Confident Writing

As we all get to write, some more so than others, this is good advice:

I was writing the other day about 'telling it in ten', my (current) top tip for confident writing. The gist of it was learning to stand back from your writing and identify the key message - which should be tellable in ten words or less. One of the comments on this post reminded me of one of the most important elements of this strategy. How can you tell when you've got to the point? How will you know?

Well, you'll feel it somewhere inside you. When you read or write the words that get to the heart of the matter - you'll be able to sense it. This isn't a rational, intellectual reaction. It's a physical, physiological sensation.

I don't know if it will be bubbles of excitement in your stomach or hair rising on the back of your neck. I don't know if you'll notice that your fingertips start itching to type, a or if you'll be aware of a shiver that runs over your arms... I don't know how you'll feel it - but I know that you will.

Yes, not a quantity, a feeling! Yes, Joanna, I agree with you. Read the remainder of the posting here.

Joanna returning from vacation (as I head out) has these thoughts upon her return:

Writing helps us to make sense of it all. Vacations provide a great opportunity to be still, to be away, to change perspective, to take stock. Words and ideas tumble out when we're away. But making sense of it often needs to wait until we come back - and writing it down is surely the best way of starting to fathom what it means.

Read the remainder of her posting here. If you haven't taken vacation yet, now you have some tips. If you have, then perhaps one or two of these can be put to great use.

If you do any writing, you should consider adding this site to your RSS Reader of choice, stay in touch with Joanna and become a more confident writer!

Teaching with Aloha blog

The Hitchhikers found Rosa Say and her Talking Story blog once upon a time.

Dean Boyer found Rosa and Managing with Aloha once upon a time.

Together they have created "Teaching with Aloha".

Dean writes:

I have always loved school, even my eleven years in college! I had difficult experiences like everyone else but I enjoyed learning. Memories include field trips to Helm's bakery, seaside tidepools and a naval aircraft carrier. Teachers like Mrs. Hurt, who seemed to like you as long as you were not her student, Mr. McClure's plastic bat which he would use as a pointer and "wake-up" tool (the class pooled their money to buy him a new bat at the end of the year), Mr. Steele's "heads will roll" and Mrs. Schweitzer's first day opening comment, "Good morning ladies and gentlemen...and others." Yes, I enjoyed school.

I still enjoy the exciting school atmosphere where hundreds of children's lives collide and blend with each other. After a 30 year career as a teacher, principal and superintendent, I remain energized. I expect schools to provide cultures of transformation, healing, counsel and wonder. For this deeper work to occur, teachers must teach and administrators must lead from their hearts.

Teaching with Aloha encourages educators to do their challenging, inestimable work from the heart so that some day, perhaps 40-50 years later, their students will be able to say, "I loved school!"

Rosa writes:

Teaching with Aloha was created as a resource for all who teach as an expression of the aloha they wish to share with others. If you teach, instruct, educate, train, coach and mentor, Teaching with Aloha is here for you.

We are a collaborative work in progress, just recently created in February of 2007

There have been some thoughtful posts on:

• Ordinary into Extraordinary!
• Valuing the Whole Child
• Lockdown!
• Four Days with Rosa!
• Charlie Brown, Lucy, and Peppermint Patty

If you are any fan of Rosa, you will want to add this site to your RSS Reader. She and Dean are off to a great start. Join the conversation!

Dangerously Irrelevant - Scott MacLeod

Our intelligence tends to produce technological and social change at a rate faster than our institutions and emotions can cope with. . . . Innovation is cumulative and the rate of change accelerates. We therefore find ourselves continually trying to accommodate new realities within inappropriate existing institutions, and trying to think about those new realities in traditional but sometimes dangerously irrelevant terms. - Gwynne Dyer

Education today and tomorrow is a subject near and dear to this Hitchhiker's heart. Hence, finding Scott's site is a good one to try and keep current in this area.

I wrote elsewhere about the Did You Know video he tweaked (originaly put together by Karl Fischer). It is impressive!

Consider adding Scott's site to your RSS Reader or don't be surprised if you find yourself dangerously irrelevant!

In Pursuit of Happily Ever After: An East Coast Girl's Search for Love

The trail turns to the classroom today where it finds Miss BrowneyedGirlie writing at In Pursuit of Happily Ever After: An East Coast Girl's Search for Love. Miss Browneyedgirlie writes in Tales of a Substitute Student Teacher:

The one thing I failed to realize, mainly because it was the first fill-in experience with children who had no idea who I was, is that developing a bond with your students, a sense of respect, trust, and understanding, is paramount in teaching. Having the opportunity to do so while substituting is darn near impossible. Instead, the day played out with me glancing at the clock every now and then to see how much longer I needed to hold on.

Ah, yes. Those were the days. I did frequent the halls as a substitute myself and know of what she speaks. It is the truth. However in order to survive as a sub, one does have the opportunity to develop some defensive tactics. But that is for another time and place.

Here Miss Browneyedgirlie writes in Head Way Above Water:

There has also been talk around New College about the Job Fair, scheduled for March 9. My friends are terrified that we now have to start looking for real teacher jobs. Me? I say, "Bring it ON!" I'm beyond eager to begin searching for a school district in which to call home. To get to know the teachers - both new and veteran - with whom I will work closely and go to for advice. To get to have a classroom of my own, that I can decorate with pretty bulletin boards, a diverse student library, and in which I can design and teach lessons that will make them think, laugh, and expand their minds.

She also writes in Irony:

We were practicing with them during my observation, which was also being videotaped. Like I wasn't nervous enough. The children were holding up their individual cards (greater than or less than) when they had the answer to a question I placed on the board. As I noted each child's selection, I noted whether or not I'd been able to trick them.

I used this same phrasing and playful tone during Thursday's lesson and thus, didn't think anything of it. The kids are always excited that Miss Browneyedgirlie can't trick them. Well, today I did. In fact, I tricked the same girl - twice.

Some students were tricked yesterday and didn't seem phased by it. This little girl cried. On camera. With my supervisor, her classmates, and my cooperating teacher in the room. I wanted to crawl under the rug.

So if this teaser has worked, you can add Miss Browneyedgirlie to your RSS Reader of choice and follow on with her exploits as she completes student teaching and then hunts for a permanent job.

Deep Fun - Bernie DeKoven

The trail takes a funny turn today and makes new connections. Checked in with Sandra to see her current posting and found Bernie. Clicked through to Bernie's site and found he wrote about Seymour Papert. I wrote about Seymour on Sunday.

Bernie writes

O, it succeeded, the Power Pad did, in its way, but not in its time. And it made me honestly contemplate the possibility that maybe it's not so bad, actually, not such a minor achievement, in fact, not something one would poo-poo, the Power Pad, and all those things and people before their time, who, despite financial failures, have made this time possible.

Read his full posting to find out how this was connected to Dance-Dance-Revolution.

Bernie writes

The Hoseball, Son of Schmertlz, came into being as a direct result of the propinquitous ubiquity of both knee-high and thigh-high hosiery. A 2-3-sock sockball, stuffed into the toe of these hose forms, creates a thing to fling of such stretchy spinworthiness that it is oft likened to a weapon of soft, but nonetheless intimidating attribute. A well-flung hoseball, trailed spectacularly by its gauzy, wobbly, hose-formed tail, beckons every eye on the playground.

With family time in the warmer than normal New England area, hoseball might be something to try. Check out the full posting.

Consider adding Bernie's site to your RSS Reader of choice, or subscribe to one of his newsletters to keep up with the fun he is having and join in making some yourself!