My fellow teachers, pre-service teachers, parents, students, and anyone else interested in education, November is coming upon is quickly, and as many of us know, that cold, crisp, but beautiful fall month is also a month of great insanity, for November is National Novel Writing Month. (And if anyone is wondering why that sentence is so wordy, it's because I was using it as practice for NaNo.)
National Novel Writing Month, generally shortened to NaNoWriMo or, even shorter, NaNo, can be a useful tool for teachers, despite the fact that it is a potential distraction for our students when it comes to homework. Why? Because NaNo can get our students interested in writing, something that all teachers, especially we English teachers, want desperately.
Here's the deal. There are two ways we and our students can participate. There is the usual adult program, which can be found at http://www.nanowrimo.org. The object here is to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. Just throw caution to the wind and write, write, write! If our students are under the age of 17, and the vast majority of them will be, or if we choose to lead our class in NaNo, they can sign up for the Young Writers Program, where our students can set their own goals. This, of course, will allow our students to take pride in reaching a goal that they feel challenges them. It will also help to unleash their creativity. http://ywp.nanowrimo.org/aboutteachers This page explains how you and your class can participate.
Now, of course, you don't have to a write a novel yourself, but think of how much extra motivation that will give your students! And why should we give them something like this if we're not doing it ourselves?
Best of all, if they reach the goall that they've set for themselves, or, if they're participating in the adult program and reach 50,000 words, here is some extra incentive for your students. Createspace.com, an associate of Amazon.com, will send them a proof of their novel for free! All they have to do is log into the website on December 2nd. If they've been declared a winner, they can go to the "I wrote a novel, now what?" page and get a special code to enter at the Create Space website. They will create an account with Create Space, upload their novel and cover art, and that's it! Create Space will recognize them as a NaNo winner, and send them a proof copy of their novel.
That's in addition, of course, to the winner certificate that you get in PDF format to download and print out. This is something that can really boost self-esteem. And that, my friends, is how you get a child interested in writing.
Friday, October 23, 2009
Monday, October 12, 2009
Zero Tolerance
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/12/education/12discipline.html?no_interstitial
That is the link to the latest story about Zero Tolerance policies in schools going way too far. If you're too lazy to click on the link, it's about a six-year old who got a 60 day suspension. His crime? Being excited about having just joined up with Cub Scouts, the young boy brought his scout utensil to school. It is fork, spoon, and knife all in one.
I know our schools have become more dangerous lately. I know we've had to take further precautions since Columbine and and VA-Tech and other such shootings. But a six-year-old's scouting utensil? Really? I'm all for keeping our kids safe, but the boy is six years old.
This of course is on the heals of an elementary-aged girl whose grandmother sent a birthday cake to school along with a knife to cut it, and she got expelled. Her teacher waited until after she had used the knife to cut the cake to report it to the principal, of course.
I remember, back when I was in elementary school, we used knives to help carve a pumpkin, though that came to an end when one of my classmates cut herself. (Not before I'd had a chance to cut out one of the jack-o-lantern's eyes, thank goodness.)
When I was in high school, on of our security guards remenisced about how when he was in high school, he and a lot of other guys had guns on the back of their trucks, on school property, and nobody batted an eye. It's still that way in some of the more rural school districts.
Is it just me, or has school violence gone up since the banishment of said gun racks? Then again, I've also noticed that it's gone up drastically since the banning of prayer in public schools, as well. Call me old fashioned, but if we were to get rid of all this PC stuff in schools and start actually teaching instead of catering to every single child whose parents threaten to sue the school district at the slightest sign that their child might actually recieve an F for getting all the answers wrong on a test, doing their math problems wrong, etc, or for the fact that we simply can't stop every single bullying situation before it starts, no matter how much we try.... Well, then we might actually have some discipline in our schools and violence might go down.
I mean, teaching our students to respect one another as human beings is one thing. But we can't force them to be best of friends, and it doesn't exactly prepare our students for the real world, where life just isn't fair, and never will be.
Which leads me back to the situation that started this entire post. It is wrong to expect a six-year-old to understand the zero-tolerance policies of most schools to the point where he would know not to bring something as simple as the utensil that this particular little boy brought in. Most parents don't even realize how unreasonably strict these zero-tolerance policies really are. When I was in high school, we used toy lightsabers in a (admittedly low-budget, extremely amateur) recreation of a joust in my world history class. Now, if you bring in so much as a plastic sword from a pirate dress up set, something so obviously fake as that is, you can be expelled for posession of a weapon.
It's not just weapons, either. You can also be suspended or expelled for Banaca. Yes, that wonderful little breath freshener is considered posession of alcohol. And don't dare get caught with asperin, naproxen (Aleve), ibuprofin, or any other over-the-counter pain killer. Also included in the list of drugs would be cough syrup, a girl's birth control pills (though many schools are handing out condoms), other prescription medications, and asthma inhalers.
Oh yes. You read that last bit right. These days, in many school districts, if your child has asthma, they can not carry their own rescue inhaler. If they have an attack, they must somehow, amidst the painful gasping for air, ask permission from their teacher to go to the nurse, make it to the nurse, hope the nurse is actually in (especially as more and more school districts, in an effort to save money, go down to part time nurses), and ask the nurse for their inhaler.
This is not to say that it's impossible. It can be done. After all, at the Tony Awards a couple of years ago, Idina Menzel went into an asthma attack at the beginning of a performence of Defying Gravity, a song that takes an amazing amount of deep breathing because of long notes, especially at the end, and performed remarkably well, then got to her rescue inhaler after getting off stage. However, Idina, it should be noted, is a highly trained Broadway actress, and it would be highly unreasonable to expect the average student to make the trek to the nurse's office for their rescue inhaler.
So, my fellow educators and future educators, what do you think? Parents? Your opinion? Students? Your thoughts? Have today's zero-tolerance policies just g one too far?
That is the link to the latest story about Zero Tolerance policies in schools going way too far. If you're too lazy to click on the link, it's about a six-year old who got a 60 day suspension. His crime? Being excited about having just joined up with Cub Scouts, the young boy brought his scout utensil to school. It is fork, spoon, and knife all in one.
I know our schools have become more dangerous lately. I know we've had to take further precautions since Columbine and and VA-Tech and other such shootings. But a six-year-old's scouting utensil? Really? I'm all for keeping our kids safe, but the boy is six years old.
This of course is on the heals of an elementary-aged girl whose grandmother sent a birthday cake to school along with a knife to cut it, and she got expelled. Her teacher waited until after she had used the knife to cut the cake to report it to the principal, of course.
I remember, back when I was in elementary school, we used knives to help carve a pumpkin, though that came to an end when one of my classmates cut herself. (Not before I'd had a chance to cut out one of the jack-o-lantern's eyes, thank goodness.)
When I was in high school, on of our security guards remenisced about how when he was in high school, he and a lot of other guys had guns on the back of their trucks, on school property, and nobody batted an eye. It's still that way in some of the more rural school districts.
Is it just me, or has school violence gone up since the banishment of said gun racks? Then again, I've also noticed that it's gone up drastically since the banning of prayer in public schools, as well. Call me old fashioned, but if we were to get rid of all this PC stuff in schools and start actually teaching instead of catering to every single child whose parents threaten to sue the school district at the slightest sign that their child might actually recieve an F for getting all the answers wrong on a test, doing their math problems wrong, etc, or for the fact that we simply can't stop every single bullying situation before it starts, no matter how much we try.... Well, then we might actually have some discipline in our schools and violence might go down.
I mean, teaching our students to respect one another as human beings is one thing. But we can't force them to be best of friends, and it doesn't exactly prepare our students for the real world, where life just isn't fair, and never will be.
Which leads me back to the situation that started this entire post. It is wrong to expect a six-year-old to understand the zero-tolerance policies of most schools to the point where he would know not to bring something as simple as the utensil that this particular little boy brought in. Most parents don't even realize how unreasonably strict these zero-tolerance policies really are. When I was in high school, we used toy lightsabers in a (admittedly low-budget, extremely amateur) recreation of a joust in my world history class. Now, if you bring in so much as a plastic sword from a pirate dress up set, something so obviously fake as that is, you can be expelled for posession of a weapon.
It's not just weapons, either. You can also be suspended or expelled for Banaca. Yes, that wonderful little breath freshener is considered posession of alcohol. And don't dare get caught with asperin, naproxen (Aleve), ibuprofin, or any other over-the-counter pain killer. Also included in the list of drugs would be cough syrup, a girl's birth control pills (though many schools are handing out condoms), other prescription medications, and asthma inhalers.
Oh yes. You read that last bit right. These days, in many school districts, if your child has asthma, they can not carry their own rescue inhaler. If they have an attack, they must somehow, amidst the painful gasping for air, ask permission from their teacher to go to the nurse, make it to the nurse, hope the nurse is actually in (especially as more and more school districts, in an effort to save money, go down to part time nurses), and ask the nurse for their inhaler.
This is not to say that it's impossible. It can be done. After all, at the Tony Awards a couple of years ago, Idina Menzel went into an asthma attack at the beginning of a performence of Defying Gravity, a song that takes an amazing amount of deep breathing because of long notes, especially at the end, and performed remarkably well, then got to her rescue inhaler after getting off stage. However, Idina, it should be noted, is a highly trained Broadway actress, and it would be highly unreasonable to expect the average student to make the trek to the nurse's office for their rescue inhaler.
So, my fellow educators and future educators, what do you think? Parents? Your opinion? Students? Your thoughts? Have today's zero-tolerance policies just g one too far?
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