Probably TMI, but I wore long pants and a sweat shirt for the dog walk this morning. It was so cool out there at the beginning (10 degrees) but it sure helped to work up a sweat.
For a Friday morning, here’s a look around the province at great content provided by Ontario Edubloggers.
Your Students Should Nap (and so should you)
Congratulations to Andrew Campbell for being recognized as one of the Top Canadian Educational Blogs. It says so on the link behind the badge on his landing page.
So, what does a high quality blog feature in its quest for cutting edge comments about education.
Napping.
The scientific research is clear that napping is good for us. A study showed that 10-12 year olds that took a midday nap had greater happiness, self-control, and grit; fewer behavioral problems; and higher IQ than students who didn’t.
And maybe a better command of buzzwords?
It won’t be the first study that goes ignored but it does beg a few questions.
- If schools are struggling to get 40 desks into a classroom, where will they find the same number of cots?
- If the kids nap, I’d want to too. We had a couch in the Business Department work area that we could flip a coin for
- Who’s going to supervise the kids lest you have a sleepwalker?
- Can you imagine the bad breath after wakey wakey time? Rush to the washrooms to brush?
- Are we getting paid for this?
- Who is going to break the news to the Ministry and the Government that this is a good idea? Or, in terms of public policy, the right wing newspapers?
- Who would be the experts in this field? Maybe a daycare worker from down the street?
I wonder how Tim King feels about STEAM then?
That’s been a hot item in education for the past few years. Keynote speakers, government grants here and there have all promoted the importance of the concept. Yet, as Tim notes in the post, there is no co-ordinated effort to make it a “thing” across the province.
Because, he notes, if it was a “thing” there would be funding, a curriculum, and recognition by universities and colleges.
Sadly, it could be taken as a slam to people that are trying their best to make it something (and some are doing great things) but it’s yet to rise to the standard of a curricular thing. The concept most certainly has value but, unlike other curriculum areas, it remains like a pickup game of baseball in elementary schools and an option in secondary schools.
It’s a shame that this pointless acronym has thrown a blanket over the grossly neglected curriculums of technology and engineering, while giving even more attention to two of the Disney princesses of academia. To be honest with you, I think technology and engineering would be just where it is now had this STEM focus never happened, which tells you something about how this ed-fad has gone down.
The Gift of Staying Connected – Thanks Andrew and Diana
This is a heart-warming story from Diana Maliszewski about connections with students who have since graduated.
There are so many takeaways to this story other than the wonderful remembrances that Diana shares. (We now know the secret to her yearbook)
It’s a reminder that connections are constantly being made and are remembered long after graduations. Can you go back to your hometown without taking a drive past your old school or university and have fond memories flow?
For non educators who view teaching as just an assembly line for students, they need to read and see the empathy and connections made here and how Diana chose to share them with us.
And for kids – it’s just not you having memories of your teacher – it works both ways.
Three lessons on Grit and Resilience
This is another very thoughtful post from Jennifer Casa-Todd although she actually provides us with four lessons. A couple of them are kind of close so we’ll cut her some slack.
The biggest head nod that I gave Jennifer’s post was actually in her first lesson:
Success is more likely when you work in manageable chunks
As a programmer, I set out a plan to do this, then this, then this, then this, and then put it all together. I always visualize a project as the sum of its parts. I’m not sure that I could do a more big idea approach without considering the sub-components.
It was always the way that things went in my Computer Science classes. It was easier for students to solve a problem if they worked in chunks. It also allowed them to get partial marks even if they couldn’t solve the big problem. When you’re walking around the room and asked for assistance, it was also easier to see and understand than looking at pages and pages of spaghetti code.
If there’s one piece of advice that people would be wise to consider, it’s this one. The other three are pretty good too!
HOW TO START THE SCHOOL YEAR OFF RIGHT
You know, if you could bottle that and sell it to teachers, you’d be a millionaire. Fortunately, there are all kinds of bits of wisdom about this.
This post is Kyle Pearce’s attempt at advice specifically for the mathematics classroom. I really like his ideas and concepts.
There are a couple of points that appear as statements that I think deserve to be fleshed out in greater detail.
Change their beliefs about math
Unfortunately, I see an underlying assumption here. While there are many students that don’t like mathematics, how about the kid like me that loved doing it? What would my belief change to? More importantly, just how would someone go about this – and doing so without dissing previous teachers in the process?
I’ve always wondered about the “beliefs about math” and wonder if it differs in grades 3, 6, 9 in Ontario over the other grades because of the impending year of preparing for the test. I think that would make for a great research study.
Establish expectations by painting a picture of what math class will look like
I’m curious about this one too – will all classes look the same? Will they all be functionally the same? Do you address homework while painting this picture?
“The More Strategies, the Better?”
There were three things that stood out to me in Mark Chubb’s post. He does use mathematics and a specific example for his purpose in the post.
- Is there value in knowing more than one way to solve a problem? I’d guess that the experienced mathematics teacher would argue yes until they’re blue in the face
- Mark does make reference to strategies that are “early understanding” versus those that are “sophisticated”. How does a student appreciate this? Does “sophisticated” equate to being more difficult? I had a university professor who just exuded a love for mathematics and the only word that I could think of for what he did when solving a problem was “elegance”. How do you get students so learned that their solutions become elegant?
- I really like the fact that Mark includes this in his post.
“Have discussions with other math educators about the math you teach”
Do you do that or do you just assume that you’re the teacher and there’s no room to grow and learn?
This is a wonderful post for anyone to read and understand. I can’t help but think of the teacher who is teaching mathematics for the first time. How do you bring them along and witness the wisdom and insights of experiences teachers?
Taking Old Town Road to School
Search YouTube for “Old Town Road” and sit back to see the many versions – live, karaoke, parode, etc. of the song.
Here’s another idea that’s also a great lesson for the classroom.
Then, check out the tags from this post from the Association for Media Literacy.
21st Century Literacies, association for media literacy, audience, codes and conventions, lil nas x, media literacy education, neil andersen, old town road
The post gives a wonderful lesson about how to take an original work and remix it so that it’s yours and address so many things along the way!
Need the lyrics – click here.
This whole activity just sounds like a whack of fun.
Your call to action this Friday morning —
- Read and enjoy the original posts
- Follow these bloggers on Twitter
- @acampbell99
- @mechsymp
- @MzMollyTL
- @jcasatodd
- @MathletePearce
- @MarkChubb3
- @A_M_L_
This post originally appeared on
https://dougpete.wordpress.com
If you read it anywhere else, it’s not the original.
doug -- off the record 
Please share your thoughts here. I’d enjoy reading them.