Monthly Archives: June 2013

Whitewater Fun

Although I learned how to use a lot of great new technology at NCCAT and I’m very excited to try to plan a few lessons that incorporate augmented reality when school starts up, I think the most memorable DSCN0943 event was the whitewater rafting trip.

My best friend growing up was a raft guide during her summers on the Nantahala (with the NOC, actually), so rafting down this river wasn’t new to me.  But on our trip, I learned a lot of great new things.  I know the gorge is beautiful, but I never really took the time to notice it and think about it like we did on Wednesday.  Peter talked to us about the diversity of the life around the river and what causes it.  I had honestly not thought of the natural history of NC, and it feel privileged to live in a state with such variety from the mountains to the beach.

The river was freezing, but clean (I ingested several mouthfuls accidently as we plowed through rapids.  We managed to stay upright and not lose any passengers, so we had an easier time than some rafts on the trip. img_0424 The people in our raft took on different roles–Angel was our guard, alerting us to the rapids ahead.  Michael provided entertaining commentary while Patricia was our resident photographer.  Jayne and Joni were our naturalists–Jayne can tell you all about  fish while Joni points out all the plants on the riverbank and how to tell them apart.

What were the roles in your raft?

Leading Educators to Home Base

My fellowship is with DPI.  This summer, our student informational system called NCWISE is being replaced by Home Base.  Home Base has three pieces to it:

  1. PowerSchools: This is where grades and student information is housed.  Parents can also access grades from here
  2. Truenorthlogic: This houses the McREL Teacher Evalluation that we have been using.  The process and rubric are the same, just in a different place.
  3. SchoolNet: a collaborative piece that allows teachers to keep all their lessons and documents in one place and allows teachers to search for vetted resources that were freely available online

Our fellowship group consists of 8 teachers in non-core subjects: music, art, world languages, agriculture, CTE and ESL.  We have the very important job of making SchoolNet a useful resource for more than just core teachers.  I’m very glad that DPI has chosen to seek the expertise of teachers that are usually underrepresented in state-wide initiatives.

Our mentors from DPI, LaVerne Weldon and Carmela Fair, along with the content management team from CUACS (the Center for Urban Affairs and Community Services), Phyllis Laughlin, Lessie Anderson and Renee Duckenfield, have trained us on how to evaluate and upload resources into Home Base for teachers to use in the coming year.

Link

“It’s a bizarre but wonderful feeling, to arrive dead center of a target you didn’t even know you were aiming for.”  
―     Lois McMaster Bujold

I was thrilled to learn that I was admitted to the Kenan Fellows program.  A colleague of mine was a past Fellow and told me it was excellent, intellectually stimulating, and fun professional development.  My mentor teacher from my first years of teaching was ecstatic, and I knew through her enthusiasm what a great journey I was about to begin.

I was particularly excited to learn that I’d be working with DPI, for two reasons.  The first is that as a charter school teacher, I feel a bit isolated from public schools and the decisions that affect us all.  It’s a very different feel from my years in public schools, and I wanted to feel ”tuned in” again.  The second reason is, quite frankly, I just really wanted to see what goes on in there–who makes the decisions that affect my students, and how do they make them?  And can I have a positive influence or give some perspective?

My fellowship within DPI involves finding resources online for Spanish teachers and uploading them to Home Base, tagged with the standards they hit.  Having taught middle school Spanish for 6 years, I’m used to seeking out resources on my own.  It’s how I’ve found most of my materials that I use in my classroom: break out the Essential Standards (or before that, the NCSCOS), throw on some good music, and sit down for a long night with my good friend Google.  Since it’s how I spend a good deal of my summers anyway, I thought it would be a good idea to learn to do it in a systematic way, and to have a way to share what awesome resources I find with others.

Shortly after receiving my fellowship, I was asked to transition from teaching 7th and 8th grade Spanish to teaching K-8 Spanish.  While I’m excited about something new, I’m also terrified.  Although most people probably don’t feel this way, and may not believe me when I say I’m 100% serious, but I think middle school students are lovely, personable, funny, perceptive, and easy to motivate……

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…..while small children are unpredictable, unreasonable and difficult to understand.

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Suffice it to say, I feel less prepared for my coming year than I have ever felt.  So imagine how serendipitously wonderful it is to know that as I seek out resources for elementary Spanish during my Kenan fellowship, I am readying myself in real time for the new challenge that awaits me–a challenge that I wasn’t even yet aware of when my KFP acceptance notification came.

In my Kenan fellowship, I hope to gain friendships.  I hope to gain respect of my peers.  I hope to gain cutting edge knowledge and skills.  I hope to learn how to advocate for myself, my school and my students.  I hope to make new connections in the field of education and open new doors for myself.  But at the very basest, I hope to find the best lesson plan for day one in a kindergarten Spanish classroom.

photo credit: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/45688888@N08/5915484733/">"PictureYouth"</a> via <a href="http://photopin.com">photopin</a> <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/">cc</a>
photo credit: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/olga_pozdina/2754569792/">ooki_op</a> via <a href="http://photopin.com">photopin</a> <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/">cc</a>