Always Be Prepared

So, our school is thinking about obtaining some new contact management software.  I am very involved in making sure that all of the teachers in our high school are comfortable with all our available technology, therefore I am training on that software today.  I am more than a little disappointed in the training.  They are using a beta version of the software to train, which is so frustrating. It has gone down at least four times, and we have been here for two hours.  There is also any number of links in the software that don't work.  I understand there is a need for beta software, however, new user training is not the time you use it.  You use your best, you are prepared.  This decision will cost the software company a lot of money, as our school decided to scrap it and use a different, stable solution. I'm guessing other schools that are here today have made that same decision.

While this is a real life example of the consequences of being unprepared, it happens all the time.  I see students do it, I see teachers do it, I see my children do it, and I'm ashamed to say that I am sometimes unprepared.  When I fail to be prepared, the consequences don't cost me thousands, but it does cost my students.  If I am unprepared, my students don't have the opportunity to learn what they need to learn.  If they don't have that opportunity, they may not pass that ever present high stakes test, but more importantly, they will not be as prepared for life.  As I teach digital media, what they learn in my class is directly applicable to real life, so if I decide to take the day off, they won't learn what they need to learn for life beyond high school. Don't worry though, they will learn something.  They will learn that it is OK to not be prepared.  They can take this lesson with them into life.  Short term, they can turn their work in late... Its OK, Haselby isn't prepared either.  Long term, they can use beta software to train their clients and lose thousands because it isn't ready to roll out.

Relevent Learning

I've been working like crazy on my code academy work.  I've finished the first two sections of HTML.  This hasn't been terribly difficult, partially because I've been exposed to HTML before, and am semi-comfortable with it.  Also, the weather has been poor, so while the kids play indoors, I've been playing.  Playing is the key word here.  I love to learn... its fun!  I love feeling like I've learned something new.  I try to learn something every day.  I am very lucky, as I have control over what I am learning.  For the most part, if I don't want to learn something, I just walk away.  I sometimes feel sorry for my students because they are constantly being told what they have to learn, how to learn it, and when to learn it.  As a former high school student, I remember being very frustrated by this.  I remember thinking, "I will never forget how this feels"  and being very angry. 
As a teacher, I try to remember that feeling every time I have to issue a mandate in my classroom.  If I am instituting a rule, I have a very good reason, and I explain it to my students.  If I ask them to learn something, (which as a teacher, I tend to do) I try to make it relevant to their lives.  I can't always do this, mostly because of high stakes testing, but even though I am required to touch on certain standards, I still always try to make things interesting.  I think most teachers try to do this.  Where they run into problems is they (and me) don't always know what is interesting to their students.  This isn't always the teachers' fault, by their very nature teenagers don't like adults to know what they are thinking and what their interests are, unless they trust them very much.  Another reason teachers have trouble is that they truly enjoy their subject and can't understand why everyone else doesn't feel the same way about it.  It's almost heartbreaking for them to discover that not everyone loves their subject. 
I think that if we as teachers work to learn who our students are, we will learn what their interests are.  Once that happens, it is easy to discover what projects will appeal to them.  Then we just have to mold those projects to cover our standards.  Piece of Cake right?

Kill 'em With Kindness

OK, it is the 5th of July, and I'm the only one awake.  We went to the lake yesterday and visited with family and friends all day.  It was a ton of fun for everyone.  I felt like a teacher instead of a mom at one point though.  Someone told my daughter (who is 9) that there were going to be a lot of times when she felt like she was the smartest person in the room, and that she should  be patient and try to teach all those dummies out there. (The dummies out there was paraphrased, but the meaning was clear).  For some reason, as both a parent and a teacher, I felt the need to correct this person.  You see, I don't believe I am the smartest person in the room ( I might be right now, as I'm alone with the dog) I believe that there are millions and millions of people who are just as smart as me.  They are probably smart in different ways, but they are every bit as smart as I am.  I had to explain to my very sweet and sensitive daughter that this person is rather awesome and incredibly intelligent, but clearly isn't very smart in communication skills...OK, I didn't say that,  but I wanted to.  The point is, as we sit here on a holiday celebrating the greatest melting pot ever, (that would be USA) I am going to preach kindness.  There are so many opinions in this country, about so many different things.  There are laws being written mandating tolerance allowing to do anything they want.  I supposed if that is the only way we can get others to be nice, that is what we have to do. However, I feel like if we use our free speech we can not only  be kind to people who are different from us, we should go out of our way to LEARN from them.  I live in an area that is fairly sparsely populated.  Therefore, if you want friends, you may not be able to walk to the culd-a-sac next door and find someone with the same socioeconomic status as you.  In fact, it is pretty likely that you will have friends who have not graduated from high school, and you will have friends who have a masters degree.  We all share a common history, our "neighborhood", which has been settled by our ancestors for 200 years, and we share a common future, our children.  I think it is time to expand this neighborhood and share a common future with our entire country.  I think we should be nice to, not only the people next to us, but to the people we don't even know.  When we go to the city, be nice to the strangers in the museum and the shopping mall.  Be nice to the guy parking your car, and be nice to the people you see in restaurants. This is not a difficult thing, if you see that, there is something to learn from each of these people.  Perhaps if we do this, we will see that we don't need to legislate everything, especially kindness.

Day 1

For me, this is a big day.  I have been thinking for a couple of years that I needed to start a blog.  It just seems like the thing to do, among other things.  I still don't have a true purpose for this blog, but it will center around teaching and computers, which are my professional interests.  I have a lot of thoughts and ideas, so this will be yet another dumping ground for me to sort those thoughts through.  Hopefully the writing process will help me with the sorting. 
I have also started using Code Academy today.  I want to learn to code.  I can read code and understand it reasonably well.  That is much better than most people that I deal with, however, it is not really enough for me.  I have some game ideas, I have some program ideas, and last of all, it will increase my credibility with my techie students.  I don't have a lot of them, but I really want to be able to influence the few I have, and I need to have credibility.  I'm starting with HTML, mostly because I already have a basic understanding, but I'd really like to learn Python or Ruby, or both...  I'm going to try to post my progress here, so I'll have some accountability.