From Bullying to Broadcasting
I’ve written a number of posts about various aspects of bullying. Many children, teenagers, and even adults are bullied in their daily life, and few find something positive out of such a negative experience. One of my former students, Ian Elliott, is one of those people. Bullied as a child, he came to the school where I teach as a freshman and flourished. He’s now a student at Montclair University here in New Jersey. Over the holiday, he created a video that documented his experience for Carpe Diem, a show produced by the Department of Broadcasting at Montclair. I wish I could say I taught him any of the skills he uses in this piece – he did learn a lot at our school – but I can say that I was his “daytime mom” for...
Business as Usual
What with the hectic holiday season and the time dedicated to the last podcast episode, I haven’t kept up with #reverb11. However, when I received today’s prompt in my email, I realized that ever there was a prompt I should respond to, it’s this one: Teaching Moment - Sometimes we find teachers in the most unexpected places. Who surprised you as a teacher this year, and what did you learn? I came to teaching from industry in January 2003 and started in my present position on my birthday that year. When I tendered my resignation, so many people told me I was making a mistake. I’d made it to middle management before the age of 40 after a 5 year hiatus as a full time mother, held a high stress yet highly rewarding job at a logistics...
Bullies Revisited.
Recently, the State of New Jersey initiated a new Anti-Bullying policy primarily in response to a suicide at Rutgers approximately one year ago. Bullying tactics have changed drastically since the schoolyard bullies of my childhood, and the approach taken by educators must adapt to include new venues and tactics used by one child to intimidate another. The failure of previous initiatives is obvious; we wouldn’t need a new one if prior methods of dealing with bullying succeeded. New Jersey’s program ends when an individual leaves the public education system. Once in the workplace there are no initiatives, yet bullies still exist (another point for the failure of previous approaches). In my experience, they’re women but I’m certain...
Classroom Confidential
I just finished listening to Anthony Bourdain’s Medium Raw and about midway through the audiobook, when the author revisited the why and how of writing Kitchen Confidential, I realized that I was the Tony Bourdain of education. Of course, I immediately posted this observation on Facebook to “likes” all around. Bourdain loves food and travel, possesses a somewhat angry, often snarky personality: the guy in the room in a ripped t-shirt and jeans when everyone else is in well ironed shirts and pressed pants and peppers his conversation with frequent curse words. If you know me, you get the comparison. Combine this literary experience with the receipt of an email from a colleague that contained the following: I attended a conference last summer...
Life.
Almost 3 years ago, when I started using Twitter, most people were baffled by my enthusiasm. Granted, I experimented with just about every social media platform springing up like weeds at the time (a student of mine even wrote a poem about it), but Twitter definitely became my social media BFF. Now, just about everyone I know is on Twitter – and, yes, I’ve commented that it’s like Elaine’s overrun with kids from Jersey – so I’m truly surprised when I read tweets, posts, and comments that separate virtual from real life and note that if you’re on the former, you must not have much of the latter. Of course, using social media to make this point is definitely ironic to a Marshall McLuhan fan like myself. Putting that aside, I return once again to...
What’s in your lunchbox?
I attended two conferences in the past few days: the Emerging Learning Design (ELD) conference at Montclair University and The RealTime Report (#RLTM) in New York. The audience at ELD was primarily educators at the college and high school level. The latter event was all about business, and I’ll be blogging about both this week. First up, ELD. Bringing little experience in social media with them, attendees at ELD asked the types of questions business people asked in 2008. Many needed to learn the basics of Twitter and Facebook: whats a DM, how do I set up a Facebook page with students and still respect privacy, etc. The concerns unique to education were rarely voiced. When issues like the amount of time teenagers spend on Facebook were raised,...
Podcast Feeds
Supporters
