for all children in the community. Any other ideal for our schools is narrow and unlovely; acted upon, it destroys our democracy” - John Dewey Chapter 9 Linda Darling Hammond - so many thought provoking ideas and ones that make so much sense...but how does this even happen?
High and equitably achieving nations would benefit from and require the following elements: Meaningful learning goals Intelligent, reciprocal accountability systems equitable and adequate resources strong professional standards and supports schools organized for students and teacher learning First, I would like to address the quote (and my silly picture) from Dewey. It never ends - as a parent, I am usually on top of my kids' learning, their assignments, their grades, their feelings with regards to fairness and equity, and their difficulties (if any) with learning. I am the staunch and resolute educational advocate and it is sometimes a joy for my kids and OK - more often than not, it is a pain in the neck for them. It is not always the delight of the student to have their mom or dad, who happens to be an educator, watching their many moves. I am trying to tone it down a bit, thank you for reminding me. There is a rich contrast between Bush Senior's six national goals and what Darling-Hammond is arguing for. Bush' ideas look absolutely fantastic on paper! And he had a lot of people of board - with the exception of educators! Is it really the teacher's fault if test scores are consistently in the tank in certain geographical areas? Wouldn't one look at equity in all circumstances, which might lend light to this issue? To "equalize access to education al opportunity" would be an educators dream come true but maybe even more important to the parent, whose child is underserved. So, in my opinion, when studying these five principals, I feel #3, is far and away the most important and the ideal that has the most consequences. As a special educator, I am always trying to understand the best way to "level the playing field" for my students. They need adequate opportunities to learn what everyone else is learning. I don't intend to give them the advantage over others, just help them ingest academic material in a way that works for their learning style. In tandem with this equity is the need for rigorous and sensible preparedness for the educators. The training should never cease. Our students' futures are depending on this. UNFORTUNATELY, I have changed my driving question. It is a bummer because I have to rewrite my ARP, AND try to make it better than before! I kind of feel like I wasted many weeks of summer classes where I worked many hours to get where I "got". The good news, is that I now have a driving question that is actually way more interesting to me, and is more narrow in scope, resulting in a better, more measurable research piece. Which brings me to my research I am now (sort of) conducting. Mostly I am looking up journal articles on the net but will dive into the Touro library of course. One thing I have learned - thank you Dr. Redmond, is that for every journal article and of course book, there are like 30 great...GREAT references at the end. Those references are gold. I am looking to find "seminal" authors, ones that come up again and again. So far, without doing library searches, I am learning a great deal from the YouthTruth Survey, where 20,000 students weighed in on well-being and learning during Covid. This is something I am very excited to learn more about. It is what we are ALL interested in right now. Are our kids learning? Are they well...on the inside, forget about the face they are putting on. The more I look into student well-being, the more I am interested in my research. Today I created my first survey for my students. I tested it on my own kids and they gave good feedback. "Mom, you're on to something, but I didn't understand the last question." Much more to do!
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Kathy FlynnAlways hoping, learning, and wondering...how am I making a difference in my student's lives? Archives
April 2021
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