All posts by ckosnik

What’s on a good research project site?

academics, digital technology, , , , , ,

I (Clare) thought this post about a research blog would be relevant for our research blog. Terrific suggestions lots of which I will follow.

Tseen Khoo's avatarThe Research Whisperer

Old Story (Photo by Place Light | www.flickr.com/photos/place_light) Old Story (Photo by Place Light | http://www.flickr.com/photos/place_light)

It seems to be the done thing these days to have a webpage about your research project.

In fact, I think it’s fair to say that it’s considered an increasingly essential part of research engagement and dissemination, and – really – it is so easy to set something up these days.

Right?

Well…yes and no. (Stay with me, I’m a humanities scholar and that’s how we answer everything)

I had a great chat recently with a researcher who was wanting to set up an online presence for his project. Part of the task of this presence was to recruit subjects for his PhD study.

It was a valuable conversation for him (or so he tells me…!) and also for me, because it clarified our perceptions of what was necessary, good, and ideal.

What I’m talking about in this post isn’t focused on what specific funding bodies…

View original post 889 more words

Guest Blog: Monica McGlynn Stewart — Tools or Toys?

classroom teachers, digital technology, , , , , ,

I (Monica) and my colleague Tiffany MacKay are just starting a new research project exploring oral and visual literacy learning with iPads for 3-5 year olds. Our research will be situated in both childcare centres and public school kindergartens in Ontario. Here is a bit more about our project:

IPadYoung children, aged 3-5 years, are exposed to many forms of digital technology (DT) both inside and outside of their formal learning settings, yet there is little research to guide pedagogical practices for early years literacy teaching. Many registered early childhood educators (RECEs) working in childcare centres are reluctant to introduce DT into their programs, while many RECEs and teachers in Full-Day Kindergarten are using DT in a variety of ways.

Purpose

This research study will introduce educators and students in childcare centres and public kindergarten classrooms to one of two i-Pad applications, 30 Hands or Explain Everything. Both of these applications allow children to easily photograph their work with an i-Pad (e.g., painting, block structure, sand table creation, etc.) and then record their voice explaining what they have created, how they created it, and what they plan to do next, etc. This digital visual and audio file can then be shared with classmates, teachers, or parents via email. Teachers can archive this documentation for assessment and planning purposes.

Objectives

Our objectives include: a) to understand educators’ comfort level and experience using DT for literacy learning with young children; b) to understand children’s use of DT as a means of communicating their work and ideas; c) to explore the value of DT for supporting young children’s literacy development.

Hypothesis

Our hypothesis is that educators will become more comfortable having their students use DT applications that allow for active, creative, and open-ended literacy learning. Furthermore, children will be more motivated to articulate and share their thinking with the i-Pad applications and will become more competent with both their digital technology and oral language skills.

Methods

We will be interviewing the educators before and after the implementation of the software to determine their comfort level and experience with using DT for literacy learning and teaching, their current practices, and in the post-implementation interview, any changes that they observed in their students’ interest and ability with respect to literacy learning. In addition, we will be observing the students in their classes as they use the applications to record and share their work.

Teachers Matter: The Letter Defending Educators @Time Wouldn’t Print #TIMEapologize #TIMEfail

schooling, , , , ,

Although this article is long I (Clare) found it incredibly interesting yet sad. When is the public going to “wake up” and realize the value teachers?

Dr. Julian Vasquez Heilig's avatarCloaking Inequity

To: Nancy Gibbs, Time Editor

From: Thomas L. Good,

Professor Emeritus

College of Education

University of Arizona

1936 E Fifth Street

Tucson, AZ  85719

520-884-4298

TEACHERS MATTER

The November 3 issue of Time magazine includes a sensational cover, an editorial statement and a feature story that systematically question the value of American teachers who often work in less favorable conditions than their international peers. The fifty million readers/viewers of Time will see the cover and millions of others will also view it at various airport newsstands. However, considerably fewer will read the editor’s comments and yet substantially fewer will read the article. So the take- away message for the vast majority of citizens from this issue of Time magazine is that poor teachers are rampant in America and that they are harmful to our children, economy, and future.

Consider the front page cover that brazenly and in bold print decries…

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Reading for Relevance AND Fluency

classroom teachers, literacy, , , , , , ,

In the past, I (Clive) have posted about the need to teach for relevance. When recently re-visiting two of Richard Allington’s wonderful books on reading instruction – What Really Matters for Struggling Readers (2006) and What Really Matters in Fluency (2009) – I was impressed with his discussion of the link between relevance and fluency in reading. In his view, there are at least 4 instructional causes of reading difficulties:

  • Texts are too difficult
  • Texts are not interesting enough
  • Insufficient time is given for actual reading (as distinct from studying reading strategies)
  • Reading is interrupted for instructional reasons

Because of these factors, students don’t do enough reading to become fluent. Teaching reading strategies is important, but a balance is needed. Allington says:

[To increase their] store of at-a-glance words, readers need to consistently and repeatedly read a word correctly. [This requires] a lot of accurate reading…struggling readers [should] read at least as much as the achieving readers at their grade level. (2009, p. 38).

He cites what he sees as “one of the greatest failures of the [U.S.] federally funded Title I remedial reading and special education programs: Neither program reliably increased the volume of reading that children engaged in” (2006, p. 43). In fact, the amount of reading was often reduced.

But struggling students won’t read very much – either at school or at home – if texts are uninteresting to them. This is where relevance comes in. According to Allington, if we want students to read a lot they must see the point of reading. But if we force them to read books they aren’t interested in and bombard them with reading strategies, along with “comprehension” tasks that just require them to recall and retell, they may never realize that reading has a point. He comments:

I fear that we will continue to develop students who don’t even know that thoughtful literacy is the reason for reading. (2006, p. 116)

So relevance is valuable in two ways: it helps students learn about “life” and the real world, and it helps them learn how to read.

 

10 Jobs That Didn’t Exist 10 Years Ago

digital technology, , ,

In this blog we have had many posts about digital technology. I (Clare) found this article by Meghan Casserly so interesting. Times are a-changing so schools must be a-changing. Who knows what jobs will exist in 10 years from now. Here is the link to the article.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/meghancasserly/2012/05/11/10-jobs-that-didnt-exist-10-years-ago/

Employment trend watchers have been pinpointing the sectors where jobs are anticipated to increase forever—every five years the BLS projects its own outlook and sites like our list what’s become old news: that careers in a handful of sectors (most linked to technology, a growing concern about the environment and an aging population) are on the rise while others continue to falter. But are they new occupations or simply new ways of meeting existing needs?

“I don’t believe that new needs have been created,” says Charles Purdy, senior editor for Monster.com. “We’ve just created new ways and adopted new technologies to get them done.”

Still, each year as twenty-somethings leave college campuses in droves, industries on the rise offer something uniquely appealing: the opportunity to seize brand new positions where competition hasn’t reached critical mass. With that in mind, we scoured jobs data and career sites for the most promising positions in on-the-rise sectors that were only created in the past decade. They’re so new that they didn’t even exist a decade ago, which more than puts your parents out of the running.

App developers can expect an average salary of $93,000 (indeed)

App Developer

The iPhone was introduced in 2007, the Android shortly after. Since then, more than a IPhonemillion apps have been put up for sale in Apples App Store and Android’s Google Play. Consider this: in 2011, Apple AAPL +0.24% pulled in more than $15 billion in revenues from mobile applications, which shrink  programs that used to run only on desktop computers to make them work on mobile devices.

As demand surges for apps to run on iOS, Android and whatever operating system is waiting in the wings, companies are faced with a dearth of talent with the skills to develop for mobile. This means fresh opportunity for programmers and developers to break into a booming market. Currently more than 16,000 listings for mobile app developers are listed on job site indeed.com.

Market Research Data Miner

As customer information becomes more and more vital to the retail experience, businesses are compiling data in droves—and hiring experts to make sense of it. From different datasets including structured (transaction), semi-structured (user behavior) and unstructured (text) information, data analysts and scientists look for behavioral patterns to help retailers and businesses predict future trends or to build recommendation engines or personalized advertising.

“Library science is a really hot degree right now,” says Purdy, “And data-mining could be one of the reasons. It’s a helpful knowledge set for someone hoping to manage large amounts of data” Hopeful data-minded candidates can include library science majors, researchers, engineers or applied scientists.

Educational or Admissions Consultants

When a certain set of affluent parents watch their toddler stack his or her first set of blocks, they’re not lost in a moment of cute, they’re strategizing their child’s likeliness of getting into the right pre-school. These moms and dads will stop at nothing to secure the best education for their kids—which for many includes hiring an educational or admissions consultant to help ease the process of interviewing and testing into schools from preschool to college. Admissions consultants can be paid thousands of dollars for their skills—which often include personal connections with school administrators.

Millennial Generational Expert

Generational consultants help companies better understand the changing workforce—and who better to explain the Millennials than a living, breathing member of Generation Y? Companies in every sector and of every size face the challenge of recruiting and developing young professionals to prepare them to be future executives.  Companies can build loyalty in their workforce by engaging in practices that connect directly with their younger employees. All-hands happy hour, anyone?

But this isn’t a role that’s strictly for the young ones. Many generational experts are older employees, who’ve turned their experience with young people into an ability to advise companies on how best to engage, motivate and, yes, placate this often fickle workforce.

Social media manager average salary: $65,000 (indeed)

Facebook logoSocial Media Manager

Making the most of online communities– what we generally call “social” networks–has become an integral part of businesses from small-town coffee shops to behemoths like Amazon and Microsoft MSFT +0.61%, which both employ social media managers in their marketing and advertising departments. “There has been a great big shift in how companies communicate with their customers ,” Purdy says. On job site indeed, for example, there are currently over 11,000 listings for the title. But the term “social media managers” really covers all manner of tasks–from the social-savvy recent grad who mans the Twitter feed to the new wave of marketing strategists who help companies to leverage their social audiences through targeted marketing.

But don’t be fooled that your 10,000 Twitter friends are going to land you a job. “Young people may be more technologically savvy than their older colleagues,” says Purdy, “But technology in the workplace is evolving so quickly that a person can’t think that just because they’re great at Twitter will make them a desirable commodity long-term.”

Chief Listening Officer

One step up from a “social media manager,” (more on that later) the Chief Listening Officer keeps her ears (and eyes) on social channels and real life conversations to keep the company up to speed on what their customers are saying. “Before social media, business was a one way channel of communication. The company talked, we listened,” Purdy says. “Now we’ve become accustomed to two-way conversations. We expect them to listen, and so we see these kinds of roles.”

Beth LaPierre became the first ever Chief Listening Officer in 2010, and while she’s since moved on to other gigs, she spent her time monitoring the more than 300,000 mentions of Kodak on Facebook, Twitter, message forums, YouTube, blogs, and elsewhere on the Web each day, using software from Radian6 and PeopleBrowsr. Then she moved that information to the relevant department. As more and more companies rely on social streams and online exchanges for customer service reasons, the role of the listener will only increase.

Cloud Computing Services

In August 2006 Google GOOG -1.5%’s Eric Schmidt described the company’s approach to software as a service as “cloud computing” at a search engine conference, possibly the first high profile usage of the term. Because it was used in the context of describing Google properties (Gmail, etc. etc.), it became synonymous with online storage and sharing of data. These days, the term has adopted by everyone from Microsoft to start-ups that help moms access coupons in the check-out line. Companies are looking for database managers, engineers and strategists for storing and indexing massive amounts of data—we’re talking petrabytes (one quadrillion bytes) of information.

Elder care salaries average $51,000 (indeed)

Elder Care

As the population ages and baby boomers become grandparents, an increasing amount of attention is being turned to the care of the elderly. Between legal concerns, staffing at residential facilities or consultants hired to facilitate end-of-life issues, jobs in this area are expected to increase. People who have an understanding of the increasingly complex healthcare system in addition to an interest in comfort care are well suited for these roles.  Communication skills are also paramount—as elder care service providers are often tasked with communicating end-of-life issues to their client and his or her family members.

SustainabilitySustainability Expert

“There are obviously some very concrete reasons that companies00even those who aren’t in the green or alternative energy space—would be interested in sustainable practices,” says Purdy. Oftentimes hiring someone into an environmentally-conscious role could be a cost-savings issue, he says, both in terms of lowering power bills or to take advantage of increasing tax rebates for companies committing to sustainability.

A degree in environmental science or business management major would prove useful in these new “green” roles as they often require developing new workflows to increase productivity while lowering the carbon footprint of a business, but specific environmental leadership majors are on the rise.  Projects can include: recycling and waste reduction, supplier sustainability evaluation. Purdy thinks Millennials are a shoe-in: “Look at the next gen of managers and leaders,” he says. “These young people grew up in a culture that valued recycling, valued being green. They’re far more driven by those concerns because they’ve been hearing about it since they were babies. I think we’ll continue to see growth in this area for young employees.”

Sustainability consultants have an average annual salary of $83,000 (indeed.com)

User Experience Design

What is user experience design? Quite simply, experiences created and shaped through technology and how to make them happen. Case in point: the experience of waking up to an alarm clock is very different from the experience created by the rising sun and chirping birds. A user experience designer’s concern is how to mimic the birds-sun experience through technology (see the variety of alarm clocks on the market that grow louder and brighter to wake you gently). Would-be designers should be fluent in Photoshop, understand programming languages like CSS and HTML and feel comfortable taking an idea from sketch to prototype. As far as demand goes, things are looking bright: a recent indeed.com search returned 168,219 job listings.

Thinking Outside the Box to Save Our Schools

education, , , , , , ,

I (Clare) read this really interesting article, Transforming Schools into Community Hubs: Where’s the Spark of Social Innovation?,  on thinking outside the box to save our schools. http://educhatter.wordpress.com/
I was so impressed with the analysis of this initiative to create centres for the community – yes there may be policy to support this creative venture but school administrators have to embrace the opportunity. That is they need to think outside the box. Good for Nova Scotia Canada for attempting to support communities and to raise desperately needed funds.

Transforming Schools into Community Hubs: Where’s the Spark of Social Innovation?,

Sitting in the dimly lit, bunker-like Conference Room on a sunny Saturday afternoon in Canada’s last surviving Wandlyn Inn was a little depressing. Listening to a veteran Nova Scotia School Superintendent explain — with clinical precision– the new Hub School Model regulations released in July 2014 was almost too much to bear. The session title gave it all away: “The Operation, Opportunities and Challenges of the Community Hub Model.”  A funny thing has happened to an exciting idea on its way to implementation.

NSSSILogoSmall school activist Kate Oland, a veteran of several Cape Breton school closure battles, was rendered virtually numb. After fighting to save her Middle River School, co-founding the Nova Scotia Small School Initiative, celebrating the April 3, 2013 school closure moratorium, and welcoming the Hub School guidelines, it had all come down to this: the Superintendent in charge of advancing the project still didn’t seem to “get it”: open the school doors to the community and let social innovation in.

Community hub projects come alive with proactive leadership and the scent of social innovation.The founder of Toronto’s Centre of Social Innovation, Tonya Surman, speaking in Sydney, Cape Breton in April 2014, was right on the mark. “You’ve got to be able to dream about what’s possible, ” and she added “social change takes time.”

NewDawnErikaSheaA “New Dawn’ arrived for Holy Angels Academy in Sydney, Cape Breton, but three years after its closure as a public school. Today it’s a thriving Centre for Social Innovation hosting a lively mix of 20 commercial and non-profit enterprises.

That transformation, spearheaded by Rankin MacSween’s New Dawn Enterprises Limited, should be on the curriculum for the training of School Superintendents. It’s time to embrace economic renewal and social enterprise, particularly in a struggling economic province like Nova Scotia.  Founded in 1976 initially as a community development fund to combat plant and mine closures, New Dawn is now a beacon of light for faltering communities on the verge of losing their schools.

With the adoption of the School Hub regulations, the Nova Scotia Education Department is coaxing school boards into being more proactive in transforming emptying schools into shared use facilities and potentially revenue generating operations.

The Hub School guidelines, in the hands of reluctant administrators, may threaten to extinguish community spirit and enterprise. Developed by a faceless team of school administrators, it treats Hub School proposals as “business case briefs” and guides proponents through a virtual “obstacle course” of new approval rules. Serving existing students should come first, but why is the “protection of property” so prominent in the regulations?

Three Nova Scotia community-school groups in River John, Maitland, and Wentworth are fighting to save their schools and fully committed to supporting the “Hubification” process. Economic and social innovation thrives when it is welcomed, as in the case of the New Dawn success in Sydney. It perishes on sterile ground marked off like the hurdles on a high school track field.

Economic renewal and social innovation are possible under the right conditions. What’s the secret to unlocking Social Innovation and revitalizing our schools? What has happened to the Nova Scotia Community Hub School Model on its way to implementation? Is it still possible for small school advocates to clear the latest hurdles and transform schools into true community hubs?

Posted in Community Hub Schools, Education Bureaucracy, Educational Change, Parent Power, Rural Education, School Closures, School-Based Management, Small Schools Initiatives | 2 Comments »

What Your Students Really Need to Know About Digital Citizenship

digital technology, , , , ,

I (Clare) read with interest this article about digital citizenship which seems to be a new frontier in using technology. Thought others might find it interesting – for their own safety and in their work with students. The article was published in Edutopia http://www.edutopia.org/blog/digital-citizenship-need-to-know-vicki-davis?utm_source=SilverpopMailing&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=102914%20enews%20didgectznship%20ngm%20remainder&utm_content=&utm_term=feature1hed&spMailingID=9792002&spUserID=MTM5ODM0MTEwNjMwS0&spJobID=402556106&spReportId=NDAyNTU2MTA2S0

The greatest software invented for human safety is the human brain. It’s time that we start using those brains. We must mix head knowledge with action. In my classroom, I use two essential approaches in the digital citizenship curriculum that I teach: proactive knowledge and experiential knowledge.
Proactive Knowledge
I want my students to know the “9 Key Ps” of digital citizenship. I teach them about these aspects and how to use them. While I go into these Ps in detail in my book Reinventing Writing, here are the basics:
1. Passwords
Do students know how to create a secure password? Do they know that email and online banking should have a higher level of security and never use the same passwords as other sites? Do they have a system like LastPass for remembering passwords, or a secure app where they store this information? (See 10 Important Password Tips Everyone Should Know.)
2. Privacy
Do students know how to protect their private information like address, email, and phone number? Private information can be used to identify you. (I recommend the Common Sense Media Curriculum on this.)
3. Personal Information
While this information (like the number of brothers and sisters you have or your favorite food) can’t be used to identify you, you need to choose who you will share it with.
4. Photographs
Are students aware that some private things may show up in photographs (license plates or street signs), and that they may not want to post those pictures? Do they know how to turn off a geotagging feature? Do they know that some facial recognition software can find them by inserting their latitude and longitude in the picture — even if they aren’t tagged? (See the Location-Based Safety Guide)
5. Property
Do students understand copyright, Creative Commons, and how to generate a license for their own work? Do they respect property rights of those who create intellectual property? Some students will search Google Images and copy anything they see, assuming they have the rights. Sometimes they’ll even cite “Google Images” as the source. We have to teach them that Google Images compiles content from a variety of sources. Students have to go to the source, see if they have permission to use the graphic, and then cite that source.
6. Permission
Do students know how to get permission for work they use, and do they know how to cite it?
7. Protection
Do students understand what viruses, malware, phishing, ransomware, and identity theft are, and how these things work? (See Experiential Knowledge below for tips on this one.)
8. Professionalism
Do students understand the professionalism of academics versus decisions about how they will interact in their social lives? Do they know about netiquette and online grammar? Are they globally competent? Can they understand cultural taboos and recognize cultural disconnects when they happen, and do they have skills for working out problems?
9. Personal Brand
Have students decided about their voice and how they want to be perceived online? Do they realize they have a “digital tattoo” that is almost impossible to erase? Are they intentional about what they share?
Experiential Knowledge
During the year, I’ll touch on each of these 9 Key Ps with lessons and class discussions, but just talking is not enough. Students need experience to become effective digital citizens. Here’s how I give them that:
Truth or Fiction
To protect us from disease, we are inoculated with dead viruses and germs. To protect students from viruses and scams, I do the same thing. Using current scams and cons from Snopes, Truth or Fiction, the Threat Encyclopedia, or the Federal Trade Commission website, I’m always looking for things that sound crazy but are true, or sound true but are false or a scam. I’ll give them to students as they enter class and ask them to be detectives. This opens up conversations of all kinds of scams and tips.
Turn Students into Teachers
Students will create tutorials or presentations exposing common scams and how to protect yourself. By dissecting cons and scams, students become more vigilant themselves. I encourage them to share how a person could detect that something was a scam or con.
Collaborative Learning Communities
For the most powerful learning experiences, students should participate in collaborative learning (like the experiences shared in Flattening Classrooms, Engaging Minds). My students will collaborate with others on projects like Gamifi-ed or the AIC Conflict Simulation (both mentioned in a recent post on game-based learning).
Students need experience sharing and connecting online with others in a variety of environments. We have a classroom Ning where students blog together, and public blogs and a wiki for sharing our work with the world. You can talk about other countries, but when students connect, that is when they learn. You can talk about how students need to type in proper case and not use IM speak, but when their collaborative partner from Germany says they are struggling to understand what’s being typed in your classroom, then your students understand.
Digital Citizenship or Just Citizens?
There are those like expert Anne Collier who think we should drop the word “digital” because we’re really just teaching citizenship. These are the skills and knowledge that students need to navigate the world today.
We must teach these skills and guide students to experience situations where they apply knowledge. Citizenship is what we do to fulfill our role as a citizen. That role starts as soon as we click on the internet.
Vicki Davis @coolcatteacher’s Profile

The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace: A Brilliant Young Man Who Left Newark for the Ivy League

academics, education, schooling, , , , ,

I (Clare) read a view in the New York Time of The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace: A Jeff HobbsBrilliant Young Man Who Left Newark for the Ivy League. I was fascinated by the review because it described how Robert “escaped” his impoverished neighbourhood through a scholarship to Yale. (He was brilliant). He graduated from Yale but did not “make it.” This book is essential reading for ALL teachers and teacher educators because it shows how complex and challenging it is to overcome your childhood and cultural norms. Yes there were people who helped Robert but …
The book is written by Jeff Hobbs )pictured on the right) http://authors.simonandschuster.ca/Jeff-Hobbs/36063537 who was Robert’s college room mate. It is beautifully written but incredibly painful. Over and over I kept hoping that Robert would make better choices, use his gifts …. And Jeff Hobbs helped me appreciate how difficult life can be. Here is a video link of Jeff talking about the book.

 http://books.simonandschuster.com/The-Short-and-Tragic-Life-of-Robert-Peace/Jeff-Hobbs/9781476731902

Here is a synopsis of the book taken from:  http://www.amazon.ca/Short-Tragic-Life-Robert-Peace-ebook/dp/B00GEEB7LC/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1414522728&sr=1-1

 A heartfelt, and riveting biography of the short life of a talented young African-American man who escapes the slums of Newark for Yale University only to succumb to the dangers of the streets—and of one’s own nature—when he returns home.

When author Jeff Hobbs arrived at Yale University, he became fast friends with the man who would be his college roommate for four years, Robert Peace. Robert’s life was rough from the beginning in the crime-ridden streets of Newark in the 1980s, with his father in jail and his mother earning less than $15,000 a year. But Robert was a brilliant student, and it was supposed to get easier when he was accepted to Yale, where he studied molecular biochemistry and biophysics. But it didn’t get easier. Robert carried with him the difficult dual nature of his existence, “fronting” in Yale, and at home.

Through an honest rendering of Robert’s relationships—with his struggling mother, with his incarcerated father, with his teachers and friends and fellow drug dealers—The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace encompasses the most enduring conflicts in America: race, class, drugs, community, imprisonment, education, family, friendship, and love. It’s about the collision of two fiercely insular worlds—the ivy-covered campus of Yale University and Newark, New Jersey, and the difficulty of going from one to the other and then back again. It’s about poverty, the challenges of single motherhood, and the struggle to find male role models in a community where a man is more likely to go to prison than to college. It’s about reaching one’s greatest potential and taking responsibility for your family no matter the cost. It’s about trying to live a decent life in America. But most all the story is about the tragic life of one singular brilliant young man. His end, a violent one, is heartbreaking and powerful and unforgettable.

They Made Me Eat My Words!

celebrations, education, , , , ,

Each fall and spring I (Clive) invite the students – 65 this year – in my teacher education Clive Beckcohort program to an evening potluck at our house. Most of them come, some with their spouses or significant others, and we are deluged with food – especially desserts! It is a great opportunity for them to get to know each other better and for me to finally learn all their names. It also models the type of community building and teacher-student relationship that I think is so important in any school or university class.

We had the fall party a couple of weeks ago just after our fourth class together, which was on practice teaching and the theory-practice relationship generally (sounds dull I know). One thing I had discussed with them was the importance of bringing our theories about life and education down to earth, using practical ideas that we remind ourselves of in the heat of the moment. I told them how one of the teachers in our research project was having difficulty with her class last year, so she wrote “don’t take it personally” in capital letters (DTIP) on her wrist and found it helped.

Two of the students with special IT talents arranged to have a slab cream cake made, decorated with a photo of me in blue along with three of these sayings: another was “you can’t do and be everything.” They brought the cake to the party and put it on display, and we all hoed in when dessert time came. I didn’t mind having to eat my words, they were delicious!