New school year...already got the blues

Wow...My school as been in session for just about 2 weeks, and it's sad to say that already that beginning of the year optimism is about gone. You know, teachers tend to be the 'glass half full type' - at least until about Thanksgiving or Christmas when we've just about lost our minds and are wondering WHEN we're going to start seeing the gains in our students! But this year I think it has fled very early in my building.

It could be the fact that for the first time, our school has not made AYP - that great and powerful standard by which all students (but really teachers and schools) are measured. (Though it actually has little to no impact on the actual children and their families, which are generally where the learning issues start - but I digress). But I don't think that's really what's bringing us all down. It could be that in a manic effort to somehow prevent another year of not making our AYP goal, our principal has instituted a rule of turning in a (somewhat) detailed plan of how our daily lessons will be geared toward our school focus. And yes, there are a number of staff that feel that this is madness and don't like the extra work. (Ok, so everyone pretty well feels that to one degree or another!) It is a kick in the face to be asked to turn in lesson plans because that implies that what we've been doing - the lessons and curriculum that we've been REQUIRED by the district to do - isn't right. But really, more and more schools in my district have started requiring teachers to turn in lesson plans, so it's not like we didn't see this coming to some extent.

I think the main cause for the pessimistic attitude is that we're all starting to feel that no matter what we do, and how hard we try as teachers - we can't win. We worked our butts off last year...and it wasn't good enough. Now, our lesson plans aren't good enough. It's beginning to feel like there's no right answer. And let's face it, there isn't one. If there was a magic formula for how to pour knowledge and skills into a child's head, it would have been bottled years ago and surreptitiously placed in their lunchtime boxes of milk!

Not all TV is bad!

I'm constantly amazed at the redundancy of the "TV is bad for your children" hype. Don't get me wrong, there are some mind-numbing kids shows out there, and too much of anything can definitely be a bad thing. But since I myself grew up watching "Seseme Street" and "The Letter People" - and I'm convinced to this day the latter was why I was always a good reader in school - I just can't pass up the power of TV to educate children. And having a toddler and a preschooler at home, I've learned a thing or two about the shows out there for the not-yet-school-age set.

Believe it or not, there are some great early learning programs on television right now. One of my favorites is Super Why on PBS. I have even used it in the classroom this year with my kindergarten students. This show covers the gamut of letters and sounds, spelling, word recognition, comprehension, and even teaches social skills! The characters in the show become super heros to read, and the animation and story lines really keep the kids interested. Although they're not too good about updating it, PBS Kids has a free video podcast of the shows available on iTunes. The website has a lot of great educational games for young kids too.

Another one of my favorites for my kids to watch is Pinky Dinky Doo on Noggin. This show is about a little girl who likes to tell (somewhat outrageous) stories. They also tend to teach a life lesson, but the thing I think is really great about the show is that it teaches vocabulary words like "enormous" or "engrossed" to very young kids in a way they can understand and remember what they mean. It also does a great job of teaching story concepts and comprehension skills. Also one nice thing I just realized after checking it out, you can watch full episodes directly from the website.

Not that everything my kids watch is completely educational - at the moment, Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, Little Einsteins and My Friends Tigger and Pooh are all right up there on the "must watch" list. And don't get me wrong, Mickey does a great job of teaching colors and math concepts, and the Little Einstein expose kids to art and music, which I do think is very important. But for phonemic awareness and reading skills, I've yet to find anything that beats the other two. Now if they would only re-release the old "Letter People" shows...

IDT 516 @ WIU

This blog has been specially created for a course I'm taking this summer at Western Illinois U. I hate the idea of throwing something out here on the web just to meet a requirement, so it took some thinking for me to determine what the purpose of this blog would be. If I'm going to take up cyberspace, I might as well be constructive about it!

The pupose of this blog will be to give me a place to post new things I learn about instructional technology, tools, and how they can be incorporated into teaching. I'm sure there are already a number of identical blogs out there, but if nothing else, I can share this with other teachers I know and work with, and maybe they can use the things I find and help me gain a better understanding of instructional technology.

One thing I've already come across while developing this blog as well as my other blog - wouldn't it be helpful to be able to search blogspot for blogs by a topic or keyword? Maybe that's already possible and I just haven't figured out how to do it yet. If anyone can help me out in this endeavor it would be greatly appreciated!