Let me get this out of the way right away and say that I had a really good time at the KATE conference. It was great to meet a lot of interesting teachers and people from all over the state. I had the pleasure of getting to sit with one of our keynote speakers and the president (well, I forget what the official title is for the position). They were very nice to me, and understanding of how awkward it was for me to be sitting at what basically amounted to the "VIP" table for the opening festivities.
Jay Asher’s presentation about his book Thirteen Reasons Why was definitely the highlight of the entire conference for me. Jay reminded me a lot of what I envision I would be like if I had decided to pursue writing as a career. He has a dry whit to him that just seems so familiar. I can definitely ay he spoke a lot to the real experiences of what it is to be an aspiring writer and still balance that with an average life. He certainly hadn’t let any of his success go to his head. I feel that after watching his presentation, and to a lesser extent Clare Vanderpool’s, it has inspired me to not just give up on creative writing avenues and to continue to pursue them while teaching. Both of them spoke of how hard it an be to get work accepted, which really reminded me of things Ben has told me about his own work. However, they both kept trying and eventually the avenues opened up for them, so it is never a lost cause. This is probably the most valuable information they both shared for anyone aspiring to write.
In the other presentation I attended at he conference, it was important for me to check out the presentation on preventing plagiarism in the classroom. This is important to me right now because it has been a huge issue recently in my placement. We have been forced to openly hinder students being able to work on certain assignments at home in order to prevent them from plagiarizing any of their work. What I learned was that it is important to try and design writing assignments in a way that helps prevent being able to find any way to plagiaries the content. Making the questions pertain directly to the student in a personal manner was one of the biggest listed reasons. However, it isn’t always possible to make every writing assignment relate in that manner. I still found the presentation to be really informative, I just wish it could have also included some helpful ways to both identify and respond to instance of plagiarism. It would be nice to have a plan set in place for how the situation should be dealt with and be good enough to discourage it ever being done again.
Overall, the conference was good and the presentations were informative. I would definitely attend again in the future and check out some different types of presentations. I was a little disappointed that some of the presentations I would have liked to see were showing at the same time as each other. Because of this, it might be nice if some presenters actually had room to give their particular presentations more than one time a day so that people could fit them into their schedule.
Sunday, October 30, 2011
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
Early Bird Catches the Woorm, but Late Riser Stays Awake
I have ran out of fingers on which to count the number of times I have seen a student fall completely asleep during a class this semester. It isn't always the same students either. It doesn't seem to matter what is being taught. Someone is going to decide that their first hour is nap time and nod off. Why is this? Is it something wrong with the curriculum? I would argue that is not the case at all.
The school I am assigned to starts very early in the morning. So early in the morning that I rarely see any of the staff who appear to be fully awake by the time classes are about to start, let alone the students, and that is the point. School should not start that early. It is detrimental to a student's learning to drag them out of bed before dawn and force them off to school in the dark. Now, I'm not just pulling out an opinion that would make me feel better about showing up in the early hours. The research is there to show us that schools who start later in the day see a surprisingly high increase in both grades and attendance. Don't believe me? Just follow the links.
http://www.parentcentral.ca/parent/education/post-secondary/article/923380--toronto-school-starts-hour-later-and-grades-improve
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6896471
Studies have shown that teenagers need their sleep, but their bodies are not wired for the earlier bedtimes of adults. They stay up at night because they aren't tired, not out of some sort of teenage rebellion, and yet we force them to school after just six hours of what should be a nine hour sleep schedule. What schools have been showing is that by starting even just an hour later than they are, they can improve the grades, and even moods of their students dramatically. So why don't we all hop on this badwagon? Sounds great right? Well, there are a few reasons.
We have a limited amount of transportation for students and it would likely cost a huge amount of money to fund all the new buses we would need if all the high schools started at the same time of day. We also have to consider that students would need to stay later if they start later and when we start cutting into time of day closer to 4 and 5pm, we start cutting into what many consider to be the time for sports and extra curriculars that would probably need to be changed drastically or cut to fit into the new schedule.
Of course, my belief is that if it is beneficial to the students, and we have the capability, then we should at least try. It just isn't convenient to us teachers and parents who would have to be at the school much later or pick them up from classes. Sometimes though, maybe we should sacrifice convenience for what has been proven to actually work and stop pretending like it is a students fault that he cannot seem to even stay awake at seven in the morning (I still recommend at least trying to keep them awake though, it won't do any good if he or she misses the whole lesson).
The school I am assigned to starts very early in the morning. So early in the morning that I rarely see any of the staff who appear to be fully awake by the time classes are about to start, let alone the students, and that is the point. School should not start that early. It is detrimental to a student's learning to drag them out of bed before dawn and force them off to school in the dark. Now, I'm not just pulling out an opinion that would make me feel better about showing up in the early hours. The research is there to show us that schools who start later in the day see a surprisingly high increase in both grades and attendance. Don't believe me? Just follow the links.
http://www.parentcentral.ca/parent/education/post-secondary/article/923380--toronto-school-starts-hour-later-and-grades-improve
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6896471
Studies have shown that teenagers need their sleep, but their bodies are not wired for the earlier bedtimes of adults. They stay up at night because they aren't tired, not out of some sort of teenage rebellion, and yet we force them to school after just six hours of what should be a nine hour sleep schedule. What schools have been showing is that by starting even just an hour later than they are, they can improve the grades, and even moods of their students dramatically. So why don't we all hop on this badwagon? Sounds great right? Well, there are a few reasons.
We have a limited amount of transportation for students and it would likely cost a huge amount of money to fund all the new buses we would need if all the high schools started at the same time of day. We also have to consider that students would need to stay later if they start later and when we start cutting into time of day closer to 4 and 5pm, we start cutting into what many consider to be the time for sports and extra curriculars that would probably need to be changed drastically or cut to fit into the new schedule.
Of course, my belief is that if it is beneficial to the students, and we have the capability, then we should at least try. It just isn't convenient to us teachers and parents who would have to be at the school much later or pick them up from classes. Sometimes though, maybe we should sacrifice convenience for what has been proven to actually work and stop pretending like it is a students fault that he cannot seem to even stay awake at seven in the morning (I still recommend at least trying to keep them awake though, it won't do any good if he or she misses the whole lesson).
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