Standard 1: Educators value and care for all students and act in their best interests.

Posted on September 24, 2010 by John Ames

Killarney Indoor Track Meet Grades 8 & 9Artifact: Halloween Student Day Killarney Secondary School: October 29, 2010.

Reflection: This special day has been a tradition at Killarney Secondary School for the last twenty four years; it was originated to ‘burn up’ the energy of students preparing for Halloween and is for grades eight and nine students. What I found very touching about this particular artifact is the mindful attention the instructor depicted in the photo towards students with learning exceptionalities. What I noticed about the behaviour of all the other students that moved me so much was the utter acceptance and inclusion of the above pictured students. I had made friends with one of the teachers of special education while on my practicum – Kathy Hartman – and learned a great deal about the problems and difficulties instructors of students with exceptionalities face. Kathy and I are meeting outside of the school with other teachers to discuss and exchange information about our interests and community work. I was so impressed with the information and exemplar models I have witnessed in how education has shifted positively in the things I value and care about in terms of ‘fair treatment’ for students and all people since my attendance in school (many years ago) that I am now incorporating this into my own teaching philosophy as well as choice of special education as a teaching diploma. Further, from this experience and commencing my special education diploma, I have met a special education professor, Dr Marion Porath, whom shares an interest of mine close to my personal teaching philosophy of ‘community-based learning’ – (community inspired lessons whereby community subject matter experts work directly with students and their teachers in schools, as well as students learning directly in their communities) – undertaking restoration and powder coating projects which will mirror two California based educational successes – Team Isetta and Team Sprite. Community-based learning is valuable in my view as it matters little on a student’s academic abilities, but rather fosters community involvement and emotional growth for all students based upon interest in tangible, real life issues.

Posted in 01: Value and Care for All Children | Tagged | Leave a comment

Standard 2: Educators are role models who act ethically and honestly.

Posted on September 24, 2010 by John Ames

The Beaty Biodiversity Museum Official Opening Day

Artifact: Blue Whale Skeleton – Beaty Museum – Opening date, October 16, 2010.

Reflection: As an Museum Educator volunteer with the Beaty Museum I have met numerous instructors and subject matter specialists interested in teaching both students and public about the Earth’s vast biodiversity and humanity’s place within it. The museum hosts over 2 million specimens and serves a vital role in building community based in biodiversity understanding and global conservation principles. During the time being at the Beaty I have connected my host school’s, Killarney Secondary, Environmental Group with the Beaty; and upon my return to my practicum I brought information to Killarney’s library and science instructors, popularizing the opening and mission of the Beaty to students whom I taught. Beaty is an exciting and valuable resource for all people, and one I shall be continuing to use in my teaching philosophy and future practice.

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Artifact: Website of previous business partnership with Associated Cab Ltd. – Red Deer & Calgary, Alberta.

Reflection: As a younger person, I was a manager for this firm for 5 years and oversaw the interests of the Red Deer interests and employment of about 130 people. As the firm’s manager I learned discipline and courtesy in how to work with a wide variety of people — the public, media, clients, employees, and owner operators. The skills I learned in carrying out my responsibilities have educated in interacting with students and parents in my teaching practice, but more specifically, made me keenly aware of the relationship of work, income, and quality of family life — the core of why we work. In carrying this ethic of work discipline daily in the classroom, I experienced a grade 8 student who was very keen on becoming an auto-mechanic, following his father’s chosen profession, yet was slipping academically in his course expectations. In two calls with his mother I was able to get to the core of the student’s course difficulties; his mother and I were able to devise a strategy to ‘coach’ the young student in deepening both his interest in mechanics (visiting his father’s shop on a daily basis) while also improving his grades. After these calls I worked closely with this student to ensure he had the time and understanding to complete all of his assignments: in three short weeks his grade moved from a 35% range to 67%, simply by completing unfinished work and applying himself in a disciplined way. The result was a happier student and mother.

Posted in 02: Act as Role Models | Tagged | Leave a comment

Standard 3: Educators understand and apply knowledge of student growth and development.

Posted on September 24, 2010 by John Ames

 

Artifact: One Room School House in Wells B.C. Grades K-7.

Reflection: I had opportunity to teach for three weeks in Quesnel School District during the last three weeks of my practicum, and applied in a morning debate an exercise that had been a success in a grade 8 class in Vancouver — a puppet show that uses course curriculum as a base. In the Quesnel application the instructor and I decided to use a community debate on whether snowmobiles should be permitted to use in-town trails — trails normally used by cross-country skiers and snow-shoers. What was unique about this class, however, was that the students included all ages – K-7 – and the puppet show had to be engaging enough to catch the interests of this diverse age group. Task in hand, the instructor and I divided up the roles of the students, assigning a judging role to the grade 6 and 7 students, the remaining to developing pro and con arguments to permit snowmobiles. In the end the show worked exceedingly well and the judges, based on he information provided by the wishes and information provided by the younger students, decided to set mixed use for the trails with speed limits, and issuing permits for entrance. It was further decided by the student judiciary that care and welfare of the wildlife also using the local parks had to be monitored by the community, and if harm was noted that snowmobiles would be more heavily restricted. All of this puppet show was done in 45 minutes, including the drawing and character of each puppet (done on plain brown paper bags), which made the exercise agreeable and suitable for future teaching and high student engagement. I was pleasantly surprised to find that students of kindergarten age were so well adapted to the exercise, and appeared to learn a great deal from engaging with the older students in the class.
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Artifact: Poster advert for Cornelia Oberlander’s UBC talk on buildings and our environment.

Reflection: Cornelia Oberlander is a renowned architect who worked closely with Arthur Erickson. Her focus in this talk was how we, as a society, can construct environmentally sustainable housing and institutional buildings at reasonable cost. Environmental education is a big part of my educational philosophy, and the information I learned from this presentation reaffirmed my commitment to teaching students pragmatic and applied techniques to build sustainable, environmentally friendly homes, schools, community sites, and places of work. Cornelia’s inspiration and enthusiasm in this field is something that will be regular part of my teaching of socials studies.

Posted in 03: Childrens Growth and Development | Tagged | Leave a comment

Standard 4: Educators value the involvement and support of parents, guardians, families and communities in schools.

Posted on September 24, 2010 by John Ames

Social Anxiety Disorder Brochure

Artifact: This artifact is a self-help guide for parents, students and educators on where to find information on social anxiety disorders.

Reflection: This brochure was specifically developed to work with parents, students and other educators when my teaching commences and resources for students suffering from social anxiety are lacking. It is a means to assist parents of students with learning disabilities caused by social anxiety identify strategies on how to help their children cope and learn better.

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Artifact: Drawing by kindergarten student in Nazko B.C.

Reflection: As with my reflection I mention above in standard 2 working with a mother to aid her son to boost his grades, this artifact reflects a situation I encountered in the absence of a parent being available. To give context to the situation I experienced in the absence of a parent being available, the above artifact was developed by a sponsor instructor working with a very young kindergarten student who became quiet and withdrawn from playing with the other students during a physical education lesson. I had been guiding the young students whom the student was playing in playing a form of softball that was suited for youngsters. The softball had been hit by another student and went past the student who later became quiet, something which appeared to trigger the quiet behaviour. Somewhat distressed by the young student switching off and out of interacting with anyone, the sponsor teacher and his teaching aid eventually came over, where upon I explained the situation. Not able to get to the bottom of things themselves, the teacher and his aid directed the student to a bench to sit things out until she was ready to return to th class. Lunch break came and went, as did the time; after about an hour and a half went by I saw the teacher communicating with the young student, at a certain point asked me over; he told me the student had something to tell: that she was sorry she made me worry. Naturally accepting what the young student said and relieved to see her go off to rejoin her classmates, I asked the instructor how he had got the student to come out her shell. He produced the above depiction, and told me that since the student could not write he asked her to draw what was the matter. The child drew that in the morning she was happy, but by the time the softball game had come about she had become sad. She wanted her mother and did not understand why she she could not go home, where she wished to be; however, the problem of her mother being at work and not available meant that myself and the other teachers had to intervene to do what we could to calm the child. Through the drawing and discussion the strategy worked, and it something that we could all share with other teachers in future situations and with other parents when they encountered quiet children who did not wish to speak. I was so impressed by this approach of communicating with the student I asked the instructor where he learned such a technique: to my surprise he said that he had just invented it! We both chuckled, where upon I immediately adopted the approach to communicate with students whether young or old, learning that drawings can communicate emotion every bit as well as words — given the right context.

Posted in 04: Role of Parents and Home | Tagged | Leave a comment

Standard 5: Educators implement effective practices in areas of planning, instruction, assessment, evaluation and reporting.

Posted on September 24, 2010 by John Ames

Artifact: “Teach-In” Ancient Chinese Philosophies

Reflection: This lesson, based upon the creation of puppets by students made from plain paper bags, was derived from the success of a grade 11 Social Studies class on Canada’s Post-War Prosperity.  Students we asked to create a short, one minute play, on their pre-selected ancient Chinese philosophy. Research for this project was based on the curriculum text and internet study, with the requirement that characterization of the philosopher and content be based on primary and secondary evidence from the text book and internet. Students were exceedingly engaged in this project from the start; students had opportunity to let their imaginations go free with both the creation of the individual puppets as well as the play script.  Assessment was based similar to the assessment strategies learned from the teaching of my grade 11 socials class — an initialized draft — and student peers and myself jointly grading presentations based upon a 12 point rubric that covered clarity of content and realism of form (presentation). This project was very well received by students and teacher peers; the concept was shared with other teachers, including the school’s two librarians who wished to see this type learning employed more often in socials as well as other disciplines.
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Artifact: “Teach-In” – Social Studies 11 Post-War Prosperity in Canada

Reflection: In this lesson I wanted to take learning further with students, readyig them for their year-end final exam; the concept of a teach-in (student driven lesson)  was to make more concrete the definitions and functions of various institutions and their acronyms, such as the U.N. and W.T.O., touched upon  in the curriculum. The vehicle of lesson delivery was the creation of student-group transparencies which defined and gave and outline of what the specific institution was in terms of its history and relevance, especially to Canada. The lesson exercise included a research component by each group, which was then transferred to a large project page as a draft; students initialized their research and draft contributions for assessment. Each talk was one minute in duration, with assessments done by both students observing the presentation and myself, everyone using a common rubric score based on six categories out of a total score of 24.  All and all this approach to secondary instruction was highly successful, so much so that I used the same approach of ‘teach-in(s)’ for a grade 9 and grade 8 classes.

Posted in 05: Effective Teaching Practices | Tagged | Leave a comment

Standard 6: Educators have a broad knowledge base and understand the subject areas they teach.

Posted on September 24, 2010 by John Ames

Artifact: St. George’s Kermis With The Dance Around The Maypole (1620-25), by Pieter the Younger Brughel.

Reflection: Conveying broad concepts, such as citizenship and principles of democratic governance, often prove difficult when introducing students to historical issues via text-based materials. In terms of creating effective hooks or lesson in themselves, I have found success in teaching such topics through art works, music, sculpture, and wood etchings directly from the period under study. I often use art, for example, to inform students of breadth of historical epochs, music, paintings, literature to immerse them in ways of seeing the world which are different from that of our age. This painting by Brughel the Younger was especially useful in providing students with an experience of fun enjoyed by labouring people in Europe while teaching socials 8 on the medieval period, whether it be the lowlands of Holland, Gemany, or England. I have found that students are keen with learning about history in this way, and moreover, it provides a window to model contemporary art which students may be interested in on masters of bygone ages. This particular painting was done in a period of European history that arguably forms the modern roots of our values, beliefs and knowledge of our democratic society. One excellent example of this is the English Revolution of the 1650s, where monarchy gave way to republic, and republic to limited monarchy. This is something that is a repeated theme in social studies’ lessons and unit plans – democratic citizenship – and I have found the above methods an important way to be able to convey the origins of such ideas in order to build solid foundations in student understanding of modern social democracy.

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Artifact: Website of the Department of English, University of Alberta.

Reflection: From 1998 to 2002 I taught English Literature to undergraduate students at Simon Fraser University and University of Alberta. The relevance of this breadth of learning has inspired me as an instructor to develop and deepen student understanding on topics of history and literature at the secondary level — especially in areas that foster the values, beliefs and knowledge of our democratic society. I have found in my teaching practice that students often wish to begin learning in areas they know best and move ‘outwards and backwards (historically)’ to link their knowledge with new domains of knowledge. This is a practice I am continually honing and intend to fully employ in my teaching now and in the future.

Posted in 06: Subject Areas | Tagged | Leave a comment

Standard 7: Educators engage in career-long learning.

Posted on September 24, 2010 by John Ames

Artifact: Philippine Organic Harvest Brochure

Reflection: I produced this small pamphlet for my good friend whom I am involved with in assisting Philippine farmers get fair prices for their coffees, cocoa, sugar, and coconut products. Helping farmers secure money for their communities helps build schools, clean water supplies, health care and libraries. Most supermarkets now carry wide varieties of fair trade, organic products, as citizens recognize the direct value their purchases make for people in third world countries. It was my intent to start a fair trade club at Killarney school, benefiting, I hoped many students directly whose families immigrated to Canada from third world countries, as well as educate all other students about the global issues of what fairly traded goods and services means to third world citizens. Although I did not have quite enough time to complete all the steps required to bring wholesale fair trade products into Killarney, I did meet with the purchasing manager of Killarney’s student run kiosk-market, CougarMart, and found she was incredibly favourable to the idea of switching the market’s goods to fair trade products. I will be returning to Killarney this autumn to follow up another project I am working on with technical teachers, where upon I hope to be able to also finish up this fair trade mini-project, whcih is slated to be linked to Killarney’s Environmental Club.

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Artifact: Ken Robinson & The Royal Society for the Arts 2010.

Reflection: I discovered this wonderful learning facility – The Royal Society for the Arts (RSA) – last autumn while researching for an in-class presentation: I’ve not been able to ignore it since and have regularly told friends and other teachers about it since learning of it. The RSA, similar to TED Talks, focuses strongly on Renaissance style learning (the United Kingdom’s version of 21st Century Learning), fusing topics as diverse as physics with literature. Although internet based, which draws certain criticism of quality sources a times, I believe in the case of institutions like the RSA, TED talks, and the Khan Academy, great hope lies not only for educators, such as myself, but of global connection – students with students – in an era previously unknown. In this sense the internet and resources such as the RSA, provide a base of community and service based learning that holds great opportunity for humanity.

Posted in 07: Life-long Learning | Tagged | Leave a comment

Standard 8: Educators contribute to the profession.

Posted on September 24, 2010 by John Ames

Artifact: “Re-ordering Creation: Materialism, Monism, and the Scientific Iconoclasm of Eighteenth Century Literature”: Restoring the Mystery of the Rainbow: Literature’s Refraction of Science.

Reflection: In 1999 I attended an international conference on Literature and Science at the University of Leiden, in Leiden, Holland. The conference was a seminal moment in the evolution of my teaching, and with the publication of the proceedings in Restoring the Mystery of the Rainbow: Literature’s Refraction of Science, a valued contribution to the practice of teaching.

In “Re-ordering Creation . . .” my main focus was on the circle of scientific writers in England and France who were intersecting the ideas of materialism (a specific philosophic view of science based in ‘naturalism’) with literary productions and social change; specifically, John Thelwall and Erasmus Darwin – two minor English poets of the late-18th century – figured prominently in this study. During the period in which I delivered the paper, discussions in academic circles on the topic of scientific hybridity fusing reform literature were limited, and in this sense, and as far as I am aware, not many new contributions have been made. I am considering continuing this work as a graduate student, as I feel the research is invaluable for assisting students of all ages to understand more deeply the intricacies of how scientific thought affects contemporary thought.

In terms of future teaching, the lessons I learned from both delivering this paper, meeting other academics involved in this field of research, and publishing with an international publisher, have left an indelible effect upon the way in which I teach humanities as a whole.

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Artifact: Courier Newspaper Summer 2010 – Sharon Burrows and the Society for Creative Anachronism.

Reflection: I met Sharon Burrows after reading this article done on her and the Society for Creative Anachronism by Tom Sandborn. Sharon is a specialist in page illumination for replicating medieval texts – an art form which is not easily acquired through any formal institutions of learning that I am aware. I have asked Sharon if she would come to schools to teach secondary students, as I believe students will value learning how to make primary colours using local elements. Such practice will assist students build confidence and independence, while keeping a most interesting tradition from the middle ages.

Posted in 08: Contributions to the Profession | Tagged | Leave a comment

Hello world!

Posted on September 15, 2010 by John Ames

Welcome to UBC Blogs. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!

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