Branding Myself

I attended the Mobilize conference yesterday with my amazing principal. In all that I absorbed last night, one idea that has continued to confound me is this: branding.

I admit, there were parts of the conference that left me way feeling way out of my depth. This was one of them.

This idea of branding came from a session that was speaking more to students just about to graduate, and the idea of leveraging mobile technology in order to start a business, land a job, or create something profitable. This idea of branding was suggested.

This led me to wonder what my brand is. This connected nicely to the conversation I had with my principal in reflecting on what I had done in the school over the last 4 years, enacting positive change.

Therefore, here is my manifesto on my brand.

Technology - this plays a key role in my teaching - and the role it plays is to enhance my teaching.

Literacy - This is my passion, and has been for quite some time. I love to teach students to read and write, speak, listen, view and represent.

Numeracy - though not my strongest, it is my drive to constantly improve. 

Social Justice - it is how I teach my content, a lens to view the world.

My brand, my teaching.

M.

Me and my posse

I didn't mean to do this, but I sure am loving it!

I have 2 student teachers at the moment. Life is sweet - but not for the reasons that may seem obvious.

I am now able to muster enough man-power to accomplish all that I had wanted.

In literacy, I assigned each TC a certain skill to initially assess, plan, teach, check-in and monitor. We are seeing such great results now! I'll try my best to post the pictures of our tracking methods.

What I am noticing is that the kids have no spaces to hide, to do less than their best. It is pretty exhausting for some of them! 

Others, I've noticed, are being pushed and challenged. I've noticed in my teaching that there are some kids that I let "go", as they are independent and can coast along doing good work. This has become necessary as I push along the lower kids. The time I needed to move them along, I am taking away from the quiet, independent kids that are doing well, demanding no attention.

Now that I have leveraged my posse, I can now spread out the attention to encompass all of the needs in the room, whether they demand it or not.

As hard as it is to convince others, this is not a time off for me. I am not putting my feet up and cruising along. I am engaging the class in ways I cannot normally do. I am giving my attention to that which normally doesn't demand it.

And it is awesome!

M. 

We can write that?The blurry line between producing

photo courtesy of flickr: Technology part of our lifestyle

I have been struggling as of lately with the lines between speaking, writing and representing within my practice. In my writer's workshop, I have the students busy innovating and creating different pieces based on different purposes for literacy. 

What I'm finding, though, and a case could be made for the digital native and immigrant argument, is that so many of my kids are blowing open the idea of writing. They wish to create, and since technology is so embedded in my practice, they are creating what they want - and aren't fettered by the old notions that are limited by a paper and pencil narrative.

With the ipod touch in hand, yesterday I had a student ask if he could video a memo. I faltered, then thought: why not - since you have the technology. My only constraint was that he needed to work on the feedback I had given him after the initial writing assessment. If he needed to work on further developing his ideas within his plan, to prepare him for more sophisticated paragraphs, then why not construct a video... construct being the most important word here. 

When students are creating, they are no longer limited by the paper narrative. Revisions are happening in real time, with ease, without the cumbersome draft after draft, redundancy not-wth-standing, motif, masquerading as improving writing (when really it more frustrating). I'm finding that kids are no longer re-creating the paper and pencil products on the computer, but more intuitively using the tools to create - rather than being dictated by the tool. They are starting with the product. Yeah!





Photo courtesy of Flickr: Interconnected Chain with One Odd Link

This causes me problems when addressing the Interconnected expectation in the language document. I have to get my students to think about their skills in the different literacy areas, and the connections between them. However, I can no longer draw a simple line for my students. I cannot clearly distinguish for them the work that we do in the writer's workshop is writing, and not speaking or representing (a media message - media literacy, the production part). For them, they are quickly becoming one and the same. In a video that was produced, the students used speaking skills to deliver a message. They used their writing skills to develop the plan and write the script. They used their representation skills by filming the video, thinking about lighting, backgrounds, music, etc. 

In theory (having not attempted this yet), this should be a bit easier for them to see how the skills are transferrable to the other literacy areas. The trouble I forsee is that they won't be able to see the different literacy areas as truly different.

Truly, with the lines blurring, producing content is becoming very exciting!

M.