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Saturday, December 15, 2012

What is Next ?


 Anyone who did not hear about the shooting yesterday at the kindergarten school in the United States would not have to be on the planet. This comes right on the heels right after a few weeks where there was a shooting at the mall. The thing with the United States is that this will be mourn until the dead are buried and then everyone except for those who suffered will go to their usual lives. How many more will have to suffer or die before America realizes that there is a problem with how their citizens have access to guns.

 Those committing these crimes get younger with each  tragedy. It is quite clear and speaks to what I have been saying that  we have a generation that has no coping skills. The question remains as to what could have caused this young man to snap? Better yet why did this parent have guns in the home? As I listened to the many reports about the community being one of peace and harmony. I had to laugh inside, because what a shallow world we are living. What equates peace? What seems as peace on the outside is raging battle on the inside. How many homes in middle class America are raging war on the inside but yet  appear as if all is well on the outside. Simple put we live in this false world where everyone has set false ideals for themselves. Too many persons are hooked on Hollywood, and current 21st parents have way too many falseexpectations for their children.


  Who will reach out to these parents who have lost their children,and what can be said. No words or compensation can account for this great loss. Also while the news sensationalize this and we think about the victims,let's not forget about the perpetrator's family. The news is very insensitive in how it goes about to report news. What about this young man who used his brother's id which was broadcast around the world,not to mention this innocent young man being dragged off  to jail handcuff. How will this young man hold his head up? What about his father who was so emotional that he was unable to talk, yet insensitive reporters couldn't understand why this man would be reluctant to comment having just lost his wife and son.

Yes, while we think about the victims let's also focus on the family of this young man whom had nothing to with this horrific act. So I ask the question again, what next? Will this be swept under carpet like all the others until another shooting. I somehow feel that this is not the last of shootings, so when will policy makers start talking.

Let's See!

Your comments.  

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Sunday, December 9, 2012

It's that time of Year

 Christmas is here. Let's forget about ourselves this season, and think of someone who doesn't have a home,a job or love ones this season. Give the gift of love,love someone unconditionally. Give someone a hug. Love someone just because they deserve to be love. Forget about presents, forget about the food and think of someone who hasn't anyone or anything. It's that time of year to give,but let it not be something material, instead give of yourself.
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Sunday, October 28, 2012

Halloween Literacy



   It always amazes me how much many parents go out of out their way to accommodate  trick or treating. Halloween is not apart of my culture so forgive me if I seem like a kill joy.I can see this being a fun time between families but I do not think that parents should spend so much money on this activity that last just a few hours.

Also with  the crazy world we now live in, I wonder how many parents are looking at the bigger picture. Are they monitoring older children on these walks, and what about all the candies. Do children really have them.? Or rather do they need all this candy?

Seeing as I am not a kill joy,if Halloween must be celebrated then it is important that proper supervision is given to children and  adults as well. Be aware of your surroundings as this is a perfect time for some demented person to disguise their wrong doing. Walk in groups and please search all candies given to children before they are consumed.


BE SAFE! 
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Sunday, September 30, 2012

New Literacies


 How should teachers deal with new technology as students enter the classroom quite adaptive to technology? Read the article below and post your comments.


Literacy for the 21st Century: The Hope and the Promise
A CML Reflection Resource
Since the beginning of recorded history, the concept of "literacy" meant having the skill to interpret "squiggles" on a piece of paper as letters which, when put together, formed words that conveyed meaning. Teaching the young to put the words together to understand (and, in turn, express) ever more complex ideas became the goal of education as it evolved over the centuries.
Today information about the world around us comes to us not only by words printed on a piece of paper but more and more through the powerful images and sounds of our multi-media culture. Although mediated messages seem to be self-evident, in truth, they use a complex audio/visual "language" which has its own rules (grammar) and which can be used to express many-layered concepts and ideas about the world. Not everything may be obvious at first; and images go by so fast! If our children are to be able to navigate their lives through this multi-media culture, they need to be fluent in "reading" and "writing" the language of images and sounds just as we also teach them to "read" and "write" the language of printed communications.
In the last 40 years, the field of media literacy education has emerged to organize and promote the importance of teaching this expanded notion of "literacy." At its core are the basic higher-order critical thinking skills of any well-educated person - knowing how to identify key concepts, how to make connections between multiple ideas, how to ask pertinent questions, formulate a response, identify fallacies and so on.
It also expands the concept of "text" to include not just written texts but any message form — verbal, aural or visual - (or all three together!) - that is used to pass ideas between human beings.
And full understanding of such a "text" involves not just "deconstruction" (analysis) activities but also "construction" (production) activities using a range of multi-media tools now available to young people growing up in today's media culture.
So, media literacy is not about discarding geography in order to have time for making videos; it's not about dropping Shakespeare in favor of Spielberg. Media literacy is just named that way until the day comes when the definition of "literacy" automatically incorporates the idea of fluency in both print and non-print forms.
Information Explosion
But there's more. Kathleen Tyner says in her landmark Literacy in a Digital Age, that media literacy or media education is more about education than it is about media!
What she means is that the goal of media literacy is not so much to study what's on television, how advertising works or how to make a movie (although it can include those activities) as it is to explore how human beings can interpret ("read") and "make sense of" the complex media culture in which we swim. A multi-media message can be the "text" under discussion but the skills to be learned include questioning how an image is composed, analyzing what it might mean to different people, evaluating it against other concepts and principles I believe in and ultimately developing and creating a response ("writing") so that others can know what I now know.
At the same time that our multi-media culture is expanding the notion of "text" to be analyzed, the proliferation of technology is transforming how human beings acquire knowledge and pass it to one another. No longer do we need to accumulate all the information we may need for a lifetime. What we need to know is how to find and then manage the information needed at a particular time for a particular task. We need to know how to process the information that we can now so easily retrieve through technology.
This explosion in information has presented a major challenge to the world of formal education. For centuries, schooling has been designed to make sure students learned facts - which they proved they knew by correctly answering questions on tests. But such a system no longer works when facts-for-life are not needed! What is needed today is for students to learn how to learn, how to find what they need to know when they need to know it. And to have the thinking skills to critically analyze and evaluate whether the information they find is useful for what they want to know.
How will schools do this?
First, schools and classrooms must be transformed from being storehouses of knowledge to being more like portable tents providing a shelter and a gathering place for students as they go out to explore, to question, to experiment, to discover!
Secondly, to use a phrase from the great Brazilian educator, Paolo Freire, teaching must be distinguished from "banking." No longer is it necessary for teachers to deposit information in students' heads. Teachers no longer have to know all the answers, to be a "sage on the stage." Instead teachers are becoming a "guide on the side:" encouraging . . . guiding . . . mentoring . . . supporting the learning process. Creative classrooms today are ones where everyone is learning, including the teacher!
Thirdly, curriculum, classes and activities must be designed that will engage students in problem solving and discovery, in learning how to learn. Some call it "inquiry-based learning." Using today's multi-media culture, which includes print but is not limited to it, provides a nearly limitless resource for acquiring a range of skills, e.g. how to identify "point of view" by examining how camera angles influence how we think about the subject being photographed or how to determine whether information is bogus or not by learning to evaluate websites on the Internet.
The transformation of our culture from an Industrial Age to an Information Age is why a new kind of literacy, coupled with a new way of learning, is critical in the 21st century.
At the Center for Media Literacy, we hope that the theory and practice of media literacy education, along with the resources, information and networking available at this website, will provide the framework — and the tools — to bring the promise of an empowering 21st century literacy to every child, every home, every school in America.
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Sunday, September 23, 2012

One Small Step For Literacy




Hernando Guanlao has set up an informal library outside his central Manila home to encourage his community to share in his joy of reading, BBC News reports.
In 2000, Guanlao put his collection of books — he owned fewer than 100 — outside the door of his house, offering them to anyone who wanted to borrow them.
People did. They even added to his collection.
There are now close to 3,000 books — he doesn't keep an inventory as numbers are always changing — on the shelves and boxes stacked outside his door.
"It seems to me that the books are speaking to me. That's why it multiplies like that," he says of his unadvertised library, dubbed the Reading Club 2000. "The books are telling me they want to be read…they want to be passed around."
Locals call it "the library on Balagtas Street." Guanlao insists there are no rules at his library, and people can borrow the books for as long as they want, or even keep them permanently.
"People can borrow, they can read, they can take home. In fact, the club is open 24/7. I never close," he tells the Philippine Daily Inquirer.
Despite the Philippines' very high literacy rate, access to books in the country, especially among the poor, is limited.
Guanlao reaches Manila's poorest communities on his "book bike." He loads a large basket with books and delivers them to families who can't afford to buy books or make the long trek to the national library.
Guanlao is also starting to branch out, helping two other men set up similar ventures in other provinces. Eventually, he hopes to set up a "book boat" that would travel around the islands of Sulu and Basilan, "an area better known as a hideout for separatist rebels than for any great access to literature," BBC News reports.
"A book should be used and reused. It has life, it has a message," he says. "As a book caretaker, you become a full man."
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Monday, September 3, 2012

Losing our Good Teachers


                I came across this article and I felt a feeling of loss as I feel that very soon we will be losing our good teachers all because we now have  a generation of parents who seem to be more interested in enabling their children than teaching them about the real world around them. Teachers are no longer to correct them or give deserved marks. I wonder what type of world are we creating in the future if  the next generation is not equipped to deal with it. Read the article below and tell me your thoughts because this is happening all too often these days in our education system. I myself am becoming quite disheartened with teaching at the lower level because of the behavior of parents. It is becoming more and more difficult to teach from the heart.


Edmonton teacher Lynden Dorval may lose job over zeroes


By | Daily Brew – Fri, 31 Aug, 2012
Suspended teacher Lynden Dorval faces a termination hearing next month. The Edmonton Public School Board has a No-Zero Policy. When 61-year-old Lynden Dorval continued to dole out zeroes to students who failed to hand in assignments last year, he was suspended.
And now that suspension may result in his termination, as the principal of Ross Sheppard High School, ignoring students' petitions asking for Dorval's reinstatement to the classroom, has recommended Dorval's dismissal.
"I have been told that termination often results in withdrawal of teaching certificate, which means I may not be able to teach anywhere," Dorval told CTV's Canada AM from Edmonton Friday.
In principal Ron Bradley's letter to Dorval, he cites Dorval's failure to mark and return tests in a timely manner following his mid-May suspension as contributors to his recommended dismissal:
"Your habitual refusal to obey lawful orders, your repeated insubordination, and your obvious neglect of duty force me to consider recommending termination of your contract with Edmonton Public Schools," Bradley wrote.
Dorval responded that when he was suspended for his stand against the No-Zero policy, he was told to turn in his keys and pack up his belongings at once — and claims he didn't realize he hadn't returned some of the exams until the school notified him of the issue.
"All of this confusion could have been easily avoided by  allowing even one day of transition to allow me to walk the new teacher through what he need to prepare and we could have easily identified any missing evaluation material…I turn your own words back on you: If you were so concerned with the achievement of those students, then why did you so abruptly terminate my teaching and replace me with an inexperienced teacher?" Dorval rebutted.
Read both letters in full at the Edmonton Journal.
The Edmonton Public School Board is set to review the No-Zero approach this fall.
"That's why I'm still doing this," Dorval told the Canadian Press, determined to fight both his dismissal and the no-zero policy.
"Otherwise I would just let the termination go through. But I think to keep it in the public mind and eye is the most important thing that needs to be talked about because a lot of parents, even some of the trustees I'm sure, didn't know these kinds of policies are in place."
Those in support of the No-Zero policy claim that zeroes don't reflect what a student knows about a subject — unfinished work should be treated as a behavioural issue, not an academic one — nor zeroes encourage improvement. Instead, students should be given "incomplete" grades when they fail to hand in work. They are then expected to do make-up assignments.
Dorval, a physics teacher for 35 years, claims this approach doesn't prepare students for the real world, nor are students motivated by the more lenient grading system.
"The students need to develop that intrinsic motivation to do it on their own," Dorval told the National Post.
"There's actually no research that backs what they're doing; it's simply a philosophy. I believe it damages students to allow them to just get away with not doing any work. They say that giving out zeros damages their esteem and makes them give up. But in my experience, that's not true at all," he told CTV News.
When the Edmonton Journal polled its readers last summer, 97 per cent of them believed a zero is an appropriate mark on an assignment that isn't handed in.
Dorval is set to appear before the superintendent on September 10th to address the call for dismissal.
[ More Daily Brew: Alberta research find common gut virus may be potent ca

  • dozertank
    dozertank  •  2 days 23 hours ago
    How can you give a mark to something a student does not hand in?...Definitely would deserve a 0, but that's just common sense, which is no longer in fashion.
  • TheAntiHarper
    TheAntiHarper  •  2 days 15 hours ago
    The dumbing down of Canadians! No kid left behind even if he doesn't do the work? Give them a zero! Spoiled punks think they can run and cry to mommy to make it better. Better buck up chump or start canvasing the local McDonalds for a job.
    • elea
      elea 18 hours ago
      Hey Macdonalds is not going to want these slackers either they hire many Phillipino staff who work hard with a smile on their faces
  • Crys B
    Crys B  •  2 days 17 hours ago
    This almost sounds as if the principal has it out for this teacher. Teachers shouldn't have to make up extra work and assignments because some brat won't do the first work. Not only that but what if they don't do the make up work? Give them make up work for the make up work? Todays society is setting up this generation of kids for failure.
  • Frank Connors
    Frank Connors  •  2 days 16 hours ago
    "unfinished work should be treated as a behavioural issue" crap. How is letting a student make up an assignment fair to the kid who had to skip baseball to do an assignment? Love to see the kid in the real world when he does not make the burger right because lets be real thats all they will amount to is flipping burgers if you hand everything to them in life. Challenge, encourage, motivate, but make sure they know they earned the zero if they do not do the work
    • Brian
      Brian 1 day 7 hours ago
      The problem is lack of discipline. No one is able to keep kids in line these days what with the "no spanking" "no shouting" "no punishment at all for anything". It amazes me that people expect progressively dumber generations of children are supposed to survive let alone thrive when they can't even be disciplined enough to hand in assignments at school. We're going to have people going to university that have no idea what they're there for. Probably ones that haven't even heard the name of the class they are in. Ridiculous way the world is heading these days.
  • raylew3
    raylew3  •  2 days 17 hours ago
    It's quite obvious who should really be terminated.
    • Jully
      Jully 1 day 10 hours ago
      The kid you dumb#$%$
  • pancho villa
    pancho villa  •  2 days 16 hours ago
    If the superintendent were any stupider he/she would have to be watered twice a week!
    • Marianne
      Marianne 1 day 18 hours ago
      But most kids know everything about everything ... just ask them, they'll tell you!
      Especially at the "miracle" age of 16, that's when most of them think that they just woke up brilliant, and it all happeded on their 16th birthday! I am so grateful that all of my children are out of high school and the only one left in university is the youngest and he just turned 20. Now that he's helping to pay for his education, his whole attitude toward school and studying has changed, for the better. He was always a pretty good student who did his work but I can definitely see the difference in his assignments and the amount of time that he studies, compared to his high school days. It's nice to see him grow up and be responsible!
  • G C H
    G C H  •  2 days 16 hours ago
    This news item has been going on FAR to long.My kid's had part of their education in St Albert,and have since become very sucessful individuals,in their own fields.I was a very invloved parent in their education.Had they been allowed to pass when I knew that the effort was not there,I would have been in the principals office in short order.This teacher is making a fair comment on the students effort,and as such is a good educator.IN NO WAY does he deserve to be admonished for giving Zero's when Zero effort is shown by the student.I,for one would support him,and say that there should be more educators like him
    • canadiangirl
      canadiangirl 1 day 14 hours ago
      @Name - that 10% decrease per day is also what's not allowed in no zero policies. Basically, you cannot deduct marks for a behaviour...the grade has to reflect knowledge of the subject.
  • A Yahoo! User  •  2 days 16 hours ago
    If students don't do the work as instructed or not at all, they deserve a 0. After all, when I was in grade 9...I handed in a math assignment and got -10/100...the -10 came from it being handed in at the end of class...LOL Live and learn...Hand in your assignments and get help if you are not understanding it! Simple as that!

    Kudos for this teacher!! Why should he be penalized?? This world has not only become a joke but ridiculous to the point where you can sue and arrest a person for trying to do something to help others!!!
  • Dave
    Dave  •  2 days 23 hours ago
    Once out of school and working, doesn't your paycheck go to zero if you fail to hand in your work, or even show up for that matter?
  • unscrat
    unscrat  •  2 days 17 hours ago
    Okay. Instead of zeros. He could grade it a negative one.

  •
  • bryan m
    bryan m  •  2 days 16 hours ago
    Personally I applaud Dorval for trying to put a little responsibility back onto the student instead of coddling them and pushing them through school with little effort on their part. I went to high school in the late 60's, you either completed your assignments and passed your year end exams or you redid that grade. Simple, and I would venture a guess that students of that era were better prepared to enter the work force or go on to higher education upon graduation
  • canuck 111
    canuck 111  •  2 days 17 hours ago
    Sound like the principal attended one of those schools that passed him because he was granted a clear pass to go and get an higher education with no intelligence to back it up. What else is he to do but to criticize someone that knows that if your a dummy you don.t get the marks It does show that we don.t need teachers and most government are making sure of that. This principal seems to be without vision. Bradley the dunce got his education in the corner because he knew he would get a pass.
  • lirechek
    lirechek  •  2 days 16 hours ago
    Lynden Dorval - thank you for trying to teach children the difference between right and wrong - and about what is ethically correct. Continued support from me and my family - life is not a free ride - you cannot jump thru life without doing the work to get there .. Zero marks for Zero work = Zero grade..the choice is yours

  • Yah, let the students pass, They are the future engineers of this country. How idiotic.

  • To the school board and all those that support the "no zero" policy... as a uni grad and entrepreneur that has started and operated companies both here in Canada and overseas, this policy is ridiculous and does NOT teach kids the realities of the real world. Don't get your work done on time, do a poor job, etc you will be fired. There are no safety nets in the real world and this is just another policy aimed at protecting the schools themselves at the expense of students' proper education.

  • i was a teacher and fought grade inflation continuously to no avail. As far as not attending meetings, if they are of little or no value, why go? Been there, done that!
    The best teacher's I've known fight hard for their students but at the same time expected respect in return which in part means doing their share in the classroom to learn what is being taught...I had my share of ne'er do wells and they always ran to mommy or daddy wailing about unfair treatment...things don't seem to change do they?

  • No work handed in? Go directly to fail, do not pas 'Go forward', do not collect your passing grade. There should be a tax on stupidity. Oh wait, there is. It's called a lottery.
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