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SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
Making Ontario schools competitive
So the Ontario public high school teachers' union has done an about-face, now recommending to their members that they offer extra-curricular activities after all - and all because the new premier is making nice. If the premier and the union are to be believed, there is no secret deal - no sweeteners like a promise to reinstate banked sick days or give additional time off.
If, as I say, it's really true that the union caved without any concrete inducements, then Christina Blizzard has hit the nail on its head in this column. Christina points out that the province's non-Catholic students are able to attend the free Catholic high schools (although not the free Catholic elementary schools). As a result, the public school boards were worried that a lot of their high school students would switch to the Catholic system in order to enjoy all those extra-curricular activities. Because few public high school teachers are eligible to teach in the Catholic high schools, some of them would lose their jobs.
It is telling that the public elementary teachers are still boycotting extra-curricular activities. After all, they have little to fear from the Catholic elementary schools.
Christina Blizzard is now convinced that the province's education system would benefit from even more competition, and so she has - for the first time - endorsed school vouchers.
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
There’s more than one way to keep a school open
Enrollments are falling in Ontario, and so there's a constant drumbeat of school closures. Here's an interesting article that points out that even very bad schools may be performing an important function in terms of being an important strand in the invisible web of social connectivity".
Which is why this article by Paul Bennett and me is worth pondering.
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
An IDEAL School
There is no one solution for students with disabilities, since kids are all different and so are their disabilities, but here's an article about one promising approach to educating some disabled students. For those who protest that this approach would be too expensive, they ought to know that the Ontario government's special education grant is two and a half billion dollars a year. That ought to be enough to be going on with. H/T FA
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
Late to Bed, Late to Rise
Dan Willingham's article in the latest American Educator concerns sleep deprivation and its effect on high school students. The evidence suggests that inadequate sleep results in mildly-reduced learning (along with increased lethargy and mood changes).
Dr. Willingham suggests a few remedies for teenagers' sleep deprivation: set school start times later; schedule electives first thing in the morning; and work with teenagers to help them get to sleep earlier.
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
Sunday at the Movies (Dogs and Cats)
Today a zoology lesson on the difference between dogs and cats. Enjoy.
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
Creating Sound Readers
This message wil be of interest to readers in the Barrie area.
An excellent teacher has just started a small private practice (one day/week so far) out of Georgian College’s Speech, Hearing & Language Clinic in Barrie. She will be offering parent-child interactive workshops, as well as workshops for parents and teachers. She is very excited about being able to offer teachers and parents a place outside of the school system where they can get early literacy information/instruction.
The teacher's name is Martha Kovack, and here is Martha's website.
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
Just when you thought all the chickens had come home to rest, new chickens appear…..
Ontario's former premier, Dalton McGuinty, was very fond of the grand and crowd-pleasing gesture - for example, mandating small class sizes in the primary grades and all-day junior and senior kindergarten. But as this article shows, it might have been prudent to think through the long-term implications of these policies.
The mandated cap of 20 primary students per class took up most of the available space in many schools, leaving no room for the mandated addition of full-day kindergarten classes - meaning that some schools would need to build expensive addiitions or bring in expensive (and not very desirable) portables in order to comply with the province's requirements.
In an not-unexpected turn of events, the cash-strapped provincial government can't afford the tens of billions of dollars it would cost to retrofit schools to bring them into compliance. So the government is now telling school boards to find low-cost options to solve their problems - for example, bussing kids to other schools or even off-site space. All of these options have major drawbacks, and so the school boards are having trouble deciding what to do - leaving parents in limbo.
Apres moi, le déluge, said Louis X, and so it was.
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
Letter from a good conscientious teacher
GUEST BLOG BY JOEL WINTER, TEACHER
Dear Parents:
I’m sorry that you are upset that your child cannot do the lunchtime or after-school sports and clubs that you are used to. As a teacher and a parent, I also feel bad that students are not engaged in these activities.
I’m sure you know by now that I used to do these activities voluntarily on my own free time and out of goodwill. In fact, I’ve been doing this for about 20 years. It’s funny though, how I’ve never heard from you before this. I never got a note or a phone call saying, “Thanks for coaching floor hockey, my son really enjoyed it!” or “My daughter had a great time in Ottawa. Thanks for giving up your family time to plan and go on this trip.” But then again, as a parent myself, I can’t recall thanking any of my child’s teachers. I’m ashamed of that. I guess I took these teachers for granted, and forgot what they were doing was beyond what they had to do.
I don’t know if you know what my day is like. I’m sure it’s much like yours, except you may be in an office and I’m in a school. You have all that office work to do, and I have all that schoolwork to do - things like planning, teaching, meeting, assessing and reporting. I’m sure your day is as busy as mine, even though right now I’m not doing extra-curricular activities. I start at 8:00 am and usually work through my lunch helping kids. I don’t have to do this, but if I don’t nobody else will and the kids just won’t be as successful. Their parents don’t seem to have the time. I don’t blame them because often their English isn’t very good, or they don’t quite understand the way I’m teaching the math, or they’re tuckered out at the end of the day just like you and me.
My down time at work is my tea-break at afternoon recess. That’s 15 minutes. Oh yes, I do get 40 minutes of planning time, and I’m busy planning or meeting just like you do in your office. My day with the students ends at 3. I know you finish at about 5, but I drive home and wind up the planning about 6.
As you can see, your office work and my teaching day are quite similar. Now I hope you don’t take this the wrong way, but I wonder if you take time out at lunch hour or before you’re finished your workday to coach a youth team or run a club. If you do, you must find it difficult to get all your work done. I can relate, because that’s what it was like for me when I used to volunteer.
I’ve done a lot of volunteering in my life both inside and outside of schools. One thing I’m sure you’d agree with me on is that if you’re not appreciated, or the people in charge don’t treat you very well, you’re probably not going to keep on doing it. You can likely put up with not hearing a thank you from a parent for 20 years, but if the people who run the show start treating you badly, then it’s likely you’re going to pull the plug on it.
I’m sorry if you feel your child is being used as a pawn in all of this. It’s funny though, now that I think about it, rarely do I recall your child thanking me for volunteering. So perhaps we all can use this as an opportunity to think about how we take things for granted, and how we can act to make our lives a little better.
Sincerely,
Joel Winter, OCT
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
No Sneering Please
In a sneering comment to Bev's remarks in Something's Rotten in the State of Denmark, Mr. Wainscotting has told Bev that she ought to do some research before making certain claims.
I do not approve of sneers like this, and I especially do not approve of them when the sneerer is wrong. Mr. Wainscotting's evidence that Bev is wrong is seriously flawed. Furthermore, the Credo study was done in 2009 and has been superceded by other, better research.
Smile and take the day off.