And the “Oscar” goes to…

What a show last night, eh? The Academy Awards are the most watched award show of the year. Celebrating success is an important part of creating culture. America treasures motion pictures so it makes sense that we all love to watch the celebration of movie making success.

What skills are important in your classroom; what are you trying to promote beyond academic success? How about effort, teamwork, compassion, service to others, or critical thinking?

If these are important skills then celebrate them. You might ask, “But an awards ceremony…really?” Well, maybe or maybe it’s a personal note or maybe a phone call home to a parent praising the student’s efforts. The key to celebrating success is that it is heartfelt, meaningful to the recipient, and conveys importance of the award itself.

Take a minute to identify ways to celebrate the success you see in your students. The red carpet is optional.

Leadership Development Tip for the Week of February 23, 2009

The Ladders – give students perspective

Have you seen the commercials for the jobsite, The Ladders? In the commercials, the announcer proclaims that The Ladders is a premium jobsite for premium talent – those who people who are qualified for $100,000+ per year job. If you were like me, you might have wondered, “What exactly does it take to get one of these ‘premium jobs’?” I logged in this weekend to check out the job listings. (I signed up for the free service-I’m not taking myself too seriously, here)

This is what struck me: most of these jobs are within reach to ‘regular’ people who have worked to get the education and experience needed to qualify. None of the jobs were available to recent college graduates and most required evidence of success in previous jobs.

I think many high school students have one of two huge misperceptions. Misperception #1: they’ll never have a shot at a $100,000+ job. Misperception #2: they’ll get a $100,000+ job right out of college. The problem with Misperception #1 is that the belief becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy when many students have the skills and work ethic to earn a great job in the future – with guidance and a plan. The problem with Misperception #2 is that students fail to recognize the value of performance outside the classroom. Employers care little about grades after you’re hired. You’ve got to work hard to create success on the job, too.

Take a minute to log in and check out the site. Find a few job openings related to your subject area and share with your students. Use as an opportunity to have a discussion to talk about long-range career plans and the importance of education and work performance.

Career Development Tip for the week of February 23, 2009

Existing Resources

There are many organizations and individuals willing to share their talents and time to help students and staff. Some are willing to come in when a teacher needs a little help setting up or prepping for an event, others are specific about the students and services they offer. Either way, they can be tremendous resources IF THEY ARE UTILIZED. This means both staff and administrators are aware of the resources available, what they offer and how to use them. A client of ours is working to pull together this exact information to help their staff and students better utilize existing community resources. The process has been fairly straight forward thus far. We collected existing contact information for the resources from both existing lists and teachers who currently coordinate with them, set up an electronic information form, and sent it to the contact person responsible for each resource. Our next step will be a small “summit” meeting where each organization will share a little about themselves and the school administrators and staff can share their needs. We’ll update you on the summit after it happens, but for now thought we would share a template of the information form. Discuss the idea with an administrator or take on the project yourself.

The only requirement for the form is Adobe Reader, a free download that most of us already have on our computer to view PDF’s. Occasionally MAC users use a different product that doesn’t always play well with PDF forms, so it may be useful to add a note about this to your contact e-mail. In any case, here’s the form for you to adapt to your needs. Another idea would be to set up the form using a free on-line survey host such as Survey Monkey or Zoomerang.

Professional Development Tip for February 12, 2009

Decreasing Down Time between Student Presentations: A PowerPoint Trick

You have 20+ plus students in class.
You’ve assigned a small project and want each student to give a small presentation to the class.
Students, or you, spend more time loading their presentation onto the computer than they do presenting.
The class grows restless.
You grow restless.

Sound familiar? Science teacher, Malinda Burk, found a solution. She used the “Reuse Slides” feature in PowerPoint® to combine all the students’ slides, including their custom backgrounds into a single presentation. She loaded it, each student presented using their slides and when they were finished they scrolled to the next slide which happened to be the title slide for the next student to present. No time was wasted and she could review each presentation later without having to open more than one file. Check out the nifty how-to video to see for yourself.

PowerPoint 2007 Directions
- Open a new file or the file you would like to add slides into
- Click on New Slide>Reuse Slides
- (On the right side of your screen) Click Browse>file
- Navigate to a file you would like to use
- Select the slide(s) you would like to include from the file and click to add them to your new master presentation
- Choose Browse>file again to select other files

Classroom Engagement Tip for February 12, 2009

Edutopia

Matt Mineau from Appleton Area School District (East High School) tipped us off to a great resource filled with multi-faceted gems – Edutopia. Edutopia was created by the George Lucas Educational Foundation to provide the educational community with innovation. As they say, “we spread the word about ideal, interactive learning environments and enable others to adapt these successes locally.”

Edutopia exists in three realms – www.edutopia.org, Edutopia magazine and Edutopia video.

You may see several pieces of Edutopia pop up in the future on here; today my favorite resource is the video library (

http://www.edutopia.org/video). “Through an extensive offering of documentaries, Edutopia video is a catalyst for innovation by helping educators and parents, as well as business and community leaders, see and understand pioneering best practices.”

A few best practices to check out when you have 10 minutes: Team Teaching: Two Teachers, Three Subjects, One Project and Tricks of the Trade: Using a “Fishbowl” for Discussions .

Professional Development Tip for February 6, 2009

GNAP

as shared by Jenison Public Schools Family Consumer Science teachers

Jenison school district requires every junior to take a one semester “Decisions” class. Three weeks of the class are dedicated to career development. They shared a simple tip called GNAP (“guh-nap”).

G - greeting
N - name
A – affiliation
P – purpose

GNAP is an acronym to teach students how to properly introduce themselves. It’s practiced with a smile and a handshake. Here are a few samples:

“Hi, I’m Carrie. I am a junior at Lincoln High School and am here to pick up an application.”

“Hi there, my name is Carrie. I’m a member of the Blaze softball team. I’m here to drop off these flyers for Randy Wilson.”

“Hello, my name is Carrie. I work with Relevant Classroom. I’m looking to print a small catalog and am wondering who I would speak with about a price estimate.”

It may seem small, but it is empowering to have a quick strategy to take charge of an introductory type situation, be it on the phone or in person. Jenison High School teachers model GNAP with their students on a regular basis, rehearse with their students and require students to GNAP them as their “ticket to class” the next day. Hopefully, GNAP will be their “ticket to an interview” or a “ticket to a great career” someday as well.

Career Development Tip for February 6, 2009