I’m overly frustrated right now. After fighting the fight with my school board that a blanket ban of cell phones within schools in our region (students, teachers, and other staff) and having a reasonable policy brought in, our Minister of Education has stepped into the fray.
For background purposes, one of the schools in Nova Scotia had two serious fights with racial overtones on Tuesday. 26 students were suspended and the police are involved. Yesterday, the Principal held a press conference and let the media know that cell phones were involved. Apparently, students were using cell phones to text back and forth after the first fight and somehow this led to the second fight. (I’m basing this on news reports).
So today, the Minister of Education called for a review of cell phone policies at all school boards in the province. Given the media scrutiny, a review is probably appropriate. However, the media reports indicate that the Minister “believes that cell phones have no place in the classroom.”
I will comment no further (the Minister is my employer), however I’m interested in what the edublogsphere thinks of a comment such as this. So, what do you think Will, Dean, and others?
March 27th, 2008
Forgive this post of background information. I plan to start posting about a significant shift in how our school operates. I felt that it was important to get some background contextual information out first.
My school is involved in Nova Scotia’s School Accreditation process (no web site available). We are in the 3rd year of the process which is the 2nd year of implementation. Before I transferred, the staff had identified two SMART goals for the school to focus on for the next three years. One goal relates to student literacy while the other is focused on school leadership. As a teacher, I gravitated to the leadership goal and since becoming vice-principal have continued to sit on the leadership sub-committee. Interestingly, the leadership goal seems to have a significant focus on providing support to classroom teachers so that they can be more effective.
Prior to our last school-based in-service (Sept 27th), the principal and I sat down to review where we were in meeting the leadership goal. We discovered that we had achieved many of the items on the action plan and were really stuck on how we would be able to achieve the remaining items. The focus of the remaining goals required groups of teachers to have common planning time to work together to increase student achievement. We have tried a number of ways to provide this time but ultimately we haven’t been able to provide time on a regular enough basis for the same group of teachers.
Our timetable is our constraining factor. Forest Heights is a predominately semestered school where students can take four semestered courses per semester for a total of eight courses per year. We operate an eight day cycle with five 1-hour periods each day (the first two periods are a double class with recess in the middle). Teachers teach three semestered courses each semester and one full year course. We are unable to provide teachers with common planning time without providing students with a significant amount of unscheduled time. We are now looking at restructuring our school (starting with grade 10) to find a way to provide this common time. The only way we see to do this is to change our scheduling model.
At the same time, our School Board and our provincial Department of Education are espousing Professional Learning Communities. The remainder of the leadership goal revolves around improving student achievement in a manner that is strongly reminiscent of a PLC. We have now challenged our staff to consider whether we want to become a PLC. To help them make an informed, educated decision we have purchased (and are awaiting delivery from Amazon) “On Common Ground“.
So far, even without the arrival of the literature, we are experiencing significant interest in the concept. There seems to be a new energy in the building with teachers discussing the possibilities of what this might look like. We tossed out one scenario that we came up with (which I’ll share in another post) and it seems that our teachers like where we might be headed.
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October 14th, 2007
I’m spending this week marking provincial physics exams in a hotel in Halifax. This is the final (at least for now) provincial physics exam in Nova Scotia. All of the exams have previously been marked by classroom teachers and the marks reported to the students (most of whom have now graduated). We are remarking the exams to generate provincial statistics and data for reports. I’m not sure how fruitful this exercise is but it is an interesting time.
We are noticing that students can get the right answer but show no understanding of the concepts - what does that say about our teaching methods. On the first day, when he learned that there was no provincial exam next year, one teacher exclaimed, “Now I can teach what I want.” I’ve always been a teacher who felt it was important to teach the curriculum proscribed by the Department of Education. However, now I wonder if that is the best for the kids that I teach (or for the kids taught by the teachers in my school). I’m pretty sure it may not be the best to teach what the teacher wants to teach - maybe we should be looking at what our kids want to learn about. Of course, I’m in a room full of physics teachers who all are pretty sure they know what kids need to learn to go on to college and succeed in physics there - unfortunately the exams I’m marking are telling me that the students are pretty much disengaged from their learning (at least in physics classes in Nova Scotia).
I don’t know where I want to go with this but I know I need to start by trying to organize my thoughts in writing.
August 8th, 2007
Well it’s been quite awhile (over a year) since I’ve really blogged. I’ve been following the conversation via Bloglines. Thanks to Will R., Dean S., Steve D., David W., Chris L., and many others for all the writing I’ve had the privilege to read over the past while. I’ve made the personal commitment to start blogging more regularly as I move forward.
It’s been a busy year for me personally and blogging (well the writing part of blogging) just seemed to get pushed off to the side. In the past year and a half that I’ve been away I bought my first house, transferred schools, got engaged, became vice-principal in my new school, sold my house, bought our first house, moved, sold my fiancee’s house, moved, and here I am. I’m hoping next year will be even better than last but maybe just a little less hectic. I really have to start using my blog for my professional growth again.
My school board is big on Professional Learning Communities. The blogosphere I think became my Professional Learning Community the summer that Will introduced me to Bloglines at BLC in Boston.
Anyhow, I’m back and I plan to start some professional blogging as we move into August.
July 24th, 2007
So David Warlick has asked for information on AUPs. At my previous school, we spent a significant amount of time developing an AUP that looks quite different. Our focus was to create an AUP that didn’t focus on what you couldn’t do but rather what you could do. The main reason for the change in thinking was that we didn’t want to be changing the AUP every year (or more often) as new technologies emerged.
Unfortunately, I can’t find the AUP on their website or on my laptop. However, what I remember was stating everything (as much as possible) - that is, telling kids what they can do rather than what they can’t. The two major premises would be: You can do things that support your learning and You can do things that don’t impact on others’ learning.
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January 15th, 2007
I just tried to head to Bloglines and my browser can’t find the server. I don’t remember the last time I did an OPML export.
It’s amazing how much one comes to depend on a piece of technology.
July 27th, 2006
For many reasons (mostly financial - having bought a house), I wasn’t able to head back to Boston this week for Alan November’s Building Learning Communities Conference. It’s been nice being able to keep up due to the efforts of bloggers like Steve Dembo. It looks like there’s a whole new group of edubloggers out there as a result of all the sessions on blogging. Even though I was at Will Richardson’s pre-conference last year, as I watched the blog postings from yesterday, I found myself wishing I was there again. Of course, then I read about Steve’s account of the MIT Media Lab and wished I was there.
Seeing all of these great posts reminds me that I haven’t posted anything meaningful here since basically last year’s conference. The energy that existed in Boston was wonderful but difficult to keep going once I returned home. I’ll post an update soon on what has happened to me in the past year.
Technorati Tags: blc06 blc2006
July 18th, 2006
We are finally at the point of posting some podcasts - well maybe not truly podcasts but at least some audio files with an RSS feed.
Available at:
http://yearbook.pvec.ednet.ns.ca/pveccast
June 13th, 2006
Big news - I got the official letter today telling us that we were approved for our grant to start a podcasting program at Park View. The plan is to develop a weekly podcast showcasing what happened in the previous week and what is coming up next week.
Now I have the pleasure of ordering the gear. Timing is great as far as the new Mac’s go. Looking at probably picking up 2 of the new iMac’s.
Has anybody found a mic for the new video iPod’s yet?
March 2nd, 2006
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