Sussex, New Jersey teen, Ashley Craig, has come up with a great idea for confronting the bullies. She has designed a three step plan, along with the help of school officials, to provide a “report and support” program. The first step is to establish two text lines that are available during the day. One line is for victims and bystanders to report bullying incidents to administrators and one line is for counselors to provide support for the victims. An email address is available for after hours reporting. The second step is a peer support group for students who are bullied and the third step is a safe room for students before school, monitored by a teacher. Maybe a fourth step to this plan would be a rehabilitation group for the bullies.
What a great way to empower students! The bullies would think twice about intimidating others if they knew that anyone could report their behavior. This also looks like a low cost solution to help schools create a no-bully zone for kids.
In the February issue of Education Week, Sarah D. Sparks writes that if schools would address relational bullying, which includes spreading rumors and ostrasizing others, the school’s climate would improve significantly. Unlike the recess bully, who is physically and verbally intimidating, and probably not the most popular kid in the school, relational bullying is often practiced by the “popular” kids to control enemies, rivals and friends.
The Steps to Respect antibullying program, which educates the teachers to identify relational bullying and trains the kids to stand up for the victims, reduced “malicious gossip” 72 percent in Seattle area schools according to researchers led by Karin S. Frey, a research associate professor of educational psychology at the University of Washington.
Remember that teacher you had that was always yelling at the class to be quiet? Did it work? Was that your favorite class? Did you have any respect for that teacher? Michael Linsin has a great article on why you shouldn’t yell at your students. By the way, this is a great site for classroom management ideas. You can sign up for a free weekly newsletter. http://www.smartclassroommanagement.com/2011/01/08/10-reasons-why-you-should-never-yell-at-students/
A recent Princeton study entitled, “Fortune Favors the BOLD ( and the Italicized): Effects of Disfluency on Educational Outcomes”, reports that scrambled fonts can improve the amount of information retained. According to the research, people remember more from worksheets and PowerPoint presentations when they contain various fonts. The idea is that you have to use your brain more because it is more difficult reading varied text fonts in a document.
Why not create your worksheets with varied fonts and see if that will help your students? Looks like a quick, easy way to improve reading comprehension scores.
Researchers have found an easy solution for test anxiety. In the recent edition of the journal Science, researcher Sian L Beilock, associate professor in psychology at the University of Chicago, along with graduate student Gerardo Ramirez, reports that students who spend 10 minutes before an exam writing about their thoughts and feelings can free up brainpower and allow students to perform better on tests. Beilok states, ” We essentially got rid of this relationship between test anxiety and performance.”
According to the January 13, 2011 online article in Education Week, ” The researchers believe worrying competes for computing power in the brain’s “working” or short-term, memory. If working memory is focused on worrying, it can’t help a person recall all the information his brain stored in preparation for the test. It also affects the working memory’s ability to stay focused.”
It was a rainy day to begin with and by the time I was to go teach at the elementary school, shortly after 12 noon, rain was falling in torrents. At the high school my parked car was a short distance away, but by the time I reached it I was drenched, soaked to the bone. I arrived to teach my gifted class in the special services building separate from the main elementary building. We called it the Tin Shed.
The after-school program had a trunk full of play clothes, castaways that had been donated for children to dress up in. Rather than spend the entire afternoon cold, in soaked clothing, I picked out a dry outfit from the play clothes. I knew my students would understand when I explained the situation and they were the only ones who would see me. The mismatched stripes and plaids gave me the appearance of a circus clown, but at least I was dry. The long bright stockings warmed my chilly legs.
Then as we settled into our lesson, the tornado warning sounded. Everyone was to go into the main building and the students were to line up against the concrete wall of the main building on their knees with their hands covering their heads.
As I stood protectively by my students, another teacher looked me over from head to toe and with a twinkle in her eye, she said, “Irene, I think we’d better talk to the school board about getting you a pay raise!”
The National Center for Safe Routes to School has released new data showing a 40% decline in the number of students aged five to fourteen who walk to school. This is hardly surprising, given trends in infrastructure planning and development which favor cars over pedestrians, as well as parents’ heightened concerns regarding child safety.
I’m mainly interested in the “Other” category. Besides cars, buses, walking, and bikes, how else do children get to and from school? I suppose things like scooters and skateboards would qualify, as would catapults and jet packs. I especially like imagining a Futurama-style pneumatic tube system.
I'm not the first to think about this. Image from fearandparenting.wordpress.com. Click to read their post on the subject.
This has already been all over the internet, but it bears another mention here — Teabonics. “Teabonics” is a term coined by Flickr user pargon for a photo set featuring hilarious and sad (sadlarious?) mutilations of spelling and grammar on Teabagger protest materials.
It’s tough to protest effectively when when your hot-button words are misspelled. Click on the image to see the entire set.
