Teacher education

Here are some of the key quotes from the Conservative Party s Social Justice Policy Group s paper on addictions .particularly in step with \ journal ‘is not negotiable’ approaches to education to children in greatest need. It also seems to be in step with the concerns of scientific experts on cannabis.
With the understanding of the real dangers of drug abuse and addiction.

Systematic carefully designed research to test the impact of different approaches [to what they call addictation education] – scientific, informational, experiential and personal, and peer led interactive – to be tested and compared across different school settings is required. Impact measures need to look at comprehension and retention in addition to longer term behaviour change. This requires a ‘capture and recapture’ method or other form of longitudinal, cohort study.

Filed under: Conservatives

Stick that on your power cord!

Drink and Drugs News highlight a series of criticisms Conservatives # 8217, Social Justice Group # 8217, with reliance on paper Includes what we said:budget, after assessment, should be primarily directed to detoxification as part of rehabilitation, with the unique advantage of the prison setting and length of sentence. (Section 3.3.3), a therapeutic community and 12-step programs in every prison wing. We propose an extension of the existing 16 such special programs (which are currently mainly of RAPT and Phoenix Futures) for each prison in the yard. (Section 3.3.3) Our immediate recommendations within the current framework is to:

mrschili
March 15, 2007 at 6:03 am

Welcome, Saintseester! I love my readers, and new ones make me happy!

Just to update you all on this little situation; I’ve not heard a peep from our boy Dave. My suspicion is that I called his bluff; he wanted me to cave to his (oh so eloquent) argument without calling anyone else in on the party. I’m pretty sure he’s smart enough to know that his “excelent” and “factual” research paper would probably get a LOWER grade from another teacher, and he’s not willing to risk that.

What I didn’t point out to him when he complained about how little the extra credit changed his grade was that, while I was taking four zeroes off his average, he was adding two ON by not doing his homework. I’m a drooling moron when it comes to math, but even *I* can figure out the effects of that!

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9 Comments.
Organic Mama
March 7, 2007 at 2:56 pm

DEEEEEP Breath.

Hey, there HAS to be a starting point. You are their teacher and you must continue to show them examples of good writing regularly so they see (god I hope so) how it can be done. Why not ask them if they think THEY can write as well as one of your fave pieces of short writing and when they say no, insist that they produce a list of the issues they see standing in their way. Who knows what you’ll get?

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meg4meg
December 14, 2006 at 8:08 pm

Mrs. Chili,
I am honored you would want to print and share me with your class. Permission granted!
Meg @ The Anonymous Truth

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1 Comment.
jrh
December 10, 2006 at 8:56 am

This doesn’t belong here, but as a reply to “what should I have my students read?” post…
Songs: I love the imagery in I’ve Been Delivered by the Wallflowers and I love the analogies in Breathe by Anna Nalick (also like that she acknowledges how we analyze and interpret lyrics and writing to suit our own needs).
Articles/columns: Try Rick Reilly’s column at the back of SI for humor/pop-culture/sports writing.

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8 Comments.
feather
December 9, 2006 at 9:01 am

I was so eager to get to the bits about the books that I missed the part where you talked about me. I agree with your mom about history. I am perhaps over-preoccupied with it. I expand my reverence of it to all things in life — I just talk about the history of literature because words are what I think about the most — but context is terribly important to me. It makes it hard for me to have serious discussions with anyone — I qualify too much, and am too aware of what I do not know.

History in regards to peoples’ lives is trickier. I’ve studied enough psychology to have thought a lot about the lifelong influences that early childhood environment, experiences, and even, yes, genetics have in determining the life story of a person. I think — I hope — that these things can be changed, but I can’t discount their importance any less than I could ignore the role that the Bible has had in shaping western literature. It isn’t the same at all. But at the very least I think it’s vital for an individual to understand their personal history before it can be changed. I find myself wanting to fall back on Freudian terminology and say that it’s necessary to bring history to the conscious level to prevent it from festering in the shadowy subconscious and spawning one or many of his rather brilliant defense mechanisms.

Since I’m speaking Freudishly, I don’t mean to project or assume. It’s just that it’s hard for me to think about the history of literature without equating it to the much more immediate personal histories. This is because, in moods of grand idealism, I tend to think of literature as the most perfect reflection of human nature, a centuries-spanning illustration of the pains and joys we grapple with in our own relatively small lifetimes. So, for me, thinking about the importance of history to literature is almost the same as considering personal histories in human lifetimes. Same concepts, different scales…

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The DCSF have published a review of the impact of drinking on young people.  These are the risk and protective factors the authors identify which are associated with alcohol misuse by children and young people.

Risk Factors

Protective Factors

Original source : http://www.drugeducationforum.com/blog/?ArticleID=… Filed under: Uncategorized

Youth and the schools population – EMCDDA.

EMCDDA have made the figures from the last school survey about drug use available on their website; from which comes the above table.

Original source : http://www.drugeducationforum.com/blog/?ArticleID=… Filed under: Uncategorized

A Cup of Chocolate.

This video isn’t exactly aimed at children and young people, but it’s an interesting take on talking about addiction from the Cumbria Users Project.
More on how it was developed in Drink and Drugs News.

Original source : http://www.drugeducationforum.com/blog/?ArticleID=… Filed under: Uncategorized

Drug Test Your Kids? (2).

The News of the World follows it’s sister paper the Times in reporting the marketing (presumably largely via mentions in newspapers) of drug testing kits to parents.
 
They do a classic balancing act by getting one person to set out the case for and another to argue against their use.
Setting out the case for drug testing your children is the paper’s agony aunt, Jane Butterworth:
I don’t

Original source : http://www.drugeducationforum.com/blog/?ArticleID=… Filed under: Uncategorized

World Drug Report 2009.

The UNODC have published their World Drug Report for this year and while I can’t claim to have read each of the 300+ pages I have been searching through for things that might be of interest to this audience.

Here’s a slideshow with what I found:

Original source : http://www.drugeducationforum.com/blog/?ArticleID=… Filed under: Uncategorized

Day twenty-six in the 30 Days to Being a Better Blogger series was yesterday and asked us to look at Day 26: Tag, you’re it . Essentially, Steve discussed what tags were, the importance of tags and using effective tags.

This was an easy one for me. On the external front, I have always tagged each entry with “virtual school”, “cyber school”, “high school” and “education” – as those were the places I wanted to show up in the Technorati searches. Beyond that I tag based upon the specific topic of the entry – usually including geographic tags, descriptive tags, organizational tags, tags for major events (e.g., conferences), etc.. I also use the same terms I use in my tags in the categories field in WordPress as well.

So, even if Technorati is showing me no love whatsoever (see Day Fifteen and Day Seventeen ), I’m still tagging…

UPDATE: Educator Announcements – November 26, 2008.

Thanks! I should let you know that the updated version is out in 2009 and has many more schools. It’s a very different world in (almost) 2009 than it was in 2006 when I wrote the first edition.

Comment by Tom Nixon — November 27, 2008 @ 5:14 pm | Reply

Voting For The Canadian Blog Awards.

Well, a few weeks back I mentioned the Canadian Blog Awards (see Canadian Blog Awards ). Jokingly I reminder folks that I was Canadian (I say jokingly because there wasn’t an education category and because much of my blogging content is not Canada – and lately is simply re-posts of things that people send me or things I find).

Anyway, it appears the joke is now on me as someone nominated me (and thanks to whomever that was).

The voting is available at:

Canadian Blog Awards – Vote 2008

You can find me under the Best Professional/Career Blog in the Lifestyle category. Polls for Round 1 close around the middle of Saturday, 29 November 2008 to give the folks at the Canadian Blog Awards time to count the votes and set-up the final round of voting.

So, since I’m there take a look at the other folks and if you feel I’m worth the click, by all means vote for Virtual High School Meanderings. And thanks in advance for your consideration.

organic mama
October 22, 2006 at 5:14 pm

What is also so galling is that this is a viable conversation topic AT ALL. Will they train the students on effective blocking and/or throwing techniques? What about the counseling for those students who worry about A. whether it will ever happen and B. what if they don’t do it right. Doesn’t this sound like satire? Why not body armor? How about we stop the GUNS in this flipping country!! Apologies for soapboxing, but this is INSANE!!

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More Musings About Current Events.
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The superintendent of our school district called my cell phone Monday morning and left a message inviting me to watch the school board meeting on public access cable on Monday night. The first thing I have to say is DAMN! School board meetings are BORING!

As promised, the superintendent spoke about school security, and rather early in the meeting (thank heaven!). While he talked a lot about locked doors and security cameras, crisis preparedness and how closely the school district works with the city’s police and fire departments, he didn’t mention anything about EDUCATION.

I really think many of our current school violence problems can be alleviated through education. We need to TEACH kids how to deal with their stress just like we teach them language, mathematics and how to avoid drug use. We need to show children that it’s not okay to cope with your problems with violence. As responsible adults in schools and other child-rich environments, we need to be aware of which of our students come from homes and family situations that may be prone to pass, shall we say, less-than-ideal social skills to the students. We need to know which students share their homes with guns.

Let me say that again: We need to know which children share their homes with guns.

Why do I want to invade the general privacy of some families by knowing whether the household owns a gun? The same superintendent who spoke about door locks and security cameras wrote to me last week in response to my email. He told me that, when he was principal of my daughters’ school about ten years ago, a fifth grader brought a .375 to school, and that the weapon had been discharged in a classroom by accident. Locks on school doors and security cameras would have done nothing to prevent this.

When I was strolling up and down our city’s main street during the annual autumn festival this past weekend, I saw that our police station had a tent set up along side the merchants and service companies. An officer stood in full uniform behind a bin of trigger locks. A bin of FREE trigger locks. A bin of free trigger locks standing behind a sign that essentially said “please take one – no questions asked.” While no one was hurt in the .357 incident, a trigger lock could have prevented the punchline of the whole story (though it could be argued that a nine year old having access to a gun in the first place should be a felony offense on the part of the parents).

It’s all about education. We need to teach parents to be responsible with the care and keeping of whatever weapons they feel they need to possess. We need to teach children to deal with their feelings in socially acceptable ways. We need to teach everyone to see themselves in others and to do no harm.

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SoftChalk Innovators in Online Learning Series

Hello Michael,

Innovators webinars highlight extraordinary work done by SoftChalk clients. They are aboutthe pedagogy, not the technology.

This Wednesday see how one school system is creatinglessons for the 21st Century Frameworkusing SoftChalk. Click here for details .

In January see the work of our youngest teacher, 10 year old Adora Svitak, who will show how sheteaches the importance of writing and integrating technology. Click here for details .

To learn more about why so many educators believe that SoftChalk is the ONLY choice for easy lesson content development…..

-register for one of our online live demonstrations at www.softchalk.com/webinar

-check out our newly updated Quick Tour Videos at www.softchalk.com/demo.html

-explore sample lessons at www.softchalk.com/lb_examples.html

Please feel free to forward this email to your colleagues who may have an interest in creating more engaging on-line lessons for their students.

Please contact us with questions or concerns.

Your SoftChalk Team
team@softchalk.com www.softchalk.com 877-638-2425 (toll free USA/Canada)

Guest Blogger: Eddie Reisch – New Zealand Virtual Learning Network.

Again, continuing the guest blogger feature… This third entry is from a recent colleague that I met this past August while I was in Wellington at the Distance Education Association of New Zealand’s conference.

The Virtual Learning Network is ending its 5 year at the end of 2008. Another successful year with our focus this year on supporting our year 1 to 13 students with a mixture of video Conference, Adobe Connect and Learner management System supported lessons. These are the stats as at Nov 2008:

Current Total Schools: 238
Current Total Teachers: 143
Current Total Courses: 184
Current Total Classes: 189
Current Total Enrolments: 1141

A number of new areas have been explored this year and we will be implementing a lot of them in 2009

If you follow this link it will give you a pretty comprehensive outline of what is going on a part from the info provided above.

Kia Ora
Eddie Reisch
Virtual Learning Network
Web Site: http://www.virtuallearning.school.nz

Mrs.Chili
October 7, 2006 at 1:17 pm

The prevailing wisdom is that infinitives (the “to” version of the verb – “to go” “to eat” “to drive”) should never be split. According to my Webster’s New World English Grammar Handbook, the “rule is a holdeover from early studies of English based on observations about Latin. In Latin, infinitives cannot be split because they are single words, not two words as they are in English. Because splitting the infinitve is still often frowned upon, you probably should avoid doing so as often as possible. But at times, awkward constructions may result, and you must decide whether splitting the infinitive or sounding awkward – or even inane – is the greater error.”

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1 Comment.
Kizz
September 29, 2006 at 8:09 am

It’ll also tell you who reads their e-mail and who brings homework in on time. It’s a brilliant tactic.

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3 Comments.
HomeFireBlue
September 25, 2006 at 10:47 am

Mmmmmmm … Dunkin Donuts …

I’m sorry, what?

Oh! Well that just sucks about the loss of both your week and your classroom!

I’d’ve busted in on Chef, crashed about a bit, said, loudly: “OH, Jeez! SORRY! *crash* I thought this was MY room! Guess I’ll have to talk to the PRINCIPLE! *tee*hee*PUSH!* Oh dear, was that your souffle?”

So … what happened to the donuts?

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1 Comment.
Kizz
September 24, 2006 at 1:33 pm

Have fun! Can’t wait to hear all about it.

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sphyrnatude
April 3, 2009 at 9:29 am

personally, I LIKE this idea. As someone who is definitely considered evil by many, I want to know how much they’re going to pay me to shut up.

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4 Comments.
sphyrnatude
March 27, 2009 at 7:22 am

I’m still amazed that you hung in for three years. I looked at teaching there, and I just couldn’t bring myself to teach elementary school science as “college”. Of course, from what I’ve seen of your work, the English dept. is a lot higher level than the sciences….

In any case, Job Well Done. I’ve watched you grow through it, and the students that you’ve touched have definitely benefited.

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2 Comments.
fermat
March 19, 2009 at 10:44 pm

Sounds like someone was trying to use “legalese” and didn’t bother with the dictionary.

How about “incur”?

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9 Comments.
Mrs. Chili
March 6, 2009 at 12:25 pm

CTG, that’s exactly what *I* wonder, too. HOW did this kid pass the prerequisites to get into MY class? WHO was his composition teacher, anyway?!

Kizz, I have to be careful with my facial expressions – I’m sure I’m the dictionary illustration under the definition for “WHA?!” (though, judging from the looks on my students’ faces, none of them is getting it, either…)

Mamacita and Melissa – I almost HOPE this kid has some sort of diagnosable disorder – at least then there’d be some hope for him. At this point, though, he’s not availed himself of the extra attention I’ve recommended; if it’s up to him to make himself better, I think he kind of IS doomed…

Sphyrnatude, I’m SO glad you’re back – I’ve missed your blogging voice on my computer. Yeah; I’ve not “given up” on the boy, but I’m not killing myself about him anymore, either. I’ve literally done everything within my responsibility (and then some, really) – the rest is out of my hands.

He DOESN’T particularly upset by his lack of progress, Dingo, no. I got an encouraging email back from my boss, though, who essentially told me to not fret about it as I’m doing everything I’m supposed to be doing for this kid (and I’ve got all the paperwork to back it up). Still, I won’t be at all surprised when he comes back at me mad about his grade…

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