Carnival of Cities for August 10, 2011

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Welcome to the Carnival of Cities blog carnival, where we tour the world in a single post, via submissions from a variety of different blogs, all about any aspect of one, single city (or fair-sized town)

Thank you for letting an educator host this great carnival for the first time. I welcome all of you to Edutech Musings, where I blog about education related matters and my family. Glad you stopped by! 

This is the August 10 edition. The previous edition was hosted on July 27 by Arrows Sent Forth and the August 24 edition will be on Sheila's Guide. 

Please submit your (ONE, non-spammy) blog post to the next edition of the Carnival of Cities using the carnival submission form. 

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CITIES IN EUROPE

Anne-Sophie Redisch presents Appealing Alghero (Sardinia) posted at Sophie's World. 

Marc Fav presents Barcelona - - - A Dream posted at Marc Fav.

CITIES IN THE AMERICAS

Eileen Ludwig presents Delighted I was one of the lucky 50 For Final Shuttle Landing Atlantis #NASATweetup #STS135 Landing attendees posted at Freelance Tourist: Travel Tips. 

Joe Vargo presents Zoombezi Bay Water Park: Say Hello to Summer posted at The Columbus Experience. 

Nicole Wiltrout presents Georges Island: Tips and Photos posted at Arrows Sent Forth. 

Sheila Scarborough presents Slow down and appreciate the less exotic posted at Perceptive Travel Blog. 

Mary Jo Manzanares presents 10 Days of Seattle Summer Fun for Families posted at Traveling with MJ. 

Dominique King presents Family-friendly fun at Michigan’s Grand Rapids Public Museum posted at Midwest Guest. 

Lacy Morris presents The Mural Project: San Francisco's Balmy Alley posted at Away.com Travel Blog. 

Kathy Gray presents The Stark County Back-to-School Bucket List posted at What's Happening in Canton/Stark County, Ohio. 

Jessie Voigts presents Lakeside Shakespeare Theatre's Summer Camp for Kids posted at Wandering Educators. 

Muriel Clark presents Nebraska Outback: North Platte Area Attraction Tour posted at Nebraska Outback. 

Jennifer presents A Visit to Hanauma Bay 21 Years Apart posted at Two Kids and a Map. 

Debbie Dubrow presents North Vancouver With Kids: Exploring Persian Food posted at DeliciousBaby.com. 

Zhu presents Tourists in Toronto posted at Correr Es Mi Destino. 

Corinne McDermott presents Baby Friendly Toronto: Riverdale Farm posted at Have Baby Will Travel. 

We had a wonderful tour of the world. That concludes this Carnival edition. Thanks for visiting. 

If you would like to host a future Carnival edition on your blog, please contact Sheila Scarborough at Sheila “at” sheilascarborough “dot” com. I can now attest that hosting is easy and fun! (Who wouldn't want a sneak peak at all these great travel posts?!) Spots to host are available in September and October. 

Past editions and future hosts can be found on the blog carnival index page.

My Teacher Essay Contest Submission

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    This morning I submitted my entry into the Teacher Essay Contest for NBC News Education Nation.  Three "winners" will be selected and will be flown to NYC to be a part of the Teacher Town Hall on September 25th.  Here is the link to the contest, followed by my essay entry. 

Teacher Essay Contest: A Day in the Life of an American Teacher    

The biggest challenge I face as a teacher is students arriving for high school with huge learning gaps.  But I do not place the blame on the teachers these students have had while they were attending elementary or middle school.  Many of these students have gaps due to things happening in their lives while foundational topics were being covered.

     These may include any of the following scenarios or combinations of scenarios:  

We have students moving into and out of homes with relatives, group shelters, or a car on the side of a street.  We have students taking care of sick brothers and sisters or grandparents. We have students who are really, really hungry.  We have students living where partying and all night activities are the norm.  We have students with no backpack, paper, or books in their “homes.’  We have parents who want to be supportive but they are pulled in multiple directions with multiple jobs, taking care of family and relatives, or a possible drug or alcohol addiction.  We have students who are surrounded by people who have never been to college – there is no role model to show them the way.

     I could add a few more scenarios but I want to make the point that students come to 9^th grade with a lot of baggage.  It’s a wonder they can count to 100 or spell Mississippi with all of the barriers to learning that they have encountered.

     One of the really frustrating things, for me, is seeing high school freshmen willing to fail.  How should I react when a student tells me “I don’t care,” when I tell him or her that he needs to get his work done so that he can pass the class?  Should I respond, “well I don’t care either?”  They have seen so many low grades that they don’t think that it is strange to fail.  They have already given up hope of being a successful student.

     When I transitioned to being a teacher from a career in the military, my father-in-law gave me some sound advice.  He said, “You can’t save them all.”  What he meant was that you should try and help every student but when one of them refuses the help and falls through the cracks you shouldn’t beat yourself up – if you truly have tried everything.

     And so, as I drive home from school each day, I take the time to think about my students.  There are the ones who may only be making B’s and C’s but they try hard.  They do their work every day, and they are becoming good citizens of the world.  Then there are the high achieving students.  Am I challenging them enough?  Am I encouraging them and giving them praise for their work or am I ignoring them because they always do good work – I’ve got problem kids to worry about!

     Finally, there are my low achieving students.  One student might be dealing with a pregnancy (theirs or their girlfriends).  Another might be going home to a really bad situation every night.  And another might be actively involved in a neighborhood gang and all of the potential for trouble that entails.

     What about those students who don’t understand the material?  What is going on in class that might be causing this?  Or worse, what might be going on at home that could be causing this?  Am I actively listening to their discussions with their fellow students so I know whether they have any misconceptions?  Do I need to pull a student or a group of students in for extra help with a concept?  Is there a leader in the class who could do some peer tutoring and when should I schedule that?   Do I need to have our master teacher, who is bilingual, call in one of these students for a conference with a parent or guardian because I’m concerned something is going on that is effecting his or her work?   What can I add to tomorrow’s lesson, (or to a future lesson), to make class more interesting with real-life problems to solve?

      It seems like there are more negative influences on our students, today, than in any other time in my life.  Most students are able to overcome these obstacles and they do so without much assistance.  Many reach incredible heights of learning in spite of these barriers. 

     At the beginning of this essay I stated that I had one challenge.  However that challenge is a many-headed monster that I must face.  I measure my success by how well I am able to help students navigate this maze known as life.  One student may periodically get lost and never find the exit.  But most will reach the world outside of the maze.  And then, I will have succeeded as a teacher.

Hello Mother, Hello Father: Growing up at Camp

Sheila Scarborough Photo

If you hadn't read my post about my son going to camp you should do so. But, if you didn't, Tommy is at Camp Champions in Marble Falls a little over an hour away. He attended the camp 2 years ago as a 9 year old and he was miserable for most of it but ended up loving it so much he cried when he had to leave.

When your kid first goes away for camp they always tell you that if you get letters from the camper you can expect the first one to (usually) be all about being home sick and asking you to come get them. It really rips your heart out. But, they grow into the camp routine and they have fun and suddenly any follow up letters will be filled with "guess what we did..." types of passages.

Today we received two letters from Tommy. This is a significant improvement over the last time when we got 2 letters total and one of those didn't arrive until well after he was back home because he messed up the address.

When we opened the first letter it was folded so we could see "I am very homesick" in big letters on the fold. He continued in the letter saying "can you pick me up I miss ya"ll to (sic) much I can't stay here for two weeks." He adds a "P.S. pick me up as soon as you can" and a "or at least come visit me please I need you."

We sighed, didn't really say anything and then opened the second letter. There was no "I'm homesick" on the outside of the folded letter and inside he started with "Dear Mom and Dad I'm kind of homesick it's hard to sleep at night." He immediately started telling us that he loves swimming in the lake and that he did the Ropes Course (which his counselor from two years ago was in charge of) and he was excited that he didn't have to "swim the lake (he's not old enough yet)."

He finished the letter by stating " the good thing is I've lost weight! I run and drink water every day. Camp isn't so bad I guess. Love Tommy."

Total time between writing the two letters? Two days!

So, if you have kids getting to that age where they are ready to go away to camp remember, they will survive, they will (usually) have a blast, and you can expect the first letter to be awful. They wouldn't do that if they didn't love you.

     If you haven't heard before or just can't remember the lyrics to Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh by Allen Sherman, here are the lyrics:

Hello Muddah, hello Fadduh,

Here I am at Camp Grenada

Camp is very entertaining

and they say we'll have some fun if it stops raining.

I went hiking with Joe Spivy

He developed poison ivy

You remember Leonard Skinner

He got ptomaine poisoning last night after dinner.

All the counselors hate the waiters

And the lake has alligators

And the head coach wants no sissies

So he reads to us from something called Ulysses.

Now I don't want this should scare ya

But my bunkmate has malaria

You remember Jeffrey Hardy

They're about to organize a searching party.

Take me home, oh muddah fadduh, take me home, I hate Grenada

Don't leave me out in the forest where I might get eaten by a bear.

Take me home, I promise I will not make noise or mess the house with

other boys, oh please don't make me stay, I've been here one whole day.

Dearest fadduh, darling muddah,

How's my precious little bruddah?

Let me come home if ya miss me

I will even let Aunt Bertha hug and kiss me.

Wait a minute, it stopped hailing,

Guys are swimming, guys are sailing,

Playing baseball, gee that's better,

Muddah Fadduh kindly disregard this letter.

Hiring Teachers in the Digital Age

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     Yesterday and today I was honored to be interviewing candidates for 2 positions at our school. Honored, yes, because in these trying economic times the candidates came to us with incredible resumes. Teacher positions are hard to come by and only the best (or luckiest) are getting hired. Add to that the fact that our school is considered to be a great school, where innovators of education reside, and there really isn't a dearth of applications.

     An added strangeness to this school year is the fact that school districts were late to the game in releasing openings for positions. This was directly linked to the late passage of the state budget.

     So, here we are 3 weeks until students are coming through our door, and we are just starting the interview process. Our principal had narrowed the more than 70 applications down to a dozen or so. Many of these came with recommendations from people at the University of Texas and Texas State University and were easy pushes to the interview round.

     And so with laptop and iPad in hand we entered the room to sort through our interviewees. I had an initial list of questions on the iPad Notes app and was able to (if needed) do more extensive searches with my laptop. (Note: that was only the case because I've only had my iPad for a month or so and I really don't have my driver's license for it yet).

     When the interviewer came in I would try to tell them that I was going to be keeping notes on my iPad and that I wasn't reading emails or on twitter during the interview. Two of the interviews were held via Skype and so I didn't have to make a reference to using my iPad.

     What I found myself doing was a quick Google search of their name while they were introducing themselves. I would look to see if there were any interesting things that popped up on the first page, good or bad. None had anything bad come up by the way. But I was able to pull up school websites and see what the environment of the school they were coming from, or had done student teaching at, was like.

     If they threw out that their school had 80% Low SES (an indicator of students on free or reduced lunch) I could pull up those statistics to see if they were trying to sway us with these numbers (again, none were wrong). And, I could instantly see that there were some things (all good) that hadn't really been pushed to the forefront. One candidate was the Head Baseball Coach at his high school and another was on the U.S. Paralympic Team at the Nagano Olympics and brought home a Medal!

     Should we have had time to do a more extensive study of our candidates I would have checked their Twitter stream (if they had one), their LinkedIn Profile (if...), or their Facebook Profile and status.  Because that's where we are these days.  Nothing is, or should be, a secret unless it is so small it is insignificant.  For example our district is pretty conservative.  Although what you do in your private life is of little importance to me, there are people who would take offense to what you do if you are involved in something that's, say, less than Christian.

     And so we forwarded a couple of names to our principal and one of those will become part of our Manor New Tech staff.  We feel very blessed because there wasn't one candidate that I interviewed that I wouldn't be happy to work with.   When I find out the selection I'll have to invite them to twitter and Facebook and see if they are the type I would send a Google + account to.  Only then will we really be connected as a co-teacher.