YYYYYY Back to sch0ol for kids remember this

A mother gave her 10-year-old a math test today. He spent nearly an hour and used four sheets of scratch paper. He worked on each problem with intense concentration. And then, with a deep breath, he handed it to her to be graded.

She quickly worked my way through the test and calculated his score.

“It’s an 89,” she said, “that’s a high B.”

Immediately, his eyes filled with tears. He had done his best work, given his greatest effort, and had still come up short.

She looked at my boy and back down at his paper. And then ripped it in half. Here is what she said:

I am more concerned with his ability to learn

I am more concerned with the character that we are building than the division facts on the paper.

Our children should be able to show us where they excel, especially in the elementary years.

I was shocked at the pressure he felt to do well on that test. I never imagined the tears of disappointment that would fall. I admire his ambition and his desire to do well.

My boy is amazing in the kitchen. He can cook a meal for the entire family without breaking a sweat.

My boy is incredible at putting things together. He uses tools like a skilled artisan.

My boy is a founding member of the mother/son debate team. (I just made that up) he can persuade me into doing things I never planned to do.

My boy is hilarious. He is always the first one to make a joke at the dinner table.

My boy is a sensitive soul. He’s kind when that sort of thing is necessary.

My boy is diligent. He will work at something until he feels it’s as good as it can be.

When I ripped that paper up, I looked my boy in the eyes and I told him how I had watched him. How I saw him give his best, how he considered each problem and checked each one until he felt it was complete. I watched him erase and rework problems he was unsure of. I watched him pour every bit of effort in his little body into that test. And I told him I had never been more proud.

Children are so much more than test scores. They are so much more than their reading level. They are so much more than the box we try to mold them into.

School is important, and education is important, but it’s not of the highest importance. You should be more concerned with how he treats others, with his level of integrity than with any score on any test.

Learn at your own pace

Sometimes one of the most helpful things you can do for another is to let them learn stuff for themselves, at their own pace.

It's also one of the most helpful things you can do for yourself.

Empower, celebrate, and free them all

Technology and Ageing

I was giving a workshop on Technology and Seniors to a group of seniors in North Vancouver and in the audience were a number of grade 6 and 7 students who were taking part in an intergenerational project.  I started the workshop by talking about the fact that seniors can learn just as effectively as young people, it may take us longer to learn but we can learn. I saw a couple of the students look very surprised at this. However, the collective body of research clearly shows that creativity and learning have life-long potential. Given adequate time and support, seniors are able to learn and learn effectively. This, of course, includes learning new technologies

Adults who were productively engaged in learning new skills showed improvements in memory compared to those who engaged in social activities or non-demanding mental activities at home. People of all ages are able to learn new things including seniors. The following chart taken from Stats Canada Daily Briefings released 2017-11-14 shows the percentage of seniors in Canada who use any particular technology.

Seniors use desktops, Laptops and touchscreen tablets (iPads) because they have become easier to use. Tablets are quite easy to use due to their touchscreen for surfing the internet, chatting, or e-mails, there are few computers which give you the portability and ease of use for a relatively low price point.

Among 65- to 74-year-olds, 81% of us use the Internet. When we are searching seniors look for information on health. The most commonly researched item for us is health research. However, not all sources on the Internet are reliable. I tell my friends and others to be careful as to what you read on the Internet or Facebook or any social media site, especially health information.

The Internet is a great resource and a tool to help you to become more knowledgeable and increase awareness. However, always consult a healthcare professional for any health advice, including prior to engaging in physical activity.

I love learning and see technology as a great opportunity to expand one’s horizon. There are some great sites online for online (free or low cost) courses for seniors and mind improvement sites online. Here are some that I share when I give my workshop on Technology with seniors.

Digital Learning: Online Courses

Stanford University has joined forces with iTunes U, Apple’s downloadable education service

The Khan Academy is a global, not-for-profit organization dedicated to providing a world-class education to anyone, anywhere.

Coursera provides universal access to the world’s best education, partnering with top universities and organizations to offer courses online for a low fee. With online learning, you can study from anywhere.

Youtube in addition to general learning for example How to Hang a Picture, YouTube a has a channel dedicated to learning including University courses and general courses

Senior Planet has a list of free online courses for Seniors

Open Education Consortium, a global network of colleges and universities that provides free digital course materials.

OpenLearn website gives free access to both undergraduate and graduate-level course materials.

Digital Learning: Mind Games

Brain Aid Task manager app for people with cognitive "challenges"

 Elevate  https://www.elevateapp.com/ has more than 40 fun games to help you improve your cognitive skills. Selected as Apple’s App of the Year in 2014, Elevate is a free brain training app with more than 40. Detailed performance tracking is included and Elevate also features adaptive difficulty progression to ensure that you are always being challenged. Elevate is available on Android and iOS.

 Fit Brain  http://www.fitbrains.com/ Trainer offers more than 60 games and over 500 workout sessions to target the six major areas of the brain. You can create an account and start training with Fit Brains for free, but to unlock all the games, you'll need to pay a monthly subscription fee. If you pay month to month, Fit Brains is the pricier option at $19.95 a month. But if you pay for a year up front, it averages out to $8.33 a month and for a two-year subscription, you'll pay $6.25 a month. There's also a lifetime subscription option for $399.95

 Mind Games  https://www.mindgames.com/Brain+Games Offers over a dozen brain training exercises to challenge you daily, it focuses on a range of cognitive tasks including attention, basic arithmetic skills and mental flexibility. Offering over a dozen brain training exercises to challenge you.

 Dakim's Brain Fitness https://www.dakim.com/dakim/

You can try it for free but there is a charge after the free session.

 Brain Aid  http://brainaid.com/

Designed to "help individuals with executive function disorders complete more real-world tasks. It 6is particularly good for those with brain injuries who lose executive function - the ability to keep track of what you are doing minute-by-minute.  

How Do You Learn Best?

People don't often consider how they learn...how they can best absorb information so that they can easily apply it.

Learning is a two-way street. A lot of people would rather stick their fingers in their eyes than learn something new!

That's fair enough... but you won't do very well with a new online business if you're not prepared to learn about this new, fast-paced, ever-changing sales medium we call the Web :-)

So, let's assume you'd like to make money from a new online home business and you're willing to learn.

How can you learn what you need to know quickly and easily?

By using as many senses as you can while you're learning, and learning from the best sources.

So, if you just read an ebook, you're not absorbing  the information as well as you could.

If you just hear an audio cassette, you're not  absorbing the information as well as you could.

That's why people pay fortunes to go to Internet marketing seminars...because they get to see and hear the speakers at the same time.

Thoughts on the aging work force

A few months ago I was asked by one of my students how old I was and when I told her, she said you must be the oldest teacher at this school. 


I laughed and said I probably was but I still loved teaching and getting up and going to work. The next day as I was driving to work I heard the radio announcer asked "Do employers discriminate against older workers? As I was driving to work and I thought the answer is obvious to me. 


Of course they do. I cannot speak for all employers but I will speak about my experiences in education, teaching in the largest school district in BC.


The District refused from about 2002 to about 2006 give or take a few months to hire older teachers who had retired, back as Teachers on Call until the union grieved the policy as age discrimination. So for a short time after the ruling and the need for qualified Teachers on Call in areas such as Science, Math, Computers, Learning Support and English as Second Language, the district hired a few retired teachers. 


From what I understand, this change of policy by the district lasted about two years and then the freeze on hiring older workers went back into effect, the district does not discriminate, they do other things like ignoring applications by older workers, or they find other ways of discouraging older workers from working


This is part of a trend started in the US with the removal of Tenure for teachers.  "Tenure protections were created in the early 20th century to protect teachers from arbitrary or discriminatory firings based on factors such as gender, nationality or political beliefs by spelling out rules under which they could be dismissed after a probationary period. The changes are occurring as states replace virtually automatic "satisfactory" teacher evaluations with those linked to teacher performance and base teacher layoffs on performance instead of seniority. Politically powerful teachers' unions are fighting back, arguing the changes lower morale, deny teachers due process, and unfairly target older teachers". (Source: USA Today)


The prevailing attitude in my district of administrators to older teachers appears to be"These people  are over the hill." Most of the Administrator in my district, I think, believe that younger teachers have more energy, work harder, and contribute more to their schools than older workers.  


Given the choice between an older and a younger worker, with equal qualifications the administrator would hire the younger teacher. One of the reasons is that younger teachers are more willing to do what they are told to do without queston, older teachers will question the administrators decisions.


The employer along with the government, in its latest round of bargaining is trying to strip the union of the right for teachers to be considered for transfer based on seniority, and the removal of tenure for teachers. This position is put forward because of the attitude of the admin that older teachers are not worth having on staff.


Rather than embrace the experience of the older worker, senior management and administrators in my district, at least discount and devalue their older workers.


As I have left the profession, I am sad for my colleagues who are in their late forty's and early 50's who will be coming up against the age discrimination that exists in education--at least in my district.


I suspect that the attitude of our senior management and our administrators is one shared by most employers in BC not just in education. The fact is that many older workers face challenges in staying at work, and if they are not working, they face many challenges in overcoming challenges of attitude many employers have. 


The Boomers have never shied away from fighting discrimination and bigotry, and I suspect the battle to end age discrimination will be hard fought. There are many other battles that will have to be refought, at least in Canada. With our current government, the social progress we have made over the years are being slowly dismantled as Harper tries to turn Canada back to the 40's.

Education in Canada one of the best in the world

Canada is the second in the world with respect to its education system I know we all want to be number one in the world, but Finland is still ahead of Canada. However, according to the Conference Board of Canada, we are closing the gap between us and Finland.


Lets keep moving ahead, however the Liberals in BC do not like this kind of news, as it goes against their agenda of the destruction of the public school system. Good news from the conference board of Canada does not make its way into the press in BC very often.


The government of the day in Victoria, along with its allies want to destroy public education and have started by attacking teachers.  Unfortunately for them, teachers just continue to do the job  they are paid to do and they do it well.


The government  of BC just recently cut the funding for Adult Education going back to a user pay system.  This is counter productive and will hurt the economy of BC in the long and short run. They are also ignoring what the Conference Board said when they did this.  This is another example of  how our government is going out of its way to hurt the ones that can least fight back.

The Conference Board said in its report on Education

Canada should be concerned about its adult literacy rate. Canadians who have not been fortunate enough to acquire adequate education in school, therefore, are at risk of slipping through the cracks as adults. About 3 million adult Canadians have only Level 1 literacy and a further 4.5 million only achieve Level 2. A person with Level 1 literacy may have difficulty performing simple tasks like reading and understanding medicinal instructions. Many Level 2 adults hide their lack of broader functional literacy by tailoring their lives within narrow and simple work and life parameters.

Therefore, Canada has over 7 million adults who may lack the functional literacy to adjust to changes in the economy. Canada’s economic boom in the last 10 years has so far protected many of these people. Conference Board research shows, however, that people with low literacy skills have weaker attachments to the labour market and generally do not do well in economic downturns.

The students in Quebec are fighting the raise in tuition fees as they should—other students across Canada should be joining in this fight to keep their fees low. I think of tuition fees as taxes on students as the Universities are subsidized by the government. One of the reasons the governments fund post secondary education is that  because a post secondary education is an investment in our county’s future. An increase in tuition fees not only hurts students today by increasing the tax they pay it hurts future generations by endangering our future economic well-being. 

he following is a list of ten points that everyone should know about the student movement in Quebec to help place their struggle in its proper global context.

1)                  The issue is debt, not tuition

2)                  Striking students in Quebec are setting an example for youth across the continent

3)                  The student strike was organized through democratic means and with democratic aims

4)                  This is not an exclusively Quebecois phenomenon

5)                  Government officials and the media have been openly calling for violence and “fascist” tactics to be used against the students

6)                  Excessive state violence has been used against the students

7)                  The government supports organized crime and opposes organized students

8)                  Canada’s elites punish the people and oppose the students

9)                  The student strike is being subjected to a massive and highly successful propaganda campaign to discredit, dismiss, and demonize the students

10)               The student movement is part of a much larger emerging global movement of resistance against austerity, neoliberalism, and corrupt power

The Conference Board goes on to say that:

Canada also underperforms in the highest levels of skills attainment. Canada produces relatively few “high-end” graduates with Ph.D.s (Canada receives a "D" grade), as well as graduates in science, math, computer science, and engineering (Canada receives a "C" grade).

We need more graduates with advanced qualifications and graduates in these fields to enhance innovation and productivity growth—and ultimately to ensure a high and sustainable quality of life for all Canadians.

Some long-term structural issues are not being adequately addressed through Canada’s current approach to education and skills. To maintain its high ranking, Canadians need to have access to education and skills outside the traditional school system. Currently, Canadian employers are notably low investors in workplace training programs. And of what they do invest, only a very small percentage—less than 2 per cent—goes to basic literacy skills. As a result, the Canadian training system does not fill the skills gap for people who, for various reasons, have not acquired skills at school. Much more needs to be done in the workplace in order to improve Canada’s adult literacy rate.

Demographic change in Canada offers an opportunity to shift resources from the formal education system into the skills system. Instead, as the population of school-aged Canadians declined in the 1990s, education spending on youth kept increasing. Canada will need to shift resources into other parts of the education and skills system as demand for traditional schooling continues to decline.

Online Education can it work

As the school year is only a few days away and the uncertainty caused by the teachers work to rule begin to get parents thinking, the concept of online education may gain favour. In the United States New York State now requires Online Education as the board has reduced the amount of time students need to spend in class with teachers. Is this a positive move? I think so, having taught online for the past seven years, I know how positive the experience can be for students and for instructors. However, one has to be careful about how this mode of instruction is used. It may be a good thing, and in  a post on August 8th, Andrew K Miller stated
Online education is becoming a legitimate and viable option for education systems around the country. Both colleges and secondary schools are offering classes to students. In fact many states and schools are requiring students to take some method of mode of online learning. New York made major changes around seat time and face-to-face contact between student and teacher. The state's intentions are good. They want to move away the focus from seat time, and they want to offer courses that might be hard to offer in certain areas of the state to all students. With all these innovative systemic changes, one might think we are completely on the right track. I offer a word of caution.

Online education is in danger of replicating a system that isn't working. Yes, I wrote it. With all the potential for innovation that online education has to offer, we have fallen into the pitfall of replication. The keyword is "danger." There is much that online education can do to innovate the education system, and much that has already been done as a result. Yet most of the actual courses and pedagogical structures that are in place are simply replicating the traditional style of education.
What's the biggest positive effect of online education? It is causing schools to reevaluate and seek to answer the question: "Why do students need and want to go our schools?" In addition, online education is focusing on the learning, not time, a movement toward competency-based pathways, especially those championed by iNACOL, and moving conversations about student achievement in the right direction. Teaching and learning can be tailored to the specific student. Students complete work at their own pace and seek feedback and instruction as they need, rather than when the teacher decides. Students are immersed in a variety of technology tools and media, allowing for different ways to learn content.

With all these positive implications and results, what is missing? The pedagogical structures for most online courses is traditional and does not meet the needs of all students and the variety of learning styles that they come with. Although there might be a variety of media types, such as videos or music or reading, the lesson design is still in the "sage on the stage" mode, where the course knows the content and pushes it out on students. Although students might be asked to show what they know in different modalities, from a collage to a podcast, they mimic low-level performances of regurgitating knowledge for the teacher to assess. Grading practices are often poor, with arbitrary point values being given, rather than focus on the standards. Well-designed rubrics are not present for students, and if they are, the students are left to their devices to understand it. Revision mimics a typical essay from school, where only one draft is required. Although there might be discussion boards or other social media to collaborate, collaborative assessments and work are not present to create a true need to collaborate. Discussions boards, for example, are treated as a summative assessment, points in the grade book. Shouldn't it instead be used for the purpose is was created? It should be a place where collaboration and wrestling with rigorous questions can occur, not a punitive measure to "cattle prod" students into doing work. Courses are often not culturally responsive, nor are teachers trained in culturally responsive teaching and what it looks like online.

So we have to be careful about how instructors teach online but we also have to be careful of how the system treats students who take online courses. The following is a letter sent to the Superintendent of Schools in a local district in BC. In the letter the writer  point out how the system discriminates against students taking online courses. ( I have removed the name of the school)

  
I was informed today, May 11 2010, by my son that he was ineligible for all district scholarships. Since he has been the Student Council Co-President for the past 2 years, an Honour Role and Principal’s List student, we as parents were more than shocked with this news. He told us that he was deemed ineligible for District Scholarships because of a problem with taking English 12 through the Learn at Home Program.

He had applied for more than 30 school and district scholarships. Upon being informed of this problem from my son, I phoned the School. I asked the secretary  whom should I be speaking to about problems with school district scholarships, she told me to talk to --------at ((xxx) xxx-xxxx. I called  and told her that I just found out from my son that he had been deemed ineligible for school district scholarships and I wanted to know why. I was told that he was ineligible because he had not completed 60% of the English 12 program through Learn at Home by April 15 2011.

I will briefly outline the problems again:

 2) parents were never formally informed by the school that their child was deemed ineligible for School District Scholarships because of problem #1.

 3) parents should have been informed by either the Learn at Home program or by the  Secondary School at the end of March 2011 of the arbitrary deadline of April 15 2011 to have 60% of the Learn at Home course completed in order to be eligible for School District Scholarships.

 4) 3 outstanding students are being denied Scholarship opportunities due to errors and omissions that are not of their doing.

 5) There is no indication of the arbitrary date of April 15 2011 to have 60% of Learn at Home coursework completed in the District's Foundation 2010/2011 Scholarships Bursaries Awards Booklet.

There is no requirements for students not in this online program to complete 60% of the course by April 15, which to me means that the system discriminates against students taking online courses.

The teachers and the admin involved probably were not aware of the issue of how their actions could be seen to be discriminatory.  The Superintendent allowed the students to be considered for scholarships in this case, because of the lack of communications. The bigger question is how will this district deal with the attitude that students taking online courses are being discriminated against?

As parents if your son or daughter is taking an online course, you should check your districts policy about how these students will be treated come scholarship time.

Manufacturing a crises in education Welcome back to all my teacher friends

I found this wonderful post by someone named Dawn Steele in the blog Public Eye online  in response to a document that was posted on this site that discusses how senior government managers should create fake crises to bring about change.

I don't know about railways or healthcare, but the strategy of manufacturing a fake crisis has certainly been evident in Education.


The province keeps telling us they're spending more on Education than ever despite declining enrolment & that costs are out of control. A Special Adviser was appointed, prompting hysterical headlines about VSB mismanagement, until weeks later the Minister quietly accepted the VSB's claim of $17 million in provincial underfunding was actually legit. A week ago, the Minister hinted again at a need for drastic change because student outcomes are flat or declining.

I've been gathering research & data on education funding at the BC Education Coalition Website: http://stopeducationcuts.org

The data (including the Ministry's own data) don't support a crisis of out-of-control spending - on the contrary they suggest underfunding is increasingly straining the ability of public schools to meet even basic student needs:

1) In real dollars, the $5.1 billion Education budget for 2010-11 is actually $500 million less than the last NDP Education budget in 2000-01, after adjusting for inflation (that stat originally cited by the Vancouver Sun's Don Cayo & I fact-checked it).

2) In 1991, Education represented 26% of the provincial budget vs 14% today.

3) Relative to provincial GDP, BC's Education spending has declined by 14% since 2001.

4) After a decade of VERY modest declines (avg 0.5% per year), K-12 public school enrolment is now growing again. And provincial projections call for continued growth as far out as they look.


5) BC now has the second-highest student/educator ratio (a Stats Can proxy for average class size) in all of Canada.

6) BC has cut special education grants to public schools by $120 million since 2001, while the number of students with special needs has increased. Despite deep cuts, boards now face $350 million a year in unfunded special ed costs - a gap that's grown from $50 million in 2001-02.
7) Ontario spends $10,000 per student vs BC's $8,000. McGuinty has increased Education spending by more than $5 billion (more than BC spends in all) since taking office, because they see a highly-educated populace as a key pillar to building future competitiveness and prosperity. Our Education Minister talks about our schools needing to offer more opportunities in the culinary arts and house-building.

Meanwhile, to find evidence of out-of-control spending, there is no need to manufacture fake crises - just look at the capital side of the BC budget, which most pundits routinely ignore. Or the extra $6 billion that former Finance Minister Carole Taylor paid to buy labour peace for the Olympics. Or the MLA, Minister & mandarin pay hikes...

Taking Risks

It does not matter if you are a Doctor, a Lawyer or an infantry soldier in the Army if you want to be the best and get ahead, you will need to take risks.

A doctor may have to take risks when working with a patient. The Doctor may have to experiment with different forms of medications or new surgical procedures when all else has failed in an attempt to help the patient.

A lawyer may have to argue a case in an unorthodox manner to win the case, but if the lawyer wants to become the top lawyer and make millions of dollars fighting high profile cases lots of risks have to be taken.

A soldier may have to take a risk and run thru gunfire to save another injured soldier, to complete their mission, or just to secure an area from being overrun by enemy troops, after going days with little to no sleep, but if a soldier wants to get promotions and eventually lead men into battle they also need to take risks.

The same can be said about life in general. No one gets ahead in life from playing it safe. You will not meet your special someone if you are too afraid to risk getting rejected by someone, you will never get that big promotion unless you take risks at your job.

It is very important to continue to take risks in life. To stop taking risks means to stand still in life. Standing still in life is one of the main causes of depression. These are usually the people afraid to confront the boss and tell him that they demand a raise; they are the ones that allow life to pass them by out of fear. The entire purpose of fear is to stop you from taking a risk.

Fear is nothing more then the unknown. If you have always wanted to quit your job and open a shop but you are too afraid to do it, this is because you are afraid of failing and risking what you already have.

It is important to learn to take risks in life if you want to be happy, you may not always get the things you risked for, but you will know that you tried, and in the end it does not matter if you succeed or not it is how many risks you try to make that is one of the tests of how successful your life will be.

We have a need to belong

At the learning center, the students gathered from the morning, afternoon and evening classes for the year end barbecue and celebration. For most of the students they had not seen success in the mainstream education system but they valued education. The slide show of the year in pictures started and I watched as the students eyes lit up when they saw themselves, or their friends, laughter rang out as the years highlights flashed onto the screen. Welcome Barbecue, Halloween antics, Xmas with Santa, kayak trips, softball games, class work every month was highlighted. Students as well as teachers laughed and appeared to be excited about the slides. Awards were given out and students joined in the celebrations for the students who were being recognized. This could have been any school. At lunch the weather was not cooperating so the students lined up to get the food and raffle ticket and then returned into the common room to eat. As the lineup was not planned for the execution of the made up plan did not go smoothly and only then did I see a few students react by swearing and pushing. The teachers with a word and a look soon took control and peace was established. The students seemed to enjoy the lunch and were appreciative of the teachers and the staff who had helped them be successful.

These students felt like they belonged and worked hard to be successful to live up to the expectations of the staff and teachers. I was reminded of how important the need to belong is in all of us both youngsters and boomers.

Moving on

I have been very lucky this past year, I am working at Kwantlen Park Secondary School, in Surrey. This school used to be called West Whalley and it was where I started my career in education. Many of the students who went to the school are now members of my facebook page and I enjoy seeing there comments and keeping in touch with them.

I am in my last week at the school and I am having mixed feelings. I am working with two wonderful people in the Career Resource Center (Kim and Rick) along with a very strong staff that cares very much about the students. I am looking forward to my new assignment but feel sad about leaving the school. Moving on is always like that, but Boomers are good moving on when the time is right. I am sitting in the Career Office at lunch as the army recruiter is fielding questions from students interested in a number of army programs being offered this summer. There are seven woman and three men in this session.  The students are here because the school wants to make sure that the students complete their applications are filled out correctly, so they can increase their chances of getting into the programs. The staff at KP are still caring and interested in helping students plan their future. I will miss them.