Teacher education

This past week I have been trying to find other blogs, or at least entries from other blogs on the virtual school movement. A few that I came across were Althouses post on Virtual High School , Snooze Button Dreams entry entitled Virtual School , Kimberly’s Number 2 Pencil’s post titled Surf the web, earn an A , and Joanne Jacobs entry on Online classes for all . The essence of these entries look at who virtual schools are for and how they will affect the quality of education.

I’ll leave the second issue for another day, but I wanted to look at the first issue in this entry. Many of you who have been reading my blog to date know of my own bias towards students in rural schools who are disadvantaged because their schools aren’t able to attract teachers qualified to teach specialized courses or they simply don’t have the enrolment figures to justify allocating a teacher to so few students.

But let me through out the issue in another way. The legislature here in Georgia, has decided that not only will the publically-funded, state-wide virtual high school cater to students in the public system, but will also be available to students in private schools and homeschooled students. While I am no expert on the homeschooling movement, I do know that I had a homeschooled student in one of my online Advanced Placement courses a few years back.

This girl was an exception student who was in my course for two reasons: the content was at a level where she felt that she was unable to do it on her own and her family were unable to support it, and she was interested in trying out an online course because it was something that was becoming quite popular at the university that she was interested in attending. It was at about the same time that the Pennsylvania Homeschoolers Association was beginning to offer their online courses (see http://www.pahomeschoolers.com/courses/index.html ).

While the feelings towards the online opportunities offered to homeschooled students by virtual schools was mixed in the four blogs above, I can’t see how these opportunities could be a bad thing?!? Like any instructional product, there are online courses that are well designed and online courses that aren’t so well designed. Like any traditional classroom, there are some online teachers who are quite good and some online teachers that aren’t so good. However, I would argue that in many of the specialized areas (such as the AP courses offered by the Pennsylvania Homeschoolers Association) are beyond the ability of many parents of homeschooled students to support in a way that maintains the academic rigour of these courses.

But like I said, I’m no expert in homeschooling So let’s hear from those out there who know a little bit more about the homeschool movement than I. What do y’all think?

Tags: virtual school , cyber school , homeschool , high school , education

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:

This blog is taking a break until early September. drug and alcohol services.

David Chater, head of policy at youth charity Rainer, says the tax is a brave proposal.  The treatment tax is a brave step and is really positive, it would double the budget for drug and alcohol services. It takes a brave politician to say they  increase tax, especially on something like alcohol.

But Chater is less impressed with the report&s emphasis on abstaining from drugs and alcohol.  Measures like reclassifying cannabis as a class B drug, risk dragging a lot more young people into the criminal justice system. The best bits are outside the addiction section, with ideas for family support that will do more to tackle substance misuse than abstinence programmers.

Filed under: Conservatives

Lara
December 2, 2009 at 11:53 pm

Okay, I’m going to take a moment to not be modest at all and say that vocab is one of the parts of my job I do really well. And most of the reason why I do it well is because I make my kids understand those words inside and out, mostly by assessing them in lots of ways. They have to be able to match it to synonyms, match it to antonyms, define it, use it in a sentence, and/or recognize whether it is being used correctly in someone else’s sentence. I had numerous students (and parents of students) who had me last year come thank me because of how much their vocab scores improved on SATs and other standardized tests.

All that to say that I totally agree with you – memorizing a nonsense (to them) definition is useless if they don’t actually know what the word means. Oh those dumb teenagers. How we love them anyway.

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3 Comments.
Edward Carson
November 17, 2009 at 9:00 am

I keep a file of old letters, notes, cards, emails, etc in my desk for those tough days. I pull it out when I am having one to remind me that I love this. For me, its usually not students that make my days tough. You are a great teacher. That is clear.

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1 Comment.
Edward Carson
October 12, 2009 at 9:02 am

I have heard of a number of progressive schools that do this. I assume you still assign a letter, right? Man, I have a hard enough time getting letter grades turned in on time. I do think your method is a more reliable one.

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Nothing to do with virtual schooling or K-12 online learning from the remainder of the day, I wanted to use this forum to remind folks – particularly Canadians – of a dark day in our history.

Twenty years ago today, a 25 year old man walked through the doors of Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal and spent the next 45 minutes hunting women. In the end 14 women lay dead, over a dozen others injured, with the killer having committed suicide. Stories surfaced of how he walked into a classroom, separating the male and female students, then allowing the male students to leave as he began shooting. In the days following, it was discovered that Marc Lepine had applied to the engineering program at Ecole Polytechnic, but was rejected. He blamed this rejection on the school’s affirmative action policy, which he perceived to be passing him over in favour of women. [For those unfamiliar with these, the CBC Archives has a fairly good entry on the Montreal Massacre .]

Months later, the federal Government passed gun control legislation. You see, even those Lepine had been turned down for the military service because he was deemed to have mental issues. And while the military found him unfit to carry a gun, the regulations in Canada at the time allowed him to simply fill out a form, check a box that he was mentally fit, and then he received a permit to allow him to own any kind of firearm available for purchase in Canada – from a simply handgun to a military-style, semi-automatic assault rifle. Primarily due to the events on 06 December 1989 the laws were eventually changed to require a much higher standard for obtaining a firearms acquisition certificate, many of the weapons previous available were banned, and all gun owners had to register their guns in a national registry.

The current Conservative (i.e., right-wing – not the former Progressive Conservatives of old which were more centre/centre-right – this current group is made up largely of elements from the far right of the former Reform Party) have essentially left the gun registry die. It is still on the books, but the Government has not provided the funding, have not done any of the maintenance, etc. to the point where the registry is so out of date that it has become a useless tool for law enforcement. The current Government is even floating ideas that would lift the current restrictions on certain hunting weapons that play well to their rural and western base (as if somehow a rifle used to shoot a deer couldn’t have been used almost as effectively as the weapon that Lepine chose to go hunting with).

On this day, a day which has become known in Canada as a National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women , remember these women and continue to fight for kind of gun control that would help in preventing this kind of gendercide from happening again

eatsbugs
June 29, 2007 at 11:14 am

Thanks for commenting on my feast! Hope your summer vacation is going/went well. You’ll have to give us a recap here, or link to your personal blog for that recap. Either way, I want to hear about it!

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8 Comments.
sphyrnatude
June 20, 2007 at 7:28 am

I have to disagree with this one. Yes, Beth was definitely out of line – both ethically and proffesionally. As for Lisa, her is unfortunate, and I do sympathise with her position. However, as you stated, if she had come to you BEFORE the grades were finalized, you could have addressed these issues then. By waiting until after, Lisa has created her own problem.
Think about it: how many other students do you have that would benefit from an after-the-fact opportunity to make up unfinished (or at least unrecorded) work, or a chance to do abit more on the final exam? By extending this provoledge to Lisa you are unfairly penalizing the students that don’t have the same chance.
Another unfortunate reality is that in the real world, Lisa will have to deal with life crisis. If she is having problems at her job, and she wawits until her exit interview to explain the reasons, she’s not going to keep her job. If she is proactive, and makes sure her boss understands her situation, her boss (if a good one) will make whatever allowances possible to allow for her situation.

Unfortunately, one of the unspoken lessons that college is supposed to teach is that the individual has to deal with the results of their actions (or inaction).

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This report suggests that there’s more research going on around the Strengthening Families programme:
"The Strengthening Families Program is one of the most promising universal family-based preventive interventions, " said Coatsworth. "Research shows that it delays the onset of substance use, improves parenting practices, increases youths’ resistance to peer pressure and reduces

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

links for 2009-12-17.

One Response
Synchronium says: 17 December, 2009 at 2:25 pm

Here’s a worthwhile link:
http://www.theargus.co.uk/news/4796771.Worthing_drug_scare_teen_died_of_natural_causes/

Every story on mephedrone recently has included the above girl, and now it seems she died of something else. Somehow, I doubt this article will receive anywhere near as much publication as the initial report on her death.

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Drinkaware’s Youtube videos.

Here are a few videos that Drinkaware have put on their Youtube channel.

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

The making of evidence-based practice: The case of Project ALERT.

There appears to be an increasing interest in the way that evidence is being constructed in relation to drug prevention research.
You may remember that Prevention Action had a piece about the Society for Prevention Research’s (SPR) standards, which we covered here.
There was also a paper about how the evaluation of DARE had been conducted which suggested that there were issues about a level

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

Our close-knit community was dealt a severe blow by Hurricane Ike. Humble ISD campuses had mild to moderate damage and repair crews have been working from dawn until after dark to ready campuses for students as quickly as possible.

Humble ISD tentatively plans to re-open for students on Thursday, Sept. 25th. Support staff members in construction and maintenance should report to their supervisors beginning today, Thursday, Sept. 18. Child Nutrition personnel should report to their supervisors on Monday, Sept. 22nd. Campus and administrative personnel should report to work on Wednesday, Sept. 24th. Please share this information with your neighbors and co-workers – and be alert for updates and changes.

The annual Humble ISD Education Foundation Golf Tournament has been canceled. Reschedule information to be determined soon.

from the Humble ISD website .

Observer working overtime; Away game travel funding cut for football teams’ support systems in Humble ISD.

Looks like we are in an all out battle (notice I did not say war.) Only because this is just the beginning and it’s something that is not common knowledge, for the moment. I will be scratching about more on this later.

JENNIFER SUMMER from the Observer pens some hard core facts that I believe is just the beginning of just how deep the cuts will go, and how it will get the forces, the parent’s, panties in a bunch. It seems only when you hit them where it counts (Texas football) do we/they get involved, in an up roar, and down right nasty. Well, kids, we are well on our way. Maybe when we start cutting into Texas football will the masses come out and work on the lege, now! I’m posting the whole enchilada so everyone can see it in it’s full glory.

Away football games may have a different tune this season as Humble Independent School District had to cut funding for away games for the band and drill teams to ease the burden on an over-expended budget.

Facing a $17 million budget deficit and rising fuel costs, the district met with the fine arts director and band directors from all four high schools to make cuts that affect the students the least and continue with academic standards.

“We needed to cut $100,000 from the fine arts budget and left it up to the directors to decide what would be eliminated,” Karen Collier, Executive Director of Public Information, said.

The budget cuts included the band, drill team and cheerleaders and they are all still able to go to away games to support their teams but they will have to provide the funding themselves.

A few of the support organizations like the Booster clubs have stepped forward to make sure the audience is entertained and students are able to show off their talents.

“At Kingwood High School, we devised a plan where the $6,000 total will be split three ways between the All-Sports Boosters, The Fillies Boosters and our booster club, The Band Boosters,” said treasurer and parent, Jim Galegar.

“This year we feel we can commit $2,000 for this purpose. Next year, we will have to re-evaluate our funding to see if we can continue this. We are lucky enough to not have our students pay a band fee like other school districts to be a member of the band.”

The money these booster clubs are forking over will pay the bus drivers and buy the gas to get to the games.

The Booster clubs makes funds through the sale of concessions at the football game which will help fund some of the money needed for the away games.

While the Band Boosters does raise funds through their entertainment coupon book sales, a majority of that money is used to fund conventions, entry fees for contests, accompanists, clinicians, pre-UIL contest judges, local transportation, food for concessions and permits to name a few of the responsibilities of the club.

In the case of the Atascocita booster clubs, they are still new organizations and growing so they will be helping fund a few of the games, but if they take too much out of the budget they will not be able to afford other things that are budgeted for every year.

“We are planning to go to as many as we can. Currently, we have decided that we can only attend three out of the four of the away games. We are doing as much as we can right now,” Atascocita High School band director Larry Ward said.

“We are already asking the parents to pitch in and help us fund some activities and now we are asking again. Hopefully, there will be a resolution to this problem so we can all attend these away games.”

After the the budget cuts were announced, the directors met to make the decision of what could and what had to go under a directive by the administration.

Each school dealt with the budget cut independently, deciding what would work at their school and what would not.

“It was never about us not wanting to go to away games. We have thoroughly enjoyed traveling to these games in the past, we will just have to see what happens in the future,” Kingwood High School band director Destry Balch said.

Kingwood Park High School will also be receiving funds for travel for their organizations from several of their booster clubs and a couple of donators.

Kingwood Park High first opened in 2007, so a few of their booster clubs much like Atascocita High School are working on generating funds to support more programs which now include funds for traveling to away games.

Humble High School will be working out a program to see if they can attend any away games though since they are in a new district, their games will be located closer to home than the other high schools.

“While we do not know how our fundraising will go this year, we are hopeful that we can continue to bring in the kind of funds needed to keep our band program strong,” Jim Galegar.

“There seems to be a constant stream of kids wanting to be in band because of the excellent program we offer. Our booster club has always been thrifty with our budget and we are always looking for new income streams.”

With all budget concerns set aside, each band director are excited about the football season and performing at home games and the away games they are able to attend.

They are prepared to show off all of the hard work they did this summer to get incoming freshmen ready to march and learn new drills.

“It is amazing to watch a student learn how to be a band student,” Balch said.

“Watching and listening to them perform is what I love. Directing is an art form and all of the students’ success is a daily journey. We are excited about this band season and what is to come.”

For more information

Call Humble ISD at 281-641-1000.

Filed under: NACOL , NCAA , cyber school , education , high school , online teaching , virtual school , webinar — mkbnl @ 1:48 pm Tags: cyber school , education , high school , iNACOL , NACOL , NCAA , online teaching , virtual school , webinar

Friday Funnies.

Back to Friday this week… As always, courtesy of Darren at TADO .

- T3 Line

- Ram Needed

- Relationships

- My Car

- Debate

Until next week…

The Knight Scholarship Competition.

I received this in my inbox earlier today. For the virtual school teachers reading this, please pass this on to your students…

Hello Michael,

I hope you are well. To start I have been reading your blog for quite some time. I have two daughters and education is something I take very seriously when it comes to their future and online learning is something that as a parent I try to keep up with. I am contacting you today on behalf of The LEAGUE which is a school and web-based system for service learning that builds character and empowers young people to make a positive difference in their communities. I am writing today to inform you about a great scholarship opportunity that is being offered by The LEAGUE through funding provided by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. I thought of your blog because it seems like the perfect place to inform parents and teachers about this scholarship.

The KNIGHT scholarship is a national scholarship competition where 3 students will be awarded $5,000 each for their writings or reflections on their civic experiences in one of three categories: Persuasive Essay (building awareness and inviting action for change in your school, community or the world), Personal Narrative (experiences with service and volunteerism), or News Story (creating newspaper articles that reports acts of service and volunteerism by young people). The scholarship is open to high school seniors from all over the country, even students who are not part of a LEAGUE classroom can apply!

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation ( http://www.knightfoundation.org ) promotes excellence in journalism worldwide and invests in the vitality of 26 U.S. communities. Since 1954, the foundation has given more than $300 million in journalism grants.

Please visit the link below for a lesson plan that will help students develop the skills needed to write a persuasive essay, news story, reflective journaling, or personal narrative: http://www.learningtogive.org/lessons/unit224/ .

I hope you can join me in supporting The LEAGUE by informing your readers about this scholarship opportunity. For scholarship applications and additional information please visit: http://www.leagueworldwide.org/index.php?option=com_knightgrant&view=knightscholarship . Students must submit their applications before the March 6th deadline . I am available to answer any questions you may have and look forward to speaking with you soon.

All the best,
Holly Alonis
halonis@westglen.com

nhfalcon
June 1, 2006 at 7:39 pm

“If I can get you close enough, can you nail this sucker?”
“Yes sir. Now that I know what to listen for, I’ll bag him.”

I LOVE Jonesie’s tone of supreme self-confidence when he says that line: “I’ll bag him!”

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3 Comments.
Wayfarer
May 24, 2006 at 11:44 am

I’m all nervous about this and it’s not even my interview! Can you wear a wire or something and set up a live feed? Can we all go and sit outside the door? I totally can’t be there, but I totally WANT to.

This is worse than the season finale of “How I Met Your Mother”!

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1 Comment.
Kizz
May 13, 2006 at 10:49 am

WOO HOO!

Sorry so short, I have to run to go pat myself on the back for not say, “I told you so.”

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4 Comments.
Kizz
May 5, 2006 at 4:03 pm

Emma or Clueless are really good Jane Austen movies/adaptations and do good stuff about societal pressure. The Matrix isn’t lighter but it’s actiony.

It’s a fun topic, fun to continue to explore.

Congratulations!

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3 Comments.
Mrs.Chili
May 2, 2006 at 9:30 pm

Yeah, the waters turned a bit treacherous toward the end there. Part of it, I know, was my inexperience in navigating my boat, but much of the tempest was completely beyond my creation or control.

I’ll tell you this, though – I learned A LOT (one might say a ‘boat load’ if one were so inclined to lousy puns). I don’t begrudge the experience. Besides, the end result was that I ended up in a near-perfect placement; one that I could never have had otherwise.

The Universe provides.

And thank you for your good wishes!

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