Here are some interesting articles we received and discovered this past week…
ENJOY!
HOW TO USE TECHNOLOGY TO PREVENT SCHOOL BULLYING
Quote from Article:
More than ever, we need innovative ways to keep our student’s safe in today’s hyper-connected world. How can edtech help? Companies like NetSupport are creating software solutions designed to help schools stop bullying events before they start, and respond appropriately to bullying that becomes fully realized. Their award-winning IT Asset Management and Internet Safety solution, NetSupport DNA, helps technicians to track, monitor, and manage IT assets across individual schools and entire districts.
NetSupport DNA contains a “Report a Concern” tool that students can use to quickly and anonymously report any issue that they are encountering to an adult that they trust. With its most recent update, teachers can also use the same tool to report an issue in situations where they are verbally told of a student’s concern. In addition to reporting the issue, students also have access to the contact information for several national support organizations. These organizations can help support students in ways that underfunded school districts cannot. Empowering students to confront bullying can give them the confidence they need to attend school without fear.
District Deeds Synopsis:
Give all of the current tragedies on High School campuses across the United States, this article caught our interest. The technology strategies being suggested include a large amount of both District and School site support to put into place and must be backed by a strong Information Technology staff to make sure the implementation is fully functional.
Unfortunately, the current Supt. Cindy Marten regime puts very little value on technical support as we recently described in our article exposing the deterioration of i21 Classrooms due to Info Tech Dept. layoffs across the San Diego Unified School District (SDUSD).
For now, with the incompetent Marten in charge, there is NO will and NO way to implement this innovative safety measure and Students will just continue to be at risk.
‘Starbucks Classrooms,’ Plus Six Other New Approaches in Education
Quote from Article:
Parents often view school policy the same way they consider the greasy secrets of their garage mechanic or the tax-form calculations of their accountants. All but the most diligent are a bit puzzled at times by the techniques and terminology.
Because today’s parents, teachers and students are busier and more distracted, the family-school connection is more tenuous and parental awareness about education is slipping, says Carol Tomlinson, an education professor at the University of Virginia and author of dozens of books and articles on instruction.
“A lot of parents just don’t know what is happening in school — and they feel out of touch,” she says. “There are probably many reasons for it, but regardless, it is unfortunate for both sides.”
Here is a primer about some of the most visible initiatives and trends in K-12 education.
District Deeds Synopsis:
The various tactics described in this article struck a chord with us. We found Flexible “Starbucks” Seating, Project Based Learning and “Flipping” lecture and homework time the most interesting.
Well worth reading!
Reimagining Middle School
Quote from Article:
Compliance. Restraint. Passivity. These are the behaviors and habits of mind that our education system — from discipline policies and curricula to teacher training and school buildings — is designed to impose on teenagers. Our approach to educating teens in America is governed by the damaging and mistaken notion that young people are predisposed to disruption, apathy, and noncompliance. They are taken to create, by nature, conditions that make teaching and learning difficult. Bluntly put, we view young people as presenting threats that need to be controlled rather than assets to be cultivated.
This containment strategy of education is fundamentally out of line with what we know about adolescents’ capacity and motivation. Containment privileges discipline and obedience over intellectual and social exploration. It favors regimented learning rather than creativity, mastery, and autonomy. It results in over-disciplining and under-supporting students. Above all, it quashes the very strengths — which should be the foundation on which educational strategies are built — that young people bring to the classroom and thereby forecloses on opportunities that can enrich education.
More than anywhere else, this is evident in our middle schools, the Bermuda Triangle of our K–12 system, where talent and interest go to die, where outdated understandings of adolescence construe teenage autonomy, independent points of view, and the heightened influence of peers as impediments to learning rather than the assets that they are. It’s no surprise, then, that middle schools are places where both teachers and students disengage. Zero-tolerance policies, multiple-choice tests, and stand-and-deliver teaching methods make it clear that these are environments to be survived rather than places to thrive.
District Deeds Synopsis:
Having had our own children experience the challenge of Middle School we recognized many of the school site symptoms described in this article. The rapid emotional, intellectual and physical development of Middle School Students present unique challenges to Teachers and school site staff.
This article mentions the “containment strategy of education” used to subdue and control Students that are at the peak of their mental and physical development and then mentions how San Diego charter school, High Tech High, addresses the challenge.
Very good article to help us “reimagine” how Middle School could be with the right leadership.
Now for our Quote of the Week:
“Our Whole childhood remains to be reimagined. In reimagining it we have the possibility of recovering it in the very life of our reveries as a solitary child.” – Gaston Bachelard
Have a great week!!!
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IF
- Your family has been injured by the San Diego Unified School District, go to the District Deeds Complaint Forms page to find instructions to fight for your Civil Rights!
- YOU ARE TIRED OF THE COVER UPS AND LIES BY SUPT. CINDY MARTEN…
Please Click the Link Below and sign the Petition Today and READ the COMMENTS to Support the REMOVAL of Marten by SDUSD Stakeholders!
District Deeds 