Month: June 2008

News & Events

1.  Start planning for October’s Month of the Young Adolescent!
2.  Innovative Practices Across the Curriculum, June 24 in Minnesota. 
3.  Institute for Middle Level Leadership.  July 13-16 & 20-23
4.  Best Practices for Student Success.  July 28 & August 6 
5.  NMSA Annual Conference, October 30 – November 1 
6.  Summer Teacher-to-Teacher professional development program registration is open. (free)

MiddleTalk question:  Where can I find some resources on teambuilding to incorporate into Advisory on a teacher’s paycheck? 

There are a number of stock resources that can be used for advisory.  Some of the best are strategies that you can apply to content. 

• www.kaganonline.com – Teamwork Tools by Wendy C. Horikoshi & Yael Schy, Silly Sports & Goofy Games by Spencer Kagan, Community Building
  In the Classroom Vanston Shaw, Discussion Chips for post activity, Classbuilding, Miguel, Laurie, and Spencer Kagan, and Teambuilding by Miguel, Laurie, and Spencer Kagan. 
  
• NMSA’s Treasure Chest, Goal Setting, and the Student Goal Setting workbooks.
  
• Youth Leadership (www.youthleadership.com) Designing Student Leadership Programs: Transforming the Leadership Potential of Youth
  • Links to organizations with resources. 
    
  • Journals of resources. 
    
  • Resource books.
    
• Project Adventure has lots of materials for teambuilding activities.  Look at their materials and their books.  Also look at your local resources and see what matches up.  Some times you can get the materials they use or make it yourself for cheaper and just get the books for the activities. 
  
• Laurie S. Frank’s book Adventure Education for the Classroom Community
  
• Previous Middle School Matters Podcast (#20) and blog post. 
  

Video Taping of Teacher called to question:
District Superintendent Carol Whitehead revealed Friday in a two-page letter to district employees that the district used a video camera to record Powers’ classroom between May 10 and June 11 last year. A district lawyer just last month denied a surveillance camera was used.
It was done to determine who was entering and leaving the classroom on weekends, she said, adding that it is the 18,500-student district’s “paramount duty to protect students,” Whitehead said.
Powers was placed on leave in June and fired in November for helping students publish an underground newspaper despite a warning not to do so. She was reinstated in April to a teaching post at Henry M. Jackson High School after reaching a settlement with the district.
http://heraldnet.com/article/20080528/NEWS01/396823946

Internet2
With an average speed of 100 gigabits per second, Internet2 supports even the most bandwidth-heavy research projects and group collaborations, such as high-definition video conferencing, telemedicine, and tele-immersion, or shared virtual reality.
Participation in the Internet2 network was expanded to include K-12 schools a decade ago. As of last year, nearly 4,300 K-12 school districts were connected to the network, and this number has been climbing slowly but steadily each year, said Greg Wood, director of communications for the Internet2 initiative.
http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/top-news/?i=53893;_hbguid=f6e3cf57-d645-46ee-8e62-f0c89d8551a2

Arizona Presses e-Learning
Backers of “e-learning” in Arizona are trying to maintain their state government’s momentum in helping provide digital curricula to schools across the state, even as the state’s economic headwinds stiffen.
Although advocates of e-learning in Arizona—including state officials and groups representing school boards, technology, and e-learning businesses—say the state needs to make heavy investments in helping its rural schools have robust access to the Internet, they have instead focused on crafting policies and on limited experiments that will keep the initiative advancing during the expected lean years ahead.

One, an amendment tacked on to a bill on student bullying would would have given school districts greater flexibility in issuing bonds for the purchase of instructional technology, rather than funding it only through state allocations for curriculum materials, including printed textbooks, as is now done.

The amendment also would have required school districts to forego textbooks if they invest state money in digital curricula and laptops for every student, unless the digital curricula failed to meet state standards. But the Senate narrowly rejected that amendment last week.

http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2008/06/11/41digital.html


Hurdles Remain for ELL students
Ong Vue’s very first day of school came when she was 15 and was enrolled in 9th grade at Luther Burbank High School after arriving here as a refugee from Thailand.

The Hmong teenager says her family couldn’t afford to send her to school in Thailand. When she started at Luther Burbank, she spoke Thai and Hmong, but no English.

Four years later, Ms. Vue is a senior at the 1,970-student school and has passed the math section of California’s high school exit exam. She plans to attend community college in the fall, and hopes to become an elementary school teacher.

Despite her clear academic progress, Ms. Vue’s showing on standardized tests has been a handicap in her school’s quest to meet the yardstick for adequate yearly progress, or AYP, under the federal No Child Left Behind Act.

http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2008/06/04/39sacramento_ep.h27.html