What are you doing right now? What's on your list?

[Connie Weber]

Hi, Everyone. Busy enough?

This is a community check-in forum: please sketch out a list of your projects, activities, happenings (and mishaps!) of this current time, maybe what's going on from now until June. Come on--it'll be fun to see what everyone's doing.

What items are on your list right now? What fills your days? Is each day different from another, or are they the same? What's coming up shortly? What do you have to be done with by June? What are you really into? What are you dreading? What events are going on or upcoming?

[Doug Martin]

Right now I am taping and editing a video presentation that will be used as part of a mock accident assembly we will conduct next week in preparation for prom. I have anther day of shooting and then post-production begins. Once that is concluded we will begin making plans to tape the prom and air it for a week to the building and the community on cable. This year we may have it stream on the web as well. Once prom is over I need to get busy producing a video which shows the value of interactive white boards in the classroom to gain community support for additional purchases. Soon after that is completed, I'll need to plan for taping graduation and getting it on the air. I'm sure there will be a dozen or so other video requests that will come in over the next 3 weeks as well.

Of course I teach 3 periods of television and video production classes in a 4 period day. I'll have final exams, final projects and portfolios to grade somewhere in there. Fortunately our district went to an online gradebook and I have been able to keep up with the grading so I shouldn't have as much to do at the end of the semester as usual.

Getting ready to end the year is always hectic when you teach in a production facility or lab. When I finally get to the last day of teacher inservice, turn in grades and finish student reports, I finally get to begin putting equipment away. (usually after most of the other teachers are long gone) We'll need to wipe the hard drives on computers and install software updates, order supplies for next year, compose a list of equipment that needs to be repaired over the summer and switch some crucial components on to a timer system so they warm up and dry out each day for an hour or so during the summer months. I will need to do an inventory, pack gear in closets, move everything off of the studio floor so it can be scrubbed and waxed, put sets into storage and disconnect the electrical equipment in the studio.

The thing I dread most about this time of year are the loads of meetings, paperwork and new initiatives we are expected to attend to before we finish. I don't know why we pick this time of year to think about making changes in curriculum. Everyone is usually burned out and can barely think about what we should change. I think I would rather do curriculum work at the beginning of the school year when I am refreshed and energized. At the end of the school year I would really rather get my studio in order, put the equipment away, fill out order forms and requisitions, finish grades, and go home.

[Connie Weber]

Doug,

Whew... I'm not sure I could even begin to manage the sort of work you do, with the television and video production labs. Impressive! Please share news (examples?) of your work.

Hey, I just bought a book called Death by Meeting. Have you seen it? I know what what you mean about dreading the loads of meetings (along with the paperwork and change-making). I agree with you about wanting to do curriculum work at another time of year.

Well, hey, summer's coming. That's gotta be good!

[Ellen Pham]

Well first of all, I think Connie is a dear.... I'm one of those people who just refuses to be busy, Connie! I get tired instead : ). I just finished subbing for some (wonderful, but still...) middle schoolers, and guess what? I'm tired! I will try to write more coherently after a nap.

[Britt Gow]

Hi Connie and friends,
We are three weeks into second term in Victoria, Australia and busy preparing students for NAPLAN tests. Some of the great things happening at our school this term include:
* Student planning, costing, preparing, cooking and serving chicken parmagiana for staff at lunchtime
* Rat dissections in year 11 biology and junior science class
* Chinese teacher and students constructing "Wall of China" from sugar cubes and play dough
* Students competing in athletic sports, walking the Rail Trail, Auskick and "Net Set Go!"
* Science and Engineering Challenge for year 10 students
* Students participating in the Netgen Education Project with Anne Mirtschin
* Enviro. students doing case study of critically endangered Orange Bellied Parrot
* Year 8 students making paper from grass then a research project on the manufacture of a substance.
* Year 7 students "Separating Mixtures" assessment and then starting a unit on "Cells"

No wonder I'm so busy! But I wouldn't have it any other way - I love teaching and finding the ways that students learn best.

The other issue - on a more serious note - the threat of turning our preparatory (age 5) to year 12 (age 18) school into a P to 9 school. Public rally next week to discuss centralisation of educational provision, postal and police services. Has anyone else out there had experience with the 'centralisation' of education - I think all the other countries in the world are practising decentralisation - or am I wrong?

[Evy I. Siregar]

Contrary to your experience, here in Indonesia we have just beginning decentralisation of our educational provision, meaning each region are now allowed to construct their own curriculum. Our experience with centralisation gives us unfair educational experience to kids all over Indonesia. Those living in Papua or Aceh have different exposure to our world as well as having different life experience, therefore, among others, we are now moving to decentralisation.
Up to now, things are just falling into place and some kids are really enjoying their educational experience because they are learning from their own surrounding, but we still have problems with benchmarking and standardisation. So far, we are still afloat.

[Connie Weber]

Hi Britt,

I hope you get some answers to your questions about centralization/decentralization. Mike might have something to add. Seems to me the US is in a big swing towards national standards--yet people like Howard Gardner advocate pluralized standards. It's highly political right now, with all the (empty) hoorah about NCLB getting revised. Mike knows a lot about district consolidation, which may be more of what you're asking about. Maybe he'll get on and answer a few questions.

Your coursework sounds fascinating, rich. Your students are mighty lucky.

Thanks--always so good to hear from you.

[Evy I. Siregar]

Currently Indonesia is so 'international' minded, so here I am doing training and running workshop for schools intending to run the 'international' curriculum, whatever it is!
Trying to 'make' people see that it's our children best interest that we should be concentrating on is really, really very hard. In addition, getting across message that 'international' means we have to work on better standard that can really be measured, focusing on process rather than the end result, being fair to kids with all their strength and weaknesses, working for the whole person rather than the cognitive part alone, and other issues of multiculturalism, bilingualism, and so on.
This is a very crucial time in our education, where having a democratic country now means everyone has a right to say and 'demand' of service! A whole different approach to learning! It is exhilarating, exciting as well as confusing. And being in the middle of it is an experience to live through!

[Ellen Pham]

Wow, Evy, what a massive and important (crucial) challenge! I feel humbled by it.

[Connie Weber]

I'm with Ellen, saying, WOW, Evy! I hope we can be of support to you here. Let us know what's happening, OK?

[Evy I. Siregar]

Hi Ellen and Connie, thank you for the support. Currently, with the group I am working with, we are trying to 'map' a couple of districts in term of professional competence. In addition, we are trying also to map where we are in term of our standard of achievement of our students.
Our problem are still the same, trying to let people see what we really are doing to provide a quality education and, at the same time, working with so many people with diverse cultural background, many oops and ahs, and we are still going on. No holiday yet for us, wish us luck and courage to go on. thank you all.

[Connie Weber]

I am in awe of my distinguished and deep network-mates. This forum is an absolute delight me--don't you love hearing what people are up to?

My happenings are much simpler than a lot of yours--I'm just teaching away, enjoying the supercharged class I have, racing to keep up with their learning-interests, orchestrating their expressive talents in productions that reveal who they are. I'm giving them the reins, watching what develops.

We have a performance evening for families and friends coming up shortly. The kids will be drumming, singing (with my daughter--Joni Mitchell, Judy Collins), storytelling, dancing.

We just got back from a fantastic trip to the UM Art Museum where we studied ancient Korean pottery with a superb docent who linked everything together with a novel we read and loved: A Single Shard. That was Wednesday. Then on Thursday we had Art-Music night, a whole-school celebration of Asian culture.

Upcoming on Monday through Wednesday I'm off to overnight camp with the students for three days of outdoor adventuring: canoeing, archery, pond-study, the high-ropes course.

Next Thursday we say goodbye to our elder partners at the senior home.

Things are just busy. A good sort of busy.

I get to play women's indoor soccer soccer twice a week. Love the fitness it demands, love the teamwork.

I've added in a new graduate course on Educational Leadership, one of those intensive spring seminars that meets all Friday night and all Saturday. I'm already getting a lot out of it. Enjoying the challenge of getting a more accurate picture of the broad current tides in education, honing my skills in being able to swim against many of those tides.

Oh yeah--preparing for summertime's Harvard experience; one of the most in-depth learning involvements I've ever had in life. I'll be a study-group leader in Project Zero, and a faculty member in Future of Learning. I'm reading, reading, reading. I'm gathering lists of activities that spring off of Perkins' and Gardner's work, from the studies of Daniel Wilson and Ron Ritchhart. In our study groups we'll explore the themes in depth. The vastly cool thing is that the groups are composed of educators from all over the world--idealists, people who are intensely passionate about education.

Hmmm... have to write students' reports shortly; an unpleasant marathon coming up. (Didn't I just write reports?! Next trimester, already?) Reports are always hard enough--we take them really seriously and try to "paint portraits" of our students, try to show how we know each one very personally--but now this arduous exercise has become doubly-difficult since the technology the school has adopted constricts rather than facilitates the process. It's a study in frustration. Gotta be fortified, for getting through all that!

Preparing for Summer Camp--that comes up one week after school is out. Yea, summer! Can hardly wait for the days of mixed-age groups outside all day: sports, art, exploring nature, grooming horses, gathering eggs, writing in journals, making skits. The camp takes place at my house, a farm about 25 minutes from Ann Arbor. I'm surrounded by 172 acres of rolling hills and wild woods. Summer is bliss. There's something to be said about this model of learning I use in Farm Camp. Wish it was something you could do all year long!

Looking way ahead (two months seems "way ahead" in my current state, that of living day-by-day, dealing with everything right here and now, getting done what needs to be done right on the spot), looking way ahead to August: at last I'll be on deserted white-sand beaches in northern Michigan with absolutely no one around but family. We'll be doing the rugged sort of camping with no electricity, cooking over fires. Just think of that: reading all day, playing board games, going on hikes. Now there's the carrot, the reward for making it through the circus that'll go on up until then. But hey, it's a happy circus. Life is good.

A dilemma: how to get more sleep?

[Ken Messersmith]

I am interested in your "Farm Camp". Who comes? How many students and staff do you have? I grew up on a cattle ranch and agree that there is something special about the rural life.