Typeit4me is a program that I have heard about but never tried, until today. It is cool. With the "Utah Pandemic Flu" that will inevitably kill us all, I have had a lot of sick students. So, just about every day, I get an email from the attendance office that says something like, Teachers,Student has been out ill this week and homework has been requested.Please send his work to the Attendance Office, his brother will take ithome today. ThanksI have a system in place for this very thing, and I like it. I have a website with all the info that my students need to complete an assignment. I do this on purpose because all but 2 of my students (and they are sisters) have internet access and home, and everyone can access the internet here at school. This way, when students come and ask me what we did yesterday, I point them to the website, and say, "EVERYTHING you need is there!"So, when I get an email from attendance, now, I can just respond with a few characters and it will punch in all the info for me. It is wonderful. Here is a video. I don't know if my computer is acting up today or if it this program, but things have been incredibly sluggish since I installed Typeit4me. Earlier, when the prefpane was open, it iStat was showing that the prefpane was using 90% of my memory! Yikies! Now you can see it is just Firefox. Double yikies!Uploaded with plasq's Skitch!Have a good life.

Here is a quick breakdown of my day:Herd students to classcall students and parents to talk about tardies and other referralssupervise lunch (Headache city)Bust some more kids after lunchHerd students out of the buildingAll in all, I like it. I think I am going to enjoy being an administrator. I have learned a lot, and hopefully Monday, I will get to sit in on some teacher evaluations. I don't think we will have time to drive around doing our safe walking routes to school.I busted a lot of kids today, and the result was mostly ISS (in school suspension) and lunch detention. I don't particularly like those punishments, but it is better than writing an essay. I would like to spend time with each kid and figure out how to help them change their behavior, but it is very hard when you've got 20 kids you need to talk to, and you spend much of your time waiting for them to come down. It is very frustrating. I think it would be more effective to figure out why these kids are misbehaving, and then make sure that I am doing something to help them stop their behavior--not just give them a one-size fits all punishment. I think most kids wouldn't really mind getting out of class for an entire day. Out of school suspension would have been great for me when I was growing up because I didn't want to go to school anyway. I wish that there were a way to know what would help a kid realize that they need to change behaviors. That is tough. I would like to do something like circle justice (warning: legal and boring link). Circle justice tries to heal people, and not just punish them. When you punish people, they still are mad and hate others. When you heal them, they are able to forgive. It would be very hard to implement in real life, but if it would make students change, that would be wonderful. However, some kids realize how much it sucks to sit by yourself at lunch and not be with your friends. For instance one kid has been tardy a lot. She needs to get to class on time. They have these behavior packets for different bad behaviors, and they read something, answer the questions, and then turn it back in. I gave this girl lunch detention so she could work on it then, and she finished it during her class right before lunch and was really mad when I made her stay in detention during lunch anyway. That was effective for her, I hope. And one girl who was in ISS was really bored by the end of the day. She might think again before doing something stupid. So, I don't know yet how I feel about all discipline stuff. I will have to mull over it more and get back to you. If you've got an idea on this, let me know. Have a Good Life.

As I sit here typing this blog on my wife's iPod Touch, I am rethinking the idea that I had about iPods in the classroom. It would be pretty hard to convince some people to invest in a whole classroom set of iPods. So what I am thinking is that if I can get five or six (still less than two grand) then I can do something else that I am interested in doing. What I really want to do is have some learning areas where they can have some self-directed learning experiences. I would like to set it up so that they can go to the different stations and do different things. I would like to have a station for reading, one for writing, one for web stuff. There are a lot of possibilities that we could do but it would be really neat to have them work on some things all by themselves. So I am going to focus on getting a few for the classroom and that is it. The district has mini-grants available, and our PTA is doing some grants for teachers, so I think that I might be able to get some money to buy them. Then we could use them two or three times per week, and that would be really near. Plus, we could see how well it actually works before investing in a classroom set. By the way, this takes a bit longer to type on the Touch, but I don't think it's that bad. The software does a great job of correcting my typos. There are a few times where it gets it wrong, but it is very accurate.Have a Good Life.

Here is a rundown:Announced when it was time to change classesbusted some kids on tardiesbusted some kids for fightingdealt with an upset teacher (three times)gave a kid a hugforgot to release everyone at 2:30So, today was a much better day for administrative duties. It seemed more real than last week and I am glad, because last Thursday was not that fun. One upset teacher did not want to burden me with anything, but I told her to just go for it, I've got to be baptized by fire, I guess. She has been dealing with a student that is very passive aggressive since the first quarter, and she has just now reached the breaking point. I talked to her and realized that he is doing things to make sure that he doesn't look like he is screwing around, but that he is "not one to make trouble" (his words). I realized that there is a lot of passive aggressive behavior going on at schools and kids love it so much (and adults, too) because it is easy to get away with things. I think that we ought to have a training about passive aggressive behavior because almost every problem I dealt with had to do with that. Some were more aggressive than passive, but most are things where the kids can get away with things and still try to seem innocent. For example, one kid was "helping" a kid gather his spilled papers by pushing them to him with his feet. Right, that is a good way to "help" someone that you have had problems with numerous times before. Anyway, it was pretty silly. I think it would be very beneficial if all middle school teachers and administrators had training in identifying and dealing with passive aggressive behavior. It just makes sense to arm them with some knowledge about what it is. Maybe they already know, but I didn't understand it until Leigh VandenAkker explained it to me last summer. On Friday, I explained to some of my students what the passive aggressive behavior was that they were exhibiting, and once they knew, they seemed willing to try to change it (we will see ;).In a more humorous note, I had to be the bell ringer today. That meant that I had to get on the loudspeaker and announce when it was time to move to the next class. When you get on, it makes a doorbell sound and then you can make your announcement. What I should have done is just let it make the doorbell sound and not say anything. At the end of the day, I forgot to ring the bell to let everyone out, so it was two minutes late. Some teachers decided they didn't care that I was late and they let the students out anyway. I got on at 2:32 and said, "Oh, I forgot to ring the last bell! Everyone get out of the building fast!" I thought it was funny, but didn't hear anyone laugh ;(.So, I know that you have to be careful when touching students in any way, but I gave a kid a hug today. He seemed like he needed it, and so I gave him a hug when he apologized to me for being non-compliant. I was already reprimanded by the school psychologist, so now I know. Oh, well, I am just an intern. The school psychologist also mentioned that he got tears in his eyes after I gave him a hug. Was it a good thing to do? I don't know, maybe? Was it bad? I don't know, maybe. In the immortal words of Michael Scott, "Am I a hero? [pause] I really can't say, but yes."Have a Good Life.

Here is my question of the day for my administration program: Why don't we learn anything relating to dealing with students (or parents)? That is a huge issue for administrators. We learn interpersonal skills and that is great, but there really should be a class on dealing with kids and working through attitudes, anger, depression, etc. Every administrator that I have known has dealt more with kids than with teachers. We have all these courses about dealing with teachers and making them better (and maybe they teach this because they want us to deal with teachers more), but the reality is that we are so busy dealing with kids that we don't have time to make it to the classroom and observe and help teachers. Maybe they think that because we are teachers we already know how to deal with students. But it is very different when you are an administrator and not just a teacher. I should think about this more.

Yesterday, one of the teachers that was having a problem and discussed it with me gave some good feedback to other people. She didn't say anything to me about it, but other people sure did. She came in and talked to me and I sat there and listened, said that I would do what I could, and then followed up with her later in the day and this morning. All I really did was listen and make sure that she knew I cared about resolving the situation. That is important. The hard thing will be making sure that I remember that when I am an administrator.Have a Good Life.

Here is a video in two parts that this college (Abilene Christian University) produced called "Connected." The funniest part is that it is playing the video on the iPhone is not shown in widescreen! Classic. Just goes to show that not only is this a crappy way to get people to come to your school, but it also shows that not everyone is on board with this, which is how it has to work if it is to succeed. The other thing that is hilarious about this is that they totally overlook (at least in this video) any educational possibilities that exist for the iPhone/iTouch. "This new iPhone is so great, it shows me how to get to class late on my first day! Thanks, ACU!"The video is actually pretty funny, and makes me want one for each of my students even less. I guess it shows that maybe my dreams won't really happen because then we would all be dorks. Thanks ACU!Have a Good Life.

I have pink eye. And yes, it sucks.The other thing that sucks is that tonight is parent teacher conferences, or as we say in our school, student-led conferences. The students come in and present information from each of their classes to their parents, and instead of all the the teachers sitting in the gym and getting monstrous headaches, the students come to our rooms and talk about things that are going on in their classes. It is a much better setup. I like these conferences a lot. I really like being there and talking to the parents. Since I have pink eye, and my wife and kids are all sick as well, I decided that I should come home and help them. When everyone is sick, just being there is a lot of help. So, I decided that I would set my school laptop up in my room and be home with my family. I am doing it through Skype. Below is a picture of what it looks like while I am waiting for people to come talk to me.I must admit that it is awesome to be able to do this. So cool.Have a Good Life.

The class with the worst behavior is sitting there working and has been working since I told them to start working. AMAZING! I didn't think that it was possible, but they are all reading their books just like they should. Nobody is goofing off, and they are all doing what they should. This never happens. It probably helps that a bunch of people are absent, but I think it is also because I am letting them read out loud in groups. They are doing just what they should. Awesome. They like reading out loud more than to themselves even though I think it is harder. This group of kids, though, I think they just like interacting with other people. Have a Good Life.

I am surprised that I have already updated on Twitter 500 times! I didn't think that I had used it that much, but I have. I really like it. I have learned so much it is just crazy. There are a lot of people floating good ideas around. I would really like to have documented everything that I have learned, but there is just so much that I have learned, I wouldn't even know where to begin.Have a Good Life.