The most amazing commercial...

A friend of mine sent this video to me in an attachment. I just had to post it and I'm sure we can figure out the literacy connections later...

Web 2.0 Video

To Facebook or NOT to Facebook...

It's a whopper of a question, not mention a major bone of contention. Like everyone else, more and more teachers are participating in social networking sites like Facebook for the same reasons everyone else is. Where things start to get a bit murky is when we start talking about teacher conduct on these sites. The infamous 'Blue Pages' in Professionally Speaking have been bulking up these days, with increasing reports of teacher misconduct using technology and web-based applications. Look, adults behaved badly long before they had access to technology, so let's no vilify Facebook or Twitter and MySpace. There is endless research that supports integrating these applications in instruction for educational purpose. There is a real value to them.

One of the items I'm currently working on is a review of our Board's technology policies, including appropriate use by staff and students. I've begun to draft a list of considerations for teachers:

Content on Profiles or Sites
-refrain from including any content that conflicts with the teachings of the Catholic Church
-avoid posting any content that calls your professionalism and integrity into question
-this includes offensive or obscene language used on your profile page or site and questionable photographs and video

Privacy Settings
-whenever possible, restrict access to personal websites, blogs and wikis
-if the application allows, limit who can find you in the site’s search engine
-“invite” those with whom you have familial or social relationships to join your sites

Accepting Students as “Friends” or “Followers”
-do not accept current students in the system as “Friends” or “Followers”; the relationship between teachers and their students should be strictly a formal and professional one for the protection of both the educator and the student
-do not initiate friendships with students
-accept students who have since graduated as “Friends” or “Followers”
-limit access to your personal information as much as possible
-do not allow students to view personal contact information, photographs, etc.
-keep all communication with former students strictly to the public communication spaces on your site; avoid personal messaging

We have a professional image to uphold, and like it or not, we are held to a much higher standard when it comes to our behaviour after the school day is over. The idea of a teacher as a role model isn't a cheesy, outdated cliche. If we want the respect that so many of us think we're entitled to then we have to conduct ourselves accordingly, even when we're online in our own free time. When I'm getting sick and tired of is the misinformation teachers continue to get from local units of our unions. Our provincial association fully supports the ethical and responsible use of this sort of technology in our schools, but locally, teachers are being told to shut down Facebook accounts and avoid any sort of online interaction. I think there is a severe lack of understanding and knowledge and that is the only way I can even begin to rationalize all of this unnecessary fear-mongering. Are there teachers behaving badly? Sure. They're emailing students. They have inaapropriate and immoral content on their social networking sites. Not every teacher is like that and as I mentioned, it's not so much the technology as it is the teacher who is using it. Trust me, bad behaviour always manifests itself eventually, and you don't alway need a computer for that to happen.

Teachers should out Social Networking Best Practices. I also came across a Teacher's Guide to Using Facebook on a fellow blogger's site. It's quite good and thorough. I strongly recommend teachers giving this a whirl.

A Vision of the 21st Century Learner

One of the predominant themes in my blog has been learning in the 21st century. Recently, I was involved in a meeting about how we can truly begin to prepare staff and students in our system for what this means in terms of access to technology, in particular, web-based technologies. When I watched this clip on YouTube, I thought that it speaks volumes about what is really at the heart of the conversation, and that's our kids. Have a look...

New Dove Commercial

I absolutely love the new Dove commercial. Lots of media literacy learning here...



Also a great clip - an oldie but a goodie!

I Really Needed This...

For the last couple of days I had been working with a colleague to prepare for a co-teaching opportunity with a Grade 11 World Religion class, working at the workplace level. The first day was spent exclusively with the teacher, ensuring her comfort with blogging that she so enthusiastically wanted to introduce her class to. I had worked with her on a previous occasion to build the blog and in between our meeting tims, she and her class spent some time getting comfortable interfacing with Blogger and the kids practiced responding to postings. (The teacher remarked how engaged the kids were when they were writing for the blog. She couldn't bribe them to do pencil-paper tasks, but the kids apparently took to the blog like ducks to water. Attendance is up and deadlines are being met on a regular basis. How about that!!!)I had also shown her how to upload documents using Slideshare. In the meantime, I had taken the CPT for the course and made it "bloggable". I chunked the summative and creative organizational checklists that the kids could use when they were blogging. I replicated the expectations of the original task so that the students could produce it virtually. I had also included a metacognitive piece, as well as a component that asked students to provided their peers with feedback. The teacher decided to augment the writing by including an artistic/creative component. Lots of good work happening!

When I met with her yesterday, we reviewed the basics so she could more confidently relay information to her students and we also planned for the today's class. The students had completed the first part of the CPT - the writing and the artistic piece. She wanted me to teach her and the kids how to take digital photos and edit them and upload them to the class blog. As well, we got the students started on the next part of the CPT, which was the class' study of Judaism. And that's what we did! The kids had created some truly beautiful artistic pieces to represent their learning about Christianity. A former student of mine had hand-crafted a wooden sconce in the shape of a dynamic cross which held a tea light. Another picked up water colour paint for the first time and painted an absolutely lovely cross. A boy in the class came up with his own clay recipe and created relief of a chalice and grapes. It was just amazing... We took pictures with the digital camera and uploaded them to a photo management program. We cropped,adjusted brightness and contrast until everyone was happy and uploaded them to the class blog. Were those kids ever proud.

This is a special class. Like I mentioned, it's a workplace level class with quite the profile. There are only 8 students in the class but EVERY SINGLE student is on an IEP and has varying degrees of exceptionalities from an array of LDs, to a young girl with severe vision impairment in addition to MID to a boy with autism. A number of students in this class have had problems with behaviour, and having taught some of them, I am aware of the reputations they have been given. In this class, when the kids were posting and creating, none of that mattered. Every students was present, every student was on task and every students was engaged. I truly believe that half the battle is figuring out what these kids respond to. The reality is that these kids are using real world tools to access the curriculum. They are using skills that EVERYONE should be taught. I would argue they've got something of a technical edge on some of their friends who aren't doing this sort of work. The teacher doesn't have behaviour problems because she knew that the kids would respond to this medium. The kids understand what is expected and they keep themselves in check to make sure no one steps out of line with regards to how the blog is used. It's quite remarkable. This is what differentiated instruction is all about, believing that every student can learn given the appropriate challenge and support and meeting kids where they are. I felt so privileged to be a part of this, even if it was for only two days.

Another Year, Another Test

For the past two years, I have been supporting teachers who have been preparing students to write the OSSLT. I have encountered the expected beligerance concerning the nature of standardized testing and how unfair and punitive it is. I have been shocked on occasion at the number of teachers who themselves have struggled to complete some of the tasks that students are asked to complete on the test, which according to my colleagues, tell us absolutely nothing about what students can do. I'm not quite so sure...

The OSSLT is a BASIC FUNCTIONAL LITERACY TEST. In fact, students should be able to complete it by the end of their grade 9 year. Granted, it is crafted in such a way that it isn't a total cake-walk. The instructions require students to read and re-read what is expected of them. The tasks themselves reflect work that students have been working on for the large majority of their academic career. The problem is that we don't teach our kids to name what they are doing. Admittedly, where the kids are disadvantaged is in the language of the test. What's particularly comical about that is that the test highly reflects the typical language of assessment in the Ontario classroom. Think about it: summarize, compare, list, describe, define, determine, explain your thinking, identify, justify, support your answer... I have often asked teachers, "do you teach your students EXPLICITLY what is expected of them when you asked them to do any of these tasks?" Typically, the response includes the assumptions that by grade 10, students should know what is expected of them. Do I really have address what happens when we assume? Let's face it, when it comes to preparing kids for this test, we spend more time blaming our colleagues in the elementary panel for not teaching the kids well enough instead of being accountable for our failure to be thorough enough in our on-going assessment, that is, if we ARE in fact assessing on an on-going basis. Another posting for another time...

As far as I'm concerned, this test demonstrates if our kids can read and write at a level where they can simply function in the world. Sometimes, the results force us to look really hard at what we are doing and NOT doing in our schools. Trust me, I know the limitations of analyzing this sort of statistical data. It does not present a complete picture. But our schools have those missing pieces. Our schools have access to attendance records and credit accumulation reports that can give some indication as to how some kids could potentially fare on this test. Instead of looking at the data after the fact, we should be using it to be proactive. The reality is that this test is not going anywhere. We can blame the previous administrations all we want about bringing this testing into the province but it seems that their predecessors don't have much of a problem with keeping it around. Funny, we never hear about that. I'll admit that I vote for Mike Harris. I liked how he thought and frankly I think he's been given a bum rap for the work he did in attempting to clean up a disaster area of a system. I'll take the heat for my politics, but I won't make excuses when kids can read and write at a basic level when they still manage to graduate from high school.

Yesterday, thousands of students across the province were dry-heaving inside while they wrote the OSSLT. My heart goes out to them, really. I appreciate the stress that goes along with writing this test. They're told that it's a high-stakes situation, and it's true. This is the one thing that technically stands in the way of graduation. I would assert, however, that the daily work in the classroom in becoming even more high-stakes. Again, another posting for another time...

It's a Done Deal

It's official. I've decided to go back to the classroom after two years in my role as a Program Resource Teacher. I figure a couple of things:

1. It'll get me back to working with kids - which I love above all things.

2. This decision will prevent me from becoming increasingly cynical about the prospects for change. I have met and worked with so many great teachers who are doing really fantastic work and I want to be an active part of affecting real change.

3. I'll have the chance to put into practice all the good stuff I've been working on and researching about over the last couple of years.

My only dilemma is whether or not I go back to an elementary or secondary classroom. At this point, I've exercised my right to return to my former school, a secondary posting, but I plan to put in for an elementary transfer. Two principals whom I respect very much are opening new schools in September and I would love the opportunity to work for either of them and to start in a brand new school. It excites to think about being in a teaching scenario that allowed me the most flexibility with my teaching and creativity. We'll see what happens. Regardless, I'm really happy with my decision. Working with adult learners is just not my cup of tea.

Lesson Study - Professionally Speaking - March 2010

I was really excited to read this article in this month's issue of Professionally Speaking. It's really fantastic to read that professional development is moving in this direction!

Lesson Study - Professionally Speaking - March 2010

iWonder. iLearn. iKnow.

iWonder. iLearn. iKnow. Home - iWonder iLearn iKnow @ Brebeuf

I'm currently working on a proposal for an action-research project when I return to the classroom in September. I am proposing a Student-Directed Learning opportunity whereby students will select courses from the Interdisciplinary Curriculum, select units of study, design assessment and summative tasks with rubrics and engage in experiential learning. This is the class wiki! It is a self-contained, "go-to" site that contains all the information and material needed to be successful in the course. I'm presenting my proposal on February 5 and I have all conceivable body parts crossed for this one...

Tools used for good but we tell kids to make them invisible!

You know, I really do understand why it is that administrators and teachers perceive cell phones and iPhones to be a nuisance at school. Kids are texting their friends and taking personal calls at inappropriate times. Tell me, have we ever taught them about how they SHOULD be using those devices? Seriously! I think before we photocopy more "NO ELECTRONIC DEVICES ALLOWED" posters and plaster them all over the front doors of our schools or ask kids to produce posters that report of the potential brain damage cell phone use can cause, we need to take a step back and examine what we're so afraid of. These days, the potential that these devices possess for education is astounding and we are not willing to go there.

I felt compelled to write about this topic after reading about Dan Woolley, an American filmmaker who was trapped in an elevator shaft for 65 hours after the earthquake in Haiti. He was badly hurt and his iPhone saved his life. He downloaded a first aid app that showed him how to make a tourniquet for his leg using his shirt and a bandage for his head using his sock. In doing research on the internet on how to prevent himself from going into shock, he discovered that he should avoid falling asleep for too long periods of time after sustaining head trauma, so he set an alarm on his smart phone to wake him up every 20 minutes. The DSLR helped him make extra light while waiting for help to arrive.



Could you imagine the potential that tools like this can have at school? These days most phones come with internet browsers and wireless capabilities. More and more kids have them. How many of us complain that we don't have computers in our classrooms? Wouldn't it be great to be able to look anything up on Google, for example, if a question came up in our lessons that we couldn't answer? What if when we asked our students to an in-class assignments, students could use these tools to improve their grammar and vocabulary, or augment their work with research? Cell phones are not just for cheating on tests and yet we accuse kids before it even happens. We have a moral obligation to teach our kids how to use this technology responsibly and ethically.

Haiti Quake Another Reason Why Critical Literacy is SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO Important...

Father Mario showed this video during his homily at mass on Sunday:



I couldn't believe what I was seeing and hearing. An alleged man of God, a Christian, BLAMING the people of Haiti for the earthquake that devastated the tiny nation. This is yet another reason why critical literacy needs to become the "new basic" in education. There is too much for our kids to process on their own. Ridiculous propaganda such as this could and probably will reek some havoc in a world that is constantly seeking out scapegoats and looking for yet another reason to justify racist, biggotted viewpoints. It's shocking, but it isn't...

Professional Reading for Teachers

This is a list of some professional reading that I think would really benefit teachers who are interested in critical literacy and teaching and learning in the 21st century. It's good stuff...

Professional Reading for Teachers

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Student Directed Learning Notes

This posting excites me for two reasons:

1. I finally learned how to upload a document that wasn't a power point using Slideshare, and

2. It's some of the work I've been doing around student-directed learning. I really can't wait to get back into the classroom...

Student Directed Learning Notes

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I know first-hand what an amazing learning opportunity this can be for students. In my final year at York University, because of my GPA, I was permitted to design my own History course. I had to seek out a professor who would meet with me on a weekly basis to discuss what I had been reading and writing. The readings that were selected by me had to support my central inquiry question. In my case my question was, "Did the death of Pierre Elliotte Trudeau create an identity crisis for Canadians?" I also had to come up with a working hypothesis, which I fleshed out with my weekly writing. I surveyed people. I researched in the National and Provincial Archives - online and in person. It was a really rich learning experience. My culminating task was a huge, 50-page paper. I had to present it to my professor before he graded it. I was truly proud of myself when I was done. There wasn't a course like it being offered and it was exciting to me because identity politics is a topic that I was, and continue to be passionate about. By the time one reached the final year of a 5 year Honours program along with a three years in the Concurrent Program at the Faculty of Education, one is generally tired and looking forward to the end. This one course really revitalized me as a student and had a significant impact on me as an educator.

I recently made the decision to return to the classroom this September. I am really hoping that I'll get to pilot this back at me school. If not, this is certainly going to be worked in, somehow, to a course I'll teach because I want to students to be excited about coming to school and I want them to know that they can contribute to a body of knowledge that they are passionate about.

Theories of Teaching and Learning: The Staged Self-Directed Learning Model, G.Grow.

Lately, I've been completely engrossed in some research I've been doing about student-directed learning. Interestingly enough, the interest for this project was generated by one of our Board's student trustees. I'll be blogging more on this topic soon. In the meantime, I thought this was a great overview of what STL is all about.

Theories of Teaching and Learning: The Staged Self-Directed Learning Model, G.Grow.

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2000-2009: The FAKE Decade?

I always find it interesting how the media, in particular, reflects on the previous year or decade in this case after another new year comes and goes. At church for the last couple of weeks, this very topic has been the focus of Father Mario's homily. He spoke about how people are struggling to label the decade that has past. We easily identify with 60s or the 80s, but somehow the 2000s or the 00s doesn't seem to pack the same kind of punch. Apparently, the hot buzzword on Twitter is the 2KOs. Catchy. Father Mario encouraged us to go home and Google (yes, my PRIEST told the whole congregation to do this)"the fake decade" to see how the 2KOs have been summed up. It made for some pretty interesting and compelling reading. It also confirmed for me more and more the need for critical literacy and media literacy to be at the forefront of everything we do in the classroom.



So Father Mario was right. Some of what I found through Google made for some very interesting reading. Here are some of the highlights of the "fake decade":

Fake Celebrities
Two words on this subject: Paris Hilton.

Fake Religion
Ah... Scientology. The religion of the Hollywood stars! Its dogma reads like the script of a really bad Sci-Fi movie. It is fuelled by celebrity membership, such as the likes of Tom Cruise, the Travoltas and Will Smith. To profess that psychology and psychiatry are "evil" is ludacris. This whole cult, and it can be reduced to nothing more than that, is simply ludacris.

Fake Prosperity
I have to say that I am so relieved that the Ontario Ministry of Education is doing a lot work to include Financial Literacy as part of the work that we do in our classroom. I can't ever remember in all my studies in History, ever coming across a decade where the stock market crashed three times. It's unheard of! The reality of the free market is that we are trusting that those who run companies and corporations are being truthful and upfront about the financial health of the enterprise. We have to trust that they are not keeping two sets of books - one for the profits and one for the lossess, but only reporting on the profits so as to generate excitement for the purposes of selling shares and stock. Can everybody say ENRON? I can't even wrap my head around how many people fell victim to Ponzi schemes. We need to teach our kids how the market works and how banking systems work. It can't be reserved for senior-level business and economic courses anymore. Kids need to know this stuff to simply BE in the world and save themselves from being victimized by people who know perhaps a little too much and would exploit those less astute than themselves.

Fake Jobs
Many of my friends loved this book, but The Secret gave people licence to think and believe that they have complete control of their lives and that we can do it on our own. This kind of attitude gave rise to the Life Coach. I still can't believe that this is an actual job that people make a living at! What education would you need? What makes someone qualified? Why do people take the word of Tony Robbins over the word of their own priest? There is something seriously wrong here.

Fake Faces
Plastic surgery has been around for a long time, but it seems that the last decade allowed more people to access it. You can get Botox injections right at your family physician's office these days! It's all about looking as young as possible. Have you SEEN Wayne Newton? Joan Rivers? Can you pull a face much tighter than that? I fear for the irreparable damage done to the self-esteem of our kids, especially our girls. So much pressure to be beautiful in an age when most beauty is created with an airbrush.

Fake Athletes
I think it is safe to say that our kids would be hard-pressed to find any heroes in the world of sports who AREN'T abusing performance-enhancing drugs like anabolic steroids. The baseball world was especially hit hard when it came to light that the likes of Alex Rodriguez, Barry Bonds and Manny Ramirez weren't what they appeared to be. At the very end of the decade, even a Toronto-born doctor who is said to have treated Donovon Bailey and Tiger Woods was arrested for distributing performance enhancing substances.

Fake Politics
Where to start... The Florida election? The entire Bush administration? Weapons of mass destruction? Need I say more?

Fake Nobel Prize
I almost gagged when I heard that this prize, which I once held in such high regard, was given to the leader of a nation with troops engaged in active warfare. I make no apologies when I say that appointing the Nobel PEACE Prize to Barrack Obama, after having bestowed it upon the likes of Mother Teresa, Kofi Ananan, Martin Luther King Jr., Yitzhak Rabin, Nelson Mandela, Elie Weisel, the Dalai Lama, Bishop Desmond Tutu and Canada's own Lester B. Pearson, that this prestige of this prize has been officially tarnished. Obama has no business be heralded in the presence of such company and quite frankly, the integrity of this honour has been officially ruined.

What this all comes down to is a single question: what is truth? As Catholics, we know that there is but one Truth and that's Christ, who said himself that "I am the Way, the Truth and the Life". It's so important that in all that we teach we keep this message at the forefront. I'm disaapointed to say that it doesn't happen too regularly which is why Catholic education is in a bit of trouble. We don't seem to be brave enough to teach our kids to speak the Truth. We're too busy teaching them about political correctness, which isn't synonomous with Truth. This is where critical literacy comes in. This view of the world, this way of thinking and being is complementary with Catholicism and yet so few teachers are fluent in it. Very few can tell you what it actually means. Most think it's the same thing as critical thinking, which is going to get them into a bit of trouble. Our kids need to be able to render their view and reading of the world in an intelligent and Truthful manner. We simply have to facilitate this educational experience by being careful of the primary and supplementary material that we choose to teach with. Catholic educators need to be more than fluent in the social teachings of the Church so that they can make connections as often as possible, and no, this isn't the job solely of the Religion teachers just like OSSLT preparations isn't solely the job of English teachers.

We have an opportunity to shape the next 10 years in Catholic education around this notion of Truth. Our kids need to be proud of their faith and come to a full understanding of what we are called to believe about the world, our neighbours and ourselves.

Get your hands on Wetpaint!

C21 Learning Home - C21 Learning

In doing some research for a project at work, I've been mucking around with Wetpaint - a website/wiki builder that is really easy to use. Basically, site editing is done through point, click and type. It allows users to build sites collaboratively. Any given site can have multiple contributors. Any number of multimedia files can be uploaded. Documents in Word, Excel and Power Point format can be attached. The site can have multiple pages within itself, allowing users to more efficiently and effectively organize information. Best of all, it's free!

So far, I'm enjoying learning how to use this and I wish I had known about it sooner. Oh well...

Some of My Favourite Picture Books - Great for all Ages

I have always loved picture books. I've used them with students of all ages for a variety of purposes. When I taught grade 11 Parenting, one whole day every week was devoted to children's literature and how it can be useful in teaching everything from a moral lesson to literary devices to discussing social justice issues. Coupled with beautiful illustrations, these books are truly a treasure to have in the classroom. The grown-ups that I've shared them with love them too!

Student Engagement is VITAL

Whenever I think about what "student engagement" means, I almost always think to a specific scence from the film Sisterhood, where Whoopi Goldberg's character, Sister Mary Clarence, is leading the choir for the first time at Sunday mass...



The music brought in kids from off the street who probably wouldn't have chosen to be there in the first place but they were captivated by what they heard. I always wondered, "If my students had a choice, would they really want to be here? Am I giving them reason enough to care?" These questions have always kept me in check. Yes, our kids, to a certain age, have to be in school because the law compells them and their parents but that isn't enough. It creates complacency if you ask me - on both sides of the teacher's desks.

I recently read an article called Setting the Stage for Student Engagement by Jan Richards (2006). She had me from the very beginning with this statement:

Most of us have experienced such moments of "student engagement" when every learner seems utterly focused on the task, and time seems to stand still. They are what teachers live for. You wish you could capture the exhilaration of these moments to sustain yourself through those exhausting, miserable days when everything seems to go wrong.

Hit the nail right on the head. Good teachers constantly reflect on what they did to facilitate those wonderful moments, and when it's not happening all the time, they take an honest inventory of what was or wasn't done. This is basically critical pedagogy. They rethink the teaching model(s) they employed or they fine-tune their knowledge on a specific topic. Richards suggests that there are four key factors that teachers consider when attempting to maximize student engagement in the classroom: issues of time, space, materials and relationships. In a nutshell, this is what she is getting at:

TIME
-the lesson should be an appropriate length for the students you are teaching
-plan for the timing of all parts of the lesson, especially transitions -be aware of wandering eyes and movement -given information in small chunks
-provide short breaks or change in location to keep the momentum of the lesson going
-try to strike a balance among cognitive, social, and kinesthetic experiences -keep the day of the week or time of year in mind when planning the kind of lesson you wish to deliver

SPACE
-arrange desks in such a way that will encourage on-task behaviour and conversation
-allow room for easy transition from direct instruction to cooperative activities
-avoid crowding where possible so that students don't have the excuse to be distracted -avoid creating an "action zone" - groups of students who tend to participate the most - because other groups will naturally be disengaged from the lesson and the general culture of the classroom
-move around the classroom and change up the areas from where direct instruction is given

MATERIALS
-have all materials needed for the lesson ready to go before the lesson begins -use as many hands-on materials whenever possible
-have a seamless routine for the distribution of materials in place

RELATIONSHIPS
-be conscious of facial expression
-monitor the tone of your voice
-care - about ALL students; students want to be liked by their teachers, whether they admit to it or not
-be sensitive to the difficulties some students are facing
-be accepting of differences and encourage students always

I don't know that these factors are listed this way for any particular reason. Admittedly, I'm surprised that there wasn't really any mention of differentiated instruction in the article. It's a no-brainer, really. DI keeps kids engaged, learning and well-behaved. It also shows that you care about how students learn, what they are interested in and they appreciate the choice that is afforded to them. For me, relationships is the most fundamental. Quite frankly, with a caring adult in the room, the chances for success increases astronomically for our students. The other factors are simple and do-able, but how we get along with our students can sometimes make or break the experience they will have in our classroom. If nothing else, begin and end the day with a smile. Easy stuff...

One Step at a Time...

I've been doing a lot of talking lately about Web 2.0 with various groups of teachers and inevitably, there are always some who are unsure - about themselves and their ability to understsand and effectively use the technology with their students in a meaningful way or that using the web-base applications will in some way compromise the integrity of the work they have been doing up until now. Let's face it - this sort of stuff makes people really itchy. I received this vides clip in an email:



Why I love it so much is because it illustrates the point that I try to make when I do try to bring awareness to teachers about Web 2.0. Like in the video, there will be some who feel so confortable with these new options that they will run up the proverbial stairs like it's nobody's business. Others will cautiously toe-tap their way up. Others still will continue doing what they've always done - take the escalator. The point is that we've all got the exposure and more information, which is one step ahead of where we were before in the use of this technology. Whether teachers use it or not is not of great concern to me, although our kids would appreciate the engagement it brings, but simply knowing about the benefits and potential will allow teachers to provide students with even more choice that is far more relevant to them. Imagine! Allowing students to use technology at school the way they LIVE it their lives outside of school...

In the meantime teachers, relax! Give yourselves a break and afford yourselves some time to become comfortable. I promise, you won't see this stuff popping up in curriculum documents or in board mandates. Play a bit and see for yourselves. The possibilities are endless.

Wordle!

I love WORDLE!

Wordle is an online application that allows you to create word clouds from the text (words and phrases) that you provide. You can modify the shape of the cloud, the font, the colours - it's great! The site allows you to print your creations or you can post to the public gallery.

This is the Wordle I created with a critical literacy theme:



How is this useful in the classroom?
-great for poetry
-works great as a "getting to know you" type of activity
-awesome for displays in the classroom (eg. bulletin boards)
-neat addition to works of art
-effective posters concern social justice issues

The only thing that irks me (but only slightly) is that you can't save your Wordle. To get around that, I simply performed CTRL+PRT SCR and pasted it into a Paint file, trimmed the edges and saved the image as a JPEG. A bit pesty, I admit, but until I figure out and easier way of going about this, I don't mind doing it. I really recommend playing around with this one :)

The 21st Century Learning Part 2

I'm a bit behind in my blogging - can ya tell?

On December 3rd, we had the greatest time with teachers in part two of our series on The 21st Century Learner. Teachers got right into looking at the kinds of questions we as teachers ask of our students and how we can challenge our students more with deeper questioning. Next, we moved onto a really rich discussion in critical literacy. We examined what it is and what it isn't. We looked at some media texts and asked some really tough questions. Generally, I've found that critical literacy makes people really itchy but this group was really receptive to this world view. What made me a bit sad was that a teacher indicated that there is a negative stigma attached to embracing this kind of teaching. Teachers are really feeling pressured to conform to the ways things have always been done. My response was that teachers who believe in critical literacy often find themselves alone at first, but it catches on really quickly. Once colleagues see how engaged students are, they'll want to try it too.

In the lab, we "mucked around" with Delicious and I think teachers were excited about the "green potential" this application has.

All in all, a fantabulous day!

The 21st Century Learning Part 2

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Moderns 2.0: A P.A. Day Well Spent!

I was sooooo thrilled to be spending the day with our Moderns teachers on December 4th. This power point accompanied the keynote address that I gave in the morning. It was so great how receptive participants were to these ideas and to looking for new ways to engage students in their classes.

Moderns 2.0: A P.A. Day Well Spent!

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In the afternoon, I hosted a workshop where teachers basically got to play! They "mucked around" (a very technical term I learned from Michele Knobel) with various Web 2.0 applications and voiced their excitement as well as their concerns about using them in the class, but it was certainly a productive afternoon.









What a great day!

Remixes

Take a look... Really interesting stuff!

Some Food For Thought...

In May of 2008, Sony BMG featured this video at a conference. It fits in beautifully with the major themes around 21st century learning. We included this as part of the materials for the September PA Day, which focused on differentiating instruction for the 21st century learner.

Great Video Clip!

I found this clip on YouTube. One of the reasons I love it is because it's set to a mash-up of Under Pressure by Queen and I Wanna Rock With You by Michael Jackson. Mash-ups are a really interesting topic when it comes to 21st century learning. Essentially. a mash-up takes two completely different songs and seamlessly blends them together to create a brand new product that is relevant to a new audience. If the ability to create is the new high order thinking, then a mash-up is a great example of this new kind of skill.

Typography

Check out this link on Vimeo: Typography - poem by Taylor Mali and animation by Ronnie Bruce. Very thought-provoking...

Tools for Real-World Work

Today, thanks to an email sent to me by a teacher-librarian in our board (Jeanne - you totally made my day!!), I've discovered a terrific blog run by Carolyn Foote, a librarian from a high school in Austin, Texas. The blog focuses on how we can use Web 2.0 tools effectively with our kids. A couple days ago, she posted, "What are really fighting for?", and this is what she had to say:

We all talk a lot about tools. About great sites; about Animoto and Twitter and Facebook; about Voicethread and Delicious and blogging.

We struggle in our districts to convince them to lower the filter so we can use some of these tools effectively. We fight for Skype or Facebook or Blogger. We fight to use wikis or Ning or YouTube.

But to paraphrase Dr. Seuss in the Grinch, maybe it’s about a little bit more than we are fighting for.

Because after all…

It’s not about creating a blog, it’s about expressing your own ideas and beliefs clearly.

It’s not about using delicious or Diigo, it’s about developing a system to keep up with your stuff and to share your stuff.

It’s not about Skype, it’s about understanding how to communicate globally in a video setting or via chat/conversation.

And it’s not about making an Animoto slide show, it’s about having a good sense of design or telling a story.

It’s not about learning to use the software, it’s about the skills our students will carry with them that these tools and others like them allow. It’s about our students expressing themselves clearly, beautifully, and skillfully.

And that’s what we should be teaching them. And that’s what we should be fighting for.

I think this is brilliant. What is especially brilliant is that this message is coming from a teacher-librarian - the ultimate partner in 21st century teaching and learning. If there is anyone in a school is sitting more on the cutting edge and keeping up to speed with what's going on in the world, it's our teacher-librarians. Our school libraries are the hub of a school, and active and vibrant place that should be connecting our kids to the outside world.

It's not about jazzing up our lessons so that we can look like we're keeping with the times. It's about giving our kids the opportunity to use real-world tools to solve real-world problems and develop real-world skills. Who can argue with that?

Rynee Flaherty's story

Thestar.com - VideoZone - Rynee Flaherty's story

This video accompanies one of the articles in the previous posting. Really good...

It's Not Going Away...

No amount of government restitution can repay the damage done throughout history to Canada's First Nation, Inuit and Metis people. Just because official apologies have been issues and token amounts of money handed out, doesn't mean that we stop talking about the issues and concerns that continue to plague Canada's first peoples. A fantastic teacher in our board sent me three links to some very compelling articles from the Toronto Star. These are great resources for teachers to use:

www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/732447--high-arctic-exiles-still-feel-raw


www.thestar.com/news/insight/article/732175--inuit-were-moved-2-000-km-in-cold-war-manoeuvring

www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/732446--her-quest-for-justice-started-early

Girls' Access to Ice Time: One Critical Literacy Issue After Another...

When I first started hearing about the Leaside Girls' Hockey Association's concerns with equal access to ice time, I immediately sympathasized. I assumed that they weren't getting the same amount of ice time as their male counterparts. Turns out, that's not the case. It just so happens that the girls have some not-so-great times, like 5:30 am practices. Why is this time more acceptable for boys, who have been doing it since (what seems like) the beginning of time? Anyway, in reading a bit more about this rather interesting case that is set to go before City Council, I found out a few things that now have me singing a different tune. This is no longer an issue of equal access for girls. This is actually a case of power and class. It so happens that Nick Lewis, a senior economic development advisor to Mayor David Miller, is one of three coaches of a Leaside hockey team this year. What's more, Lewis' team is part of the competitive branch of the organization. Kinda adds a different dimension to this whole issue, doesn't it? In an editorial on November 16, 2009 for the Toronto Star, Christie Blatchford questions why the mayor's office is even taking an interest in this case as it seems far-removed from day-to-day responsibilities.

Stories like these provide us with the resources we need to infuse critical literacy into our classrooms. We can get a wealth of materials just from cracking open a newspaper, so why are there so many piles of neglected papers sitting in our staffrooms?

Remembrance Day: A Lesson in Civic Literacy

At 11:00 am all across the Nation, Canadians stopped for two minutes to give thanks for their freedom in memory of the men and women who paid for that freedom with their lives. A high price to pay...



The artist performing in this video is Terry Kelly. He was inspired to write this song for Remembrance Day in 1999. The following is an excerpt from his website:

On November 11, 1999 Terry Kelly was in a drug store in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. At 10:55 AM an announcement came over the store’s PA asking customers who would still be on the premises at 11:00 AM to give two minutes of silence in respect to the veterans who have sacrificed so much for us.


Terry was impressed with the store’s leadership role in adopting the Legion’s “two minutes of silence” initiative. He felt that the store’s contribution of educating the public to the importance of remembering was commendable.

When eleven o’clock arrived on that day, an announcement was again made asking for the “two minutes of silence” to commence. All customers, with the exception of a man who was accompanied by his young child, showed their respect.

Terry’s anger towards the father for trying to engage the store’s clerk in conversation and for setting a bad example for his child was channeled into a beautiful piece of work called, “A Pittance of Time”. Terry later recorded “A Pittance of Time” and included it on his full-length music CD, “The Power of the Dream”.

For me, this action of a single person is what civic literacy is really all about.

Civic literacy is defined as follows:

*Participating effectively in civic life through knowing how to stay informed and understanding governmental processes;

*Exercising the rights and obligations of citizenship at local, state, national and global levels; and

*Understanding the local and global implications of civic decisions.

This diagram highlights the ELEMENTS of civic literacy...



... and this diagrams features the various civic literacy SKILLS.



Civic literacy has been identified as one of the key interdisciplinary themes of 21st century teaching and learning. What it basically comes down to is knowledge of how to actively participate in society for the greater good. In times of global chaos, and we can find it wherever we put our fingers on the world map, we should all be helping our students to come up with ways to be in the world peacefully. It's not just about voting in elections, because frankly, even in democracies, governments are sometimes powerless against external forces. It's about developing a conscience about issues that are not just important to individual people, but to the collective.

I think the benefits are obvious. If all teachers made a concerted effort to incorporate civic literacy in their disciplines, we would see:
-increased participation in community and civic affairs
-communication and improved solidarity among people across racial, gender, religious, economic and ethnic lines
-increased curiosity to learn more about various cultures and world affairs

Civic literacy needs to be the basic and foundational culture that is established in a classroom. It encourages participation because it is rooted in basic democratic principles and can even foster effective conflict resolution and peer mediation.

The 21st Century Learner: Part One of the PLS for Teachers

I love, love, love my time at work when I can spend a day dialoguing with teachers about the craft of teaching. Today, Cathie and I ran part one of our Professional Learning Series called The 21st Century Learner. Today we looked at what categorizes 21st century learning and we asked some really tough questions (peruse the power point and you can find them in the first few slides). One of the goals that I had for this session was to demonstrate that 21st century skills as a concept is kinda gimmicky. Yes, I said it! When you really drill down to what defines a successful learner in the 21st century, it's all the "stuff" we're already doing - front-loading content with skill and teaching those "soft skills" (valuing and accepting diversity, collaboration, tolerating ambiguity and encouraging risk-taking so as to foster resiliency) that are seen as unimportant in the face of evaluating overall expectations. I think that participants were somewhat releived to know that not all 21st century learning is reliant upon technology, that most of these skills are skills for living and interacting with living, breathing people. Teachers built a timeline to show the evolution of the profession - in practice, pedagocially and technologically. It was neat to listen in on some of the conversations as they were remembering what it was like to be a student. Here are some of the photos:











One really interesting discussion that kept coming up throughout the morning conversation focused on whether or not it was important to teach a lot of stuff, or to simply drill down on few things. A debate arose whether it was necessary that English teachers cover so many works in a semester (thinking they are facilitating a rigorous program), as opposed to choosing one or two and really going to town in teaching a number of different skills through fewer works. Something to definitely chew on...



The afternoon session consisted mostly with "mucking around" Blogger and learning about the different ways to incorporate blogging in the classroom. I was pretty miffed that the Board's network blockages were at work. I think we need to have some serious conversation about the fear behind allowing (at least teachers) access to certain online spaces.



All in all, it was a terrific start to the series. Next time we meet on December 3, we are going to be focused on the Inquiry Model and Powerful Questioning. I think it'll be great!

Part One

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Do you know your alphabet?

I bet that if you set this alphabet in front of any kid, he or she would be able to identify each of these brands. I dare any grown-up to try this ...

Full-Day Kindergarten Kinda Makes Sense...

I'm not entirely sold on Ontario's premier. I am, however, liking his idea to make kindergarten a full day more and more. He was recently quote as having said, "In a highly competitive, global knowledge-based economy it's absolutely essential that we invest in the younger generation to ensure that we build a powerful workforce that can compete and win against the best anywhere on this planet." I think he makes a good point. Research also shows that kids who attend full-day programs before grade one have better-developed social and academic (especially literacy and vocabulary) skills. In Ontario, kids get access to these kinds of programs if their parents can afford it. Full day kindergarten will level the playing field in terms of what young children have access to in their formative years.

I have to admit, this is tres gutsy, given the current economic climate. Anyone who is willing to present taxpayers with an annual bill for $1.5 billion has got my respect.

When Faith Meets Pedagogy 2009

This was the power point presenation that accompanied the workshop I gave at When Faith Meets Pedagogy.

When Faith Meets Pedagogy 2009

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The Cross Walk

I love this. I was emailed these images and I turned them into a power point, which I have used in a number of different contexts. I love this because it shows the power of images to convey messages as powerfully as words can.

The Cross Walk

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iPods in Education ... iLike!

Skeptics of the world, hear me out... I know what you're all thinking. We don't need to give our kids yet another excuse not to pay attention in class. I know that this idea will take a little getting used to be it actually makes so much sense.

When I was at When Faith Meets Pedagogy on Friday, I attended a session called iTouch, iLearn. It was hosted by Rob Policicchio of Apple Canada. The focus of the presentation was how to incorporate iPods in education. He has been working with a number of schools who are using the various iPod products for a whole host of different reasons. Here are a few:

-audio books
-uploading tests with audio files for Special Ed. students to follow along
-video books
-podcasts - both teacher- and student-created
-assessing fluency in reading

If you think about it, the combination of viewing text and hearing increases retention and understanding. That's useful to ALL students, not just those who struggle at school.

Rob pointed out that iTunes (a free to download software), is loaded with free downloads for educators and has a wealth of audio books and podcasts that are appropriate for the classroom at both the elementary and secondary level. As well, there is a lot material for professional development for teachers (e.g. podcasts on how to podcast - I thought this was funny, but after further research, I learned that the number topic in podcasts in education is podcasts in education...).

Apple Canada is not paying me for this endorsement, but I couldn't help but add my two cents worth about this worth while opportunity that I think can be afforded to students.

Skill First, Content Second

This is me with another dear friend, Pat Chiarella (and that's Dave eating in background...). Pat teaches geography. Kids love her to pieces. She's one of the best teachers I know, but it has nothing to do with her popularity.



Without question, Pat knows her stuff. Any question of a geographic nature, she can handle it with information that is current and precise. I've had the fortune of being in her class a number of times while she's been teaching and it never ceases to amaze how ahead of the times she has always been.

I think, in all the research and reading that I have done on the subject, that if there is one thing I can emphasize as critical for 21st century teaching is the importance of teaching SKILL, not content. In this day and age, knowledge is no longer static, especially in disciplines like the social sciences. We need to impart our students with a skill set that will do them well in a multitude of subject areas so that they can deal with the ever-changing nature of knowledge and knowledge construction. That's why my friend Pat inspired this posting. At the centre of what she does is the skill - whether is mapping, graphing, note-taking or reading (yes, she is a geography teacher and she teaches reading in her subject area...), the content is never the star of the show. The beauty thing about this approach is that those kids are more likely to remember the skill more than the content when they take history the following year, and that's just fine because they'll be successful in their ability to learn the content through the invaluable skills they acquired the year before. I'm not saying that content no longer matters to 21st century learners, because it still does. Teachers are called to use their professional judgement, in conjunction with the Ministry documents to decide what content is truly essential to meet the overall expectations of a given course. In doing so, we stop teaching courses, and the focus turns to teaching students.

Maybe one day, this will be reflected in our curriculum documents. I mean, the newly revised Arts document is on its way to being THE quintessential 21st century document. The strands were re-named and re-ordered and Creating and Presentation is now the first strand in all of the areas of Arts. It's a small but significant change. It places the construction of demonstration of new knowledge literally at the forefront of every course of study, which means that the acquisition of a specific skill set is crucial. If this was done in every discipline, Ontario would be on its way to catching up with the times, and Pat's geography class. For now, I can be content with this being done one document at a time.

Jesus the Blogger?

First off, I mean no offense by this image. I thought it was hilarious that I could actually find something like this, so I suppose nothing is impossible with Google...

Yesterday, I presented at When Faith Meets Pedagogy. I held a workshop on the Literacy Prism and it went so well. I can't emphasize enough how relieved I was. When it was all over, I was completely wiped out but so satisfied. But that's not what this posting is about. I got to attend some breakout sessions. I was thoroughly intrigued by the title of an offering called "What would Jesus blog?" I thought it was an absolute hoot! Turns out that it was right up my alley. The gist of this session was that all the technology that is available today is a gift and we as Catholics have a responsibility to use this technology ethically for the benefit of others, for the common good. EVEN THE VATICAN GETS THIS!!! This is so ironic isn't it... The Church has been slow to move on many an issue, but of all the popes in history, Benedict XVI is challenging his priests to get in touch with their followers using this technology. Boggles the mind, I know. The session was run by Michael Redfearn, IT Consultant with the Waterloo Catholic District School Board. He showed participants Pope 2 You - a website that contains links to a Facebook profile and a wiki set up by the Vatican. I strongly encourage people to read the message that prefaces the whole existance of this website, "New Technologies, New Relationships: Promoting a Culture of Respect, Dialogue and Friendship." It emphasizes that technology is a gift and it acknowledges that the generation that the Church is trying to reach most communicates in a new way. It was so refreshing to read:

The accessibility of mobile telephones and computers, combined with the global reach and penetration of the internet, has opened up a range of means of communication that permit the almost instantaneous communication of words and images across enormous distances and to some of the most isolated corners of the world; something that would have been unthinkable for previous generations. Young people, in particular, have grasped the enormous capacity of the new media to foster connectedness, communication and understanding between individuals and communities, and they are turning to them as means of communicating with existing friends, of meeting new friends, of forming communities and networks, of seeking information and news, and of sharing their ideas and opinions. Many benefits flow from this new culture of communication: families are able to maintain contact across great distances; students and researchers have more immediate and easier access to documents, sources and scientific discoveries, hence they can work collaboratively from different locations; moreover, the interactive nature of many of the new media facilitates more dynamic forms of learning and communication, thereby contributing to social progress.

The words of the Pope, people! I'll be honest that I didn't have a whole lot of faith in the pope after the passing of John Paul II, but I have to say that I'm pleasantly surprised to say the least. All this said, however, the message also includes that Catholics are obligated to use this new technology responsibily to promote the common good.

So while I was sitting in this session, I began to wonder. Has Jesus been on earth in human form today, would he have used technology to get across his Good News? I couldn't help but think that he would have. Back in the day, he walked. That's what people did. Could you imagine how much more quickly and effectively his message of love and peace could have been disseminated had he had access to the Internet? Imagine, using the Web for good instead of evil... So we as Catholic educators do have an obligation to our students to teach them the ethical use of technology. I know people are afraid of it. I understand, but it's time to get our heads out of the proverbial sand. Technology doesn't ever go away. It only becomes more sophisticated and those who choose to ignore it only fall further and further behind.

Take a look to your left... I've added a poll. What do you think Jesus would have blogged about? (I give full credit to Michael Redfearn for this. He did the same poll on Twitter, and I'm curious to see what responses I get.)

And the Rat Laughed...

I didn't intend for this blog to serve as a book review, but I have to say that EVERYONE needs to read this book. It's about a Holocaust survivor but it's not about the Holocaust. It's about how those horrific, disgusting events are remembered. This is a story that will challenge readers to think about what it means to remember and how we pass on memory from one generation to the next. The novel is written in 5 genres: story, legend, poems, science fiction and diary. The story takes place over a span of 150 years, and its unconventional use of literary devices is what earned the novel acclaim for exploring the act of memory. The story offers these questions:

*How do we tell our painful story?

*Does it change while we recall it?

*How will those who hear our story recall it in their own individual way?

*Is art the only way to transfer emotional memory?

The following is an excerpt taken from the back of the book:

On the last day of 1999, a survivor grandmother in Tel Aviv shares with her granddaughter her tragic life story as a child hidden in a pit, with only a rat for company. The granddaughter tells the legend of “Girl and Rat” to her teacher; in 2009 those who heard it through her classmates establish an internet website with poems. From now on, this memory is spread all over the world and becomes a myth. A future anthropologist, researching its mysterious roots in 2099, discovers Father Stanislaw’s personal journal documenting his rescue of that little Jewish girl, and so the chain of remembearers moves from the present to the future and back to the past.

What has got me so excited is that students and staff all of our 15 high schools are going to be reading this book and participating in a symposium called The Desire for Change. Many of these kids and teachers have received Tools for Tolerance training at the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Centre for Holocaust Education and have travelled abroad to learn more about the importance of maintaining the dignity of all people. Many of these students are members of their schools' Equity Committee or Social Justice groups. At the symposium, each school will recreate a scene from the book in some artistic and creative way (i.e. visual art, music, drama, etc.). This is directly connected to one of the key ideas in the book in that emotion is often transferred to art. The book was transformed into an opera that is performed in Hebrew with surtitles, and our students and staff will get to see that as well. What an experience!!

Ultimately, the goal of this symposium is to inspire social action. Shouldn't that be the goal of all education? The more relevant we making the learning experiences, the more ownership our students will take in what happens next. This past summer, some of the kids and staff who will be coming to the symposium had a chance to visit Auschwitz. As a teacher of history, it has been my experience that kids generally are desensitized to what they learn about these events because they happened so long ago, but when it comes to issues like hate and intolerance, those are two lessons humankind has yet to learn. Walking the train tracks, visiting the dormitories and looking at the ovens was relevant to these kids because they recognize the hate. The lessons from the Holocaust were not learned. Millions have died at the hands of those who found reason to hate them, all the while, good people stood by and did nothing. It is my hope that these kids become a transforming force in our world. If it can begin within our local school communities, then we're off to a good start.

Kanye Gave 'Em Something to Write About!

I am not a fan of Kanye West. At all. It was nothing short of amazing, however, that after his deplorable behaviour on the MTV Video Music Awards, kids everywhere had an awful lot to write about. Blogs were rolling and Twitter was tweeting. It was an amazing time to be online to witness real time reactions to an incident that people were so interested in. Granted, in the grand scheme of things, Kayne West's dissing of Taylor Swift (as unfortunate as it was because no one deserves that kind of humiliation on television) made no real impact on anyone or anything, but it just goes to show that if given something that is immediately relevant, kids WILL write.

I forgot about Alvin...

Alvin Toffler is a futurist. He and his wife Heidi are prolific authors and are "known for having forecast the acceleration of daily life, the decline of the nuclear family, the spread of loneliness and rise of religion, the Tofflers decades ago also anticipated cloning, virtual reality, niche markets, information overload, work-at-home, product customization, the "de-massification" of the mass media, the threat of terrorism and many other features of contemporary life." (www.alvintoffler.net) Educators know him more commonly by his famous quote:

"The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn."

It's this quote that has me excited about the Professional Learning Series that we're running this year for teachers. There are three series - Critical Literacy, Cross-Curricular Literacy and 21st Century Skills. What's different about what my partner and I are doing this year is that we're including a job-embedded professional learning component for each teacher who participates in any of the series. I have to admit that I was unimpressed by the idea at first. Truthfully, my cynicism was the result of reservations I had about teachers' levels of receptivity to the idea of co-planning, co-teaching and co-debriefing. Generally speaking, I'm not one to care much what people think, especially when it comes to projects that only to improving student learning. That said, if no one buys in then practice when never shift - that includes my own. I was initially resistant to the idea of "coaching" other teachers. After all what could I possibly offer a science, technology, or french teacher. I have come to a better understanding that it really isn't about WHAT is being taught. It's about practice and that's a universal language in teaching. Ultimately, the goals of this process are basically four-fold:

1.) to increase student achievement;
2.) to improve student learning;
3.) to refine existing instructional strategies; and
4.) to introduce new strategies withing a supportive framework.



To me, this sounds pretty good. It embraces the spirit of Toffler in that teachers are called to be truly reflective and REFLEXIVE in their practice, essentially, engaging the process of learning, unlearning and relearning. This is the very essence of critical pedagogy.I can certainly understand why teachers may not be rushing to book time to work with me. It can be pretty intimidating having another educator, much less central staff, working with you in your classroom. It is invasive. From time to time, I think it's a good thing. For me, I suffer from the "three year itch", where I get a bit bored and I look to be challenged in my profession. I can't imagine anything that would make teachers more itchy than this. It's completely voluntary, so there is no telling how many will take me up on the offer.

Engaging in this process with my colleagues will by very uncomfortable and intimidating for me, so I can only imagine how other teachers will feel. It's one thing to sit around the table and brainstorm solid instructional straegies, but moving into a teacher's "turf" is a different story.

Very itchy...