End of Year Update Coming Up Soon!!

I have a LOT to say, and haven't taken the time to say it. My plan is to spend the summer reflecting on this first year of teaching, and to hit the ground running in September.

New Literacies

Will Richardson recently quoted a summary created by the NCTE (National Council of Teachers of English) outlining the literacies required in the 21st century. This item efficiently captures and explains where we as teachers (of any subject) need to guide our students.

Here it is in its entirety:

TOWARD A DEFINITION OF 21st-CENTURY LITERACIES
Adopted by the NCTE Executive Committee
February 15, 2008

Literacy has always been a collection of cultural and communicative practices shared among members of particular groups. As society and technology change, so does literacy. Because technology has increased the intensity and complexity of literate environments, the twenty-first century demands that a literate person possess a wide range of abilities and competencies, many literacies. These literacies from reading online newspapers to participating in virtual classrooms are multiple, dynamic, and malleable. As in the past, they are inextricably linked with particular histories, life possibilities and social trajectories of individuals and groups. Twenty-first century readers and writers need to

• Develop proficiency with the tools of technology
• Build relationships with others to pose and solve problems collaboratively and cross-culturally
• Design and share information for global communities to meet a variety of purposes
• Manage, analyze and synthesize multiple streams of simultaneous information
• Create, critique, analyze, and evaluate multi-media texts
• Attend to the ethical responsibilities required by these complex environments

Midterm Day

In a few hours, my physics students will be taking their mid-term exam, and I'll find out what the impacts might be of having 3 different teachers over this first semester. I fell like they are fairly well prepared, and the results of their most recent quiz (over which there was a lot of angst) were better than the students' response would have indicated.

Stay tuned.......

2008 so far......

I'm in my 10th week teaching Regents physics at Pittsford Mendon HS, and all is well. It could not have worked out any better, including having a fantastic colleague as a mentor - the other physics teacher, Mr. Bruce Peachey. I actually took over his classes, and he moved to Regents Honors and AP physics, so that I have a huge store of material to help me out, such as worksheets, tests, and so on. This has allowed me to concentrate on creating lessons and teaching, and not spending time on coming up with practice problems, quizzes, and tests.

Just this week we've started our individual class blogs, modeled on the "scribe post", where the "scribe" writes about that day's class, with the goal of enough information and clarity that someone who was out could catch up. So far, they have been doing a fantastic job, better than I would have hoped. Considering we are only in our first week, a post like this gives me confidence that we are going to get some learning out of this. The next step is promoting conversation around the posts.