Quiet time for meditation is transforming a troubled urban middle school in California, reducing truancy and suspensions.
“We’re giving the kids a coping mechanism. The problems that you have keep coming, except your ability to deal with them changes.” — Rose Ludwig, 6th grade teacher.
Twice a day, once at the first bell and again just before the last bell, students sit quietly for 15 minutes, either reading, sitting with their own thoughts, or closing their eyes and meditating. Nearly all students have chosen, with their parents’ permission, to receive meditation training, and about 90 percent of students choose to meditate during quiet time.
via Edutopia
Source: edutopia.org
Dear Stephanie,
Your 3 absences will result in your letter grade dropping. I am a working mother so I understand, but you need to come up with a better plan for when your children get sick. I know you have turned in your assignments and do well on your exams, but I have to enforce the letter grade drop. Also, if you miss one more day I will withdraw you from the class. Do you have a doctors note?
-my psychology professor.
Dear psych proffessor,
Thank god you UNDERSTAND. Since you have 2 toddlers and full time childcare, I knew you would. I do not have a doctors note because I have been so overwhelmed with studying for the midterms that I did not take him. What I do have is emergency room papers. I was so tight on time because of the low tolerance for absences, I waited until he was THAT SICK to finally go. So I will bring you those papers tomorrow. I will also “plan” for my ten year old to stay home alone so I never miss your class again. I have no babysitters or child care, this is the best I can do for you. Or since you are so understanding, I can drag my sick child to school and let him nap on the floor during your class. The pain meds they gave him will knock him out, you won’t even know he’s there.
Thank you so much for all of your understanding. I apologize for my sons inconsiderate respiratory infection and infected lymph nodes.
Xoxo,
Steph
Source: martiniqueeny
Ensuring student success – Students are not to blame
Many students may appear to be unqualified, unprepared and uninterested. But if you believe, as I do, that each one of them has a talent, each of one them has a capacity to develop – intellectually and emotionally – then it follows that each one should be given a fair chance to succeed.
— Arshad Ahmad, president, Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, Canada
- Students are drawn to hot technologies, but they rely on more traditional devices
- Students report technology delivers major academic benefits
- Students report uneven perceptions of institutions’ and instructors’ use of technology
- Facebook generation students juggle personal and academic interactions
- Students prefer, and say they learn more in, classes with online components
— ECAR National Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology, 2011 Report
Pew: College students and technology
Community college students and device ownership:
- 67% have desktop computer;
- 70% laptop;
- 72% ipod/mp3 player;
- 94% cell phone.
So tell me again please why online courses and learning management systems are still designed around a desktop paradigm?
Creative students are teachers' "least favorite"
“Psychologists at Union College surveyed several dozen elementary school teachers in 1995. While every teacher said they wanted creative kids in their classroom, they were mistaken. In fact, when the teachers were asked to rate their students on a variety of personality measures – the list included everything from “individualistic” to “risk-seeking” to “accepting of authority” – the traits mostly closely aligned with creative thinking were also closely associated with their “least favorite” students. As the researchers note, “Judgments for the favorite student were negatively correlated with creativity; judgments for the least favorite student were positively correlated with creativity.”
