End of Year – Roundup.
First , I am the least faithful blogger, so I can’t complain about lack of readership. I blog rarely or never. Even when I have gotten some readership, good people like Ewan MacIntiosh and Noon and others I don’t blog for 3 months. So no complaints here. There is no consistency.
Anyway this year was great in some ways, we had this cool grant from the S.I Foundation which brought Alan November to our school several times, and gave me a boat load of money to work with teachers to encourage literacy and 21st century skills in the classroom. Some good fruit. We had a fabulous film festival this year with some great efforts by teachers. 18 films in all. Took 2 days to run the festival, but the work was teachers and students purely. I think the thing we got out of Alan and Co. visits was a new shared language. People have a greater understanding of all that Google has to offer, how easy it is to podcast/or screen-cast. How much kids dig these technologies and that the Apps of Web 2.0. are the new pencils, crayons and chalkboards so to speak.
Some of my less tech-savy colleagues that have children in elementary schools (3 to be exact) expressed exasperation that the grades for “writing” on their children’s report cards were mainly talking about hand writing, then made comments,” they are going to be working on keyboards, I would rather a grade in keyboarding skills” or something to that effect. A small shift, but I think our professional development plan clearly made the point, ( helped along by the digital world encroaching around us) that it is essentially a digital world we live in, and perhaps, keyboarding, not handwriting is the new penmanship.
I am a little disillusioned, politics where I work are Machiavellian at best, and incestuously Borgian at worst, and this has sucked some of the life out of me. I am not brimming with enthusiasm right now. However, I am hoping to “get my groove back” this summer. Number of reasons for this, 1. We get a new principal, 2. We are doing a summer literacy cooperative with The Staten Island Foundation. and 3. I am making another pilgrimage to the holy waters of Boston for November’s BLC 08.
High hopes for our literacy project. We have already created a blog, about the North Shore of Staten Island, and have funds to take numerous trips to all the hot cultural spots on the North shore of Staten Island.
The idea is for the kids to create an online travel brouchure extolling the many pleasures, and educational opportunities offered from Howland Hook to the Verazzano Narrows above Forest Avenue to Richmond Terrace. Some history pieces, GoogleEarth, photogaphy and dozens of real reasons for kids to read and write. All crammed into 6 weeks. Should be good.
No other great words of wisdom right now. I do however have a new out look on being politically correct in education. I think it is the equivalent of a severe diabettic eating a box of dough nuts. What is needed is brutal honesty to cleanup the current mess.
