Goodbye and Hello!

Hello students,
I would like to thank you all for doing an awesome job journaling, sharing with all of us about your service-learning day to day, and commenting with enthusiasm and thoughtfulness on each other's experiences. I am delighted to read that all of you recommended their classroom teacher or reading coach for future years which to me is one obvious sign that you had a good learning experience all in all. As I read some of your posts, I noticed, at times, how some of you express concerns about their personal fit within the teaching profession. Some of you also express being conflicted between your sadness about leaving your student "mentees" and your happiness about having completed this part of the course as well as the semester coming to an end and bringing (for hopefully most of us) if not a real vacation, at least a change of schedule or scenery! This internal tension/conflict seems perfectly appropriate to me. In fact, this concern shows maturity, and reflection! Hopefully, this experience will remain with you down the road and you can keep referring to it as both a developmental and educational landmark. As I explained in class, I will be reading all of your blogs and comments in the coming week. I will be paying particular attention to:
- the quantity of posts and comments
- the appropriateness of your response to prompts
- the depth of your reflecting on issues encountered in the classroom
- the ability to connect your experiences to authors we read and issues we tackled
- the ability to connect to your own schooling experience and personal background as it relates to issues of power and privilege.
This Service-learning experience is worth 25% of your final grade, as you know!
Finally I would like to say goodbye to you as Fned 346 students and hello as future candidates to the wonderful and rewarding teaching profession (underrated!). I will be in town until may 12 if you have questions and available per email after this.
Good luck and don't be a stranger ;-)

Service-learning and reflection

I really have enjoyed reading about your experiences in the classroom and your responses to the course prompts. As your community-service-learning work is coming to an end, think back to the beginning of this semester. What were your expectations? What did you think it would be like to work with students in Providence schools? Did you think you would be able to combine reading and thinking about theoretical concepts in education and practice in the classrom? were you able to do so? How has this experience revived memories of your own schooling and socio-cultural background? How has it shaped your teacher identity and helped you articulate your beliefs about what it means to be a teacher?
Please remember to print and bring all your blog posts and comments from your peers to class tomorrow Wednesday April 28!

Spring is here: Let's keep up the good work!

I hope you enjoyed this wonderful w-e and had a lovely holiday for those of you who celebrated Easter and/or Passover (Any other Holiday I am missing?).
I enjoyed reading your new posts and comments to each other. I would like to briefly go back to our class discussion on Friday about Deanna's "problematic" cases: one female student who is not responsive at all and whom the teacher seem to have given up on, and another girl who seems to be placing herself at risk in "conversation" with other students (boys) and even threats of physical violence. One of Deanna's questions was, why is it so hard/dangerous to tell (snitch)? In class, we talked about how hard it may be to find out information about students depending how much contact and time we have to spend with the classroom teacher. We discussed how hard it is to actually impact these students whom we feel may need help. However, we agreed that as tutors, we are in a somewhat less powerful but more informed position because these students may share with us information they would not share with another adult.
As I was driving home Friday, I heard the mayor of Newark, NJ on NPR, and I was reminded of our conversation. He has been working on improving the situations of impoverished children and families in Newark's schools. One of the things he said stuck with me as it relates directly to the work that you are doing this semester. I am trying to repeat it in my own words here:
"Some children and students in our city' schools are in great need of attention. They are at risk of failing/dropping out due to the lack of resources, parent's involvement, absent parents, poverty, etc. Yet, research shows that it only takes four hours a month for a motivated adult (not necessarily the child's teacher) to spend with one of these children to TURN THEIR LIFE AROUND."
We spoke about establishing trust on Friday which is a first step (Please read Amy S's latest post!) and a hard one, which becomes harder as the students gets older. However, it it possible!
The time you invest, the attention you give makes a difference in the life of students. So to go back to Deanna, if a student confides into you information that seems dangerous, it is important for you to tell them exactly what you think and why, and show you care, whether you can address the case, or the "non-snitching."
I look forward to reading more as the semester moves on. If you have completed your 15/25 hours, you need to look at all your posts and comments and make sure you match the requirements for our course (see syllabus for prompts to be addressed and # of posts and comments). I also look forward to your midterm presentations Friday!

Break is over: Back to Blogging and Commenting!

Hi everyone,
I hope you enjoyed this break and found some new energy for the remainder of the semester. It is wonderful to read about your progress, tribulations, and even sometimes frustrations. Thanks to all of you who blogged and commented on your peers' blogs during spring break. Some of you need to seriously get to work, however, as this journaling is an essential part of the service-learning project, which constitutes 25% of your final grade. A month or even three weeks is much too long an interval in between posts. Frequent and regular blogging will come in handy when you write a final reflection on this tutoring experience because it is difficult to capture and memorize so much information unless you keep track of it. I am sorry to announce that I had to rearrange our blog groups because Normarie had to drop this course. Her blog is no longer on our course blog: we will miss her greatly! I look forward to reading more and even hearing some of these stories in class.
A bientot !

Blogs 2 and 3

Thanks to all of you who just posted. I noticed that the most recent posts come up first at the top of the list on the right hand side of our couse blog so you can read from the top down from the most recent to the end.
Some of you have done a great job researching infoworks, finding and posting statistical information about the demographics, the SALT survey results, and the school report (NCLB) of their school, and connecting what they see in their classroom (students' diversity, teacher's knowledge, methodology), to the concepts we have been discussing in class around Delpit, and others. once you have written Blog 2 (prompt 1), please consult the list of prompts on p. 5 of our syllabus and pick from prompts 2 to 7 which one you would like to address in your next posts. be sure to write the prompt you chose so that we can follow your thinking!
Please visit each other's blogs and comment this week! check out Ry's blog and read Jen's comment to him to get some sense of what it might look like...
The course only shows 8 followers (incl. myself) which tells us that 14 of us have not yet been on the course blog? No, can't be...Hope you visit by Wednesday so that we can share our thoughts!
Also, check your email for announcements,
Wow, that was a long one, see you next week,

More blogs 2!

Thank you Amy H. and Lisa for sharing on your first visit! It is important that you go and read each other's blogs so that you know what everyone else is doing, and how they are feeling. It helps you situate yourself as well. I look forward to more as school vacation ends this week. Remember to bring your tracking sheet, have your contact form filled in and leave the bottom part with your classroom teacher, and have your BCI with you at all times when tutoring.
As you spend more time there, I hope you are able to relate some of the concepts we discussed especially this week's "culture of power," and the many cultures of students.

Check out people's blog 2!

Kayla, Margeux, Lauren, and Arielle are sharing interesting info about their tutoring setting...
This is a great opportunity to check out and compare with each other's experiences!

Also please remember to add your first name in your blog name so that we can identify you easily. Thanks and have a great week-end,

Comments on blog 2

I missed seeing you all yesterday and I hope you took this opportunity to read, write and enjoy some hot chocolate! some of you have already posted their blog 2: congrats! I commented. Remember to post about your first school visit by tonite (thursday feb 11) 5pm. If you have not been able to visit, please post blog 2 asap...
We are still missing 3 bloggers at this time and I hope they get on the train!

Great Job!

Thanks to most of you who created their blog, posted a comment on our class blog, and posted a short bio on your own blog. You are now connected to our class blog. I am making a list of all the blog names and what student they are attached to since some of the names are not personalized and it's better to know whom you are addressing, and who's saying what!
I noticed that some of you created more than 1 blog in the process. please be sure to go and delete the unused blog. Follow the steps (Delete a blog) and be sure to NOT DELETE the correct blog connected to our courser (the one in which you have written your first bio/blog).

If you have not created your blog, you received an email message from me asking you to do so ASAP. deadline was feb 6 per syllabus!

Most of you may be starting volunteering this week.
In class this week, I will collect your contact forms.

For February 12, you are asked (see syllabus) to post blog 2 using prompt 1.
See you Wednesday at 8am!

Welcome to our FNED 346-10 spring 10 Blog!

A blog is your very own, personal online journal. It is public, in that I and your classmates can read it and comment on it, but it is your space and you can control most everything about it. (If you want to make it private so that *only* members of this class can read it, I can show you how to do so).

Creating your own blog will also introduce you to the blogisphere if you don't know this place already. I hope that you will discover creative educational uses for this online medium. You will see how easy it is to use blogger.com, and perhaps it will inspire you to bring blogs into your own classroom.

To start your own blog, you will go to:

www.blogger.com




The big orange button at the top right of the page will direct you to creating your own blog on a site called blogspot.com. Follow the instructions to open up a free GOOGLE account. (If you already have a google account, you can merely sign in at the top of the page.) You can use any email account you use on a regular basis — this will be your username.

Don't forget your Username and Password!! You will need them to login everytime.

As you fill in the info, you will be asked to name your blog. This title will appear at the top of your blog. (Our class blog is called "Schooling in a Democratic Society.")

Then, you need to choose an address:

http://_______.blogspot.com

This will be the web address associated with your site. you can call it anything you like. Be clever or simple (or both) -- it is up to you.

You will also need to choose a design template for your blog. Look through the options listed and see what appeals to you. You can change this later and can even find fun, creative templates at sites like PYZAM.

Once you have the account set up, you can start posting. A “posting” is an entry on your blog. (For clarification, you have one blog, but many postings). Give the post a title and then compose as you would any journal entry. When you are finished, hit the button at the bottom that says Publish Post. It will not appear on your blog until you publish it. You can always go back and edit old posts and create new ones.

Your First Post:
Your first post should be a short introduction to you: who are you, how your semester is going so far, what do you do when you are not in class, etc. (Just a short paragraph — no big deal).

When you are done creating your site and posting your first entry, please come back to this blog and post a comment at the end of my first posting (scroll down) that includes your blog address so that I can post it in the link list to the right.

Some Tips and Helpful Hints:

• Once you are in your blog, look at the top right corner of the screen. If you click on the word CUSTOMIZE, you will be able to make design changes, create new posts, edit old posts, etc.
• Once you are in the CUSTOMIZE screen, you can do all kinds of things to make your blog a bit more interesting. Change your fonts and colors, edit a post, change your settings. See the tabs at the top of the screen for all kinds of options.
• Poke around online and make a list of websites related to education, diversity, social justice or anything else relevant and post them on your blog. You can add all kinds of things by ADDING A GADGET from your LAYOUT tab.
  
• Just do the best you can with this. If you get stuck, don't fret... I am new at this, as well. Remember: you can't break it. It is just a blog. Everything can be changed if need be!

Good luck!!
Odile Mattiauda