Monthly Archives: February 2012

46.366 – oh, daily show, you’ve failed me

A brilliant piece by Jon Stewart and The Daily Show that should have been the highlight of my class last night, as we looked at differences in coverage not only between different forms of media but also different parts of the world… except I couldn’t share the audio on my shared screen and I didn’t feel right showing the video without being able to censor the few parts of the video that I thought were mildly inappropriate for class. 

This image alone wasn’t doing it for the class, which was too bad, even though it was an amazing commentary on American media coverage.

Screen_shot_2012-02-16_at_5

45.366 – we want you

Theatre

I admit that I originally wanted to post a video of Ralph Wiggum and a picture of a train this Halloween, but I couldn’t find one. So I’m turning to the next best thing: TEDxNYED!

We’re looking for NYC-area teachers to deliver a series of short talks at TEDxNYED on April 28. If you’re interested, hit up the link above and leave us a video application.

Oh, and Happy Valentine’s Day. 

CC-licensed photo by J. Marshall.

40.366 – back to first grade

CC-licensed photo by BC Gov Photos.

It’s been my experience at schools that I’ve worked at that elementary school divisions essentially function as different schools, as though they were complete separate. I’ve gotten a few people to back me up on this, but I’ve never understood it. It’s likely because the technology departments in schools tend to touch every part of the school — every academic division as well as every administrative one, too — but I’ve always felt uncomfortable by the separation that tends to happen. Elementary school teachers tend to go to one side of a room and middle/upper school teachers go to the other. Don’t we all work together?

I’ve got a solution to this problem: take a day and teach some classes in the “other” part of the school.

I’ve only ever taught middle and high school, various grades but always in that same 6th-12th grade container. Today I had to cover first and third grade classes for someone in my department, and I had no idea what I was getting myself into. Little kids? Heck, one of them was mine, how bad could it have been? I quickly realized that I had no tools in my arsenal to deal with these littler kids if things went south. Nothing I would normally do to get the calmed attention of a class of older students worked. I could only resort to a pathetic “Would you be doing the same thing if Ms. Teachername was here?” or “I’m going to have to tell your teacher.”

It was a profound learning experience for me. I felt like I knew, if even for a brief moment, what it was like on the “other side,” and I think everyone would benefit from some kind of one-day trade like this. If every school that had more than one division made every teacher do this, I bet there would be a lot more cohesiveness? How better to develop an appreciation for your colleagues than to have tried to do their job for a day?

We encourage students to exhibit empathy, but do we do enough to make sure that we are doing the same?