Can he post anymore videos?

Enough with the videos already! Mr. Meister we cannot take anymore! Why don't we start producing some of our own? Where is the next great producer going to come from? Can we produce a video that is next to go "viral"?

This video is for our students....What Do You Think?

The students at PHS are a part of Generation WE. I would like to know what they think of the country they are inheriting. Is changing our dependence on fossil fuel their number one priority? Watch the video. Write your comments. Tell us what you think!

Where are we?

We really need to talk about what we see in this video!

What are your comments?

Are You Stuck on the Technology Escalator?

Data from our students

Hours spent each day watching
television, playing video games
or playing computer games

Less than 1 hour 26%
1 hour 13%
2 hours 33%
3 hours 15%
4 hours or more 13%

74% of our students spend an hour or more watching tv, playing video games or playing on the computer. Do they really not have time to do homework?

More musings from HSTW data conference

The key practices of HSTW:

HSTW Key Practices for Improving Student Achievement

High expectations: Motivate more students to meet high expectations by integrating high expectations into classroom practices and giving students frequent feedback.

Program of study: Require each student to complete an upgraded academic core and a concentration.

Academic studies: Teach more students the essential concepts of the college-preparatory curriculum by encouraging them to apply academic content and skills to real-world problems and projects.

Career/technical studies: Provide more students access to intellectually challenging career/technical studies in high-demand fields that emphasize the higher-level mathematics, science, literacy and problem-solving skills needed in the workplace and in further education.

Work-based learning: Enable students and their parents to choose from programs that integrate challenging high school studies and work-based learning and are planned by educators, employers and students.

Teachers working together: Provide teams of teachers from several disciplines the time and support to work together to help students succeed in challenging academic and career/technical studies. Integrate reading, writing and speaking as strategies for learning into all parts of the curriculum and integrate mathematics into science and career/technical classrooms.

Students actively engaged: Engage students in academic and career/technical classrooms in rigorous and challenging proficient-level assignments using research-based instructional strategies and technology.

Guidance: Involve students and their parents in a guidance and advisement system that develops positive relationships and ensures completion of an accelerated program of study with an academic or career/technical concentration. Provide each student with the same mentor throughout high school to assist with setting goals, selecting courses, reviewing the student’s progress and suggesting appropriate interventions as necessary.

Extra help: Provide a structured system of extra help to assist students in completing accelerated programs of study with high-level academic and technical content.

Culture of continuous improvement: Use student assessment and program evaluation data to continuously improve school culture, organization, management, curriculum and instruction to advance student learning.

Musings from HSTW Data conference

Mr. Doughan, Mr. Van Meter and I are attending the High Schools That Work using data to set improvement agenda workshop today and tomorrow. We have learned quite a bit about PHS's students, staff and curriculum so far.

Some quotes:
"It is far better to accelerate students than to remediate them."
"They can't learn it if they are not exposed to it."
"The number one reason students drop out is because they are bored."

From our data:
85% of our students think that post high school education is very import. My thought: We need to prepare all of our students for post high school education!

Only 9% of our students that graduated last year took the HSTW recommended curriculum yet we performed significantly above students at all schools on all parts of the HSTW exam!
My thought: How well could they do if we did a better job of providing the key indicators identified by HSTW as important to achievement? How high would our students score if they were all pushed to take the HSTW core curriculum courses?

WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS?????

Perception = Reality?

Current events are always full of items that are a veritable treasure trove of "teachable" concepts. Being a teacher of history, I always try to be mindful that history as it is written is often a set of human perceptions that are not always based on reality. For example, one could look at the history of World War II from two different perspectives. If one one reads an American account of the war in Europe to defeat the Axis alliance written shortly after the war and then reads a Russian account written at about the same time, they might conclude that they had just read about two different wars. Now, over time, the differences in the two stories of the war slowly become more similar or at least include each other's perceptions on how the war was executed. Why? Because the relations between the two countries have changed? Probably. That and time has a way of finding an "average" of stories that is closer to the truth. O. K. Mr. Meister, what is your point, you might ask? Consider that very often human beings are acting in a way to persuade one another to believe one thing or another for various reasons. Whether that be on a personal basis between a group of friends or on a impersonal basis when a company shows you an ad trying to get you to do something, the same principles apply. The perception that is often supplied is not fully based in reality.....and from time to time we all fall for it. Whether it be a bully that tries to ruin a reputation, or a group that is try to exert power over another, they only show or talk about things from their perspective. The lesson here is that we must check the sources! One source is never enough to prove whether something is true or not. Check multiple sources, even when your friends or colleagues are tying to convince about someone or something. Humans are very emotional and sometimes those emotions get in the way of separating someone else's perception and reality. Today's current events provide a wonderful case student in perception vs. reality. Read closely some of the news or ads about the candidates running for president. Both campaigns are doing the best they can to shape the country's perception of reality. Check your sources. Look for multiple sources and try to include varied points of view and try to draw you own conclusions. The bottom line is: think for yourself, try not to let emotions cloud your vision, and remember there are usually more than one way of looking at a situation.

Dealing With Negativity

One of the life lessons we need to revisit ourselves from time to time, and help colleagues, friends and students with is how to deal with those, who no matter what the situation is, always find a way to find a dark cloud on a sunny day. (for another post on this subject click here) You know this person. He/she lives next door, eats with your lunch group, works with you, and (let's hope its not true) possibly looks at you every day when you look in the mirror. Some things in life are constant, but Benjamin Franklin missed it when he left out miserable people in his famous quote: "In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes." He surely knew about the gentleman or lady that always seems to show up, uninvited, and drowns out everything with rants about how awful this and that is? I would think so. We all have to deal with these people in varying degrees. Since tomorrow is a STAR mentoring day, here are a few pearls of wisdom that you can use with your students OR they may help you because it is not always possible to run away with your hands over your ears.

1. Figure out where it is coming from. Most people who are constantly negative are trying to control people. They may not be aware on a conscience level that there negativism is causing others so much grief, but they do notice they can and do affect people with their behavior. That in itself is a reward and will cause the behavior to continue. The key is for you not to internalize the problem. You are not why this person is so miserable so do not take responsibility for it.
2. Resist the need to help this person. If they are of the constant whining variety, you cannot save them the conventional way. Take stock in how you feel after dealing with this individual. Ask yourself this question: After trying to help this person I feel _________. If your answer is flushed down the proverbial toilet, exhausted, drained or worse....you are part of the problem, not the solution. These people feel the need to control and by making you listen and dragging you down, they are in control! They may not be making the conscious decision to manipulate you, but their actions are doing just that. Find a way to get away, if not physically, then in the proverbial sense. For example, immediately following a rant, jump to another subject as though you could care less about their problem. Another strategy might be to ask them to say something positive about where they are and state "that will make you feel better!" Do something to make them realize that your are the victim, not them!
3. Be positive yourself. Birds of a feather flock together. Why are you hanging out with people who drag you down??????? Do you whine a lot yourself? Are you afraid the group will "rip" on you when you are not around. Sometimes these perpetual negative people are also bullies and people are afraid not to hang around for fear about what might be said in their absence. People have to have the self confidence to walk away and not care about what others are going to say. Be confident enough to be positive and not worry about your peers. After all, they can only drag you down if you let them.

Friday Ramblings

This week in a department meeting, after we had finished the official agenda we began talking about what is important for students to know how to do. Teachers, coming from an academic background, always believe that academic skills are paramount in what we try to get our students to do. We talked about whether it is important for students to know how to write a formal research paper. We asked questions as to whether it was important for students to know how to correctly reference sources, to interpret classical literary works, and solve for unknowns in complex equations. We talked about how hard it is to get high school students to understand the importance of such academic pursuits. When we consider the breadth and depth of the Illinois Learning Standards (click the link to get a look at them), it is hard to grasp how big a task it is to prepare every child, leaving none behind, to be proficient on all of those standards. A comment was made about how even our brightest, who do well on the state exam, are not prepared for the "real world" because high school has not changed appreciably in the past 50 years and the "real world" has. It was at this point that I was able to interject that the outside world...i.e. business and industry want workers that will show up on time, complete a project that is done on time and with attention to detail and quality, work together well with others, think critically, continue to grow in their knowledge about their work, and be willing to do what is asked. I feel that it is important to stress the processes that students have to complete in high school as much as they need to know the hard facts. The biggest change in the past 15 years is that schools are no longer the repository of information. A student in the back of class with an Internet capable phone can answer any factual based question you ask, but can they take that information, combine it with a multi-media presentation and persuade us to believe something that we might not have believed before? We must define what our students need to be able to do, not what they need to know. We must ask for input from people other than ourselves (teachers). We have such an academic slant! Parents, students, business leaders, industry managers and the community at large need to help us define what students need to be able to do when they leave us to be successful. The product of this effort just might make high school more relevant and engaging for our students....What do you think?