thoughts and questions

Since i teach ended on Friday, I am wondering how Heidi Brocious, and Julia created their show and tell presentations? Was it with power point? I want to do one for our dean. I will also poor through my folder and previous folder.

I continue to work on my class in spurts. I have also been reading William Ayers, To Teach: the journey of a teacher. 2nd ed. Published by Teachers College Press. On p. 19, he begins with a quote from his teacher, Maxine Greene(1973) whose teacher was Hannah Arendt. This quote speaks to issue of moral choice. Maxine Greene argues that " the teacher who wishes to be more than a functionary cannot escape the value problem or the difficult matter of moral choice." (p181) in the Teacher As Stranger. Bill Ayers continues to discuss that ways in which we allow ourselves to become functionaries - all the ways that we are worn down by the situations we find ourselves as teachers. All the ideas in these essays are powerfull and inspiring.

To end with another quote from Hannah Arendt. " Education is the point at which we decide whether we love the world enought o assume responsibility for it and by the same token save it from the ruin which except for renewal, except for the young, would be inevitable. And education too, is where we decide whether we love our children enough not to expel them from our world and leave them to their own devices, nor to strike from their hands their chance of undertaking something new, unforseen by us but to prepare them in advance for renewing a common world. "

My mind is full of all sort of things that are taking further awary from the traditional teadcher preparation models and along a road that is not know to me.

Am with elive and ELIVE

I really want to use elive to teach but I think I will go crazy with some of problems that crop up. This am my audio kept going down. Cests la vie. I think I worry too much about students becoming discouraged. What do other instructors find about students getting discouraged or scared. I guess if I can do it, they can do it right? I would really like to hear from other folks in the iteach session on this. Kay

An Assessment I like

Reading other blogs - I realized that I left this out of my earlier post. In the ECE S 245 Child Development class, the students have to create a Child Development Guide. the Child development guide includes their own history which can be the same one they have created for an early intro class. Students often revise this early history. The CDG continues with a history of early childhood development knowledge in their communities, their families, how they were raised, it includes observations of infants, toddlers, preschool, and early primary. Several interviews are required either of elders in the community, other people who have child development knowledge, tradition child rearing knowledge, and beliefs about pregnancy, birth, early infancy, to early primary. Their final product is a guide for their community and themselves that can be shared or published. Students must cite and reference all their resources. I will continue to use this assessment with some revisions for this class fall 08.

assessments

One of the many things that I like about UBD is the importance assessment plays in designing a class. Most of us - in the past, beforeUBD - started planning our activities first. In UBD the class designer starts with the assessments they are going to use. This gets to the meat of the connections to the big ideas and the enduring understandings. I just had an aha or I think it was an aha about tying the assessment to the the big idea and the enduring understandings. I was asking myself how are my assessments in the ECE 245 going to to be sensible to the students and clearly show how what they are being assessed on is connected to the BI and the EU's.

I think writing assessment criteria is hard and I think I may have too many assessments but the process of starting with the objectives i.e. the end result, thinking about objectives connecting to the BI and the EU helps me to think about what I want the assessments to be. What do other people think about this?

From a " work for me" standpoint having fewer assessments is a good thing especially when it also comes to doing a larger program assessment report requiring me to report on aggregated data.

thoughts on this am's discussion

Fascinating, I am very excited about sharing my course and getting feedback. I am also excited about creating a more sharing community of early childhood teachers. I resist the idea of specialization but from the perspective of learning how to learn, it seems okay.

I want to add the citation for the book I mentioned. It is In Over Our Heads, by Robert Kegan. Harvard Press.