It's College Tour Season Part 2

So, our second college tour happened to be the Historically Black College, Bowie State. Before we toured their campus, we went to the National Mall. Now, we didn't have a lot of time to go each of the museums and tour all of the monuments so I created a scavenger hunt for my students, so they could take in as much as possible.

Unfortunately it rained, so it dampened my students' spirits a bit, but we still had tons of fun. One of the rules of the scavenger hunt was to post their pictures on Instagram they could not however, post their answers on there because all the other teams would see it.  (yes, we use this a lot because the kids use it a lot why not incorporate it into my lesson?)

the hunt begins

one of the clues

of course I had to make the Capitol one of the clues

After our scavenger hunt, we trekked on to our tour of Bowie State. It's a little off the beaten path, so we couldn't tour the neighborhood like we did at Georgetown. Our tour guide were very helpful here. Usually, tour guides have trouble with middle school students...they aska ton of questions and a little on the immature side. They usually prefer high school students, but our tour guide joked around with our students and made them feel right at home. They were also very thorough and we were able to go inside some of the buildings. My students really appreciated the welcome mate being rolled out for them.  

and the tour begins

Our tour guide, joking around with the students and showing them the Performing Arts building.

My students loved this tour!

School Closings a Civil Rights Issue

I'm glad somebody said it....

It's Not Always the Right Choice to Close a Failing School

Haiku for the Blue Planet Student Mosaic Part 1

So, in the previous blog post I shared a mosaic that my students put together for Earth 2010. This year, we were already working on haikus which are traditionally written about nature to for our unit of poetry. (Happy Poetry Month!) I had my students decide what they wanted the picture to be, draw it, cut it up and each student wrote his/her haiku on a piece of the planet.

We started first by drafting our poems:

Then we checked over them to make sure they followed the correct format:

Then we wrote our haikus on our little pieces of the planet:

Next we put them all together to create our mosaic:

I added a little extra credit assignment that my students were really excited about. We went outside and took pictures of nature with our camera phones and then I had the students post their pictures to Instagram and put their haiku as the caption. We used a hashtag them so I could find them and give them credit. They liked that they could share their assignment on a social media site they often use:

Ode to Earth Student Mosaic Part 1

Back in 2010, I had my students create a mosaic to honor Earth on Earth Day. Each picture has a poem, in the form of an ode, celebrating nature. We pieced them together to create this beautiful mosaic in the hall which we dubbed, "Ode to Earth". This year I plan to do the same thing with my Creative Writing class only this time we'll be focusing on haikus since we're deep into our poetry unit and are focusing on poetic form. (Happy Poetry Month! btw) That mosaic will probably be much more detailed. I will be posting the results. Stay tuned!

Land of the Free?

Student Punished for not Reciting the Pledge of Allegiance in Maryland

We Need to Talk About Injustice

Economic status determines a lot for our children especially with the public school to prison pipeline being a very prevalent problem here in America. On the video above, Bryan Stevenson has a frank discussion about injustice in America.

How does our justice system reflect the inequalities of the public education system?

How can a true investment in a child's education change the likelihood of them being found on the wrong side of justice?

Are Our Students Allowed to Flex Their Decision Making Muscles?

"Simply put, we have fallen in love with the illusory certainty of making a choice, and abandoned any shared commitment to investing in the long and careful deliberative process that is necessary to ensure that the decisions we do make are both well informed and thoughtfully constructed."

These sentiments came from: the Education Week article In Modern School Reform is it We the People or Me the Individual?

I agree whole-heartedly, I just haven't articulated it the way they have. As a middle school teacher, this is what you lose when you create "zero-tolerance" policies. This is what you lose when you evaluate instruction with selected response assessments. There's no wiggle room, no second chances, no mercy and no grace. We are teaching our children that making "good" decisions is a natural innate ability. We give little room for growth to reflect that one's ability to make the right decision comes more easily over time and maturity, or that decision making is more like a muscle and only gets better with exercising. When an adolescent makes a mistake now-a-days, they are severely punished ...imagine how this discourages their faith in their ability to make good choices throughout life? 

I know that is not the central thesis of this of this article, but I couldn't help but pull it out. It is definitely a problem in our schools. 

Time is a major factor. So much as to get done in a certain amount of time, and we simply ignore the differences in time it takes different individuals to process information. 

How can teachers and parents help students flex their decision making muscles?

How do you feel about "zero-tolerance"? 

In what ways can we teach children to enjoy the process instead of focusing solely on the product?

While School Doors Close, Prison Cells Open

Four major cities are closing several schools next year: Philadelphia (23), New York City (23), The District of Columbia (15) and Chicago (54). I've often wondered what the ramifications might be for so many school closings aside from larger class sizes and already overwhelmed resources such as wrap around services (social workers, resource teachers, etc) being abused, and I found an article that outlined many more problems for districts in the future. Here, Education Week argues why closing so many schools only temporarily saves district budgets.  

Closing Schools and the Consequences: Ed Weekly

I also watched, "The House I Live In: Takes a Hard Look at the War on Drugs" yesterday on PBS and found that so much money goes into the war on drugs. With the privatization of the prison system, prisons in this country are looked at as more of an asset while our schools are considered liabilities. Convicting felons is a business that turns a profit. Hence why while the U.S. contains only 5% of the global population we have more 25% of the world's prisoners.  More money is invested in convicting non-violent offenders than educating our children. The lack of investment in education causes the overpopulation of our prisons. When are our priorities going to change?

The House I Live In Preview

It is important to put a proper workforce engaged in keeping our streets safe, but do you think there is a disproportionate amount of money and human captial invested in the war on drugs versus what is spent on schools? Why or why not?

In what ways can law enforcement work with and within schools to decrease the number of convicted felons in the future?

According to the documentary, the drug problem in America is only a symptom of larger problems related to social structure, public health, and economic issues. In your opinion, what are these problems and how can community organizations (schools, law enforcement, religious organizations, social workers, etc) ban together to find a resolution? 

180 Days: American High School

PBS follows one struggling District of Columbia school's journey to redemption. This is probably one of the more realistic depictions of what really goes on in urban schools across the nation. Here, you get to hear from the CHILDREN, teachers, parents, and community leaders who all come together to support the school. There aren't any assessment companies, sponsors, or politicos recording this to insert propaganda or political agendas. They instead delve into the lives of the people interact with the children the most. I've seen this story play out in so many places. Parents, teachers, and communities do in fact care for their youth...I'm just glad someone caught this on camera for a more accurate picture. 

180 Days: American High School Part 1

and

180 Days: American High School Part 2

Kill Em' Kindness: How Teaching Empathy Curves the Bullying Epidemic

I've been watching quite a few videos on empathy. America seems to be dealing with a huge bullying problem. From our classrooms all the way to Wall Street, people are being pushed around. I've been "researching" if you will, ways to address this bully phenomenon, from attending the National Conference on School Safety and Discipline which might I add, had an abundance of policy makers in attendance and very few teachers...the people closest to the children. They were actually shocked that I (a teacher) had been invited..that's a problem, but I digress. Anyway, it seems that when we focus on attacking this issue, we are being more reactive than proactive. We teach students in school how to react to bullying: tell a teacher, do not fight or argue, tell a parent, etc...There are very few schools who approach this problem by addressing the lack of empathy in the first place. I mean, peer mediation helps with problem solving and addresses empathy to some extent, but only after someone has already been offended. Below is a video about how a school used a baby to "teach" 5 year olds empathy. 

http://video.pbs.org/

Ever notice how bigger kids interact with younger kids? I've seen my 4 year old niece protect, support, and even teach my 2 year old nephew. Her empathy barometer is on level 10 with him. Even I tend to be more empathetic when I'm dealing with my students or other children. Having to help someone who is more vulnerable or dependent on you increases your ability to empathize.  

Now the next video addresses extending this empathic spirit throughout your life. Understanding how empathy and sympathy differs. To truly empathize, you must feel the pain and the woes of the person you are helping NOT pity them. By pitying them, you have disassociated yourself from their experience. A lot of us do it, thinking, that could never happen to me. Here this video shows us how introspection can be significant to our personal growth, but outrospection is key to building our ability to empathize. It's not very hard. As humans, we're hardwired to want to "belong," already, but in these great civilizations, we've taught ourselves to separate and form "cliques." Don't get me wrong, these small communities do create quite tight unified bonds; however, it also creates outcasts and ostracizes. You can see it in religious affiliations, political parties, ethic groups, gender, and even age groups. Sure, people like you can understand you better, but we often cut off, those who are not "like" us. At the end of the day, we're all human. There has to be a balance.