Dan Brown 2

Dan Brown is currently posting about a new initiative by the government to make the teacher preparation programs better. From the government's website "We need to give schools the resources to keep good teachers on the job, and give teachers the flexibility to teach with creativity and passion." They plan to do this by imposing regulations on teacher education programs. This could be a good idea or a bad idea. It is generally a good idea to want better teacher education programs. No one can argue that. The problem is, what determines what is a good program? Teaching is not an exact art. Different things work for different teachers. If they were able to pinpoint exactly what makes a great teacher, the US wouldn't be below average in many educational statistics. So I will take a wait and see approach with this new reform. However, I will not be too optimistic based on the failures of No Child Left Behind and so on. 

The Male Teacher post 2

This post from the Male Teacher is about managing stress at school. This is not a blog post that is targeted just to male teachers like the rest, this post is applicable to everyone. He offers great tips to follow in how to manage stress. The first he mentions is managing your time better. This is important because I know many teachers that work long past their contracted hours. This isn't healthy and you need to have your own life outside of school or you will go crazy. That goes for any profession. The best tip from the Male Teacher is to "be a comedian". I like this tip because it is exactly how I handle stress. If I am stressed the best way for me to reduce it is to make someone else laugh. It is almost medicinal.  I'd recommend this post to anyone having trouble with the stresses of their job.

The Male Teacher

This is a fairly new blog for male teachers. They discuss issues that might not be normally discussed in a normal education blog. In one blog entry they discuss respect in the classroom. Apparently here is a misguided notion that being a male teacher in a younger classroom will automatically give you respect. This blog post wants to dispel that notion, and offer advice how to receive that respect. A lot of the advice I agree with. One piece of advice I find especially important, and that is to be honest. Many teachers think since they are in the position of authority that they can lie to their students. I do not think that is appropriate. Many times, students are smarter than teachers give them credit for and they can see through some transparent lies. This is especially true when they ask a question that you do not know the answer to. I think it is very important to say "I don't know" rather than making something up. Often times a made up answer will be remembered and they will carry that false info for a long time.

Gaining students' respect

@TheJLV 2

This blog post is about the twitter user @TheJLV. I posted about him a couple of times, but today was an interesting day to follow him, mostly because of what happened last night in Ferguson. He has not been shy to speak his opinions on race in America before, so today was a good vessel to get his message across. However, one interesting topic came up in that how do you talk to your students about what is happening. Unfortunately, to me anyway, many teachers will shy away from the topic. @TheJLV was direct with his students and gave them a place to vent and discuss. I think this is important for the students. A lot of their time they are in their own echo chamber, if they get to hear other points of view it can be good for getting a better understanding of a topic. This will be how I handle my classroom if ever an important event happens like it did yesterday.

If this keeps happening...

My blog post for this week comes from the blog of one of the people I follow on Twitter Jose Vilson. He posts a response to critics of the article he was featured in about what makes a great teacher. He explains that he foolishly looked into the comments section of his article and found many people complaining. Mostly these people were complaining about teaching being a thankless job and they complain that the teachers being interviewed often leave the profession and become advocates or administrators. He is right that he made a mistake looking into the comment section of the article. 99% of the time the comments section will be full of people who want to complain, rarely do people comment to say anything good. However, I don't agree with the main idea of his article. That is, he is lumping all these people as having one hivemind. The complaints given by these commentors make sense alone, but not when they are lumped together, which is what he has done. I can understand his instruction, he should avoid the malcontents next time.

If this keeps happening...

Dan Brown

This post is about the newest twitterer I am following, Dan Brown. He is the Executive Director of Future Educators Association, an organization for high school students who plan to become teachers. Mr. Brown is a certified teacher as well. He often tweets about standardized testing and new technologies to use in the classroom. On the 15th he retweeted an interesting article from the Washington Post by Valerie Sheets titled "Teacher to parents: About THAT kid (the one who hits, disrupts and influences YOUR kid)" It is written by a teacher to parents about a disrupting student. The article is about how the teacher can not tell parents what is wrong with another disruptive child that isn't their own, but that she is doing her best. This article is heartbreaking. It is a window into the life of a teacher dealing with a child that might have a rough background. I can see why Mr. Brown retweeted it. It is useful to not only teachers but also parents who might worry a disruptive child might be getting in the way of their child's education. I agree with everything she writes and highly recommend reading the article.

What I Wish I'd Known as a Teacher

This is a blog post from Edutopia from contributor Elena Aguilar. This is an extremely insightful article about Mrs. Aguilar's first year of teaching and what she wished she knew. This is not the first article I have read that explains how extremely stressful the first year of teaching is or can be. Because this seems to be common knowledge, I try to seek out as much information as possible to prepare myself for that year. At the very least, if I do get extremely stressed out that year, I will know it is normal. This article doesn't give any concrete strategies or classroom management ideas, it is just an article about managing stress. She makes sure that you know that if what you do comes from the heart that you can rarely be wrong. One thing she mentions that I find a very important piece of advice is to find a mentor. This will be the first thing I try to do when I get into a classroom. I can see the value of someone with an unbiased view telling you what you should do or not do. She says finding a mentor is so important that if one is not available to you, you should change schools. I agree with her that finding one is that important.

What I Wish I knew...