Fighting the Plague…

by Cyndi Faircloth

On Monday, my classroom was the source of a “symphony of sickness”. Hacking, coughing, sniffing, wheezing…you name it, we heard it.

I think all but one student was sick. And I might have been the worst off. (Of course, I’m also a whiner when I’m sick so it might have been in my head)

On Tuesday, I went to Quick Care to check in for the 2^nd time this round of sickness. There were lots of other coughing, sneezing victims in the waiting room. The doctor took pity on me and listened to my complaints, and gave me another prescription to fight the plague. After one of my hacking sessions, I asked the nice doctor if he took Airborne when there were this many people coming in with these kinds of symptoms. He said he doesn’t take supplements.

He just washes his hands…a lot.

Seriously? That’s his preventative measure when he works with people coughing a sneezing in his face every day?

Wow.

The CDC says that “Handwashing is one of the best ways to protect yourself and your family from getting sick.”

I thought I washed my hands pretty regularly at school, but I realize it is something I have to consciously think about doing because there isn’t a sink in my room. Other than the regular bathroom trip, or before and after eating, I’m just not near a sink during the day.

Yet students are in my room all day long…touching things. Sneezing on the desks. Coughing into the air. Blowing their nose and throwing dirty tissues into the garbage (…or at least aiming for the garbage. Sometimes they miss and have to pick them up off the floor).

If you really think about the possible sharing of germs that can happen in a classroom, a germophobe might go into convulsions.

So it was kind of a reality check for me that the doctor (into whose face I had nearly coughed while he examined my nasal passages a few minutes ago) believed that handwashing was the best way for him to avoid getting sick.

I need to up my game during flu season. Maybe all year long.

So here’s my pledge: I will start washing my hands during every class break that I can.

This creeping crud is finally losing its hold on me (thanks to the doctor’s prescription, I think). And I don’t want it back again. Ever.

I will wash my hands whenever I pass the sink in our school kitchen. Or whenever I go in the Science classroom. And whenever I’m standing at the copier waiting for a job to finish (there’s a sink right around the corner). I may buy stock in SoftSoap at this rate.

‘Course I probably also need to invest in some good hand lotion because all this handwashing is going to dry my skin out. But that’s a story for another day…

Senioritis

By Cyndi Faircloth – English/Social Studies/Art/Journalism teacher

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It’s that time of year.

The kids who are close to graduation start running of out steam and find it hard to focus all day. Teachers spend more time practicing amateur psychology and trying to head off emotional meltdowns, than we do celebrating the success of various assignments.

Student smarts off in class? We have to ask ourselves if it was intended as a rude comment for the teacher (or another student) or if it was a fight-flight reaction to being afraid that he/she didn’t know the answer. And we have to do that mental processing in the second or two it takes for us to respond so that we can respond appropriately. Make a joke out of it? Suggest a time out, like getting a glass of water? Or impose a more serious consequence?

Making the wrong choice may mean the situation escalates and takes the class off-track.

Sigh.

One of our past lead teachers had this theory that seniors go through a mini-phase where the terrible twos reemerge. He believed that senioritis, and the resulting condition of “jerk-headedness” that sometimes comes with it, are actually part of the student’s process of saying goodbye to both parents and school. That period, where neither side is really enjoying each others’ company on a regular basis, is key to being able to let go when the student moves on after graduation.

Hmmmm….

Sorta makes sense.

And, that theory is part of what gets us through the end of the year. We work at not taking things personally when students act up. “Senioritis,” we tell ourselves when the basketball breaks the backyard light fixture at lunch.

“Senioritis,” we say when a student stares at the blank computer screen and says, “My head will explode!” when we make them work.

“Senioritis,” is the mantra when a student can’t stop talking during 4^th period, dominating class discussion.

Whatever helps us sleep at night, right?

Just in case it isn’t obvious, teachers look forward to graduation as much as students do. It is the cure for “senioritis”. Both students and teachers can relax and go back to the usual merriment and general delight in each other’s company.

We’ll be really glad when “this time of year” ends on June 4^th!

The Cookie Guy

by Mike Krewer

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I have trouble sleeping at night. I’m not sure why. I just can’t sleep get to sleep – it just takes too long for me to finally get rest. Usually, as I lay there in my bed, I’m lost in thought. I have Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, meaning my train of thought is more like a rabbit trail going anywhere and everywhere rather than a straight line like a train. So the act of staying still and shutting down long enough to go to sleep has to be one of the hardest things accomplishable. Because I hve trouble sleeping getting up and ready is a challenging task but i’ve learned that stimulants like caffeine chocolate or sugar kind of counter the ADHD and calm me down so I found a way of putting that into my mornings.

Everyday, on my way to school, I walk to the store next to the bus stop to get some cookies. I’ve been doing it for so long, it’s part of my daily routine. Everyday the guy at the counter of the bakery greets me and says, “Cookies right?” I ask him how his morning was so far, and we have a short conversation as he grabs my usual four chocolate cookies and prints my bill.

I don’t remember his name, we just haven’t gotten to that point in our friendship. So far, hes just the guy that hands me my morning cookies. I only see him for, at most, a few minutes every weekday, but he has become one of the most important parts of my day, and he’s a cool guy as far as I can tell. The stimulants in the cookies not only calm my brain but give my body some energy

Another symptom of ADHD is the ability to sleep 16 or more hours, so the usual five or six hours that I get doesn’t really do it for me. Waking up for me is like getting up from 3 hours of sleep then picking up a big rock off my chest in order to get out of bed. Then, once consciousness sets back in, I immediately have three espressos and a line of cocaine. My body is all like “SLEEP!” but my mind is like:

“Uh no. I just had the espressos and a lin–Hey look! Left over Jack in the Box! I wonder what Jack is doing right now probably playing video games I should play more often but I can’t get past that one level it’s like the developers made it impossible on purpose like they give us promises then they’re all like, “Oops! Backsies!” Just like our government, The Wizard of Oz was about the government way back whenever it was written…”

Whenever I am awake my mind is always racing. Everything reminds me of something else; it makes paying attention to things hard. The cookies are important to me and my day because they slow down my otherwise run on thinking enough that I can have an easier time concentrating at school.

When I go through the two automatic doors, i’m greeted with the smell of flowers, and fluorescent lights. I walk to the far corner where the bakery is, with the thought that someone might try to accuse me of foul intent wearing my backpack into the store. It never happens though. As i’m about to turn the corner around the aisle, I can faintly smell those freshly baked cookies.

Every once in a while The Cookie Guy will tell me, as he hands me my bag of cookies without the bill attached to it, “On the house.” Those few words have the magical ability to brighten my whole day and put that needed skip in my step, because… free cookies!

Whether my morning stimulant comes in the form of free cookies or something else, it helps me. When I get to school I have to struggle with all the work and lessons of things i’m not interested in, so I have times two difficulty concentrating. Still, the Cookie Guy always looks the same in his store apron, with his black hair in the same messy style when he gives me my usual, and I go wait at the bus stop. The familiar routine helps me prepare for the hard work ahead. There at the bus stop my day seems brighter – eating those warm soft cookies.  They have to be the best cookies in town.

Are We Watching a Movie Today?

By Cyndi Faircloth

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Matt and I were talking about using videos in class yesterday. The conversation went something like:

Matt: I need to show a clip in Astronomy tomorrow.

Me: Ugh. That stinks!

Matt: I know…I need to get home so I can start searching for clips.

Me: I need to do that for Thursday, but I don’t have time tonight. Guess I’m watching videos tomorrow.

Matt: Bummer.

Really? Showing video clips in class is not fun?

Actually, it’s a lot more work than people realize. I’m teaching History this quarter and he has two science classes.  All three subjects lend themselves to using video clips in class.

I don’t know about science, but kids love to watch videos in History. Rarely does a day go by that someone doesn’t ask, “Are we watching a movie today?” (Some days I wish Monty Python had done History of America, Part I (rather than History of the World) since I teach US History–but that’s a different blog topic) You’d think that I have a magic dvd player where I plug in the period in History and it magically shows images from the years and concepts we’re discussing.

I don’t know about Matt, but I’ve heard people make fun of History teachers. Something along the lines of: “I’d love to be a History teacher. They just put on a movie and read a book in the back of the room.”

I wish. I don’t know where those people took their History classes, but it wasn’t at PCRHS.

I tend to watch 3-5 hours of video for every hour I show in class. Topic: Chinese Immigration in America? I watched a 90 minute clip of Ken Burns’ The West so I could  show a clip or two. I wanted to introduce the railroads that many Chinese immigrants worked on in the 19^th century, but Ken Burns weaves multiple stories together in each episode of a documentary so I had to figure out which minutes corresponded to the railroads and which covered Plains Indians. (FYI, in Episode 5, it is something like 3:00-7:54 and 11:22-16:00…) Maybe someday I’ll get smart and write down the minutes that I use in class in my lesson plan rather than on a sticky note that disappears after I show the video.

I rarely show any clips longer than 30 minutes…because I’d rather that kids looked at primary sources to analyze. My hope is that videos make them curious about the topic, or give a little background so that they can better understand the documents. No magic dvd player could help the kids understand how historians research and write about history as much as working with primary documents will.

If anyone wants to watch History documentaries and make a time log of what the movie covers and in which minutes, I’m happy to share titles with you and you can give me your time maps when you finish.  That might cut my movie previewing time down.  Then my conversation with Matt would be something like:

Matt: I need to show a clip in Astronomy tomorrow.

Me: Awesome. Do you have your time maps so you can figure out what to show?

Matt: Yep. I only need another 10 minutes to finish this lesson plan and then I can go home to play with my kids.

Me: I finished my Thursday lesson yesterday! I’m going home to walk my dogs.

Matt: Nice. See you tomorrow!

Technology…friend or foe?

Cyndi’s Thoughts:

As an educator, I have been pushed to adapt in many ways over the past 10 years.  The challenge helps to “recharge my batteries” and find new things to be excited about.

When I started teaching, the internet was just an early idea for Tim Berners-Lee and the rest of the net inventors. Now, it’s a daily tool in the classroom. We have You Tube, TEDTalks, email, Blogs, wikis, and classroom websites available as tools. These are exciting but can be pretty overwhelming! Knowing I want to share a link for all of the students is one thing. Deciding which platform to use is another. I’ve experimented with a number of sites, some work smoothly, some less so.

Some of these sites the kids enjoyed and found intuitive, others not so much. Few things are more frustrating to me than having six or seven students in the lab asking for my help at the same time with some technical issue they encounter.  Its kind of amazing how many different ways my name can be called out…especially when they all sound plaintive. “Cyndi…I don’t get it!” “Cyyyynnnnddiiiii! This sucks!” “Cyndi…this isn’t working!” (Maybe I should have just written the address on the whiteboard, instead of having the kids join a new website or creating a classroom wiki…but then they struggle with typing it out or misspelling some key word in the address…)

Many times it made me think of that old bath bubbles commercial where the woman’s hair is standing on end and she starts pulling it, yelling, “Calgon! Take me away!” Clearly, some of the website appearances in class were short-lived.

Students often ask if we can watch a video, expressing disappointment if we are reading or doing something without technology instead. Their eagerness to put themselves in front of a screen (whether their phone, the computer, television, or projector screen) makes me cringe. One of my personal goals is to help them become as active a “watcher-of-screens” as possible.

Sometimes technology is a distraction, and sometimes it can be a tool, adding enjoyment or a special way to share information. Using it effectively is a constant challenge for me.

Right now we’re experimenting with Google in my English class – encountering ups and downs, successes and failures. It has been helpful to have the kids turn their writing in via GoogleDocs. We can look at parts of student work and discuss what is going well, make suggestions, and help those who need more examples of what a successful assignment might look like. It has reduced paper usage in our building, since I’m able to read drafts and give feedback on-line. In fact, at times it is tough to get the kids to actually print something when I have an activity for them to try.  I like to have them colorcode their writing, highlighting different parts of a paragraph to ensure that they have a claim, evidence, and reasoning all together. Funny that they’ve embraced the paperless world, and often don’t want to bother walking to the printer and back to their desk to do that task.

I’m working on a Google Classroom site to try with the 2nd Quarter History class. I often have kids read and do activities with primary source documents from the Library of Congress or National Archives. Hopefully the GoogleClassroom will let me share hyperlinks with them more effectively. Or…it may generate some more Calgon moments. Wish me luck…

All of this is in anticipation of using Chromebooks in our building.  We are hopeful of having a set that we can use with the kids in class – sometime before the semester is over. I’m sure some of our posts will address that development if it does come to pass.  Both staff and students are excited about the possibility.

All of this to say, I have mixed feelings about technology.  I appreciate the tool that it can be but worry that sometimes we’re all too dependent on it and lose some portion of creativity because we can’t see past what the technology can do.

–Cyndi