“There’s 104 days of summer vacation And school comes along just to end it So the annual problem for our generation Is finding a good way to spend it”

Unless your parents let you be like Phineas And Ferb and create rocket ships, tree house robots, or drive your sister insane, you need to find other activities to keep busy during the summer.

Granted Summer should be a fun relaxing time. Swimming, playing, or staying up late can be all the great rewards. But, I hope none of our students take the entire summer off and do no learning! When I was a teacher I always gave a list, to my incoming students, of books they should read during the summer. At one school we even had the students do book reports over the summer. So following is a list (just a few) of books for a few of the grade levels. Depending on your own reading level you could pick a higher grade book or lower grade book.

5th Grade
Alien(series) – Bruce Coville
My Teacher (series)- Bruce Coville
The Best School Year Ever – Barbara Robinson
Caddie Woodlawn – Carol Ryrie Briat
Everest (series) – Gordon Korman
Holes – Louis Sachar
Wayside School (series) – Louis Sachar
The Laundry News – Andrew Clements

4th Grade
The American Girls Collection – Pleasant Company
Anne of Green Gables – L.M. Montgomery
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
Indian in the Cupboard – Lynne Reid Banks
Matilda – Roald Dahl
The Secret School – Avi
Superfudge – Judy Blume
Because of Winn Dixie – Kate Dicamillo
Stuart Little – E.B. White

3rd Grade
Boxcar Children (series) – Gertrude Chandler Warner
Judy Moody – Megan McDonald
The Littles – John Peterson
Magic Tree House (series) – Mary Pope Osbourne
Magic Schoolbus (series) – Joanna Cole)
The Mouse and the Motorcycle – Beverly Cleary
Encyclopedia Brown (series) – Donald J. Sobol

2nd Grade
Amelia Bedelia (series) – Peggy Parish
The Berenstain Bears – Jan and Stan Berenstain
Clifford the Big Red Dog (chapter books)- Gail Herman
Flat Stanley – Jeff Brown
Nate the Great (series) – Marjorie Weinman Sharmat
Get Ready for Second Grade, Amber Brown – Paula Danzinger
Horrible Harry (series) – Suzy Kline

1st Grade
Dear Zoo – Lois Ehlert
Green Eggs and Ham – Dr. Seuss
The Listening Walk – Paul Showers
Corduroy – Donald Freeman
If you Give a Mouse a Cookie – Laura Numeroff
The Very Hungry Caterpillar – Eric Carle

For right now, I’m going to try to get back into the blog with biweekly Web 2.0 for the classroom pieces beginning next week.

God bless as you finish up your school years.

As American troops stormed the beaches of Normandy, President Franklin Roosevelt called for our nation to unite in prayer. He also offered a prayer to prepare each citizen for the road ahead. “Let our hearts be stout, to wait out the long travail, to bear sorrows that may come, to impart our courage unto our sons wheresoever they may be. And, O Lord, give us faith. Give us faith in Thee.” The victory that followed on June 6, 1944-also known as D-Day-began the march to Berlin. Eighteen months later, WWII was over and one of the world’s greatest evils had been defeated. The prayers of a nation had been a powerful force.

Prayer has always been used in this country for guidance, protection and strength-even before we were a nation or a handful of colonies. The Pilgrims at Plymouth relied on prayer during their first and darkest winter. Our founding fathers also called for prayer during the Constitutional Convention. In their eyes, our recently created nation and freedoms were a direct gift from God. And being a gift from God, there was only one way to insure protection-through prayer.

President Abraham Lincoln knew this well. It was his belief that, “it is the duty of nations as well as men, to owe their dependence upon the overruling power of God.” When it came to the fate of the nation, he practiced what he preached. Before the battle of Gettysburg, he turned to God in prayer. “I went to my room one day and I locked the door and got down on my knees before Almighty God and prayed to him mightily for victory at Gettysburg.” Won by the Union, Gettysburg was one of the turning points in the war that ended slavery and kept the states united. Today the need for prayer is as great as ever. Our nation again faces battlefields, along with an epidemic of broken homes, violence, sexual immorality and social strife. As the heroes of our nation did in the past, we must again bow our heads in prayer. We must ask the Lord to bless our leaders with wisdom and protection, and that we will have the fortitude to overcome the challenges at hand. If Roosevelt, the Pilgrims and Lincoln never underestimated the power of prayer, neither should we.

WHY PRAY?

1. We pray because we love God.

2. We pray because we depend on God.

3. We need to pray in order to resist temptation.

4. We need to pray because it is necessary for men to invite God to act in salvation.

5. We need to pray because God commands us to pray.

BIBLE VERSE PSALM 91:2

~~ I will say of the LORD, “He is my refuge and my fortress,
my God, in whom I trust

PRAYER

Almighty God, you are our Mighty Fortress, our refuge and the God in whom we place our trust.  As our nation faces great distress and uncertainty, we ask your Holy Spirit to fall afresh upon your people — convict us of sin and inflame within us a passion to pray for our land and its people.  Grant the leaders of our country an awareness of their desperate need of wisdom and salvation in You until sin becomes a reproach to all and righteousness exalts this nation.

Protect and defend us against our enemies and may the cause of Christ always prevail in our schools, courts, homes, and churches.  Lord God, send a spirit of revival and may it begin in our own hearts.

Remember America, we pray.  Remember the foundations on which this country was built.  Remember the prayers of our nation’s fathers and mothers, and do not forget us in our time of need.

In the name of our Savior, Jesus Christ, Amen.

This has me thinking that we all have changes that happen and we all find ways to adjust and re-align our life.  This happens constantly in education.  Changes.  New curriculum, new staff, new students, snow days, sick days, new years, new technologies.  The list could go on and on.  How we deal with it is what makes the difference.  We can try and keep things the same or we can try and adapt and work with the circumstances we are given.  In today’s world, technology is making a place and this is changing education.   The focus is not technology, the focus is on how to reach our digital learners.  I posted recently at my Lutheran Tech Teacher blog a little more about this after attending the LEA convocation.  Feel free to check it out.  Because so much is changing, it is hard to keep up with everything.  Find one thing you can try.  Learn it well, use it well and add more as you go.  Make little changes that you feel comfortable with and you may surprise yourself!   Happy Learning!

As LEA started I knew there would be people I would know and I ran into some of them.  I was able to listen to Dr. Bull’s presentation on Media Literacies and then that night got to sit next to Dr. Bull and another college friend Jeremy Pekari a pastor.  The Skit Guys are always funny!

Later that night I decided and was urged to go to the Rock Bottom Brewery for the tweetup.  This was a bunch of Lutheran Educators who are on twitter (and a few others).  It was great to meet some of the individuals that I have converse with for the first time in person.  @kevcreutz @gilmorekendra @karacornejo @alhelmy are all great people and I am glad to get to know them better in person.  As always it is great to see @dawblack.

Friday was actually a nervous day for me, as I was going to be presenting also.  I really enjoyed sitting in the two sessions before mine and hear some twitter friends talk and even learn a thing or two.  Then came my presentation on Podcasts, I am always self-conscious about stuff I do, but I guess I did an ok job for some, I had some said they enjoyed it afterwards.    Here is a link to my presentation – http://prezi.com/_xptfwzaiay0/broadcast-your-podcast/

Both night the food was good, the speakers and other stuff was great.  The key to this conference though was the background conversations going on in the twitterverse world.  Which comes to the bad part of the conference, the lack of WiFi.  Connecting and conversing during and after the conference is KEY to a successful conference.  Even now, a week later we have new Lutheran educators on Twitter and we are still sharing thoughts and ideas.

This is just my thoughts, I liked LEA, and can’t wait for the next one in 2014!

She says she was blogging out of secrecy to start off.  She didn’t use her whole name, didn’t put a location. And she blogged about anything and everything.

In essence, people are latching onto pieces of what I wrote without A. knowing any back story, and B. knowing the whole story. The student or parents who took it upon themselves to dig up my blog–and be assured that that is what happened, as they were looking for it and didn’t just stumble upon it–are the ones who started this fracas, and they also made sure that only pieces of the whole picture came to light. I’m sure the media helped with that second part, too. After all, a juicy story is more exciting to the masses.

HERE IS THE STORY.  YOUR A TEACHER, YOU WROTE NEGATIVELY ABOUT STUDENTS!  Ask yourself why did students or parents search more information about you?  What was going on in the classroom to make that happen?

Everyone gets angry, even Jesus cleared the temple and flipped tables.  But again, Jesus died for every single person he was angry at.  Would you?

Schools are stressful, Teaching is stressful, life is stress!  WE ALL GET THAT.  The change from teacher to principal has changed the type of stress I have, but I get it.  Life isn’t peachy everyday, and you don’t get a long with everyone.  THAT IS LIFE!

Anyone who thinks when they write a blog is going to be limited to a few is seriously mistaken.  Although I don’t expect people to read my blogs (except this one, YOU MUST READ THIS ONE!), I know people around the globe have stumbled and searched for terms in my blogs, and have visited them.  I remember one of my blog posts talked about English Speaking vs not speaking English.  I got a reader that commented a few times.  It wasn’t expected, but it happens.   THE WEB IS WIDE OPEN!

But the fact remains that every year, more and more, students are coming in less willing to work, to think, to cooperate. These are the students I was complaining about in my blog.

THE FACT REMAINS, YOUR THE TEACHER.  FIND A WAY TO ENGAGE THEM!  FIND A WAY TO CONNECT TO THEM!  EVERY STUDENT CAN LEARN!!!

I am a professional

That is debatable and questionable!

YES THIS IS A BIG DEAL, because our STUDENTS ARE BIG DEALS.  HOW WE HANDLE THEM AND CARVE THEM INTO BETTER HUMAN BEINGS IS A BIG DEAL!

To all the teachers out there, take this to heart, what you say is A BIG DEAL!

To read more of her postings, as she believes she is on a crusade now: http://www.nataliemunroe.com/

What does the word mean? To some it just means what textbook are you using. Usually that is the easiest way to define what our Curriculum is. I  would like to share with you 5 other definitions of the word curriculum:

A course of study (derived from the Latin “currere” meaning “to run a course”)

Course content, the information or knowledge that students are to learn

Planned learning experiences

Intended learning outcomes, the results of instruction as distinguished from the means (activities, materials) of instruction

All the experiences that students have while at school

I really like that last definition. All the experiences. When I was a teacher, some of the best time to learn was in between classes or while at recess. As a teacher and educator, we must look at four different type of curriculum.

The explicit curriculum – what schools list and document as their teachings through course work and school activities, including goals and aims, courses and lessons, knowledge, skills, and attitudes

The hidden curriculum – the behaviors, attitudes, and information that schools many unintentionally teach students such as outlooks toward authority, ideas about “success,” and internalized beliefs about works righteousness.

The null curriculum – what schools do not teach or make available to students including certain courses (such as anthropology or architecture) as well as certain outlooks, attitudes, and beliefs (such as concern for assorted social issues or political perspectives)

The co-curricular program – already acknowledge in the explicit curriculum above for schools who view curriculum in a holistic way; but sometimes distinguished from formal classroom work. (Consider whether or not you want to make this distinction.)

As a Christian school we must have essential Biblical imperatives.  We must blend intentionally faith and Scriptures into our daily lives.

Source: Planning for a Lutheran High School, The Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod. 1997.

This week’s article will be taking a look at one of the most useful free websites: the Internet Archive.  The Internet Archive (IA) project is a 501(c)(3) non-profit that is building an online digital archive of websites and other cultural artifacts.  Access to all of this is being provided free of charge to anyone who wants it.

IA is probably best known for the Wayback Machine, a searchable index of 150 billion web pages collected since the very beginnings of the World Wide Web.  The Wayback Machine is an excellent tool to locate information from defunct websites.  The index often includes many versions of a given site, gathered over a period of time.  I’ve used it both to recover data from lost sites and to find information that was once on a previous version of a website.  There are a few drawbacks to the Wayback Machine, however.  The most significant is that websites that make heavy use of dynamically generated content (php, Flash, Java, etc.) may not function as expected.  This is because, while the Wayback Machine might contain a site’s various pages, it may not contain the content from the site’s database that belongs on those pages.

The IA isn’t just the Wayback Machine, though.  It also contains a significant collection of video, music, audio, texts, and software.  Usage rights to the artifacts vary, but most are nearly unrestricted, allowing content to be shared, printed, and used in most non-commercial settings.  Artifacts are divided into various collections and contain things like Project Gutenberg, the Universal Library Project, live music concerts from hundreds of artists, radio programs, including Old Time Radio programs from the early 1900s, open source, freeware, and shareware software archives, classic television programming, full length feature films, and more.  Content is hosted in a variety of formats and many artifacts are offered in several versions.

The Archive is an amazing collection of often otherwise difficult to locate culturally significant artifacts that cover a variety of eras.  Content is offered in a multitude of formats, require a variety of helper applications.  A modern web browser, broadband Internet access, Adobe Reader, the free DjVu Browser Plug-in (used for reading some text files), and an media player application (like iTunes, Windows Media Player, and/or VLC) will be needed depending on the type of content you are trying to access.

The Internet Archive can be of use in almost any classroom setting.  History classes can benefit from audio, video, and text files from a wide variety of time periods, exposing students to primary source documents and expending their understanding of life in those time periods.  English/Literature classes can likewise benefit from access to the IA’s literature collection.  Teachers and students in other content areas will be able to locate artifacts related to their specific areas of interest.  Additionally, much of IA’s content can be re-used (mashed-up) to create new content by students and teachers alike.  This makes the IA a significant source of content for students doing art, video, or other projects that can benefit from multimedia.