Joann's blog

In college and graduate school, fledgling teachers learn about classroom management, different types of instructional methods, and lots of other pedagogical tools to help prepare them for life in their own classrooms. There are various situations that can crop up in the classroom, however, for which teachers have little or no preparation. School violence, drug and alcohol abuse by students (or parents), and divorce are a few issues that some teachers may have to address at some point in their careers.

Every year the media latches on to some "new" statistic that either highlights American students' academic successes or reiterates their failure against European and Asian counterparts on standardized test scores. It’s a fairly predictable event, and the pendulum swings both ways – up one minute, and down the next. One troubling trend, however, seems to have some teeth. Reading scores for U.S. students have shown little improvement in recent years, despite national efforts to boost children’s basic reading skills.

On March 3, scores of mushers and their dog teams will kick off the 39th Iditarod dog sled race in Alaska. The mushers come from all walks of life – farmers, veterinarians, lawyers, biologists, etc. The race is not for the faint of heart, covering 1,049 miles of inhospitable terrain in often hazardous weather conditions. Portions of the race course follow centuries-old Native American trails, which were later used by fur traders and speculators in the Alaska gold rush in the 19th century. Dog sleds were originally used on the trails out of necessity, to deliver supplies between settlements and trading posts as Alaskan seaports became icebound in winter.

One summer when I was about 5 or 6 years old, I obsessively collected bees. My favorites were bumblebees – fat, fuzzy, and all around adorable. I kept them in glass canning jars – one bee per jar – that had been filled with red clover and had air holes punched through the lids. I loved looking at them, watching them suck nectar from the clover, and buzzing around the jar. Sometimes I had pangs of conscience, watching them in their little glass prisons, and always let them go after a day or two of captivity. There were some casualties along the way for which I felt guilty, but my fascination with them was too strong to give up the collecting.

In fifth grade, some of my friends and I created a cipher in order to pass notes in class. It wasn’t a terribly sophisticated cipher, but it was effective enough to foil the class busybody, who constantly scanned the classroom for miscreants. Many years later, I ripped through the Sherlock Holmes story The Adventure of the Dancing Men, which reminded me of how much fun codes and ciphers can be. It’s a topic that has a long and interesting history, and instantly captures most students’ attention.

At some point or other, a teacher is bound to hear the dreaded student comment “What good is this? When will I ever need this in life?” When students don’t see how subject matter applies to their personal lives – either now or in the future – they often become disengaged from the material and tune out. It’s a frustrating experience for both teachers and students, and a problem that’s plagued educators for centuries. How can teachers demonstrate the importance and relevance of subject matter to their students?

Special education is a term that covers a large range of student abilities and disabilities. Most special education teachers work with students with mild to moderate disabilities, which allow the students to learn alongside "regular" students in inclusive classrooms. The teachers and aides that work with students with special needs generally modify the existing curriculum in order to meet the student's individual needs. These students may require additional time when completing tasks, as well as adaptations in the way the content is delivered and how work is completed.

One of my favorite guilty pleasures as a kid was to curl up on the couch with a bowl of popcorn and watch cheesy old movies on TV – the cheesier the better. Anything by Ed Wood was good, as well as the early Godzilla movies. My all-time favorite, though, was Gorgo, a monster who emerged from the sea to wreak havoc on anything in its path. The thought of something utterly unknown and foreign under the sea was an irresistible thought as a kid, and something that continues to fascinate me today.

While most students start learning to read maps in early elementary school, more in-depth instruction on how communities are actually designed and constructed are often overlooked. City planning (or urban planning) is the process of designing human settlements, from the smallest of towns to large-scale metropolitan areas. It involves a wide swath of subject areas, including engineering, architecture, economics, geography, sociology, ecology, design, law, and politics. In a nutshell, the goal of city planning is to confirm the orderly development of communities and surrounding regions.

This week we’re very excited to announce that we’re unveiling a new and improved Gateway. While more information on the new features and capabilities of the site will be featured in the future, Peggy and I decided to welcome new Gateway users this week by discussing our respective columns, and what you can expect to find here. So my column this week deviates from its usual format in that I won’t be offering profiles of resources per se; that format will resume next week.