Reflective+Journal+for+the+week+of+Nov.+23rd

This is Thanksgiving Week break (week 5) and we only have school on Monday and Tuesday. We also have parent-teacher conferences until 8:00 P.M. on Tuesday evening. On Tuesday, our technology supervisor of our district, Susan Owens, conducted an all day workshop with our new equipment received via the ARRA Grant. We received our new laptop computers and our new I Touch I-Pods. It was a bit overwhelming for me as I am also the school librarian and I was also conducting a Scholastic Book Fair for the past seven days. May I just say that it was difficult to concentrate on learning the new equipment while worrying about moving my Book Fair cases downstairs by the gym doors in order to "catch" all the foot traffic during the parent - teacher conferences for the evening.

During the workshop for the equipment, the ARRA team and I also worked on Week 5 assignments together. We critiqued the Student Needs Assessment Surveys and also revised some other issues with assignments for week four dealing with the planning for the student assessment

But it all came together and hopefully I will be able to become acquainted with my new equipment the week of November 30th. My daughter and grandson arrived for the Thanksgiving holiday on Tuesday evening and were able to stay with us the entire break; they just left for home late Sunday evening. We celebrated the Thanksgiving holiday and they helped us decorate for Christmas! Fun; fun; fun!!

I received a couple of emails from Jenni Brunka concerning our postings of our "critques" of the student surveys. I think I may have accidentally posted my critque in the incorrect area and have reposted it where Jenni requested. Jenni also let us know that she was on vacation at Disney over this week; I'm sure she is having a wonderful time!

The results of our student survey hopefully will help us with designing our plan for the ARRA project for year two. We should remember to align those responses with our plans.

The next professional development scheduled for us is Tuesday after school with our tech supervisor to learn how to use our I-Pods. Another exciting event for this week is that Judy Spicer- my mentor from Columbus for the ARRA Grant - is to arrive at our RULH Middle School on Tuesday, December 1st, during the afternoon. Judy will be meeting all the team teachers and our principal. We are all looking forward to her visit.

During week five, I read an interesting [|article] entitled " 21st Century Skills: Will Our Students Be Prepared?" I think the question should be "will our schools be prepared?" An interesting statement to illustrate this point in the article was a quote by a teacher from a low income school who commented that they were too overwhelmed to prepare students for the 21st Century and the common technique across the board seemed to be "louder; slower, and more repetitive" instead of incoporating collaboration, communication and higher order thinking skills as well as technology into the curriculum. I think many schools are being forced by the "No Child Left Behind" legislation to feel pressed to focus on 20th century skills and learning rather than 21st Century learning.