Gladly Would I Teach

via shakespeare.emory.edu

If you teach Shakespeare, please take a look at this wonderful site by Harry Rusche, an English professor at Emory University in Atlanta. The site contains links to hundreds of illustrations of Shakespeare's plays and characters.

The assistant principal told police she pulled Cobb into another classroom, with the children present, to calm her down. But Cobb continued to curse in front of the students. That's when Smith ran into the room again and "attempted to attack" Cobb, the report states.

via www.ajc.com

It's hard to be a teacher today when other teachers behave outrageously.

As I drove home this afternoon, I heard a radio broadcast about two Georgia middle school teachers who argued loudly while spewing profanity and then became embroiled in a physical fight in front of students. The news made me angry and sad. How does a respectable adult who cares about students and who has spent years training to serve as a role model for impressionable children forget her responsibilities and resort to absurd behavior more indicative of an unruly child?

Although the overwhelming majority of teachers are ethical and moral role models for students, whenever one or two teachers behave in such a disgraceful manner, it makes all teachers look incompetent and uncaring. Over the years, I have seen my fair share of unethical teachers. From teachers who had inappropriate relationships with students, to unprofessional and lazy teachers who rarely taught their classes and allowed students to sit around with nothing to do, to teachers who conducted outside businesses while they should have been preparing tomorrow's leaders, the teaching profession has always had a few bad apples, as do all professions. I wonder, however, if citizens today view teacher misbehavior as a more egregious problem than in the past.

I'm told there was a time when teachers were placed on pedestals and revered as the most important members of their communities. What happened to those times? I am surrounded by caring, professional, and dedicated teachers every day, but too many citizens never see those teachers. Instead, they see and hear outrageous stories of teacher fights, teacher-student affairs, and teacher crimes, and those disgraceful faces of a few teachers soon become the faces of all teachers.

I don't know if we have more teacher misconduct today than in the past or if our 24-hour news services simply report more teacher misbehavior today. What I do know is that parents who should readily entrust their children to the care of today's teachers are apprehensive about the adults who teach their children.

What I do know is that as many spectacular potential teachers select more lucrative careers instead, we ease our standards for teachers and place adults who may not have our students' best interest at heart into classrooms where they will have close contact with students each day. We may only have a few immoral and unprofessional teachers, but they create a disproportionate number of problems for students, parents, and other teachers.

What I do know is that this week many middle school students in a Georgia school probably no longer view teachers with the same reverence and respect as they once did.

I find that distressing.

via blog.shmoop.com

Schmoop presents great Halloween Costume ideas for teachers. I just wish I had the guts to dress up on Halloween!

via poets.org

English teachers, if you need a last-minute Halloween costume idea, take a look!

I used to hate those days when I had to teach students how to write research papers. I would go over the entire process with students, distribute our research guides that illustrated how to document sources, and then take my classes to the library (yep, we used to call them libraries). Then for the next three days, students wielding heavy reference books would chase me around the library asking, "How do I cite . . . " 

It was maddening, and judging from the moans in the English Department workroom, other teachers shared my frustration.

Then, I met NoodleTools, a true gift from God.

NoodleTools is an online subscription service that allows students to set up source lists according to MLA, APA, or University of Chicago styles. Students begin by selecting the correct format and then start a source list. The program then asks students a series of questions about each source. Assuming that students answer the questions correctly, NoodleTools will create the citation for students and add it to the list of sources. Subsequent sources are then formatted and added to the list in alphabetical order. After students have added all of their sources, NoodleTools produces a perfectly formatted list for students to print or download into their research papers.

In the old days, students came to me and I had to help them create their citations by asking them a questions and helping them navigate through the research guide. Now, I just have to show kids how to use NoodleTools and then NoodleTools asks those same questions and walks students through the process.

In addition to creating citations, NoodleTools will show students how to create parenthetical documentation, provide a space for students to write annotations, and allow students to take notes on online notecards.

The subscription for schools is around $350 annually (if I remember correctly), and schools and students can create unlimited source lists. Students who work in groups can actually create an account together and work on a list collectively.

For those of you who are thinking that this program won't work for your students because students will still bombard you with hundreds of citation questions, NoodleTools provides another aid. Beside each citation on a list, there is a special gift called:

"Have a Question?" 

When students click on it, the program opens an "Ask an Expert" screen where students can then submit their questions through email and someone at NoodleTools, some kind soul with much more patience than I have in the midst of writing research papers, will respond to students within 24 hours!

Subscriptions are also available for individual teachers ($60 annually) and for individual students ($8 annually). Free trials are also available for teachers.

If you teach in a school where you have no money for such a service, NoodleTools also offers a free service to help students create citations. Students will then have to copy and paste the entries into a word processing document.

If you require students to write research papers, you owe it to yourself to investigate NoodleTools.

Now, if I can just figure out how to install a "Have a Question" button in my classroom!

Are Teacher Colleges Turning Out Mediocrity?

Oh, it is so easy to place blame than to uncover solutions. We are all guilty of it. While no one will disagree that some schools of education fail to prepare future teachers adequately, most classroom teachers today will admit very quickly that it is impossible to prepare teachers for everything they will encounter in the classroom, particularly when most colleges only have two years to work with students.

How much time should schools of education devote to teaching about multiple types of intelligence? How much time to maintaining good classroom discipline? How much time for coping with and preparing students for myriad standardized tests? What about creating exciting lessons, working with apathetic students, maintaining high academic standards, modifying lessons for special needs students, using appropriate technology in the classroom, and what about completing all of the paperwork that pops up in teacher boxes, breeds in teacher email boxes, and seems to grow each year? And, how much time should schools of education devote to preparing future teachers to address all of the changes in schools, students, materials, laws, administrators, and curriculum requirements they will experience when they enter their own classrooms?

And, let's not forget that along the way it might be an excellent idea for these college students to actually learn the material that they will teach in the future!

Is it even possible to prepare college students to become successful K-12 teachers?

Just as society often has outrageous expectations for teachers, it also appears that we may have unrealistic expectations for schools of education.

Yes, there are many, many things that good schools of education can do to prepare future teachers; however, when those optimistic, caring, and talented teachers enter classrooms of their own, they often confront situations they are not prepared to handle. When you have learned to create dynamic lessons that worked beautifully in student teaching, what do you do when you present that same lesson to students who are apathetic, or hostile, or unprepared to handle the academic rigor of the lesson? If teachers have prepared an outstanding lesson on a new novel that they know will interest their students, what do they do if the school has insufficient copies of the book and no money to purchase new copies? How many wonderful, energetic and caring young teachers are able to teach appropriately when they must teach the most challenging students in the most impoverished schools and provided few, if any, mentors to guide them?

Yes, new teachers do indeed need to know how to read test scores and how to assess the progress of their students, but sometimes that can be an ambitious goal to young teachers who are just trying to survive the day and keep kids on task and engaged in learning.

Instead of criticizing schools of education, I wish educators and policy officials would realize that it is time to revamp how we prepare teachers, and, most importantly, I wish we would recognize that preparing teachers only BEGINS in those schools of education.

If we really want to improve schools and train young people to become inspiring, proficient, and dedicated teachers who help students make tremendous progress, we need to pair new teachers with successful experienced teachers who will mentor them for the first 3-5 years that they teach. Most importantly, these dedicated, successful, and experienced mentors would not agree to mentor a new teacher in addition to their existing duties. Instead, they would be given a free class period to work daily with the young teachers they mentor.

This process would ensure that when new teachers experience the multitude of problems, frustrations, irritations, and challenges that all teachers face, they will not have to face them alone because they will have caring mentors nearby who will help them navigate the challenges instead of having to muddle through the morass of problems on their own.

We may not know for sure how to create excellent teachers in college. We do, however, know that some dynamic experienced teachers continue to inspire, challenge, and motivate students each day regardless of the obstacles. Why not give them the opportunity to teach a new teacher one-on-one what they have learned through many years inside America's classrooms?

via www.boston.com

"Business leaders complain that many of today’s engineering graduates, trained as abstract thinkers, have too little grounding in the actual practice of working with others to deliver innovative products amid time and budget constraints."

Teachers of gifted and academically advanced students know the importance of teaching students to work together in groups, particularly those students who prefer to do all of their work alone.

The first email arrived a little after 8:00 on Friday night with the subject heading “Major Crisis.” Two students needed help because they were having a “panic attack” since they couldn’t access one of the school’s online tools they needed for their group project.

The second email arrived a couple of hours later from a group of students who were upset because they could not access the same website and thought they had lost all of their work.

We resolved the problem by Saturday morning, but in the meantime, too many students were stressed out on a Friday night about an assignment that wasn’t due for days. Why weren’t these students at the football game, or at a movie, or out on a date? Why were they doing homework on a Friday night? Why were they back at work on a class assignment on Saturday afternoon when the leaves were changing and the weather was gorgeous?

On Saturday I accessed Facebook to check my students’ online responses to this week’s topic of the week. I had asked students to read the essay “Growing Up Scripted” and then respond to Doyle’s Assertion that today’s teenagers have little freedom. I posted the article a couple of weeks ago. Here it is again if you missed it:

Growing Up Scripted

When I first posted the article, I stated, “Whereas Doyle makes many interesting points, I’m not sure that my students see themselves as having little individual freedom.”

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Although most students admitted that parents and teachers had good intentions, student after student described a life of too much work, too many activities, too much homework, and too little time to relax. Here are three examples:

“Sometimes I just wish that I could go back to the days when we would go outside after school and play with friends until it was dark and it was time for dinner. I wish sometimes that our generation could go back to the times like Doyle described and get “on our bicycles on summer mornings and came
back home at dinnertime.” [from an excellent young woman who is kind, intelligent, cheerful, a teacher's dream]

“I am going to enjoy only my second full day of fun this entire semester tomorrow. Between my working every Friday, Saturday, and Tuesday, church on Sunday, youth group on Monday, school throughout the week,
and a very consistent 3 a.m. bedtime, ‘fun’ is just no longer an option. The
pressure to get near perfect grades, score higher than should be done on
standardized tests, and dedicate ourselves to countless clubs and organizations to show our commitment to excellence has morphed our age group from one that is typically filled with learning from new experiences and an overall ‘fun’ high school into one that is more or less like slavery. We do not make our own choices; society pressures us into making them. We either agree and follow the stream, or we try to fight it, to retain our inherent freedom and drown. “ [from a National Merit Semi-finalist who is hard working, charming, funny, and a joy to be around]

“The many activities we try to cram into 24 hours is outrageous. Where did relaxation ever go? For the past semester the only “me time’ I can find is in the middle of the night with my family asleep and half my homework finished. I have to force myself to go downstairs, chill on the couch, watch some television, eat ice cream, and learn some guitar. Otherwise, I would be working from the time I wake up until I go to sleep. There needs to be a cutback in the amount of involvements we subject ourselves to.” [from a student ranked third in a class of over 700 students, a warm, intelligent,  highly motivated, and kind young man who also admitted in his post that he had previously given up a sport he loved because he no longer had time to play it and keep his grades up]

When the media and politicians focus on the apathetic students with low motivation, low test scores, and few skills, it’s easy to overlook the hard working, highly motivated, and extremely intelligent students who are close to drowning under college prep classes, AP classes, extra-curricular activities, community service projects, excessive testing, and living up to their parents’ expectations as well as the expectations they have for themselves.

As a teacher, I often struggle with how much work I should assign and how hard I should grade when I know that many of my students are taking 3 other AP courses (on a block schedule – four 90-minute classes daily). Instead of having a full year to learn the subject matter thoroughly, students now have to speed through the entire course in only one semester. In the old days, students had six 50-minute courses daily for the entire year (math, science, social studies, English, maybe a foreign language, and always at least one elective). Our most gifted and most dedicated and diligent students today, however, have no idea what an “elective” really is.

Sometimes I just want to tell these students to relax and play a little more and be happy if they have a “B.” Unfortunately, among these highly motivated students, a “B” is often equivalent to failure. They would like to slow down, but they don’t think they can and probably wouldn’t even know how to slow down if they had the option.

On Sunday night I noticed the Facebook status of one of my students:

I have wonderful students. I just wish I knew how to ease their stress. Suggestions?

via www.missoulian.com

What a sad story that explains the need to teach kids to accept and work with each other.

Friday afternoon as I drove home from school, I kept thinking of a
presentation that three of my students had delivered the previous day to one of my classes. In fulfillment of a class assignment, students in groups of three or four were required to research a controversial topic, prepare a portfolio of their findings, and present their information in a twenty-minute talk to the class.

When I first announced the assignment several weeks ago, Brooke, Morgan, and Connor formed a group and selected to research the new health care reforms so much in the press today. As the days progressed, however, they read and discussed, but they were clearly “over their heads.” The topic was much too complex for seventeen and eighteen years old to understand much less digest and then explain to their classmates. In one discussion I had with the group, they found a way to narrow their topic in the hopes that they would still be able to fulfill the requirements of the assignment, but we all knew that the topic was much too challenging, and I suppose they all wished that they had selected an easier topic.

Luckily, they kept working, and, perhaps just as importantly, they kept laughing, kept discussing, and kept working together.

Thursday was their presentation day, and I knew I would have to relax my standards slightly because the topic was just too complicated for high school students. I knew I would need to help them clarify some of their points and perhaps help them address questions their classmates posed.

When the group stood in front of the class, displayed their beautiful, very
professional PowerPoint, and walked the class through the current problems with
healthcare in America, the major reform efforts advocated by conservatives and
liberals, and the misconceptions about the published plans, Brooke, Morgan, and
Connor’s poise, knowledge, depth of understanding, and genuine desire to
explain what they had learned astounded me.

Instead of grading the group, I wanted to stand up and cheer!

In fact, as I later told them, I started to call out in a joking manner, “I didn’t know y’all were so smart!”

As I drove home Friday afternoon, I kept thinking about these students who persevered through such a demanding assignment and accomplished more than I ever would have expected from high school students, perhaps much more than even they thought they could accomplish.

Cheering as our students succeed in such a challenging task is one of the simple pleasures of teaching.

And the rainbow I saw as I drove home Friday afternoon just made the day a little more memorable!