What a week! It was so warm hot here. I guess that I can’t complain too loudly though. The Sun Parlor was not the hottest place in the province. It looks like it’s going to get cooler for the weekend. Isn’t that doing things backwards?
Read on to enjoy some of the recent posts from Ontario Edubloggers.
Simple Steps to Reopen Schools
This post comes from the mindfulness side of the Stillnesshub blog and written by Safina Hirji.
I’ve read a lot of blog posts recently about how to re-open schools. They’re typically full of ideas about the mechanical and logistical side of things. All of that is really important for safety and I’ll admit to reading many of them.
This post takes a different tact though.
It focuses on students. What a concept! But, it’s not the sort of thing dealing with assessment and evaluation, content, and other teacher things. True to the theme, Safina deals with student mindfulness. She touches on four areas.
- Mental Health and Well-Being through Mindfulness
- Individualized Learning Opportunities
- Mindfulness with acquiring knowledge and building skills
- Accessing the right Tech Tools for Collaborative, Synchronous Learning
It’s a good read and a powerful reminder that opening schools is more than unlocking doors.
How Not to Start Math Class in the Fall – 2020
Mark Chubb’s post is a nice followup to Safina’s. Like her post, he’s got a great deal of concern for the student and their re-introduction to school, specifically for mathematics.
I suspect that most teachers go through a process of pre-testing to assess strengths, weaknesses, and current levels of understanding in the first part of a mathematics class.
But this is not a regular year, whatever that is. We know that things have been less, far less, than idea over the past while. Then, add two months for summer holiday.
Mark takes these notions and expands with recommendations about just how to start and a list of things to reflect on.
We’re still an unknown period of time away from knowing when and how things will open but there’s some great inspiration here to get things going in the back of your mind at least.
Amanda Potts says she “hate the poem I wrote” and that’s a shame because it’s a very power piece of media.
Inspired by the recent announcement that schools would remain closed for the rest of spring, her first reaction was that the air had been sucked out of the room.
I’m not a big poetry critic but I really felt that she laid her teaching soul bare with her thoughts and I’ll bet that you’d feel the same way.
It starts…
No more waiting
for people who don’t know me
to make a decision about
my life
my family’s life
my students’ lives
my community’s lives.…
From the Our Dad’s Shoes blog devoted to issues about Fathers and Fatherhood comes this post, from Will Gourley. It is actually a post he’d written in the past and brought forward at this time. It fits nicely into the theme.
He discusses four attributes of fathers:
- Consistent
- Fair
- Honest
- Protective
and does a great job about it and offering a tribute to his father.
There is a natural connection to teaching because, as we all acknowledge, our first teachers were our parents.
My List Of 10 Self-Reg Things That I’ve Learned
From the Self-Regulation blog, Aviva shares a list of things that she’s learned about self-regulation and herself at these trying times.
- Exercise
- Breaks
- Fidget toy
- Too much social media
- OK to put yourself first
- Social stressors are online
- Why and why now?
- Stress behaviours multiply online
- Saying hello
- Importance of routine
Aviva joined Stephen Hurley and me as a guest host on This Week in Ontario Edublogs, did a nice job and got a chance to elaborate. There were three of these topics that I singled out to hear her speak about, in addition to writing about it.
Fidget Toy – she sees a need for one of these in her future as she hesitates to jump into discussions with students. I had to smile, I play with my mouse when I’m listening to others
Social stressors are online – we all know about the stresses due to social media but what about the social interaction that goes on in the online classroom. When to jump in, when to lay back, …
Saying hello – Aviva notes that it’s OK for some students to jump into a class and not necessarily be active for the entire session. It’s OK just to say hello and sit back and watch. Just being there can be enough at times
From the STAO blog, this is a really interesting resource unit.
Who doesn’t get up and get a daily charge with coffee?
This is a free to download secondary school curriculum complete with the expectations that can be addressed with its use.
Pandemic Reflections: Surrender as a Survival Technique
I know that Tim King speaks for thousands of teachers in this particular post. He lashes out at many things, many people that are players in this “absolutely terrible school year.”
I like the success story that he shares (and had pictures on Facebook documenting it) when he and family were allowed into the school to put together some computers for colleagues.
I can understand his feeling of exhaustion but was taken aback when he indicated that he was feeling defeated. I’ve never heard that from him. Then I look at my own household. My wife is delighted when she needs to leave the place to address some essential service in town.
There are so many lessons to be learned from those on the front lines during this time. As Tim notes, our leaders had assumptions about the readiness for a shift in teaching and it’s been proven wrong over and over again.
For me, the low point of all this was the political statement about expecting teachers and students to be regularly engaged in synchronous communications. For that to work, so many assumptions had to be made. I know that many teachers have tried and some have been successful but I suspect they would have been successful without the directive anyway.
Please click through and enjoy these posts in their entirety. There’s so much great thinking.
Then, make sure that you’re following these folks on Twitter.
- Safina Hirji – @SafinaHirji
- Mark Chubb – @MarkChubb3
- Amanda Potts – @Ahpotts
- Will Gourley – @WillGourley
- Aviva Dunsiger – @avivaloca
- STAO – staoapso
- Tim King – @tk1ng
This post originated on:
https://dougpete.wordpress.com
If you read it anywhere else, it’s not the original.
doug --- off the record 