FRIDAY DROP IN

As I’ve said before, one of the greatest challenges of a high school our size is effective communication among staff members. To be sure, we have the traditional: email, phones, school newsletter, and public address system. We have faculty meetings, department meetings and committee meetings. And the most traditional of all: word of mouth.

Yet something seemed missing. So I tried an experiment a few years ago. I decided that at 7:45 each Friday morning we would have a “Drop In.” I wanted it to be a time from 7:45 to 8:30 (when class begins) for staff to drop in to the meeting room next to my office just to chat about stuff with each other. Although it is technically a kind of staff meeting, the agenda allows what the staff wants to talk about.

Sometimes the discussion is centered on school finance. Sometimes it is about how tough or good the week was. Maybe it’s an idea that works in class. Maybe it’s about the health of a staff member—or a baby that was just born. You get the idea.

However, in reflecting over the past five years of Drop Ins, I think that at the core it’s maybe just looking at each other and celebrating how good life really is. It is a time to be real people. A meeting, if you will, where the agenda is us and how good we all are each day. Making a professional point, winning a scheduling argument or impressing others is left at the door of the meeting room. Stress is not on the agenda and camaraderie is.

At times, we may have only twenty staff there. At other times, there may be nearly forty. Some stay for almost the entire forty-five minutes while others just stop for a word or two as they grab a donut. (Oh, I almost forgot to tell you about the donuts, coffee and juice. I provide those. I mean, how else are you going to get conversation going on an early Friday morning?) Some staff are regulars and others show up only a couple of times a year. Most are teachers, although I encourage everyone to come to the Drop In.

I think that the key to the success of the idea is not how many staff attends: it is that there is always a place on a Friday morning that is there for you. No one forces you to go—no one takes attendance. It’s a place you are always welcome: a place to celebrate each other and the end of a week—or maybe the beginning of the weekend.

Perhaps veteran Math teacher Denny Smith said it best when I first began the Drop Ins: “Roger, even if nobody comes, you need to have these every Friday.”

Technology, Technology, Technology

Good Morning World (the 25 people who read my blogs ;>)--

On the wall of my office is an old slate (chalkboard) in an oak frame, about 11" X 14"). It was in my grandfather's farmhouse attic when my mother found it about 45 years ago.

Of course, in the old country school days, the slate was world class educational technology. You had the slate, you had chalk and you had a way to erase it all. The slate was used over and over and over. It it still is usable today, some 70+ years since it was first written on by some farm kid in Jackson County, Minnesota.

Below is an article which was sent to me by the National Association of Secondary School Principals. It too is about technology, but not in the standard sense. (It's really more about changing lemons into lemonade.) The line I like best is the one by the principal in Virginia: "You don't ban paper." (You'll understand when you read the article.)

Thanks.

--RZ

Teachers begin using cell phones for class lessons

By CHRISTINE ARMARIO (AP) – 3 days ago

WESLEY CHAPEL, Fla. — Ariana Leonard's high school students shuffled in their seats, eagerly awaiting a cue from their Spanish teacher that the assignment would begin.

"Take out your cell phones," she said in Spanish.

The teens pulled out an array of colorful flip phones, iPhones and SideKicks. They divided into groups and Leonard began sending them text messages in Spanish: Find something green. Go to the cafeteria. Take a picture with the school secretary.

Leonard's class at Wiregrass Ranch High School in Wesley Chapel, a middle-class Florida suburb about 30 miles north of Tampa, is one of a growing number around the country that are abandoning traditional policies of cell phone prohibition and incorporating them into class lessons. Spanish vocabulary becomes a digital scavenger hunt. Notes are copied with a cell phone camera. Text messages serve as homework reminders.

"I can use my cell phone for all these things, why can't I use it for learning purposes?'" Leonard said. "Giving them something, a mobile device, that they use every day for fun, giving them another avenue to learn outside of the classroom with that."

Much more attention has gone to the ways students might use phones to cheat or take inappropriate pictures. But as the technology becomes cheaper, more advanced and more ingrained in students' lives that mentality is changing.

"It really is taking advantage of the love affair that kids have with technology today," said Dan Domevech, executive director of the nonprofit American Association of School Administrators. "The kids are much more motivated to use their cell phone in an educational manner."

Today's phones are the equivalent of small computers — able to check e-mail, do Internet searches and record podcasts. Meanwhile, most school districts can't afford a computer for every student.

"Because there's so much in the media about banning cell phones and how negative phones can be, a lot of people just haven't considered there could be positive, educative ways to use cell phones," said Liz Kolb, author of "From Toy to Tool: Cell Phones in Learning."

Even districts with tough anti-use policies acknowledge they will eventually need to change.

"We can't get away from it," said Bill Husfelt, superintendent of Bay County District Schools, a Florida Panhandle district of 27,000 students where cell phones aren't allowed in school, period. "But we've got to do a lot more work in trying to figure out how to stop the bad things from happening."

Seventy-one percent of teens had a cell phone by early 2008, according to a survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project. That percentage remains relatively steady regardles of race, income or other demographic factors. Meanwhile, many schools are low-tech compared with homes outfitted with home networks, wireless Internet and a smartphone for every family member.

Most schools still have prohibitive policies curtailing cell phone use — often with good reason. At Husfelt's district, seven students were recently arrested after they got into a fight on campus that he says was instigated through text messages.

In other parts of the country, teens have been arrested for "sexting" — sending indecent photographs taken and sent through their cell phones. Students also use the devices to cheat: In one poll, more than 35 percent of teens admitted cheating with a cell phone.

But phones are so common now that seizing them is huge hassle for teachers.

"It's just a conflict taking them up and having to deal with them," Husfelt said. "It's too disruptive."

Teachers who have incorporated cell phones into their classes say that most students abide by the rules. They note that cheating and bullying exist with or without the phones, and that once they are allowed, the inclination to use them for bad behavior dissipates.

"Kids cheat with pen and paper. They pass notes," said Kipp Rogers, principal of Passage Middle School in Newport News, Va., "You don't ban paper."

Rogers started using cell phones as an instructional tool a couple of years ago, when he was teaching a math class and was short one calculator for a test. He let the student use his phone instead. Twelve classes, including math, science and English, now use them. Students do research through the text message and Internet browser on some phones. Teachers blog. Students use the camera function to snap pictures for photo stories and assignments.

Classes often work in groups in case some students don't have phones.

In Pulaski, Wis., about 130 miles north of Milwaukee, Spanish teacher Katie Titler has used cell phones for students to dial and record themselves speaking for tests.

"Specifically for foreign language, it's a great way to both formally and informally assess speaking, which is really hard to do on a regular basis because of class sizes and time," Titler said.

Jimbo Lamb, a math teacher at Annville-Cleona School District in south-central Pennsylvania, has students use their phones to answer questions set up through a polling Web site. Instantly, he's able to tell how many students understood the lesson.

"This is technology that helps us be more productive," he said.