Channel one idea

I have talked about watching channel one before and I assumed that everyone watches it or at least knows what it is.  It is the news channel that comes on everyday of the week for about 10-15 minutes. It talks about issues in the news that concern our students.  Anyways, it mentioned grading the parents.  (Did anyone else see that)  I loved all the feedback that came back from it.  They said things like the parents have other things to worry about and should NOT be bothered with it.  I almost wanted to laugh out loud in front of the students.  I am a parent and I spend 7 hours a day with everyone else’s kid and still come home and work with my son on home work and spending time with him.  They said that it was working in one part of Pennsylvania but it didn’t work somewhere else because the questions were to specific or personal.  like:  how much time do you spend with you student and do you help them on homework.  I am beginning to think that teaching is the fall guy for poor parenting.  We have to stop giving our students food because their parents haven’t raised them with good eating habits so we have too.   The students don’t get enough exercise so make the school make it mandatory for 4 years of gym.  We have students that can’t learn or sit in class so they are classified with an IEP or 504 for the teachers to work with.  I am sorry to get so mad, but the parents feel that it is our job to teach their kids: respect, good character, courtesy, honor, discipline, and then what ever subject they may actually be teaching.  I would love to know how many new programs have been implemented in the last 5-10 just to accommodate poor parenting. We now have Character Counts in the elementary schools; no food in our classrooms at all; No sweet tea served during lunch; and new guidelines just for our school cafeteria to keep our students healthy.   Can anyone add any more?? I would love to keep an ongoing list.  If you want to watch the Channel One video go to www.channelone.com to watch it on livewire.  Thanks for letting me rant.    

blog questions

I am very frustrated with my blog and why I waited to the last week to ask I don’t know, but does anyone know how to bring up a blog that you have already read.  Once I read them they disappear the next time I long on and several time I have wanted to look back at one.  I assume you can’t unless you have starred it, but I didn’t think it would hurt to ask.  Any takers??

Time Line

Ok, for the slow people (like me) is this our last week?  And do we have anything else due besides our project due and when is that due?  I just want to make sure that we are all on the same page, and I don’t really know our schedule like I should.  I do want to point out that I do plan on using what I learned in this course next semester in my classes.  I am going to work on getting a wiki up and running over Christmas that is password protected to post pictures and give the parents places to comment on what we are doing in class.  I also plan on taking the students into the lab every Friday to do a podcast over definitions or maybe just a “diary” type of what happened to them in math class that week.  I will also look at doing a class blog where they all give me their addresses and I add them to an aggregate for the students to use to post questions on over a weekend or as a way of communicating with each other or me when ever they want to.  If I get their blogs, then I will be able to monitor what they are doing or question for the students to post the answers to on their blog.  I sure hope that I can pull this off well and am not creating too much work for me.  We’ll see!!  Hope everyone else is getting lots of ideas too.  Any math ideas or ideas in general you wan to share with me I would love it.  THanks    

Discipline Disaster

http://dancingnancy533.wordpress.com/2007/12/08/are-you-smiling-now/This blog by Nancy is the greatest link to discipline I have found yet.  THanks Nancy!! I have not only read that blog, but many of the links to links to links (if you get my drift).  I recently had a chat with one of the other teachers in the building about some of the students that we have in common.  She was asking me if they were just as unruly in my class as in hers.  Well it made me feel a little better knowing that she is having trouble too because this is her 33rd year teaching. It also discouraged me because of the same reason.  Just thought I would share.