Parents Should Use Schoolzone.

THIS POST IS WRITTEN FOR A PARENT COUNCIL MEETING WHERE I AM OFFERING HELP AND ADVICE ON THE USES OF SCHOOLZONE.

First of all a caveat. I am not a parent! I have no real experience at being a parent. I do not know what it is like to balance a personal life, my career and children. Having said that here is what I think about parenting.

First of all, it looks damned difficult. I mean I have trouble "parenting" or teaching students in 50 minute intervals. I can hardly imagine the 24/7 demand on being a parent. My wife and I, right now, are pretty happy. We traveled to New York City with nothing to worry about, we enjoy road trips because they are calm and quiet, and we get to out for dinner or drinks as often as we feel and can afford. Which is why I find hearing about a potential loss of happiness that comes with being a parent particularly disconcerting. I mean look at this graph that shows up at 12:00.



The ted talk above and the chart that they include tells us that it is okay to admit that parents are often less than happy than non-parents.

Much worse, if you have a student that is just becoming a teenager you should expect to be extremely unhappy for the next few years. I don't personally put a whole lot of weight in these findings, but the idea that parenting is difficult comes across very clearly. Further, the parenting of teens is particularly nerve racking and difficult.

This is why many parents mistakenly use the early teen years (middle school and jr. high) to become less involved in their children's lives. Teens are also using this time to encourage their parents to become less involved in their lives. This quip from an article on how to Stay Involved in Middle and High School puts it nicely,

It's not unusual for middle- and high-school students to discourage their parents from coming to school, but parent involvement is important to your teenager's academic success. Studies show that parent involvement is linked to achievement in the upper grades, just as it is in elementary school.


That is what we are in fact talking about today. Parents are needed to help students be academically successful. Students in middle school are continually pressured to lose their interest in academics. Middle school, apart from public opinion is the time to make sure students continue their academic success, not the time to assign to it less importance.

Successful students and parents know this........... Enter Schoolzone.

Schoolzone is there to make it easier for parents to be involved in their students academic lives. Here are some Westlawn School usage statistics.

• Schoolzone is currently used by 100% of the staff for reporting on marks, attendance and lates.
• Fresh Marks are posted once a month by all teachers. With other teachers updating more often.
• Schoolzone is used by 100% of Math teachers to post homework, concepts being taught, exam dates and notes.
• At least half of the humanities teachers are using schoolzone to share some kind of class information such as homework or links to the textbook.
• Some science teachers use schoolzone extensively to report on what is happening in class, post links to class content and provide extra meaningful information for parents and students alike.
• The School is posting to schoolzone school news an average of 3 news items per week. These are important events that we want involved parents to be aware of. 

Schoolzone is there to help the parents, and I am here to help you use schoolzone.

Ben Bernake and Other Reason's Why I'm Glad I Teach in Alberta

I guess it had to come out sooner or later, sometimes while doing chores or other putzing around at home I like to listen to Alex Jones at infowars.com. His particular brand of conspiracy theory and political commentary is fun to listen to, and (please don't judge me) often enlightening. Plus the advertisements for emergency ration kits and diamond gusset jeans can't be heard anywhere else.

He had a guest on, don't remember who or when, that said over and over and over (that's kind of his shows m.o.) "please read this Ben Bernake speech from 2002 before the National Economics Club." Deflation: Making sure It Doesn't Happen Here is a particularly scary piece of conspiracyness, if you are an American.

Ben Bernake calls the shots?

Now I'm not saying I even remotely understand what is happening in global financial markets, I barely understand his speech. What I do understand is the way things look from here, the situation for most Americans, does not look entirely great for 2012.

Which is why I am glad I am teaching in Alberta, Canada.

Proud Albertan?

While 2011 saw the rights and social value of teachers in the U.S. drop rapidly, Alberta was paying and valueing it's teachers almost more than we are worth. Look at what happened to the bargainging rights of teachers in Ohio and Wisconsin and around the U.S. last year. I remember reading the vitriol and hatred towards teachers that was coming out of some American blogs and thinking, damn we gots it good here in AB. We even recently elected a Conservative premier that believes in continued long-term stable funding for education. It's like we took a great situation and made it greater.

Funding education and other public institutions is very popular  at Canadian Conservative Economic Groups in Canada?

The bottom line is this, teachers in Alberta have it better than almost any other teachers in the world, and I plan to not waste this opportunity. So here is my commitment to public education for 2012 or my long-winded introduction to my New Year's Resolutions:

1. I need to innovate my approach so that I can find a more effective and widely used asynchronous method of communicating with students and parents outside of the classroom. Any ideas? I loved how moodle's start page was a message page where the first thing that I saw when I logged on was outstanding messages from students, that were usually really good questions from students about homework, important dates, exam questions. I have yet to find the equivalent in google docs or anywhere outside of moodle. I am reluctantly thinking a "Mr. Greene" facebook page, but I don't want access to student's personal garbage. Is there anything in Google apps? Email is cumbersome. I need a live always up messaging board. 
2. I want to say, I will work more productively with my PLC on our ELO's but that sounds like AKBS. So I will say this instead. I will focus on and find direction for where my career is going to go next. I sincerely believe that I personally can offer more to education in Alberta, but I do not know how or where to direct my energy. I will start by consulting with my informal Mentors, particularly those in my admin. team and in edtech. at EPSB. By March I will decide on a path and work towards the next stage in my career.
3. So far I've got communicating, professional advacement, what else??? Oh yeah TEACHING. I am going to be an even more effective teacher this year. Every day my students will learn through reading, viewing, discussing, thinking and creating. Every class will give each student the opportunity to learn through each of the above modalities. My days of "this is a work period" are over. Students don't want to work in a group for 50 minutes. They want to read, view, discuss, think and then work in as an individual and in a group creating meaningful objects that display their learning. Everyday and every class that is what will happen in my classroom.

Guess what else Alberta let's me do in the classroom? I am allowed help students learn the harmful environmental impacts of fracturing for natural gas, I can encourage students to consider the environmental and the economic impact of completing the Keystone XL pipeline, I can provide students with the opportunity to invent a new device that could help decrease our dependence on fossil fuels, and I can inspire them to see the spiritual beauty of our own existence.

So in Alberta, I am not worried that some unelected official is going to devalue the Canadian Dollar to the point where I have to sell my house, all in order to get the 1% even richer. That barely registers in my reality. Instead, I am secure in knowing that our elected officials are going to ensure my job is here, and my collective bargaining rights will remain unassailable. 

For those that question Alberta, and for those that think we are hyper-conservative oil-loving rednecks that got all our values on backwards I say to you, "come and teach here."

Alberta's Ben Bernake?