Genius Hour Progress - Update #1

Hello my friends!

How's it going?  I'll take your silence to mean it was excellent.  How was mine you ask? Well, let me tell you!  This was the first official week with my genius hour project and I've come to realize I might need to practice more than twice a week to accomplish my goal of playing a song from memory on the ukulele.  I did follow my time line though which I am pretty proud of.  Actually, I went home this weekend to visit my parents and played a little bit for them.  For someone who grew up playing in music concerts and learning new songs, this was the ultimate throw back.  I have not performed for my family members since I was in grade.  I am aware that I am using the word "perform" very loosely here but it was still kind of satisfying having them sit and listen to me mess up playing "Eliza Jane" 4 times.  My mother did put in a song request of "Mandolin Wind" by Rod Stewart, which has a ukulele in it but I think I am a ways off from accompanying him on stage (but dream big MLLs!).  Anyway I have decided to tentatively follow my timeline and actually try to aim for at least 3 practices a week instead.  One of the downfalls of the resource that I mentioned last time, Yousician, is that it interrupts you with adds and only gives you 30 minutes of feedback for free unless you want to update.  That being said, one of the coolest parts of the app is that it can actually hear you playing and lets you know when you are off-key or playing to early/late.  It's a really good tool since that means you aren't drilling the song into your head when you're actually playing it wrong.  I'm going to attempt to video tape my next practice session and uploaded it so you guys can see the skill level that I'm at now and hopefully what I progress to!  I'm aiming for stardom here.  That little girl just won America's Got Talent singing and playing the ukulele so maybe I'll be next.  Always nice to have a solid backup in case teaching falls through am I right?  Anyway, until next time my little learners!

Genius Hour Project

Music Express (2016). Mahalo Dark
Blue Soprano Ukulele MR1.
Retrieved from
http://www.musicexpress.com.au/
mexpress/U30blue.html

Hello my little learners!!

Guess what?! I am going to be learning the ukulele! That's right, this week I begin my passion project a.k.a. my genius hour project!  For our technology class we are going to be exploring a passion and reflecting on our experience during the project.  Truth be told, I am cheating a little bit during this process.  I actually already own a ukulele and have spent a little time attempting to learn BUT I definitely still qualify as a beginner.  Because of this status I am going to be  documenting my progress over a matter of 8 weeks to see how well I can progress.  My goal is to be able to play an entire song from memory.  Recently, my father told me about an app that he found called Yousician that takes you through different steps in helping you develop your skills.  I am hoping that playing a minimum of two times per week, half an hour each will help me accomplish my goal.  On top of using this app, I am going to find more resources to help me learn sheet music for ukulele as well.  I grew up playing piano so I am hoping that this will give me an edge in my task. Interesting fact, the ukulele in the picture to the left is actually the exact one I own.  That lovely shade of blue is definitely going to add some flare.  I'll keep you updated on my progress!  Bye for now MLLs!

Copyright Licensing

Prior to this class the idea of copyrighting only seemed like a distant concept that only really applied to people in the music industry.  But boy, was I wrong.  I have learned, especially now that I am a Teacher Candidate, that we are not necessarily allowed to throw any old video up on the screen to show my students.  It in fact, needs to have this magical thing called "Creative Commons".  Basically this means that the creator has allowed distribution rights for their work.  It is split into six different licenses that dictate exactly what the author gives permission for such as sharing, non-commercial uses, or attribution.  I need to be aware of the distinction as well as help my students practice appropriate internet usage.  Resources such as the wiki page Copyright Friendly or Creative Commons Chaos can help students learn to navigate what is allowed to be shared or not.  Further, it is important to understand "Fair Dealing" as it dictates further what we as teachers are allowed to share with our students as educational resources.  As long as the purpose is for research, private study, criticism, review, news reporting, education, satire, or parody we are allowed to present copyrighted material.  This is very important in order to ensure that our resources for students are legal and usable!  It has definitely helped me think twice about the materials I am sharing!  Just check out these images.  

Slaughter, M. (1983).Children like Kim Hampton; 9; (left); and David Demers; 11; are plugging into computer camps with eletronic speed. Photograph.  Retrieved from http://www.torontopubliclibrary.ca/detail.jsp?Entt=RDMDC-TSPA_0005893F&R=DC-TSPA_0005893F.

Brown, V. (December 28, 2011). Child's Play.  Photograph.  Retrieved from https://www.flickr.com/photos/vintuitive/6585812185/

Back At it Again with the New School Year

Hello loyal followers,

I hope you are ready for another whirlwind blog posting season because we're back bigger and better than ever.  Learning with Miss Lauren 2.0: Teachers College Edition.  Even if this blog doesn't give me a professional edge someday I hope some principals at least find me amusing.  But anyway down to the nitty gritty, I am super excited to be back this year!  Today marks my last first day of school EVER! Until I'm actually teaching and then I have a new first day every year but you get the idea.  I'm pumped to be participating in this tech class because 1. I love technology, and A. I love sharing it with people so finding new ways to get my students involved is awesome!  One of the really cool sites I learned about on my very first day was Answer Garden.  Which is basically a page you can type things you are interested in and see what an entire group writes and how many times each thing was written. FYI Bryan, I was the one who wrote cheese... because c'mon, it's cheese.

As this year progresses I am excited to continue to learn new resources as well as find ways to integrate media that I already love into my teaching practices! 

See you next time my little learners! (which is what I've decided to call you from this point on).

Mental Health in the Classroom

Whether we like to admit it or not, mental health has touched our lives.  Either someone we know or ourselves have been affected by mental health illness in one way or another.  And the really sad part is, we don’t like to admit it.  The stigma around mental illness is so strong that people would rather hide and hurt than reach out.  

Before grade 11 the word suicide had very little significance to me.  I knew what it was but I never imagined it could ever directly impact my life.  It was one of those things that you heard about happening in other places but not in your own school, not to people you knew.  Walking out of basketball practice on the night before the first day of the new school year will never leave my memory.  My teammate turned to us as whispered, “Josh committed suicide.”  I looked at the faces of the girls around me, shock and disbelief radiated through us all.  I saw tears hit a few of the girls faces but all I could do was stare.  Walking into school the next morning felt so alien to me.  I was surrounded by crying classmates and teachers attempting to console.  We were immediately called to the gym for an assembly to announce the tragic news, and offer up services that the school would be offering to any students who needed to talk.  

Two weeks later it happened again.  I walked into school to have a friend pull me aside and tell me that my friend, the boy who attended my first birthday party had committed suicide.  The school went into a spiral.  What was just one tragic event had turned into an epidemic.  Over the course of the next two years there would be 6 suicides between my school and neighbouring ones.  Even after watching the turmoil that was happening in the schools, how it tore everyone apart, and listening to the speeches asking people to reach out… no one did.  

Coming from a small town there was not a single person who was unaware of what had happened.  Someone was always connected by a parent, or a sibling, or a friend.  The entire community was is mourning over lives taken too young.  ‘Permanent solutions to end temporary problems’ my mother called them.  Schools were forced to address issues that had never been present before; suicide, depression, and mental health all became a main focus.  Every teacher was on the watch for ‘at-risk’ behaviour, and every student mourned the death of a peer.  From this point onward, our community would never be the same.

But what are we really doing to stop the epidemic? Small steps are being taken, sure, but is it enough?  Even widely popular awareness events such ‘Bell Lets Talk Day’  and ‘To Write Love on Her Arms’ are only once a year.  This is why mental health literacy is such an important concept to include in the classroom.  

Employing mental health literacy in the classroom teaches students how to promote and maintain good mental health as well as how to be there for others.  By teaching mental health literacy we will be able to reduce the stigma that surrounds this topic and show students that this is not something to be ashamed of, there are options and resources available.  Even starting small as teaching students to understand their own identity, recognize the impact of their actions, and learning how to be resilient, as the Ontario Curriculum now includes (2015).  

It is our job as teachers to create an environment which fosters positivity and empathy for others.  Guest lecturer, Dr. Mark Castrodale, discussed how mental health literacy is connected to so many other topics as well such as race, gender, and sexuality (M. Castrodale, Personal Communication, February 3, 2016).  It is also important to discuss mental health literacy in the context of other concepts as well.  We can’t look at someone and say “they committed suicide because they were mental ill” end of story, we need to do a better job understanding the reasons behind their actions.  We need to understand what were the reasons that caused all those young kids in my hometown to take their lives and improve those, not just use a band-aid solution on an underlying wound.  

The reason I chose to make this blog so personal is because I know that these experiences are going to greatly shape my life as a teacher.  As Drake, Reid and Kolohon (2014) note, teachers make meaning of their practice through their own personal experiences and beliefs.  In an effort to become a ‘reflective practitioner’ (Drake, et. al., 2014) I would like to use these stories to grow and guide my teaching practice so that the voices of my students do not go unheard. What my community experienced is not something that I would ever like to repeat and because of it mental health literacy will always be a big part of my classroom.  

Reference

Bell Canada (2014). Bell lets talk: Suffering in silence. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tri5ZQaiM7M. (Video).

Drake, S. M., Reid, J. L., & Kolohon, W. (2014). Interweaving curriculum and classroom assessment: Engaging the 21st century learner. Don Mills, ON: Oxford University Press.

Ontario Ministry of Education (2015).  The Ontario curriculum grades 1 to 8: Health and Physical Education.  https://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/curriculum/elementary/health.html

Critical Literacy

For this blog I wanted to reflect on a concept that we discussed in lecture and that would be critical literacy.  I feel that growing up the term “critical thinker” was something on rubrics that kind of just went over my head.  I did not know what it really encompassed or what actually made me a good critical thinker or not, it was just two words on my report card.  Discussing different literacies has really opened my eyes about how critical literacy is not just one part of a report card, it is actually an entire approach that changes the way both teachers and students look at curriculum, and just all information in general.  

The reason I wanted to discuss this is because I do not want students having the same experience I did and simply look at critical thinking as a box that needed to get checked off rather than actually understanding it’s importance.  Our world is constantly becoming more diverse so being able to understand not only the perspectives and opinions of people around you, but also having the ability to determine fact from fiction in the information that is being presented to us whether it be in textbooks or in the media.  Youths today are exposed to so many sources of information, television, magazines, social media, even Buzzfeed articles that decide they are the expert on telling us “what we really need to know.”  Critical literacy is so important to teach in these times because students need to be able to see the bias in different sources.  They need to understand the motivations authors may have for making certain truth claims instead of blindly soaking it up as fact.  

This educating can start at such a young age so that the time they are starting to grasp larger global concepts they already know how to question what is being presented to them.  The video below from Pear Tree Education Inc. (2013) shows some ways of how critical literacy can be tackled in the classrooms at young ages.  

Some of the methods of critical literacy that really stood out to me from lecture were ‘problem posing,’ ‘juxtaposing,’ and ‘making connections,’ (personal communication, Lane, February 3, 2016).  I was really interested in them because I believe they are practices that can be carried through all of a student’s educative journey, no matter the age, and into the rest of their lives. 

Problem posing is something that can come so natural in conversation so to me it seems like such an interesting tool to use in the classroom.  Playing devil’s advocate can be so fun so using it to encourage students to see both sides of a story, who the information is targeted at, is there other meanings, etc. can really help them build their ability to think critically and even help them become better and simply explaining their thought processes.  

Juxtaposing was a really interesting idea to me because it seems like something that can be built on so much over the years.  Books like “The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs” are fun ways to get students comparing perspectives that can eventually turn into companies news stories or articles on major issues!  Even tasks such as class debates could be effective as students learn about opposing sides and can even learn to argue a topic they might not necessarily side with and gain new knowledge.  

Finally, making connections was in my mind one of the most important strategies in learning critical literacy.  All teachers want their students to fully understand the concepts that are being taught not just have surface learning like memorization.  Having students be able to take the information they are receiving, look at it, and recognize how it can affect their lives or make some connection will really help them internalize the knowledge and hopefully help them become a life long learner.  To me that is the true goal of teaching.  

Making critical literacy practices common in the classroom will help them not only become better learners but better citizens as they will be able to reflect information and understand the perspectives of those around them.  So instead of just seeing a box to check off on the rubric, they see new ways to examine the world.