Alien Pedagogy

If I want to save an idea, I used to click either “clip this” or else “keep new” on my feeder, but now I just post the summary to Twitter or else I email it to a friend (which archives the link in Gmail).

Either way, I find it much easier to retrieve that data if I interact with it as simply as posting it to someone.

Angela Ehmer suggests that non literature can help students to improve their reading.

Could this be used as an argument for elinating Shakespearean literature from the curriculum? Instead of spending so much time scaffolding the language, we could be using that time to actually teach students how to read and analyze.

I’m not denying that Romeo and Juliet is popular with students, but is this a question worth considering?

I took the blog personality test recommended by Dangerously Irrelevant Scott Mcleod. In this blog, I’m channeling ISTP. However, I took the Jungian test two months ago and tested INTJ.

To some extent, I think the discrepancy is caused by my topic of writing in this blog. Because I only write about education, there is quite a bit of my personality that does not make it to the blogosphere. Moreover, the ISTP mechanical problem-solving approach is likely to be adopted by almost any teacher looking to improve his or her practice.

Still, I’ve often felt that the persona I put forward as a teacher is changing me.

This year I’ve been way ahead throughout the year, until the last two weeks.

Falling behind really affects my performance because it’s something that I can directly control. Yet as that pile of work gets larger, it gets harder to start working on it — this causes the pile to grow… This not only causes stress, but also costs me confidence and motivation.

So here are some of my strategies for keeping ahead of the workload:

• Talk to students – Working with students is my primary motivation for teaching, so talking about how they’re learning helps me to take on the pile of marking, prep, etc.
• Things – I find this application superior to just using the iCal. I invest time in planning how I’ll work during the week.
• GTD. Although it’s self-help, a lot of Allen’s executive productivity-principles can be applied to teaching.
• Know when to work – For me, working in the morning and evening are when I can be hyper- productive.
• Exercise – I run, lift weight, and play sports each week. These activities increase my energy.
• Drink a lot of water. Eat healthful food. Monitor your sleep cycle.
• Readers and blogs – Even when I don’t talk to other teachers, reading about their experiences is comforting.
• Just work – Sometimes getting caught up has nothing to do with motivation and efficiency. It’s just working, so get to it.

At I write this, I’m not all the way caught up but I’m close enough to blog about it.

It’s been a while since I’ve blogged about basketball. We won the last game of the season (57-19), though it was our only win of the season. Still, it was the best way we could have won the season.

I found myself very proud to watch my team playing so well by the end of the season. I could see their growth as basketball players and as a team.

Some goals for next year:

• I will try harder to create a sense of team identity / spirit next year. This year I focused on persistence, but I think next year I’ll go for a sense of creating memories by creating good plays. Maybe “What will you remember by the end of this season?” will be my sales pitch.
• I really want to focus on basic skills at the start of the next season.
• I need to learn more about the dynamics of the game before I’ll improve as a coach.
• I also need to learn the more minute rules.

Some reflections:

• Grade 7 & 8s are very different than grade 9s.
• I had so much support from my P/E staff as well as my student manager.
• There’s a great deal of good that comes from competition, but I have also seen sport drive people to act rather horribly.
• I am very a competitive player but when it comes to coaching, I think it’s more important to produce sportsmanship than victory.

It was good to coach, but it will also be good to have that time back for preparation and marking.