Positive Phone Calls

I just got done reading the article The Power of the Positive Phone Call Home (http://www.edutopia.org/blog/power-positive-phone-call-home-elena-aguilar) and I found it really interesting. It actually contains some of the best advice I think I've heard for aspiring teachers, and it's incredibly simple: call your students parents and tell them what they've done good that day. The author says that simply doing that can make the difference between a completely unmanagable school year, and a great one.

I've always been a big believer in positive reinforcement while working with children, and my Behavioral Management class (probably my favorite education class so far) drilled into my head the idea of catching kids being good. The teacher who wrote this article takes it a step furthur though, by bringing the kids parents into it. So many parents are used to only getting phone calls when their child is misbehaving, it must be amazing for them to hear the good things instead. And I can only imagine how much it would boost the self esteem for the children as well, especially the ones who don't get to give their parents good news very often.

Another reason this idea works so well is because, as a teacher, it's extremely important to have good relationships with the family of your students. How are you supposed to connect with a child if their family either doesn't care about their education, or doesn't have faith in you to teach them what they need to learn? By doing this you show the parents that their student isn't just one of many in your mind; you're paying attention to them and noticing the positive things they do and the way that they're growing. If you only approach parents when something is going wrong with their child, they may have trouble trusting that you want that student to succeed or that you're really paying attention to them as an individual.

After reading this article, I know that this is definately something I plan on doing in my future classrooms.

Educational Trends

Reading this article, I had trouble thinking about how to apply a lot of these new ideas to an early childhood education environment. Once I graduate I plan to work with kids mostly from the pre-school to first grade age range, and though they are more accustomed to technology than any generation before them, I have trouble seeing how things like mobile phones, tablets, Ipads, or Skype might play into that kind of classroom setting.

There were some things in the article though that did give me some ideas, mostly the idea of The Maker Movement. I believe that no matter what age a child is, it's important that they get the majority of their learning through hands on learning, and technology can help this. With upper elementary age children, you get the benefit of programs like powerpoint or photoshop, but even younger children can use the computer and internet to aid their learning. I remember in my practicum last year, my Kindergarten classroom did a huge unit on different forms of transportation. They read books about trains a drew pictures of them sure, but imagine what one could do with a computer on their side. I'm sure on the internet a teacher could find an interactive tour of a train, or a game that let the children conduct the train. Just little things like this could help the children take their knowledge one step further and really feel like they're interacting with their subject matter, and give them opportunities to create and experience things that they couldn't otherwise. I think the ideas of gaming and natural user interfaces go hand and hand with this; games will of course appeal to younger children, and the push of easier to use technology makes it so almost anyone can work with the tech with few problems.

Technology & Student-Friendly Objectives

I'll start by saying that I really enjoyed reading The Tempered Radical's view on student objectives. As a student, class objectives aren't really something I've paid much attention to, though I suppose I do find it helpful when teachers put up a daily lesson plan. It help you know where the class is going, without losing track and becoming bored. If you know where the lesson is going, I think it's easier to keep engaged, because you have an idea of how much time you'll spend on each topic and what you're going to learn.

As a teacher, I can see how objectives can be helpful as well. Not only will your students know exactly what they're supposed to learn, and gauge how well they've done that, acknowledging the objectives will keep you focused and on the right track. Without a clear objective or lesson plan, even the best teacher can end up fumbling on what to do next and loosing student interest in the process.

I'm sure technology will make it a lot easier for both students and teachers to understand learning objecters. Teachers can do what The Tempered Radial did, and research different ways to use learning objectives to their benefit and connect with other teachers to see what worked for them. Older students can connect with their teachers on sites like Edmodo, and younger students can use computer game to test their learning once they know exactly what it is they're supposed to learn. All in all, there are plenty of ways for technolgy to contribute to student friendly objectives.