Shhh...sbg

What would Tigger do? 

I am a first year science teacher and will be heading into standards-based grading (sbg) territory right from the get go.  I don't have experience in the classroom teaching and assessing students with this holistic approach (it's not just a grading system), but maybe I will have less to unlearn if I just jump right in.  I've been studying (Marzano, O'Conner, Shawn, dy/dan, Buell and others) and it makes so much sense my educational sensibilities believe it is worth the risk.  The first year is full of doing everything new for the first time anyway, right?  I am forging ahead and searching, borrowing and stealing wording and ideas for my standards.  Yeah, my district's curriculum helps too.

There is some good stuff out there.  The Delaware Department of Education has some decently written learning goals (targets, standards, whatever I will call them) for science.  Figure out what is mastery more and less, write student-friendly scoring rubrics, create some assessments that really measure what I am aiming my class towards and backwards plan from there.  It's so simple!  Really hard and yet so simple.  Sigh...

Okay, maybe not simple, but it makes so much sense I really can't see doing it any other way.  I buy into not grading homework that is practice...(check back in many weeks when I am ready to throw in the towel because I am still learning how to help the students master the whole "if I practice I will learn what I need to be able to master the learning goal" concept and actually do it if they need to do it).  I have spoken to teachers (live ones, not just my imaginary blogging friends) who say the kids focus on the  feedback and their work instead of just the numerical score or grade...wait, so scores actually distract students from what they need to pay attention to? 

I need to say I am able to even contemplate doing this because of the support from my colleagues in my district and school.   

Lest I be led down the valley of dread for I follow delusion without collusion. 

All I can say is you blogging teacher types better know what the hay you are talking about, because you influenced my thinking and I am headed up the creek. 

Please let my decisions be good ones. 

Oh yeah, anyone have any experience using Infinite Campus to record standards-based scores?  Hhhmmmm, someone has to know this blog exists and actually read it for me to get answers to my questions.   Sigh again.  Dragged kicking and screaming into web 2.0.

The purpose reveals itself

Maybe three posts in three hours is silly, but it is the process I need to go through to figure this out.  The purpose of this blog is to document, discuss and share my professional development activities, ideas, curiosities.  Obvious this should have been, but constructing one's own knowledge to the point of lucid conveyance takes time.  When time permits, I will change the look and possibly name of the blog to reflect its more defined purpose.  Thank you.

Why I love the internet right now

I am watching a video right now that I am so glad I found (because it says all the things I already believe) that I just paused it to post it on here.  ( I know I don't have any readers yet, let me take baby steps and pretend a while).  I found it through a re-tweet from my science methods teacher whom I follow using Google Reader because he suggested it in our class (I think), but also in another later course that I did not actully take that he placed entirely on the web so people like me could learn from what his course was doing anyway.  All the learning with none of the $$ and credit.   Does he know I've written this?....Duh, no, I told you baby steps and get the stupid stuff out of my system before I go more public.

Oh yes, the video...so Robert Duke is telling me all the things I already believe and want to hear about the things I am thinking about how my classroom will run this first year of teaching 7th grade science.  I am so interested in all of this I can't nearly get enough.  But will watching these help me be a better teacher?  I am hoping that this stuff (good teaching) will slowly become part of my DNA (pardon the cliche) so that I will begin to automatically create the type of classroom I envision.  You see, I was not taught the way I want to teach, so I am needing to be very determined in my thinking and actions to be what I want to be.  It is not second nature yet and so takes a lot of brain space.  How much of that gray squishy stuff does a first-year teacher have to give over to being different than they would instinctively be.  You naturally teach the way you have been taught.  Naturally.  How fast can I change that? I will need to be unnatural for some time before nature changes its tune and the drum in my head matches the drum in my heart.

Interesting, this is my third edit of this post and I see that writing a blog will make me put my ideas into a more succinct form.  Score one for taking the risk.  

A baby in the blog world

It only took me three minutes to figure out how to make a new post on my new blog.  Luckily nobody was watching.  Why does that difficulty feel so much larger than being confused for three piddly minutes?  Why does it make me wonder if I should even bother doing this?  Ooh, kids must feel this all the time as they learn about the great big world.  Do we give them credit for the struggle they endure every day while they are in the steep learning curve stage of life?  Better I should ask if we can understand what it might be like in their shoes at any given moment.  I just listened to a PBS Forum Network lecture by Rafe Esquith (author of "Teach Like Your Hair's on Fire") where he states as one way to be a good teacher is to always consider the point of view of the child.  To do this a teacher must be able to see others' points of view as a matter of her every day living.  A useful skill indeed.

Okay, so following the rules of my blog (there are no rules and I can be as useful or airy as I like), I am getting back to other work and leaving my comment at that.  So much more to say, but you will have to use your imagination for now.

Here I go...

Warning, this blog is a place where I can allow my brain to go every and nearly any direction it wants at any time.  I may never complete a thought or I might write on about it for way longer than any other person could possibly be interested.

Okay, I want to blog, or write or communicate or something, but really don't know how to use this medium yet. So I am doing it so I can learn how to do it.  I am scared I will write something I will regret letting other people see and so many would then say, well then why write in a blog?  Duh! Right?  Because I have gotten so much from other people who take the risk and communicate their great ideas.  And risk the comments good and bad.  I need to figure this out for myself and how and if I want to blog in the future.  I need space to ramble, to gather, let lose, and then gather again my thoughts, other peoples' thoughts and any ideas that happen to fly through my brain space.  I will talk about anything that occurs to me that is interesting or I want to write here to coalesce my thinking. 

I just remembered that a huge part of why I am doing this is so that I can use blogging in my classroom.  Not a place I want to tread unless I have a decent grasp of the technology.  How do I deal with privacy and basic correct usage of the internet by my students?  There is all sorts of stuff written about this in the blogosphere, and I will need to reread it and find more of it, but here I am doing it to see how it works.  I am crazy to think about this my first year teaching, but what better year to try risky seeming stuff?  Everything I do will feel risky this year.  Why do...what was my thought?  Oh well.  Signing off, hopefully to return...unless I get distracted.

Susan is going to blog!