Visit My Class

May 24, 2006

Dear Parents/Guardians,

Due to the current labour disruption, we have put together an optional package of work for students. Our current Social Studies  work revolves around numerous group activities in order to fulfill the expectations of the grade 7/8 curriculum. We are anticipating studying a country, and participating in an in-depth research project. We will also be doing a project about an historical event.

Here are some things you can do at home. While students are locked out I would suggest that your child :

• keep a journal
• keep track of money spent: how much per day or per month does your family spend on groceries, transportation, housing, entertainment? create a dream location: locate your holiday destination(s) on a map, collect maps, brochures and posters for a country
• prepare a presentation about a holiday
• write a creative story about where you would like to be this week.

There are literacy projects on this page. www.jilks.com/portfolio/Literacy.html

Create a 3-D design of your bedroom, school and home. http://sketchup.google.com/

I am planning a math unit: http://www.jilks.com/portfolio/budgeting.htm.

For more Math ideas. Novel Study ideas.

For more curriculum suggestions.

I am having a great deal of trouble motivating my students to achieve. i was reading an article called "Transforming Practice in Urban Schools". (Ed. Leadership, March 2006) It highlights issues in schools, teachers who rarely discuss 'the relationship amon instructional stsrategies, student characgteristics, and learning outcomes."
The author speaks of low-income students who

-don't have experiences
-do not appreciate their own value
-do not believe they fit into the system
-don't know where they are suppossed to be in life
-life does not have value
-they do not have goals.

While this appears to apply in urban schools, I can see, in my rural setting, as in other schools, that some of the same needs are evidenced here. Students who have role models, such as rappers and gang members, they get a lot of press time and airtime, as well as cyberspace space.

It is difficult to fight such images in the classroom. We have to teach in 10 minute soundbytes, if that.

The author says 'urban schools need to expect teacher to collectively assume responibility for making sure all students learn.'

I am not sure how we do that! We fight the aforementioned images, family history, past practices and a culture and ethic in schools that appears not to focus on critical literacy, numeracy, people handling skills,  technology skills or lifeskills, but on managing behaviour. So much energy is driven in this regard. WE must critically reflect on our purpose in schools.

I am in culture shock!
In a different school, in a new classroom, with a different school board. Living in my parent's cottage with one baseboard heater. We get the temperature up to 12 degrees celsius, on a good night. I figure it is the camping I never did as a child!

I have begun to sort out curriclum and a plan, www.jilks.com/WhitePines.

I am making progress in establishing myself in a new community, with a new staff, new program and new students. Please visit WhitePines Program for more information. http://www.jilks.com/WhitePines/

The room is shaping up. The philosophy has been generated. We are making some headway in curriculum. Tis a grand time for all.

Change is the only thing we can depend upon.
It is healthy, in reasonable doses, and keeps the thinking in the prefrontal cortex!
 The old house is up for sale, it is decluttered, spruced up and ready to go to a new family. It is a great neighbourhood, with trees and large lots. In the heart of the city; it is a peaceful spot. Only a short distance to work. Yet, just a few weeks ago I drove 4 km to work and had to navigate through 15 stoplights I had hoped for change.

What a lovely drive in from Bala: 65 km through forests, around small and large lakes.
I was playing Colm Wilkinson's song:
We Are One

The slower you move ; The faster you go.
The longer you live; The less you know.
The closer you look; The less you see.
We are one, We are one,
Follow me.

As I DID look around me, I saw a large deer by the side of the road. She carefully navigated her way across the road, a car in front of me had slowed and she seemed to know it was time to pass. As I passed her, she stopped and looked backwards at the car traveling down the road. She was large - probably as tall as I am. Tail flicking away as she bolted off into the forest. The three-quarter hour drive is beautiful in the early dawn.

Was it ever funny asking mom and dad for the car keys! Nevertheless, I borrowed their min-van and drove that long road home, although it is not as much HOME as before.

I filled it with a garage full of classroom materials, hastily removed from the old place. I miss Sir Win and my colleagues and students. I really appreciate how much they responded to my ideas on life, educational responsibilities, 'disagreeing agreeably', respect and the curriculum I created.

I unloaded, yet again, many, many boxes. While they are just things, they are indications of who I am as an educator and important to the philosophy I bring to the classroom of high needs learners.

As a result of the incident at school last Friday, I realize that newcomers and change are not always easy for students. They could be fragile from situations at home, as much as adults. I know, having changed schools, classrooms, principal, city/towns, change can be good but it is unsettling. I know that this challenge will ask of me all that I can give.

I will work hard at demanding and expecting respect. I will have to create a classroom community that will both bond and hve some sense of identity within the school.

As I drove the 420 km home I pondered my classroom and life. I saw two small moose in Bala, a pair of deer between one or other of the small towns. It could have been bewteen Haliburton and Bancroft!

The roads were bare, the towns quiet. I cannot imagine driving back to Ottawa during peak tourist season.

It was a thoughtful drive. I wished I had a micro-recorder to record my new ideas, my plans,  people to contact, themes I would like to incorporate into the program.

I will ask Big Brothers to send someone to work with our students. A male role model would be good for them. As a mom of two boys, I have a sense of how teens must establish their gender identity and part of that includes seperating from the female/mother figure, and sorting out what it means to be a male in our society. I put together a Gender Issues in Education PPT of my thoughts. My class, at this point, is made of entirely of boys. it will be interesting to sort all this out.

In a planning meeting today we brainstormed ideas about this new program. The principal, me, as classroom teacher, the truancy officer and special education senior staff talked about administration and set-up of the program, the chain of command, the  selection of candidates for the program, parental contacts (responsibility for/by team member), curriculum.

The program, which we will now call the WhitePines Program, to honour Mr. Boyle who co-ordinated this project, will reach out to parents, as much as the students, to educate students and parents in the learning process. Most of my parents will not have had good experiences in schools. These kiddies need lifeskills, a building up of self-esteem, a sense that school is a good place to be. I want the room to have some great chairs, couches and a comfortable place to learn alternately.

This is a program school within a school. The register will be separate from the rest of the school, with funding by Algonquin Child and Family Services. The Child Development Worker will be a part of the process and will work with families. I will be called upon to use all of the instructional repertoire I have adopted over many years in the field of education. Instructional Repertoire include:
instructional skills, strategies, pedagogies, tactics, concepts, organizers.

I plan on talking to the Rotary club or the Chamber of Commerce to find some 2nd hand furniture. I want to bring in various community members to support my group of young learners i.e. folks who can share their expertise with my students.

What an exciting and dymanic process as we work with each other to support our most previous resources: our children, our future.

I have had a trying time- with no place to call my home, with a classroom not yet set up, leaving behind my husband and cats and everything that is familiar. Contemplating a new home and a new class has been interesting and challenging. Despite the emotional stress of it all I am profoundly honoured to be working with some high needs students who do not fit in to the regular classroom.

I have created some themes that we will focus on. I hope to show them what we can do if we integrate technology.

I plan on using the community to help me equip my class, and to reach out to community members who may support us.

•      Role Play:  Bullying, managing stress,…
•      PPT project
•      superhero project
•      magazine project
•      growing bulbs
•      located in a D & T room: find adult to teach this?
•      Cooking (weekly)
•      Bind a 20 page book
•      Fractions
•      Applying for a passport
•      space-the final frontier
  
•      Art: parental unit= day May/June

All of these things I ahve done before and have work samples to show for it: www1.ocdsb.ca/swinweb/jilks
www1.ocdsb.ca/mandweb/jilks
I have made some new friends. Colleagues at school have welcomed me with open arms. I have figured out where to find things for school, located stores, put together an entry plan, established the bare bones of a classroom, gone shopping and figured out what I might need and what I could find.

Yesterday I bought some posters, classroom resources materials: LA EvanMoore readers, Math workbooks/assignments from gr. 6 - 8, problem solving, times table chart, cursive writing poster, large calculators, notebooks, map, powerbar, . Science/History/Geography assignment books: Canada and Canadian studies to help them become contributing members of society.

I made a plan of what I needed and went to the Teacher's Store to fill that plan. It is all falling into place.