Teacher education

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

Today Sean toured the RESPOND shelter in Somerville, MA. RESPOND is a domestic violence agency that reaches out to women who are in desperate need of a helping hand. These women have been through some of the most difficult situations imaginable. This is something that Sean feels strongly about and will continue to support and stand up for in the future. He believes that these are the programs that cannot be cut from the budget, they provide a vital service that gives unparalleled support.

For more information on RESPOND, Inc. please visit www.respondinc.org .

Zoos Budget may be Restored.

Amidst a great amount of commotion, lawmakers and government officials have been pushing to repeal the budget cuts for Franklin Park and the Stone Zoos. Much debate will most likely continue because of cuts being made to other services across the commonwealth.

Thanks everyone for their calls, emails, and letters on this issue. As always, constituents should feel free to email, call, or respond to me on my blog. I can be reached at the office or on my cell phone 781-859-7781. My email address is Sean.Garballey@state.ma.us .

Summer’s Finally Here!.

It looks like we are FINALLY going to get some bright and sunny weather this weekend. Considering it’s been so long we thought we would give some tips for enjoying the weather safely. Here are a few tips to “stay cool” now that the weather has changed;

-Stay hydrated to avoid heat stroke

-Stay away from prolonged sun exposure

-Always wear sunscreen, even in the water where light is reflected and intensified The higher the SPF the more protection you get

-Arlingtonians should look into visiting the Reservoir beach (on Lowell Street and Westmoreland Ave)

Have a great weekend everyone!

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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mrschili
April 10, 2008 at 5:24 am

These are GREAT, Everyone! See how these little tricks stick in our heads?

Lanie, I like yours – Sweet Stuff (which is what we call dessert around Chez Chili) and Sand. That seems easier to remember than my trick of wanting two desserts. I may steal this – thanks, Mrs. Maybee!

Tense, I learned how to spell together as three words – to get her. I don’t remember who taught me that – I think it was a friend’s father – but I never misspelled that word ever again.

Jules, got any other fun tricks?

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1 Comment.
CaliforniaTeacherGuy
April 9, 2008 at 9:45 am

I’m holding…breathlessly!

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4 Comments.
Darci
March 17, 2008 at 11:05 am

I love this idea for a final. Is it possible that you can email me the format? I would use it for the Narrative final that I am giving at the end of the semester. My students missed this section due to me not taking over the class until mid-November so I will not be using the state periodic assesment. I love the idea of the paragraph edit option. I also include grammar as the warm-up so your opening is helpful. I would of course give credit in the footer.

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10 Comments.
Seth
April 5, 2008 at 9:09 am

So I’m a few weeks late on replying…. .but that’s the way things have been for me lately.

It’s amazing to me how we all forget to look at the basic natures of life. At the primary levels, we all want the same things, need the same things, desire the same things… but somewhere along the lines, we’ve gotten confused and caught up in everything else. We’ve made choices to lead us away from these basic elements and we’ve “put on glasses” that keep us from recognizing each other and all of those qualities that make us so similar.

Beautiful post.

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In UNESCO’s “ Advocacy Kit for Promoting Multilingual Education: Including the Excluded “, the question was posed: “Can quality education for all be achieved when education is packaged in a language that some learners neither speak nor understand? This is the situation faced by many children from ethnic minority groups when they enter formal school systems-the official school language is very different from the language they speak at home. Forcing children to learn in a language they do not understand creates an educational handicap that should not exist.” The document concludes that “…understanding the true panorama of providing education in learners’ mother tongue is one of the crucial steps towards achieving quality education for all.”It is therefore disappointing to note that, after going through the “ Full Report for the Policy Recommendations for the Basic Education Sector Reform Agenda for the National Language and Literacy Learning Strategies for the Filipino and English Languages ” submitted to the Department of Education on Sept. 30, 2006, there isn’t any doubt which among the 170 or so Philippine languages BESRA is “strategizing” for under its Key Reform Thrust #3.Of course there is widespread agreement to use the indigenous languages as medium of instruction in preschool through elementary school in the areas where they are spoken as a bridge to learning Filipino and English plus other areas of learning using either Filipino or English as medium of instruction. But BESRA does not have any KEY REFORM THRUST to keep our non-dominant non-Tagalog languages from dying. All this BESRA strategizing to make Filipino and English so dominant will eventually make the case for the other indigenous languages as bridges or stepping stones simply irrelevant, dead. The socio-economic and political prowess of a dominant language as Tagalog/Filipino and English as they are now aggressively being promoted by the government to be so dominant will simply eviscerate all reasons for anyone to want to stick with any indigenous non-Tagalog language any longer.What’s the real incentive to cultivate our own indigenous non-Tagalog languages if BESRA is there to make sure Tagalog/Filipino and English are going to be the only ones that matter ultimately and that these are the only languages every Filipino needs? The decreasing ranks through natural causes of the elderly population who are the remaining mainstays of our indigenous languages all but insure that many of these languages will be wiped out soon. And so does the varied cultures associated with them unless there is a conscious effort–like a BESRA type KEY REFORM THRUST– woven into a multilingual education policy designed specifically to save them, at least the ones that still manifest the dynamics of surviving. Those languages with, say 30 or so remaining speakers will understandably be difficult to save with any type of intervention.Those who have the power to institutionalize mother tongue-based multilingual education in our schools are urged to NOT water down the recommendations of UNESCO’s “Education in a Multilingual World”. UNESCO’s recommendations on multilingual education are based on years of research so that to tinker with them, such as radically shortening the length of immersion of the child in his mother tongue from the ideal 6 to 8 years, would be the height of myopia. DepEd Order No. 60 s. 2008, the first department order to recognize and recommend the use of mother tongue-based multilingual education, requires Filipino and English to be introduced in grade 1 and that renders UNESCO’s recommendations virtually ineffective. I think we just don’t get it.Those of us in power who make language policy, especially one through our educational system, please watch the above video and the one below and understand their implications. If at first you don’t get the message, pretend you’re one of those who don’t speak Tagalog/Filipino.[Click here to view the movie, " The Linguists ".]Posted in DepED Order No 60 s. 2008 , Education policy , K. David Harrison , Language of instruction , Mother tongue , Multilingualism , UNESCO’s Education in a Multilingual World , When Languages Die , mother tongue as language of instruction , multilingual education | Tags: Languages Do Work! , Lubuagan Experiment , medium of instruction (MOI) , MLE , MLE training , mother tongue as MOI , multilingual education

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

Prevention Action turn their attention to a piece of research we’ve noted before, which looks at the impact of school ethos on young people’s alcohol use. 
They say:
Simply going to a “bad” school did not turn children to drink; other individual factors were far more salient, but the significance of the differences between schools was very noticeable.
So, to take the case of

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

Substance Abuse Prevention Dollars and Cents: A Cost-Benefit Analysis.

Via the Mentor website I see that the US government’s Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration have published a guide to cost effective substance abuse prevention programs, Substance Abuse Prevention Dollars and Cents: A Cost Benefits Analysis
In the executive summary they say:
If effective prevention programs were implemented nationwide, substance abuse initiation would

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

Positive Activities.

“It’s not like if you don’t do sport you’re going to get pregnant, go on drugs and vandalise bus stops!”
So says one 18 year old quoted in new research for the DCSF, Positive Activities; Qualitative Research with Young People.  The young person was responding to the following messages which went with the picture reproduced below:

“Either get into

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

‘Boredom’ leads teenagers to drink.

ITN news report (once you’re past the short advert) about young people’s drinking based on a Drinkaware survey.

more about " ‘Boredom’ leads teenagers to drink ", posted with vodpod Filed under: Uncategorized

I apologize for the delay in posting these items, but the conference hotels do not provide free wireless access. The first paper in the K-12 Online Teachers: SIG-Online Teaching and Learning session was:

Who’s at the Keyboard? A Description of K-12 Online Teachers in the United States

Schedule Information:
Scheduled Time: Tue, Apr 14 – 12:25pm – 1:55pm Building/Room: San Diego Marriott Hotel & Marina / Newport Beach
In Session: K-12 Online Teachers

Authors:
*Leanna Matchett Archambault (Arizona State University)
Kent J. Crippen (University of Nevada – Las Vegas)

Abstract: Virtual schools continue to grow in popularity as a realistic alternative to traditional education. Because of this, a growing number of teachers throughout the nation are facing the challenge of creating and presenting quality online content and instruction. Little is known about this population of educators and how they compare to traditional teachers. This study presents data gathered as a result of a national survey of 596 online teachers and describes the characteristics of a group of K-12 online teachers from 25 different states. By studying this particular population, teacher educators can better understand the specific needs of online teachers. This, in turn, can inform changes, adaptations, and improvements to teacher preparation programs across the United States.

So, I missed the first few minutes of Leanna’s and Kent’s presentation, as I was trying to find the well-hidden Newport Beach room in the Marriott. This portion of the presentation was based on Leanna’s dissertation.

The study itself was based on a national survey that was solicited via e-mail – using the Keeping Pace report and Google searches to identify the various virtual schools. She was able to contact a variety of different types of online teachers.

She used an interesting model for contacting the teachers, which she called “Tailored Method Design (Dillman, 2007)”, which I think was useful for other researchers. It followed:

Step 1 – pre-notification e-mail
Step 2 – E-mail with survey access link
Step 3 – E-mail with survey access link
Step 4 – Follow-up e-mail
Step 5 – Final e-mail (included an MS Word version)

Leanna specifically mentioned that she received positive feedback from the respondents concerning her use of this model, particularly Step 1. She noted that none of the teachers completed the MS Word version (i.e., they either completed it online or not at all).

In her searching, Leanna identified 2262 potential respondents. Based on the e-mail sent out in Step 1, 413 bounced back as undeliverable – 48 were corrected and re-sent for a total sample of 1897. Of those, it was determined that 102 teachers did not meet the criteria so the survey was sent to 1795 online teachers.

There were 549 respondents and the sample represented all 50 states, although none of the online teachers in Michigan or New Mexico completed the survey. Of those who did complete the survey:

-77% were female

-63% were between 26-45 years of age

-91% were Caucasian

-they had an average of 14 years of overall teaching experience

-they had an average 4 years of online teaching experience

-62% had Master’s degree and 13% had more than Master’s

-54% full time and 36% were part-time

Compared to traditional teachers, there were 21% more online teachers with Master’s degree than brick-and-mortar teachers. Also, there were 6% more online teachers with higher than Master’s degree education than what is found in brick-and-mortar schools.

In looking at some of the differences between part-time online teachers and full-time online teachers. For example, part-time online teachers had on average 4 more years teaching experience and 0.4 years more online teaching experience.

Of the online teachers who responded:

-81% reported teaching asynchronously

-38% reported to teaching in state-based schools, while 31% reported to teaching in an online school managed by a local education authority

-80% of respondents taught all of their classes online with an average of 97 students

Interestingly, when asked who authored the content that the online teacher taught with, they responded:

-38% the teacher themselves

-42% a content provider

-20% a curriculum specialist

-15% a colleague

-7% other (e.g., a team of teachers – and the online teacher may have been one of those, a textbook provider, etc.)

With the qualitative data, the teachers were asked an open-ended question about why they taught online. The responses included:

-ability to work from home (19%0

-new model of education (14%0

-need for employment (10%)

-flexibility (8%)

-retirees (3%)

In response to another open-ended question, K-12 online teachers also reported:

-63% reported a positive response to teaching online

-29% had mixed experience (challenging, but rewarding)

-8% had a negative experience

Finally, participants found online distance education allowed them to work more one-on-one with students and being able to provide them with more individual support, moreso than the brick-and-mortar environment.

Again, sorry I missed the technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPCK) stuff that Kent presented at the beginning (which formed the lens through which Leanna looked at this data). If you’re reading this Leanna, please add a few sentences in the comments to describe the part that I missed.

Next week I’ll be here giving a presentation about this blog and the Forum’s website .

I’ll post the presentation once I’ve given it, but this is just to explain why the tumbleweed around here may be a bit thicker than usual at the start of the week.

In the meantime here’s a video from the QCA about initial teacher training:

And here’s one about taking risks with the curriculum which repeats some of the messages from the above video, but adds more depth:Filed under: Uncategorized

Chasing the chemical demons.

Dr John Ramsey, ofSt George’s Medical School in London, writes about legal highs on the BBC website:

While the government consults its advisors on the harms caused by cannabis and ecstasy and then disregards the evidence they produce, UK based websites and high-street “head” shops are exploiting the naivety of young people by marketing to them chemicals never before used as drugs.

Read more here and people’s reaction to his views here .

Filed under: legal high

links for 2009-02-18.

One Response
Young People in Cumbria 2008 « Drug Education News says: 18 February, 2009 at 1:20 pm

[...] People in Cumbria 2008 Earlier today I saw a story about young people and alcohol in Cumbria which said there was a survey of 2,000 young [...]

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DCSF Ministers.

Confirmation of the new roles that Ministers at the DCSF will play:

Delyth Morgan’s principal policy areas include safeguarding and child protection, drugs and alcohol, sport and healthy eating.

Sarah McCarthy Fry’s principal policy areas include admissions, 14-19 reform, the National Curriculum and SEN.

Filed under: Government