Make It Stop: How We Can Help End Bullying

On today's agenda, we will be talking about everyone's favorite topic: Bullying

(Expects everyone to uncomfortably shift in their seats and debate reading further)

While I am sure dear reader, that nobody actually ever wants to talk about bullying, it is a very real and very dangerous threat, even if you have never experienced it firsthand. If you've been living under a rock for your entire life, bullying is the act of acting negatively towards another person, through either verbal, physical, or emotional means. Now you may be wondering, where is this "bullying" most likely to occur? The schools dear friend, the schools.

In fact, 30% of all students claim to have been involved with bullying, either as the victim or the bully, themselves. Considering that bullying can lead to depression, low grades, low self-esteem, and even SUICIDAL THOUGHTS, this is quite the huge problem. While teachers and parents, as well as many celebrities and corporations, have tried to end bullying once and for all, their efforts have had minimal results. Bullying needs to be taken care of once and for all.

Simply put, bullying must cease to exist, simply for the sake of the affected students and its well being. Everyone has a right to be happy, and if our students are becoming depressed and suicidal, something must be done before its too late.

As teachers we have to be able to talk to students we think are being bullied (although we should probably be sure. That awkward moment where you tell a kid they can come to you if they're being bullied and they have no idea what you're talking about.) More importantly though we have to be able to bridge the gap between the gap between teacher and student, so our kids can know they can communicate with us and trust us. Not only that, we have to be able to communicate with the bullies.Evidence shows that bullies act they way they do, due to social and emotional problems as well (ie. broken homes)So many instances of bullying could have been avoided if only the victims thought they could do so without being ridiculed by their peers, or if the bullies had someone to talk to about their own issues. There is far to much of a distance between teacher and student. We lost at least 5 students, who committed suicide in September of 2010, due to homophobic bullying. We cannot simply be in schools to teach, we have to be someone the kids can trust. We need to be a source of guidance, both in and out of the classroom. We need to be people who can build our students up, not tear them down. Most importantly we need to help make it stop and put and end to bullying.

For more information on bullying and what we, as teachers, can do to prevent it, I direct you here and schmere

But why wait until then? Do something now and upload a video to the It Gets Better Project

Now for the musical portion of tonight's event:

(Oh so that's where the title came from...)

                                        

(Yes that is Ray William Johnson)

Twitter < Facebok

Twitter.... Still dont like it. While i can see the potential for comminication with students providing you make a separate account for such things, I can stll not bring myself to use it. Besides the fact that i never have anything interesting to say, I just don't see why Twitter is even a thing. Facebook does pretty much everthing youd ever need a twitter for. With a twitter everythings all separated and you need to click like 50 times just to read a chat between two friends. Twitter is just too scatterbrained for me,. Facebook has everything I need and could easily have the same, if not better implcations for education...


Regardless you can watch me post stupid crap here

Validity is Difficult to Pronounce: Power Point Bloggin'

So for today in SEDU we had to create a Power Point project on a lesson of our choice. I, naturally, decided upon a lesson for a 10th grade Lit class, and for the most part, it went off without a hitch.

The thing about my high school was, as of last year we no longer had Snow Days. Instead we did class work over the internet and emailed them in. We were the first high school in PA to start this, and while it is completely terrifying and a chore for both the students and teachers, it provided to be an excellent vehicle for my Power Point. The hard part however, was finding a lesson to base said Power Point on...

Pdesas is a horrifying nightmare of a website, and I heard from a reliable source that it eats puppies for breakfast (WITHOUT ANY MILK!) Honestly though, it is so confusing and cluttered, navigation was near impossible. I legitimately spent most of my time looking for standard to write about, but once I had it (Comparing /Contrasting Works & Looking for Validity, Bias and Author's Intent) it was pretty easy the rest of the way.

I divided my PP project into two parts. The first, was about comparing a written work to its movie counter part. I originally wanted to use the Climax of the final Harry Potter movie, but I didn't want to spoil anything (nor could i find a good Neville/Nagini pic), so i decided on Wizard of Oz instead, which surprisingly has tons of differences. The Second part of my project was about a controversial issue, and I went with Prop 8 (focusing on the both the social and religious arguments.) While some people may argue that its "Taboo" to talk about such controversial subjects, I firmly believe that is our duty as teachers to not only teach students the three R's, but to get them to think about and prepare them for the real world.

When it came to actually presenting the project, I was pretty nervous. While I consider myself a confident speaker I tend to get tongue tied a lot and stutter. Luckily I was able to make it through with few errors, however, VALIDITY IS A TOUGH WORD TO PRONOUNCE! I must have stuttered over it every time... It certainly didn't help that it was a main point of my project.

Overall however, I think I did pretty well, I embedded a snazzy video and everything so I hope i get an equally snazzy grade.


Vadility... Valility... Vadiddley... Valoodity...

Go Analog Baby (Chapter 1 Response Post)

Chapter 1 of "Pesonal Learning Networks" deals a lot with well, just that PLN's. Namely, it does much to advocate changing to a learning network system, both as a learner and an educator. The writers consider our education system, as it is, in need of a rehaul or revamp, and wish to see a inclusion of more technology and learning networks. They even go as far as comparing the current classroom a "black and white picture of a student at her desk alone, studying from a mass-produced book," whereas a more learning network oriented classroom would be a "full color video of that same student learning how to access personalized content through a mobile device."

...and that's pretty much where I drew the line.

While I can understand where the authors are coming from, they are definitely overselling their products and making the current classroom come off as some kind of prison. Throughout the chapter they are advocating for PLN's but most of the time their wording comes across as vague and they never really explain possible examples until the last few pages. Furthermore, they tend to dismiss the negative sides to PLN's without really overcoming them, (something I know, as an English major, is very important.) Then, when the negatives rear up again at the end of the chapter, they outright tell us that learning networks could be completely ineffective and that it is very difficult to gauge their potential. Lastly, throughout the chapters the writers time and again state that they are in no way promoting the deconstruction of the teacher-student relationship or just putting the student in front of a computer all day, their examples of learning networks seem to show just the opposite:

"English students blogging with the author of of the novel they're reading, or your science class is is creating a video with scientists from the National Institute of Health."

While I am on board with a new integration of technology and learning networks, these guys need to work on their marketing. It's making it seem like us teachers will either become just a supervisor or a a man on a screen....

It's stuff like this that makes me grow wary of the coming robot overlords. Coming from a small close-knit private high school, where I was able to make valuable bonds with my teachers and hammer out the A's (and a couple B's; Physics has scarred me for life,) I both agree and disagree with the writers. While i want to see more learning networks in the classroom, I would prefer to see it as a handy option here and there, not the source of an entire classroom rehaul as the chapter sometimes alludes to. After all, I don't see a problem with the way I was taught, or the millions of people before me were taught.

may the Robot Overlords have mercy on my soul...