"One Thing/Fun Thing" for Fri. Nov. 29

We had our first Green Team meeting of the year today and we had quite a few students sign up in the following four areas:

1) Recycling
2) Inside plants and gardening
3) Outside gardening (with our new garden beds)


and 4) Energy conservation:

Last year at Diefenbaker, we had the automatic lights installed in the gym. These are great. They go out after a period of time where there is no movement in the gym. We also unplugged all of our appliances for the summer. It saved quite a bit of the phantom power apparently. I think that we can do a lot more than we have been doing at school though to save energy by turning classroom lights out, keeping the outside doors closed and generally just being more vigilant.

Anyway, this is all so I can link to one of my favourite commercials. It's from BC Hydro and is about being power smart and saving energy (or what things would be like if we didn't have it).
Have a great weekend.

"One Thing" for Thurs. Nov. 28

Tomorrow is "jersey day" in Canada. If you didn't know that, hopefully I have got this post up in time for you to spread the word (or at least give you an excuse to wear a jersey in honour of casual Friday)!

In honour of that, we will be watching the quintessential French Canadian story about growing up in Québec with two religions (hockey and the church). Written by by Roch Carrier, the story Le Chandail. is based on his real life experience growing up in Sainte-Justine in 1946.

The boys all worship Maurice "The Rocket" Richard and want to do everything like him. Unfortunately, things don't go well for Roch when his mom orders his new sweater from Monsieur Eaton... His feelings when he receives his new "chandail" are something that most Vancouverites should be able to associate with!

The cartoon version of this great story was created by the NFB in 1980:

English Version:

Version français:

"One Thing" for Wed. Nov. 27

Isaac Asimov, the "king" of Science Fiction (in my opinion), wrote this story, The Fun They Had

in 1967...

As I am a bit of a sci-fi lover, and my class will soon be looking at a futuristic novel dealing with population control (Among the Hidden), today we read The Fun They Had believe it or not. Sometimes the neat thing about Science Fiction, is that it's not that far off/away from being current. As we are embarking on an educational reworking of the Prescribed Learning Outcomes and the new BC Education Plan, I thought there were some points brought up by Asimov (over 40 years ago) that are relevant to the conversation going on in BC today.

The kids in this story stumble upon an old "book" (they now read on telebooks) and read about what it was like to go to school a long time ago. They look at several of the differences and are surprised that a man/woman could be a teacher (instead of a machine) “A man? How could a man be a teacher?” and respond by stating: “A man isn’t smart enough.” 

They were also shocked that school happened in a central location and not in their house.
Tommy screamed with laughter, “You don’t know much, Margie. The teachers didn’t live in the house. They had a special building and all the kids went there.” 

But I think the most salient point to educational discourse is this:
“And all the kids learned the same thing?” 
“Sure, if they were the same age.” 
“But my mother says a teacher has to be adjusted to fit the mind of each boy and girl it teaches and that each kid has to be taught differently.” 

Kind of interesting, and possibly ahead of it's time, for the late 1960's, isn't it? Just like a lot of science fiction often is. William Gibson, for instance, is credited (by many, but not in all circles) with coming up with the vision for how the world wide web currently functions in his sci-fi book, Neuromancer (written in 1984).

Here is a link to the whole text  The Fun They Had the whole story (it's just one page) in PDF:  CLICK HERE

Interestingly, we have a bunch of old anthologies of stories hanging around our cabinets here at school, so I actually pulled those out for this reading assignment. We were just like the kids in the story finding an old book...

Oh, "The Fun We Had".

"One Thing" for Tues. Nov. 26

Today we had Jacky Essombe and her partner , Yoro, visit our school to do some African dancing with each of our classes. Jacky is from Cameroon and Yoro, or “Granpa” as he is more frequently called, is from Benin. Clad in a gorgeous green outfit, Jacky led the classes in choral singing and dancing.

We were not still for very long in this interactive session.

Yoro was playing the drums. He would play part of a rhythm that I recognized from our African drumming workshop (put on by Milton) last year but he would stop short from playing the whole thing. Duh de du duh de duh de (duh duh) Eventually he did. It’s nice when you can make connections to that. What’s interesting is that some students totally remembered that session from last year, and others did not.

Anyway, the students had fun, moved around and gained some appreciation for African culture. I know that when Jacky asked them to name some African countries, my class was able to mention Sudan and Southern Sudan as we just finished a great novel set there called

Here is Jacky’s website:  http://www.jackyessombe.com/

"One Thing" for Mon. Nov. 25

Change can be difficult. Whether that's deciding to make a decision to move to a new district (like I did 4 years ago) or deciding to change something in your school, it's something that as educators, we deal with frequently. Today those two examples came together for me as a former colleague of mine from the private school I used to work at came out to visit us at Diefenbaker. Mr. Young had mentioned that he wanted to come and visit me at my new school and just see how things in general ran before, but he had a specific goal this time, so we set up a lunch and afternoon date.

In Richmond I have had the pleasure of working with some great people at schools or others who have led pro d on how to do "new math" or what I like to call "friendly numbers" math. In our district, we have been lucky enough to have people like Carole Fullerton helping to pass on the ideas of how to teach math this way. I know that some teachers teaching combined classes also find it an easier way (teaching a big idea) to the whole class instead of having to teach two separate concepts to two different grades. So, there are many teachers out there who are doing math this way. I also believe that it's working. My daughter (currently in grade 3) is lucky enough to have had math taught to her this way each year since she began (in the first year of all day K). My son (currently in grade 5) has had things taught to him in different ways, often going back and forth. It could just be that one of them is a more mathematical thinker than the other, but my miniature social math experiment suggests that my daughter is great using friendly numbers, grouping and holding math in her head. My son? Not so much. Connection? Possibly.

Anyway, Mr. Young has heard about the math we have been doing in Richmond from a variety of sources and wanted to come and see it for himself. We sat in on a grade 2/3 class where students had made their own "friendly number problems" and then answered them together (sharing different ways to solve each one if that were the case).

One problem was:
26 + 29 + 27 + 25 + 28 + 25. 
I now know that's 160 because it's just 25 + 25 + 25 + 25 + 25 + 25 + 1 (from 26) + 4 (from 29) + 2 (from 27) + 3 (from 28). The six 25's go together to make 150 and the remaining bits add to 10!

Easy stuff when you do it that way. If only I had known when I was younger how to do things that way. Subtraction with borrowing might have even made sense.

Mr. Young then went and watched some Kindergarten and grade 1 students playing math games and doing math stations. He said it was inspiring and liked how it directly led to how the students the next grade up were doing it. His biggest challenge lies ahead, however as it is his goal to try and bring some of the ideas about how to present math this way to his school. I know it won't be easy, (change never is) but hopefully with some support from places like here, they can do that and it will make sense. Even if "Math Makes Sense", doesn't always seem to.

"One Thing/Fun Thing" for Fri. Nov. 22

A huge hit tonight for everyone involved at the Family Fun Night at Diefenbaker. It wasn't even hard for me to decide what to write about on a Fun Friday- it already had Fun in the title... This date had originally been booked as a Family Fun Night, but due to the changes in the copyright laws (post October) which would have required us to purchase a license, the PAC decided to roll the dice a bit and plan an interactive night for the kids. There were stations, raffles and, of course, food. After completing 5 stations (and receiving the stamps to prove it), the kids were able to show their stamped card and receive cotton candy or popcorn. I took my two kids, and they had a blast. My son wasn't even feeling well when he got there, but that didn't last long. Maybe their first opportunity to ever eat cotton candy had something to do with it, but I think it was the great activities! Talking with a few parents, people seemed to agree that it was better than a movie night anyway as people could move around and talk, which, is the whole idea of one of these evenings in the first place...

Anyway, the PAC put on a great night with assistance from Amanda as well as about 20 student leaders from our local High School (McMath). Since I have been at Diefenbaker, we haven't had many events that involved the high school students, but they did a great job and I think we should continue to build on this success.

The highlight of the night for my family was my daughter winning the "Guess the Candy" draw. After a preliminary estimate of "one million" pieces of candy, she lowered her guess to 900 and was the closest to the actual total of 852. It's a good thing I didn't throw in my two cents worth, because my guess would've been much closer to my son's of 450...

Gotta make sure they brush their teeth...

"One Thing" for Thurs. Nov. 21

"If you build it, they will come."
A line most often associated with actor Kevin Costner's character, Ray Kinsella, is actually one whispered to him in his field by a voice.

At Diefenbaker last year, we held a meeting for anyone in grades 3 through 6 that might be interested in joining our Green Team for the upcoming year (the one we are in now). Quite a few students showed up and with the help of our green guru at the school (Mrs. Alvaro-who has since retired) we asked the students what they would most be interested in doing if we formed a green team next year.

Interestingly, about 80% of them wrote down gardening as the thing they would like to do most. So, we wanted to help them have a venue to do that. With the help of the district (thanks Mr. Lyseng!) we applied to have 3 garden beds installed on our school grounds as step one in a long term plan of greening our school. They were installed yesterday:

Well, since step one is done, so that means we are on to the next one. We're going to hold our first Green Team meeting next week and go from there. I do not have a "green thumb" but after successfully growing tomatoes in my back yard that we started courtesy of the tomatosphere project (if you haven't tried that with your class, you should...) We actually installed our own raised bed in our back yard and have had some summer crops for the past 2 years. My kids love it and I would say there is nothing better than picking lettuce out of your own garden to put into your salad for lunch! 

Hopefully we will soon be planting some kale at Diefenbaker and reaping the benefits of our garden. 

I will keep you "posted" on our progress. 

"One Thing" for Wed. Nov. 20

I wasn't at school today, so will write tomorrow about our exciting new "beds" at Diefenbaker. Photos and article coming Thursday.

"One Thing" for Tues. Nov. 19

"I want to go faster!" 

These words were said to me around 11:00 at the Minoru ice skating rink. I had the pleasure of skating with Regine, a student who is new to our school this year and has lived in Canada for less than a year. Regine and her family moved from the Congo. She had never skated until today and I don't think she knew exactly what it was we were skating on. She wasn't scared to try it though and when I took her hand away from the hockey boards she was holding onto, she trusted me right away. Maybe the circa 1990's Washington Capitals Peter Bondra jersey I was wearing gave her the impression I was good on skates, but I don't think she has any idea who that is or why I was wearing it. I think she just knows we are people who help. Skating wasn't hard for her because after coming over from the Congo, well, skating is just not that hard compared to that... 

As we zoomed around the rink, singing "Royals" by Lorde (Regine knew this one well) we were both having a blast. I got a few giant smiles and a "I'm having so much fun!" from Regine. I was too. In fact, this hour was probably the most fun I've had at school this year. The best part was that it all just sort of happened. It also made for my easiest decision of what I was going post for my "One Thing" today and authentic happenings like this are actually what I was hoping would "pop up" in my day to day experiences to write about. Don't we have the best "job" in the world?

 

I also had a little help from one of my students, Amani who displays excellent balance on her skates. 

"One Thing" for Mon. Nov. 18

Wordles, located at www.wordle.net are a great thing to do in your class and are something I am using right now (and have before) with my computer class. If you haven't used them, essentially by typing into the field a number of words on a topic (favourite animals for instance) the words will all be jumbled into a word collage. The neat part is that any word you type more than once gets bigger (in relation to the ratio of how many times it was typed) so that a word typed 3 times is 3 times bigger (thereby indicating its increased importance to the word collage).

Since this is a space to share, here is a picture of my "values" as a human and an educator. I am aiming to meet these by doing my best every day. It's also in my favourite colour scheme (of which there are many)

Looking at that one as an example, if you are hoping to insert a multi word phrase, just be sure to include the ~ symbol between the words for instance: "Helping~Others" will keep the 2 words together as a phrase. My other tip when using wordles is to remember to "copy" your word list (and perhaps past it into Word) prior to hitting submit. That way you can go back and make minor changes without having to retype anything.

"One Thing/Fun Thing" for Fri. Nov. 15

Seeing these trucks keep crashing into the same bridge reminds me of the old adage, "the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and hoping for different results." I'm sure that we've all felt that way at school once in a while but I hope that we are able to try to find creative ways to solve problems that arise instead of being one of these trucks.

It is kind of awesome to see them keep crashing, though. I wonder if they've thought of replacing the bridge or moving it higher. I'm pretty sure more signs wouldn't stop the issue, however...

"One Thing" for Thurs. Nov. 14

For my VP study group last year, we had to read a book called "The Art of Possibility". An ex-husband and wife team were the authors and he was a music conductor while she was a writer. The liner notes referred to the book as "A Book of Practices." What I took away from it was one chapter. This chapter was called "Giving an A".

image taken from: Here

To sum it up, Mr. Zander, our teacher/conductor/author would promise his students an A in his course, before they had even started. His purpose was to eliminate their anxiety over the measurement of their performance, thereby allowing them to take risks with their musical playing. It worked. Mr. Zander suggests that we should do this in education and all walks of life. Giving people like mother-in-laws and breakfast waitresses A's too. It will allow these people to work from a place that lets them realize themselves and not have to stack up to your (sometimes too lofty) expectations of what a server or a mother should be.

At my school last year, I found that I was able to apply this teaching principle in one situation and found that it worked extremely well. We ended up getting a new student that joined us from another school midway through the year. When this student arrived, there were a couple of meetings and certain expectations seemed attached to this student based on where they had been and come from. I conscisously decided to try out the technique with this student and "give them an A". I simply gave this young adult the respect I felt they deserved and the space and time to prove themselves on their own merit through their actions at Diefenbaker and not anything that had happened to them previously. I believe it worked. I got respect back and this student worked well for both myself and my teaching partner. Perhaps I'm just lazy, but I do the same thing when I purposefully don't read the reports of students who are coming into my class (not because I don't trust the opinions of their previous teacher-I certainly do!) but so that I can form my own opinion of them as a student-learner in my classroom.

So, what might happen if we do as the Zanders suggest when they write: "The practice of giving the A allows the teacher to line up with her students in their efforts to produce the outcome, rather than lining up with the standards against these students?" Try it and you might find it works for you too.

And a great little clip that sums up the "Art of Possibility". Shoes in Africa...

"One Thing" for Wed. Nov. 13

Did you know that we are embarking on a school version of "The Polar Express"? I am going to have to break my family rule of not being allowed to sing any Christmas songs prior to the start of December in order to do this. While somewhat troubling, I think it can be done. After school today, I was playing the first of the songs our class needs to learn for the show. Then, later at the dinner table tonight, I was excited as my daughter was humming the tune to the same song as me. I asked her if she was singing that because I was. She said, "No, dad. We are doing this song for our Christmas Concert." So that's pretty neat. We can both practice at home.

I know that some schools have had issues with being able to have a "Christmas Concert" or a "Winter Concert" and that it can be tricky. I think that the spirit of things behind the story to "The Polar Express" is a good one and that it is transferrable through different religions or faiths. It's about "believing". My daughter is 8 and she still believes. I hope that goes on forever. But know that it won't. I know that my son has done a great job of not letting anything out of the bag in this department for the past 2 or 3 years and I am proud of him for doing that.

My favourite "Winter Holiday" story has always been "The Grinch Who Stole Christmas". I have even read it to my class on occasion even though I have never really decorated my room with Christmas stuff. I've always thought that the Grinch sort of transcended religion/faith as well. I think it does so because of the characters involved. The Grinch is not human (and neither are the Whos) so that they can be used as an example of any person/religion out there. They could be green/brown/black. It doesn't matter. What matters is that the Grinch learns about giving. I still go over to my parents house and put on the record, read aloud by Zero Mostel and get goosebumps when the part comes with his understanding that he was unable to stop Christmas from coming.

"Maybe Christmas," he thought, "doesn't come from a store.
"Maybe Christmas... perhaps... means a little bit more!"

To me that's the big idea here. And at school I don't think it matters how or what exactly is celebrated as long as we are cognizant of the fact that different people celebrate in different ways and none of them are preferable to any of the others. We just need to be open to that and learn from characters like Cindy Lou Who (who was not more than two) and the Grinch. 

"One Thing" for Tues. Nov. 12

I have been teaching for 15 years. Over that time, I have done a lot of coaching. Coaching is great and what I like most about it is getting to see students outside of the classroom. That's also why I love outdoor education (but that's for a post another day). Today’s post is about a question that I was asked by one of my students before the volleyball game today and have been asked 417 times altogether since I began teaching and coaching. 

"Mr. Rollins, who are we versing today?"

I know the kids are simply turning the "vs" or "versus" in the “it’s the Canucks versus the Blackhawks” into a verb here. 

image from: http://www.comicvine.com/forums/battles-7/gogeta-vs-gotenks-1476592/

But it kills me. Every time. The teacher in me can't let it go. I always try to take the time to stop and explain to my student/player on my team that you can only "verse" in poetry. I say that they really should be asking, "Who are we playing against today?" But my teaching hasn’t ever seemed to catch on. It’s kind of like the “your/you’re” misuse or the “their/they’re/there” error. We need to address these errors of language.

Regardless of whether I was teaching PE or coaching after school and in not mattering whether it was in Vancouver, Richmond or Bangladesh, “versing” was still the popular term. Seriously, where did this phenomenon come from? I did a quick google search of "versing" and didn't think I'd find much, but there's a fair bit out there, including a couple other blog posts on this topic (darn, I was hoping to be original here) and an urbandictionary.com reference. Anyway, perhaps it’s all part of a larger breaking down of the English language including: texting shortcuts, shortening words like “night” into “nite” to make them easier to spell and the advent of new “words” to our vernacular. However, I wouldn’t be so sure, because I would argue from my qualitative analysis on the subject that the trend has remained steady over the years instead of spiking recently with the advent of instant messaging. 

Maybe we'll get this sorted out one day. But I doubt it. It's me "versus" them. Unless some people want to join me in my crusade. 

"One Thing" For Fri. Nov. 8

Today we held our Remembrance Day ceremony/assembly at our school. It's the one assembly that really needs to go well and since it comes at the start of the school year and we have not had many assemblies yet to address appropriate assembly behaviour for groups.

Our assembly went well as everyone contributed, the technology worked and we had a great guest speaker, Liuetenant Colonel Wickens from the Royal Canadian Artillery.

As it is technically "Fun Friday" in this space, I am going to post the video we showed today titled "A Pittance of Time." It's appropriate for the day we had and hopefully "moves" some people at this time of year.

"One Thing" for Thurs. Nov. 7

Are we getting outside enough? With Daylight Savings hitting us (hard) it makes me wonder whether we will be able to get enough Vitamin D in our bodies. I have long been on record of being against whatever we call this "time" on the clock. I feel it is depressing to come out of work and it be pitch black. Do we really need the light in the morning when we are all at our house? Why not have it afterschool when kids are practising soccer and playing at the playground. I just don't think it's the safest way to live. And we're doing it because it's always been done that way and farmers need it to be light in the morning? Not a good reason in my opinion.

I believe that, curriculum aside, one of our jobs as educators should be ensuring that our students get outside, stay active and gain a love for the outdoors. If you can't love Vancouver, what place on Earth would you be able to love? In school what that looks like might be different. Whether that's running laps around the school with your class, riding bikes around the community, or doing walk to school campaigns, it all adds up to getting outside to do something. David Suzuki's I was impressed when my daughter's grade 2/3 class came home with notices this year that they would be riding their bikes to the community garden, so if they can do it...
Here's a link to a great document from the David Suzuki Foundation about Connecting with Nature:
David Suzuki website, CLICK HERE

I thought I would finish with this. At one of the school track meets last year, I saw one of the teachers at my son's school with a shirt like this one:
                                  
                                       Sorry the graphic is small, but if you can't read it, it says: 

"Ask Your Teacher to Take You Outside."

Should they really have to?

image from: http://teachinginkenya.weebly.com/uploads/9/7/1/4/9714886/1323746570.jpg

and yes, that link there is because I spent today in a meeting learning about copyright.

"One Thing" for Wed. Nov. 6

I'm sure that this has been the subject of myriads of blog posts before, but whoever said "technology is great, but only when it works" really had the gist of it. We were starting our class blogs today. My class was excited. In fact, they were so excited that they were barely able to last in front of the white board when I gave them the directions of how to log in. It turns out only the girls really followed the directions, but after a few repeated questions, we were all ready to go.

We are using edublogs, a classroom format based off of our newest class blog Located Here.

The goal for today was threefold. Change to a new password, make a first post (by deleting the existing cookie-cutter/placeholder one that was there) and finally to change the appearance/design of your blog so that it could be unique to you. We got started. And then, the internet went down. Some students rebooted quickly and were back at it. Some turned on their wi-fi (not helpful) while others just sat there watching their pages try to load. In fact, one boy never actually got logged in at all. Ahh, the internet. I will say that this is the first time my class has had trouble in the lab this year after the tech people did a big upgrade from last year. Murphy's law on the timing, however for this letdown. It kind of ruined the excitement of our first day.

Anyway, we don't have too much written yet, but that will be coming. And so, in a future post, will be all the reasons we are doing this. Stay tuned.

"One Thing" for Tues. Nov. 5

For those following since the beginning, and know about the "One Thing" theme, I actually heard the Finger Eleven song yesterday on my way to pick my kids up from after school care.

Today's "One Thing" is a bit more of a thank you "shout out" to a friend of mine. This is a friend of mine who used to be just a colleague. He is someone I learned a lot from when working alongside of him at a previous school and someone that I began doing things in my classroom because he was doing them. Then I think he began cycling to work because I was riding my bike. It's funny how that works. Anyway, I feel that he inspired me and he has recently left teaching to follow his real passion and I think that it was a great move (and perhaps an overdue one) for him. On Monday he came to my school to help me with something that I needed help with but is in his new field of expertise. Not because he had to, but because he wanted to (I think). I appreciated the help and now the project that we are hoping to launch (more about that in this space later) should be able to get off the ground. Would it have been able to without his direct assistance? Probably. But it sure was nice to have the guidance.

In the words of Ringo, Paul, George and John: "Oh I get by with a little help from my friends"

"One Thing" for Mon. Nov.4

Are you on Twitter? If not, I recommend that you stop by and check it out. You can "lurk" for a while (yes that's what they call it). Lurking is when you follow people, learn stuff but don't tweet much yourself. I found a great quote (on twitter) that I think sums it up nicely.

"Think of Twitter as a waterfall with a whole bunch of information going by. You just have to stick your cup into the waterfall for a minute and pull something out." If you want that to be educational information, you can do that. I would recommend following a few people who are in a field of personal interest to you as well. So, if you're into English Premier League Soccer, for instance, then follow a few players/writers etc who tweet about that and you'll be able to get a feel for what twitter can do for you. Then, as you get more comfortable, you can tweet yourself and begin following more people who are in your field/area at work/school and you can begin to build your "personal network". I began following a couple of high tweeting educational folk: (David Truss and Aaron Akune to name a couple), because I know them personally from going to UBC with them. Now I am following people like George Couros and had the pleasure of meeting him at our recent BCPVPA professional day.

My next goal for Twitter is to get my Twitter Deck going on my laptop. I should have that up soon. Just as soon as I close all my open documents and am able to reboot...

So, give Twitter a shot. I promise you your money back if you aren't satisfied.

"One Thing/Fun Thing" for Fri. Nov. 1

This space will be different on Fridays. Something fun for the weekend. Random musings, perhaps. Also probably non-educational. We all could use a break now and then.

Here is the fist instalment of "One Thing/Fun Thing" Fridays.

It is my favourite youtube video of all time. Sometimes nothing can beat nature.

I love how everything starts out all natural-like and then there's a sudden change in the landscape. The video is from about 6 years ago. If you're one of the 72 million plus who've already seen it, I apologize and hope to find something new for you next time.
Have a great weekend!