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.

Quarterly Update

My journal/blog is one of the things that has fallen off the plate completely. This is maybe my 3rd entry in 8 months?
I'm on my second teaching job already - and this is as good as it possibly could get. Regents Physics at Pittsford Mendon HS - Good school, good kids, close to home, 1 prep, lots of support from other teachers, another great physics teacher in the room next door, 2 more at the other district high school.
I have 9 days under my belt, although it feels like I've been there longer that that.
What happened to Bloomfield? Bottom line is that I got a better offer. I could have actually ended up staying there - I interviewed for a probationary math position, but didn't get an offer, so I didn't feel too bad about leaving the long term sub position.
I was prompted to get back into the blogging business because I finally have an opportunity to use blogs ala Darren Kuropatwa in Winnipeg. I'm going to get started this week and have the students fully engaged in writing scribe posts as soon as possible. This idea of documenting and explaining classroom work seems like such a great way to foster better understand.

New Job

I'm still alive, and a lot has happened since my last post in April, almost 4 months ago. The biggest news is "I have a real teaching job!" I'm just beginning a one year long term sub position in 7th grade science in the Bloomfield Schools.

It was not a fun or encouraging ride the past few months. I was all ready to abandon teaching for now, as I was not getting any calls whatsoever from my 14 or so applications. With cash flow becoming an issue, and no teaching jobs in the offing, I was all ready to put together my engineering resume, and began looking at what was out there. All the sudden, I began to get some calls and had interviews in the city and Wayne-Finger Lakes BOCES. However, despite the fact that it's an LTS position, the opportunity at Bloomfield is fantastic, and will give me a great opportunity to get some real Science classroom experience.

Today was the first day of "New Teacher Training", and we'll go on from here....