Building a Reading Habit (Thing # 7)

I had fun with this assignment! It was fairly easy as I already have a modified Google reader as my homepage.  I’ll have to admit that I do have People and NYT crossword puzzle on my reader. Not so professional!

My new Google reader is A+ professional.  I think it’ll take some time to tweak it depending on which sites/blogs I end up truly using.

I did find myself vascillating between feeling optimistic & motivated to implement some new ideas and completely disheartened that we (in a typical public school) have been left behind.

On the positive side I found some great blogs from U.S. History teachers. Those blogs led me down many different paths. I ended up forgetting what I was originally searching! For example, while searching for History I found a video for my government class on the electoral college. I did finally come back around to a great post referring to the Jeffersonian Era in American History which we’re starting in class next week. Overall, surfing these blogs reinforced for me how much great, accessible information is out there for us to use. I’ve got some great ideas forming for my own class blog.

Unfortunately, I did read some entries which made us feel we are slipping behind. It feels the gap is widening between generations at such a furious pace that teachers have been left behind. For example, I read this post about innovation on student 2.0. How is a huge bureaucracy such as the public school system to stay afloat in this environment? We’re busy here worrying about the students passing basic Algebra, motivating them to pass the GHGST and breaking up fights.

I’m lucky as I teach in a magnet program (IB) so I truly can teach (though yesterday we did a webquest and I only had 9 functioning computers for a class of 30).

What’s the logical conclusion here for public education? Will we survive the “revolution”? How can I be a part of the movement? I’ve been giving this so much consideration and sadly I’m not sure the answer lies within public education.