Category Archives: Teachers

Some posts aimed directly at teachers rather than students.

Connecting Teachers: Whose job is it anyway?

Collaboration is the new black. Every conference I attend; every commentator I hear trumpeting the success of coder dojo; every colleague who has tried it in their teaching agrees. Collaboration works.

I’m not talking about glorified group work. I know what that is; I’ve done it. It’s where I the teacher set a task so I can feel that my students’ opinions are valued when all the while I know I’ll end up feeding them my answer in the end so why should they bother? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not defending the fact that this happens in my classroom. There are days when I hate myself for it. But sadly, unlike J Alfred Prufrock , I’m not always convinced that “there will be time, there will be time, for decisions and revisions that a minute will reverse” particularly at senior cycle. So I plough ahead because after all there is a course to cover and if I don’t get it covered I’ll be hanging up my “Teacher of the Year 2012” boots and adopting a rather fetching “Jackass of the Year 2013” limited edition instead.

No, I’m not talking about group work; I’m talking about the really meaty process of collaboration where people work together to create something that didn’t previously exist; something that fills them with the overwhelming urge to share.”Look at this thing we created. Look how great it is“.

But now that we know how valuable collaboration is; now that the research tells us what an effective learning tool it is, I find myself asking why the enormous potential of this wonderful invention known as the world wide web isn’t being used more effectively to facilitate greater collaboration between teachers in Ireland? Better connections, shared expertise, opportunities to connect.

I know it’s happening in pockets. I’m on the CESI list; I’ve conversed with hundreds of Irish teachers on twitter thanks to #edchatie; I’ve joined the INOTE facebook group to share ideas and resources and to tease out both new and old ways to teach effectively. But I’m also aware that there are thousands of teachers out there completely oblivious to the help and expertise that’s right there within their grasp if they just reach out and touch it. I know this because for eight years I was that person, living in a cave of my own invention and I wish, how I wish I had seen sooner what was just out of sight. Don’t assume reluctance, or laziness or complacency. For now, just assume ignorance – you can’t miss something you don’t know exists.

So what do I want?

Well a national database of English teachers would be a start (hell, let’s do it for every subject for that matter). This already exists. The Teaching Council have all of these details and I’m pretty sure there’s a smart computer programme out there somewhere which could cull this data into a usable list of email addresses. I think English would be a good place to start because ours is the first subject which will change in the new Junior Cycle so surely we’ll need to be kept in the loop and informed of new developments? Or am I just being a crazy person expecting to actually be informed about the changes which I will be introducing and implementing in my classroom? The teaching council website informs me that CPD is part of their remit. One of their aims is to facilitate networking among teachers. But I’m told they won’t give out this information to INOTE, the English teachers association (probably because of issues around confidentiality) and they won’t use it themselves. But goddamn it, listen to the voice of the people I say. Give us what we want. An Irish TES where we can share and connect and collaborate. You’ve got 10 million in the bank. What’s the problem?

So that’s two things on my wish list. A database of email addresses for English teachers and an Irish TES. But then I think, well maybe it’s not really the Teaching Council’s job? Maybe I should be looking to the PDST? Their job is definitely to facilitate CPD for teachers. They’re low on funding I know and swamped trying to deliver literacy and numeracy in-service (I attended a day long session recently that was just amazing). I also know they too have been compiling a list of English teachers in an effort to ensure that all teachers attend these literacy for English teachers in-services. Maybe they contacted the Teaching Council looking for this info and they too were refused. Who knows. Word on the street is they can’t share this list with the English teachers association either. Confidentiality I presume. We need to be protected from each other it would seem!

And what about the NCCA? They’re the ones driving the change and I know they’ve got a teachers network going among the pilot schools who are trying out ideas for the new Junior Cycle. I hear it’s great. But I’m on the outside not looking in but staring at a blank wall. I’ve been told that the new English syllabus / specification will be available for consultation in April/May. But don’t for a moment think that this means a letter will be sent to all English teachers. Or an email (from the list that exists but must not speak its name). It will most likely appear silently one day, I predict just as the State Examinations kick off. It will quietly lurk on a website unseen, unheard of by the vast majority of English teachers in this country (assume what you want about whether or not this is their own fault for not obsessively checking the NCCA website daily for updates). The book publishers will probably get their spoke in. And then with a flourish the new Junior Cycle English Specification will be introduced with minimal input from the people it effects the most – teachers and students – unless you’re in one of the pilot schools (and even then I’m told, by teachers in the know, that the consultation process often involves offering your input and then being completely ignored. Forgive me if I sound cynical – I try so hard not to be).

Perhaps I am naive. Perhaps I am too demanding; too vocal; too politically incorrect. Perhaps I am foolish to think for a second that anything I say makes the slightest ripple of a difference to anyone in these organisations. Maybe if I care so much I should be taking this on myself? Free and gratis. Just the way this government likes us to operate. More for less. More and more and more and more for less.

Or perhaps  I’m right. Perhaps it’s time the hand started speaking to the arm and the arm to the body and the whole lot to the bloody head. If I’m making it sound terribly straightforward that’s because I believe it should be. Today we learned that a baby was cured of HIV; surely this is not beyond us?

 

CESI 2013

[youtube_sc url =http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQfFp9ZRI1Q]

Here are the bare bones of the presentation I gave at CESI 2013 on using IT to help our students develop the key skills of the new Junior Cycle.

Paper 1 Checklist

I’ve just been browsing the site, checking that all the links are working and that the index includes all the posts that are relevant to all you poor sods out there who are doing the Leaving Cert. Anyway, it occured to me that the index page has expanded to such an extent that it’s hard to see the wood for the trees now so…

With this in mind here’s a simple checklist with links that you can refer back to whenever you need them. This may sound obvious but I’ll say it anyway – any words that appear in BLUE are clickable and will take you directly to the blog post in question…

So here goes nothing!

1. Comprehensions – begin with the General Advice post, then take a look at the different Types of Comprehensions which appear. You need to get practice in Describing a Personality and exploring the Feelings & Atmosphere created in a text. If you want help Answering Style Questions, once you’ve downloaded the spreadsheet of techniques have a look at this Sample Comprehension Answer which examines common mistakes.

Don’t forget that you must be confident discussing Visual Texts so this Sample Visual Text Answer should come in useful, along with these tips for discussing Book Covers and this wonderful post from my mate Michelle on The Art of Photography.

This is not an exhaustive list. Off the top of my head I know in the past students were asked if they considered a piece of writing funny and had to explain why – not an easy task but this post on Comedy might help.

One year recently students were asked to explore the enduring power of the mysterious in tv, books and film but I haven’t gotten my head around answering that one myself yet (which is weird really because I obsessively read my way through over 50 Agatha Cristie novels when I was 14).

You also need to be able to clearly distinguish between the language of information, language of argument, language of persuasion and the language of narration/description because sometimes they specifically ask you to identify and comment on the features of one type of writing (informative/argumentative/persuasive/descriptive) which are evident in the text. Sometimes this is phrased slightly differently and you are asked to comment on features of speech writing, or travel writing or autobiographical writing or on the journalistic style used in a newspaper/magazine article.

Occasionally students are asked to comment on the Title of the passage, or to suggest an alternative title. You could be asked to select a quote(s) used by the writer and comment on how effective and appropriate it is. You can also be asked to trace the logic employed in a text or to discuss how effectively the writer has constructed their argument to bring you around to their way of thinking.

Ultimately, practice practice practice is what will help you to improve – by all means read these blog posts to your hearts content but then DO SOMETHING with them. Apply the knowledge by practising using past exam papers or whatever speeches, articles, stories, travelogues you want.

If yet more individual written work sounds too hideously boring, sit down with a friend, pick a text (any text), come up with sample questions based on what usually comes up and discuss what you’d put into your answer. This is a really effective way of getting the brain active and bouncing ideas off someone else is always a good study technique.

Perhaps you could draw your own infographics for information, argument, persuasion, narration, description, speeches, articles, short stories, personal essays etc…  We’ve been doing this to some success in class recently, it really forces the brain to clarify things.

2. Question B – begin with the General Advice, then make sure you get clarity around the layout and style required for the following:

and don’t forget Speeches/Radio Talks and Articles which can come up both here and in the extended essay section.  Personally I don’t think you should choose the same Question B and extended essay (ie write two speeches, or two articles) because you can’t really show off your range of skills to the examiner if you do this. Pay close attention to the wording of the question – for example a ‘report’ and a ‘news report’ are not the same thing! One is an informative document compiled from surveys and questionaires on a particular topic, the other is a newspaper article reporting on an event or incident which has just occured.

3. Composing – this is the section that requires you to write an extended essay (in a particular genre) twice as long as the Question B above. It is worth 25% of your overall grade in English.

You may want to begin with the Six Rules of Essay Writing, then check out the type of Essay Topics that come up and some Sample Essay Titles I gave my Leaving Certs for their house exam. Read this blog post if you’re searching for Inspiration.

Then there are the questions: What is an Appropriate Topic? How do you move from Word to Paragraph? How do you achieve Originality vs Cliche? And a discussion of why you really need to Trust Your Voice.

There are four basic genres that recur in this section: Short Stories, Personal Essays, Speeches/Debates and Newspaper/Magazine Articles. Very ccasionally you’ll see a “series of 3 diary entries” or “a descriptive essay” in here too.

Short stories – so you need to be familiar with the Language of Narration/Description and you might want to check out Sample Short Story 1 and Sample Short Story 2.

If you want to buy and read a collection of short stories try the newly released “Silver Threads of Hope“.

Personal Essays – you need to be clear on the difference between a personal essay and a short story but the Language of Description remains central to this genre. You may want to check out Sample Personal Essay 1 and Sample Personal Essay 2.

If you want to buy and read a collection of personal essays try “A Page in the Life”, a collection from the Marian Finucane radio show (they are each only 500 words long however – your personal essay would need to be in the region of at least 1200 words in the exam). Two of my favourite personal essays are available online “I’m still alive and writing is my fighting” and “The five funniest things people said to me when my father died” – even though they were published in a newspaper and a magazine respectively their style falls into the category of the personal essay.

Articles – get reading newspapers and magazines and start paying attention to the style used. You may want to check out this Sample Newspaper Article.

You could also get a giggle a day by regularly visiting www.thepotato.ie an Irish satirical website which proves that you can make something up and still make it sound utterly convincing if you adopt the appropriate journalistic style. Also see our Links page for a longer list of online newspapers.

Speeches / Debates – ensure you understand the difference between them. Debates almost exclusively make use of argumentative techniques whereas speeches combine argument and persuasion. Check out these sample debate topics; better still practice writing one!

Check out this debate “Does God Exist?” on this link – but feel free to skip the first 12 minutes which are just introductions. Of course if you’ve taken part in the Concern Debates, the Mental Health Public Speaking competition or any form of public speaking through your local Dail na nOg or Soroptimists society then you’ve at a real advantage going into the exams.

If you want to buy a book of famous speeches I recommend “Speeches that Changed the World” and “Great Irish Speeches“. Alternatively, just browse speeches on youtube or better still check out www.ted.com for mindblowing talks on every topic imaginable!

If you’d like to try some collaborative writing with your mates you could either use edmodo (see this post on the benefits of online collaboration) or you could just use google docs – all you need is a gmail account, click on “drive”, start a new document and then email the link to the people you want to write the piece with you…

I think that’s it folks! There are so many links in this post it’ll be a miracle if they’re all working so if any of the links lead you to the wrong place please send me a message and I’ll fix it.

Hope this helps,

Evelyn

Stocking fillers…

Eek… it’s nearly Christmas! So here comes shopping, frosty mornings, eating til you want to vomit and then eating some more, boxes of disgusting biscuits, crazy relatives visiting and books, books, books. The best thing for me about two weeks off school is having the chance to sit down and read. So in the spirit of spreading my reading addiction, here are some old favourites that I recommend!

Searching for the meaning of life? Try “The Happiness Hypothesis”  by Jonathan Haidt.

You could also read “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” by Robert Pirsig – my favourite book when I was 17… tough going though, requires intense concentration!

If you feel like evolution, science and basically everything in the universe is a bit of a mystery to you, read “A Short History of Nearly Everything” by Bill Bryson. You will feel smarter AND know more stuff by the time you get to the end.

In my youth I wrote some pretty bad poetry. It would have been a lot better if I’d had this book because I might actually have had half a clue what I was doing!

I also love love love stand-up comedians and secretly wish I could join their club – except I’m not really that funny so instead I semi-stalk them in print hoping some of their funny will rub off on me (wow, that sounds weird when I read it back…).  Two of my faves are “The Naked Jape” by Jimmy Carr and Tina Fey’s autobiography.

The next lot are books I randomly grabbed off the bookshelf because I love them and they are fab!

 

Finally, some recent publications. I’ve just had the incredible privilege of having my teacher of the year speech published in Gene Kerrigan’s brilliant analysis of the boom and the bust “The Big Lie”. If you have a vague nagging sense that your head’s still spinning and you don’t quite fully grasp what the hell just happened to our country, this is the one for you!

Meanwhile if you’re the kind of person who likes to look to the future instead of lamenting the mistakes of the past try “An Optimist’s Tour of the Future” by Mark Stevenson (see above!).

Finally, if you’d like to know lots of random fascinating facts about the universe, try “A Neutron Walks into a Bar” and if you’re up for a hilarious take on Irish History try “1916 and all that”

Cyberbullying

If you are being bullied or just need someone to talk to click on this link www.teenline.ie  or call 1800 833 634

Bernardos also have a great list of places to access help here: http://www.barnardos.ie/information-centre/young-people/teen-help/finding-help.html

———-

Words are powerful. We must never forget that.

That was about five or six years ago. I don’t remember a single question about the internet or social networks. A few of them were using bebo – back then facebook was still considered the old person version of social networking. Ask.fm didn’t exist. If we had exactly the same class today things would be very different. I teach a TY module on digital media and I know last year we looked at cases where young people lost control of their online identity, or were harassed and bullied by online trolls. But those cases were American – those of Phoebe Prince and Kiki Kannibal. We should have looked closer to home. We need to start connecting what happens to ‘other people’ with what we do, or don’t do, or don’t try to stop others doing online.

I know as a teacher I have a huge responsibility to educate my students about the world they live in; to do my utmost to teach them how to be safe online and how to be a good online citizen. I like to think I lead by example but for the past few days I’ve been asking myself ‘am I doing enough?’ The thing is, I really like my students, all of them. I find it hard to believe that any of them would engage in the kind of horrendously cruel behaviour which led to the tragic suicide of Erin Gallagher last Saturday night and Ciara Pugsley in September. Yet to deny that these things are happening would be the ultimate betrayal of my students, of my role as a teacher and of my heartbreak as a parent when I think of the families who have to live through the most awful experience life can inflict – the loss of a child.

So please, please, if you are being hurt online tell someone. If you are hurting others online, stop.

Words are powerful. We must never forget that.

http://www.spunout.ie/about/Blog/BLOG:-Time-to-stamp-out-cyberbullying

http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/10000-pupils-go-to-school-in-fear-of-bullies-212849.html

http://donalomahony.edublogs.org/2012/10/29/teaching-them-to-walk-away/

http://www.thejournal.ie/erin-gallagher-online-bullying-654305-Oct2012/

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2012/1031/1224325940071.html

http://www.independent.ie/lifestyle/how-a-teen-and-his-mother-hit-back-at-the-online-bullies-3243751.html

http://www.independent.ie/national-news/gardai-speak-to-erin-bully-suspects-as-texts-checked-3278601.html

http://www.independent.ie/national-news/far-from-being-typical-victims-these-were-smart-girls-with-bright-futures-3278627.html

http://www.independent.ie/national-news/website-linked-to-two-deaths-here-has-over-20-million-users-3278600.html

http://www.thejournal.ie/erin-gallagher-cyberbullying-support-653945-Oct2012/