A teacher's challenge

Thinking...

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Thinking..., inserito originariamente da colemama.

I want to remember this, when in my classroom, as I'm only interested in my students learning to think.

You've got to really love teaching...

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Image via Wikipedia

... to keep on working like this.

Until I get a steady job as a teacher, I'm changing school almost every year.

Last year I worked in a place I loved so much, I grew irrationally convinced that it would be "my" school also in the future.

Last week I discovered that they don't need me anymore, which means I won't be the science teacher of those 120 students I developed a special relationship with. And it also means that I will be notified on August 31st in which school I will be working starting from Sept 1st.

I may qet to work in many different types of secondary school. I may be assigned to pupils aged 13 to 19. I may be required to teach chemistry, or microbiology, or geology, or astronomy, or all of the above at the same time. I will have more or less ten days to get to know the school's specific curricula, plan my whole year activity, my goals, topics, approach, without even knowing the school's equipments and its general teaching environment and managing style...

And still, I'm looking forward to start all this.

Loving students

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

from: Half an Hour: Whatever (by Sttephen Downes: a blog summary of Michael Wesch at D2L Fusion)
- I would start with that. I would start with loving my students. And it's striking how much my teaching has changed in five years, as a result of that. It's basically about shifting form getting people to love you,. to you loving them. It has four parts (Fromm, 1956):
  - caring
  - responsibility
  - respect
  - knowledge
  
  It requires all four. For example, caring without the rest is like patronizing. Respect without the rest is idolizing. The four together are true long. And focusing on that, instead of focusing on your performance, opens you up to your audience. It makes the walls go away.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Global Warming and Australia's Fires

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

How Global Warming May Be Fueling Australia's Fires - TIME - Monday, Feb. 09, 2009 - By Bryan Walsh -The raging infernos that have left more than 160 people dead in southern Australia burned with such speed that they resembled less a wildfire than a massive aerial bombing. Many victims caught in the blazes had no time to escape; their houses disintegrated around them and they burned to death. As firefighters battle the flames and police begin to investigate possible cases of arson around some of the fires, there will surely be debates over the wisdom of Australia's standard policy of advising residents either to flee a fire early or stay in their homes and wait it out. John Brumby, the premier of the fire-hit Australian state of Victoria, told a local radio station on Monday that "people will want to review that...There is no question that there were people who did everything right, put in place their fire plan and it [didn't] matter, their house was just incinerated."

(...) Destructive wildfires are already common in Australia, and it's not hard to see why climate change would increase their frequency. The driest inhabited continent on the planet, Australia has warmed 0.9 degrees C since 1950, and climate models predict the country could warm further by 2070, up to 5 degrees C over 1990 temperatures, if global greenhouse gas emissions go unchecked. Beyond a simple rise in average temperatures, climate change will also lead to an increase in Australia's extreme heat waves and droughts. Southwestern Australia is already in the grip of a prolonged drought that has decimated agriculture and led to widespread water rationing; the region is expected to see longer and more extreme dry periods in the future due to steady warming.

Read the rest of the article here.