Give a man a fish...

This week was very uneventful. I believe the students were as ready for a break as the teachers were so everything was quiet and the students were agreeable and working on whatever they were assigned. I believe the most important aspect of this week was understanding the level to which the students want to participate. I started using an online classroom a little more than a week ago in one of my classes and I talked with my co-op about using it in other classes. There are one or two major issues with using an online classroom in a couple of classes that I have. First of all,the students do not have email addresses assigned by the school district and secondly in one of the classes over fifty percent of the students have IEPs and I wasn't sure that this group could handle creating a login and my co-op didn't think they could. I posed it to the students as this is something positive that we can do for the environment and we will save paper and ink. And when I gave them the instructions it was phrased that I would like you to go to this website and create a login. Again, I can not require that they do if they don't have an email address as I can't direct them to yahoo or gmail to create one. With that said, all but two students were able to create a login and even upload an assignment! I was so happy and they seemed to be very proud of this too. I guess the lesson is to maintain high expectations and remember, you'll never know until you try.

If I could do anything differently this week it would have been to help or guide a student early in the day and not wait until the end. I have this particular student in first period and seventh period and in our first period class he mentioned that he didn't know what he was going to do as he needed to mail out two letters of recommendation that day and the teachers he asked to write them forgot. I told him to write the letters and that I would talk with my co-ops about signing them. The co-ops were glad to help him as he is a good, conscientious student and gets good grades. When I told him to write the letters, he seemed confused as to what to write so I told him to check on line for sample letters and write one that pertained to him. I didn't realize he was so lost until late seventh period (there was 10 min. left in the day) when he asked the co-op to sign a piece of paper with a couple of paragraphs on it. He didn't have addresses, a date, a salutation, or a closing! Oooops! So, I did something that I shouldn't have but it was my holiday present to him... I took his paragraphs and turned them into two well written letters of reference. The major change I would have made is that I should have had him bring them to me mid-day so I could see how he was approaching this and where he needed help but I assumed that he would have been able to create a simple business letter. This was a very good lesson for me. I realized that business letters were probably not covered in his class as he is a good student and he would have known what was expected, at least in regard to formatting. This could have been a great lesson for him on learning how to write a business letter if he would have had more guidance. Instead, I assumed he knew how to do it and when I saw that he didn't, I did it for him. He was very grateful and I hope this helps him to get the scholarship that he was applying for, but I think I could have taught him how to do this which he could have used the rest of his life. "Give a man a fish and he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish and he eats for life."