Reflection on full day school workshop

    The kids were off for Martin Luther King. Jr.’s birthday, but the teachers had an all-day inservice.  I was kind of look forward to it because our speakers were supposed to tell us about how Ruby Paine’s The Cutting Edge 3: Chasing the Dream film Framework for Understanding Children in Poverty  would help our kids.  Nearly half the kids in my class are on Free/Reduced lunch, so I was very interested in how I could help them to achieve better.

The people who showed up were 3 administrators from Hutchinson, KS USD 308

school district.  The proceeded to tell us about the impressive gains their district had made on No Child Left Behind‘s Adequate Yearly Progress.   Over half their students live in poverty, but they pulled their students’ achievement above the ever-rising AYP proficiency bar.  It’s impressive, and I wondered how they did it.  They credited it to 5 things:

1. Ruby Paine’s program  $$$
2. Kagan Cooperative Learning Structures program $$$
   

   The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King film

   The Children of Huang Shi dvd
   FleshEater hd
   download Police Academy movie
   Just Before Dawn full Catch and Release movie
   Peter Pan trailer

   Tarzan Escapes movie download

   A Life Less Ordinary movie
3. Koality Kids / Quality Keys program  $$$
4. Data driven curriculum alignment and assessment analysis
5. Technology integration

The Wrestler divx

Phantom Force They spent some bucks on the first three training programs.

They spent the rest of the day telling us about what the Ruby Paine program, Koality Kids program, and data were, but very little about how we could use it in our classroom.   I was excited to hear that they had successfully implemented Cooperative Learning and Technology integration into their district.  That’s what I wanted to hear.  Nada.

The Ring on dvd

Instead we got cramped points full of lists and words too small to see.  We got a birds-eye, administrator overview. Each presentation, Koality Kids, Ruby Payne, and data, was abstract.  Each presentation had 5 minutes of sunshine that gave me an activity or graphic organizer I could use.  I could have gone without the other 55 minutes from each.  I guess it’s par for the course for full-day inservices.  I guess I shouldn’t have gotten my hopes up.

• The Birds dvdrip

Cyclops trailer

I still would like to know more about Cooperative Learning structures, address the needs of students in poverty, and technology integration.  I guess I will still have to search for it on my own.  Do you have some good ideas for resources?  I’ll include here ones I find useful in my classroom.

All That Heaven Allows download

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

no comments yet.

NCLB: Nation At Risk vs. Sandia Report »« Open Source Textbook