Here we go!

Another year has started! This makes year #22 for me, which is still weird when I think about it. This is the first year in new building, and aside from pretty sketchy wifi, it's been really exciting to be in it at last. It's also our first year in Academies and with a new dress code, both of which seem to be going decently well, at least in the I.B. Academy, anyway. We even made the news, which was kind of neat. I was particularly pleased that I didn't walk into the lcd monitor or trip over anything while on camera, so I'm taking that as a good omen for the year. (ha ha!)

This week was a hectic week for my students. On Monday we took a reading inventory so I would have a decent sense of where my students' reading levels were, then spent Tuesday giving a basic IB1o1 to my students. Yesterday and today we were in the library getting familiar with some of the various tools we'll be using this year: the class webpage, the class blogs, our class and Academy Ning pages, Edmodo, and Coveritlive. My goal was to address some ISTE NETS standards this week, so I focused on collaborative and communication tools.

The only real disappointments came when I received some emails this week that essentially asked me to set aside what I had planned in favor of someone else's agenda; particularly aggravating when those other people don't even deal with my students on a day to day basis. I am certainly flexible and willing to roll with changes, but when those changes are essentially dropped in my lap and the message (intended or otherwise) is "Yes, thank you for planning out your lessons so carefully, but we need you to do THIS right now," I tend to react negatively. A little heads up would be nice. Ah, well. Such is the nature of education sometimes, regardless of how frustrating it is.

Still and all, a good week and an auspicious start!!

It's over... new beginnings

The summer is over for me now. I attended part of new teacher induction today, and tomorrow I will be back full time with Global Learners training. This was a really intense summer for me, so I'm not sad that it has come to an end. Added to that is the opening of the brand new, beautiful and exciting high school building, with all four Academies in place and ready to go. While I'm taking a break from the climbing program this year, my plate will not be empty. (The program needs to be reset due to the demise of the Denver Climbing League and Paradise Rock Gym, so the students and I are going to take some time to figure out what that will look like for the 2010-2011 school year and beyond.) Instead, this year I will have two mentees in Global Learners, a student teacher until December break, a few senior adoptees to get ready for graduation, and as senior class sponsor, I have graduation to help out with. The only extracurricular I have planned for this year will be the book club, though there are a few teachers and I who want to put together a triathlon event for the spring. In addition, with the authorization of the full IB program, we have to get that up and running as well. Like I said, my plate will still be decently full.

Last night I attended a book signing and teaching with Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche, author of The Joy of Living and Joyful Wisdom. I've been to a few such teachings/book signings, two with Tibetan writers/teachers (this is my second of such). The event was both entertaining as well as educational: I learned a great deal, and took quite a lot home for me to sort through. It was a really nice way for me to end my summer and to begin a new year. I'm looking forward to it now more than I was before.

Almost over and more farmers' market fun

Had my first pre-new school year meetings today; more next week, and then I'm back full time... my summer is nearly over. It's been "interesting" this summer, and so in some ways, I'm not entirely heartbroken to be going back. Not only that, but with a new high school building and the IB Academy about to be officially launched, I'm actually pretty excited.

This past week I picked up some goat meat at the farmers' market. That's right... goat meat. Tonight's menu was grilled goat ribs rubbed with fresh garlic and fresh rosemary, grilled corn on the cob, and purple potatoes mashed with parmesan cheese and tarragon. Yum! I'd had goat before, but my son hadn't... he liked it. The goat, corn, and potatoes all came from the farmers' market, as did the garlic and rosemary; the butter in the potatoes was homemade from local cream. So much tasty goodness!

Set your presentations on fire

My students are preparing to give their presentations on renewable energy and what they have learned from reading Plan B 3.0 and related readings. I've decided that this time around, I'm going to have them use the Ignite format for their presentations. Basically what that means is that they will be given five minutes and 20 slides (that automatically rotate every 15 seconds) to present their ideas. The students are in various stages of pseudo-panic about this: some think five minutes is so long, others say that there is no way they can present in that short a time. I think this format will work really well. I like the structure this promises, and I also think that teaching them to be concise in their delivery will prove invaluable.

I have become pretty hooked on Edmodo. I've started using feeds for some of the groups I've used and I've discovered that when you put in a link to a video, it actually embeds it in the message... very nice! The next pieces of tech I want to master is OpenZine. OpenZine is basically a way to design and publish online magazines. OpenZine definitely represents some cool possibilities for my classes next year; I'm already thinking about the possibilities for class and IB Academy magazines. (Cross posted to the Global Learners blog.)

IB authorization, Farmers Market, live blogs, and audio/video blogs!

It's that time of year again! The first Boulder County Farmers Market was this past Saturday, and I attended of course, in spite of the snow. The turnout was pretty light, for both the farmers and the customers, which was understandable considering that the forecast had called for a huge blizzard. It was great to see the farmers again, many of whom I consider friends of a sort.

Life in the classroom continues to take interesting and cool twists and turns. A student in my epistemology class asked if he could record his blog entries as a podcast and upload them or post the link to the class blog site; it then became an overall discussion, and it was agreed that a 3-5 minute podcast or video would be appropriate for the blog entries. I was impressed with the students' initiative and since oral presentations are a part of the class anyway, it wasn't hard to get me to go along with the idea.

The first live blogging session for the epistemology class is today. Topic: What's wrong with modern man? Should be interesting.

I've rescheduled the live blogging session for my MYP classes. The new date is Thursday, April 16. The times are:
Block 2: 8:30 a.m. -9:15 a.m.
Block 3: 9:30 a.m. -10:20 a.m.
Block 4: 11:15 a.m. -12:05 p.m.
Block 5: 12:20 p.m. - 1:10 p.m.

The topic: Within the realms of food, transportation, and housing, what have you done or what are you doing to lessen your impact on the planet and what goals do you have along those same lines?

The epistemology class will also be live blogging on April 16 at 1:30 p.m. (Mountain Time; GMT-7) for our next live blog. Topic: “In order to find out how things really are, one must understand the filters through which one perceives the world.” Discuss and evaluate this claim. The link for this blog is here.

If you can/want to join us, simply click on the class period to be taken directly to the page.

In other very cool news, the school where I work has been authorized for the IB DP program. That means that we can now offer the full MYP/DP sequence here at the high school, and it means that our district is one of the few in the world to offer the full K-12 IB program. Pretty sweet.

Education in the 21st Century: Teachers Without Borders

(Teachers Without Borders provided the logo exclusively for educational purposes and is not an endorsement of comments or opinions on site.)

I recently joined Teachers Without Borders (TWB), an organization of teachers committed to enacting global change through education. TWB goes a bit beyond professional networking sites like the Global Education Collaborative and Classroom 2.0 in that Teachers Without Borders offers opportunities for professional development and even mentorship on an international level, and it possesses the ability to identify and support educational leaders who are willing to put the effort in to making a difference. It’s interesting to see the number of organizations that have developed around international collaboration between educators and students. Teachers Without Borders promises to take training and collaboration to a level beyond mere networking. Like Doctors Without Borders, Teachers Without Borders is a nonprofit dedicated to bridging cultural and geographic gaps for the betterment of humankind; unlike Doctors Without Borders, which is a centralized organization, TWB is decentralized and more driven by its members. It’s also one of the few organizations whose focus is the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals, and recognizes that teachers are on the front line of world change. Going beyond mere networking, TWB has specific goals and a plan for affecting change through education. (Best part is that membership is free!) For the rest of this entry, please go here.

Live blogging improvement

We continued our discussion on the goal of science today, and started an interesting conversation around genetic engineering which led to the use of antibiotics and growth hormones in food (especially meat). In addition to another teacher in the building, we had a former teacher join us as well as one a former student of mine who is now a teacher in Boston. I'm pretty excited since this is exactly what I was hoping to do... branch out beyond the district. I've also joined Classroom 2.0, and I'm hoping that between that and the Global Education Collaborative that I'll be able to start hooking in with other classrooms as well. I think posting it on Facebook and the like helped, and I'm also going to post an invitation on the IB website. I think it's great to be able to reach out like I'm able to. Now I just have to get others to join us!

November!!!

Hard to believe that it's November already. The last farmers' market of the year was yesterday, so I did a little stocking up, said goodbye to the farmers and told them that I would see them come April. It's a little sad, but I'm sure farmers are looking forward to a little bit of a rest. It's going to be quite strange this Saturday, though, when I don't get up at the crack of dawn to be in Boulder for my scone and coffee at the market before getting my produce picked out and bought. For the first time in a long time I can take my time getting out of bed and getting my groceries for the week.

Term 1 is over in 12 days. Last week I got confirmation that I'm going to be in the IB Academy, which is really exciting. I am a huge believer in the IB program and what it can do for our students, so to be a part of the IB Academy at ACHS is amazing and great. A group of my students have chosen to be in an IB-influenced class starting term 2. Once we obtain authorization, they will be officially designated an IB English class, so that will be cool as well, but in the meantime I plan to get them well acquainted with various IB concepts like the Areas of Interaction, Learner Profile, the Personal Project, and the like. I can't wait!

"Mr., what's the definition of truth?": Adventures in Epistemology

I think I've mentioned before that I'm teaching an cross-cultural studies/epistemology class this year. It's a junior/senior level class, and I've been borrowing from the IB Theory of Knowledge (TOK) curriculum for supplemental material for the class. This week's blog question asked the students to address whether or not truth is culturally based or if there are some truths that are universal. One of the students read the question, then looked at me and said, "What is the definition of truth?" And so began the class. At first, he stated that he was interested in the literal definition, but then found that the literal definition wasn't helpful and didn't give him the information he was really looking for, and so as a class, we began to discuss the philosophical side of the question. It was an amazing class period: the conversation ranged from culture to politics to semantics to science to religion and so forth. By the end of the class, we still hadn't answered the question, but one student acknowledged that she knew I wasn't going to answer the question, that the whole point of the class was to get them to ask the question and to think about it rather than answer it.

The student that asked the question was a student that I've had for the past two years and was in my IB-influenced class, so I wasn't surprised by the question, but very pleased to see that the seeds I had been planting for two years were beginning to bear fruit. It speaks well of the MYP program and speaks to the importance and urgency of implementing it here if our DP students are to be successful. I am fairly convinced that the encouragement to think differently in his freshman and sophomore years led him to begin the questioning that led him to asking that question in class today. He got bonus points from me for asking it, with the hope that he will ask more, and that other students will pick up on it and begin asking similar questions as well.

This is the realm where I function best, really. While I acknowledge that I do well working with freshmen and sophomores, I also flourish when placed into an environment where I can explore the "deeper" and less "traditional" questions in a class. I guess that's why in the long run, I definitely plan to apply to be in the IB Academy at the new school (this isn't exactly a state secret- I've been saying that since we found out about the Academies), for both MYP and IB TOK.

More importantly, however, it shows that providing a continuum of IB style teaching and learning definitely sets a student up for success within IB. I'm really excited about the implications for IB within the district, especially since the ultimate goal is a K-12 IB program. IB is an amazing program, and we have amazing students, so we're perfect match! :-)

Goals for the year

I'm going to be giving my students weekly blog topics to write about, and I will be writing my own entries along with them... after all, that's only fair, really.

This week's question is: What are your goals for this year both as a student and in general? Well, since I'm not a student this year, I will instead address my goals from a professional point of view as well as a more personal one.

Professionally, I have several goals, really. First, I want to become much more adept at the use of technology in my classroom. I am working on a few lessons involving the Smart Board in my room, but I haven't actually used it yet, and I feel a little guilty about that. I haven't nailed the podcast thing yet, which is fairly disappointing, but I'm working on putting up a podcast/PowerPoint for my students on how to get their blogs set up, and my goal for that is to have it done by the end of the week. I'm thinking of recording tomorrow's lesson on the 11 sentence paragraph as well, so that should also be available soon. I would also like to attend an IB Extended Essay training this year, so that I can be fully up and running for everything I'm going to be teaching once we are an official IB World School.

On the coaching side, my goal is to continue to build and strengthen the program. We had a great veterans' meeting yesterday, and the students continue to push themselves even higher than previous students have. I'm very encouraged by what I'm seeing, and I think this year promises to be an amazing year for the team.

Of course, there is also the book club for the students and faculty that I want to start up, and I need to get the cycling program moving again as well.

Personally... hmm. This one's always a little tougher in some ways. First, I want to become more adept at cooking Tibetan and Vietnamese foods. I've cooked a few things from the Tibetan cookbook I picked up, but I haven't hit up the Vietnamese one yet; I need to get moving on that.

It's also a goal of mine to be able to keep up not just with this blog, but also with the Elephant Journal blog entries and reviews that I've been doing. I really enjoy doing the reviews and working with the magazine, though I haven't published an article in a while... I would like to get at least one more article in print in addition to the online reviews and blogs.

In general, though, I want to continue to learn about as much as I can about as many different topics as I can. I really love to learn new things, and I see learning as a celebration of life and what it has to offer. I haven't picked out my next book yet, but as I certainly have plenty to choose from, I don't see that as a problem... except knowing which one to choose, of course!

Oh yeah... another personal goal: I really want to get more consistent with both my meditation and yoga practices. Both of these really help to keep me centered, and I can always feel it when I start to drift. I didn't do a great job of that this summer, and so I need to put more effort into that.

Wow... I have several goals, which isn't a bad thing, I don't think. Of course, these will continue to grow and change as some get met and new ones develop, but I think that's a good start.