TAKS Blues Diminished

A few of us gathered for the TAKS Monitoring Blues Brunch yesterday. Great food and fellowship! Many TAKS tales were shared and the conversation shared was warm and refreshing. Laughter was heard, and gently each of us was rejuvenated and somehow more prepared for the task ahead (TAKS Monitoring). Attitudes were uplifted. How nice it is to have human contact without distraction.
Who would have known that we would wake up to flooding across our great city this morning? After slipping on a pair of jeans and tennis shoes, it occured to me that it had been raining all night. I turned on the news only to discover that Paul Revere MS was in the worst hit area. In fact, I probably could not even exit the Sam Houston Tollway. Guess I won't be walking the halls today - prehaps tomorrow.
As I reflect on the sudden change today - I consider how many times I actually do accomplish what I set out to do each day. What are those obstacles that keep us from reaching our daily goals?

Technology or Literacy Issue?

While studying for my master's degree, I encountered lot of reading material about twenty first century learning. AFter surfing Route 21, I am completely convinced that acquiring my master's degree later in life certainly came with fringe benefits!! BTW - 50 rocks! Anyway- back to the blog -one of the resources I refer to (Teaching with the Internet Grades K-12: New Literacies for New Times by LEu, Leu, and Coiro) regularly poses the controversial question: Is learning how to use the Internet a technology issue, or a literacy issue? Has anyone out there flipped through the yellow pages lately to get a phone number? Have the sales of Key Maps possibly diminished now that competitors like Mapquest and Google maps have , shall we say, become the more convenient way to find a route? In less than a second thought - we could agree that the times are telling us that learning how to use the Internet is a literacy issue.
On another note, the authors conducted a study which concluded that the Internet contained more content related to the skills and strategies on state assessments than appeared in school textbooks. Well duh - this is probably no surprise to most, however, the elephant in the room is the biiiiiillions school districts spend on new text book adoptions. Did someone say HISD is starting the review process for a new ELA textbook?? How about them tamales?

Could it be that exercise really does affect our brain? After all we learned in Brain Rules, I decided it was worth giving it a try! It has been my habit throughout my career years, (and that would be farily significant at this point!) I have never taken the luxury of a break. There's never time for a break - too much work to do, too many deadlines to meet, too many expectations of myself! It simply was not part of my daily routine.

That changed in mid-January of this year. I began to take heed to Mr. Medina's brain rule # 1: Exercise boosts brain power!. It sounded good - made great sense, but surely I could prove him incorrect! I began to plan a walking break whenever I was on campus mid-morning and mid-afternoon. This indeed was a 10 - 12 minute power-walk. At first I felt very guilty - how could I do this on HISD time? Then I consoled myself my reminding myself that full-time employees are actually granted a break in the morning and in the afternoon. My husband works at Fluor, and they REQUIRE all of their employees to take a 15 minute break in the morning AND afternoon. We're actually doing HISD a favor - by increasing our productivity level!

Well, my little mid-day sprees soon became a habit. I return to my seat feeling amazingly energized; ready to take on the world! My energy level is greatly elevated and my mind is cleared. The stress is reduced, and my productivity level is on the rise! I discovered that I actually improved my ability to "get things done"! Of course, a great little side benefit is the loose-fitting clothes and several pounds disappearing around the waistline!

I encourage everyone to try this - it would be awesome to see you out there in the corridors! Boost your brain power today!

Hello C&I Friends,

Some of you are already familiar with the website, readwritethink.org. Recently I was doing some exploring and I am amazed at how useful this site is not only for ELA folks, but for all the content folks! One of the absolutely coolest pull down menus is called Student Resources. Here there are a myriad of activities and strategies to build literacy skills across the content areas. There is another tab called Calendar; this pull-down allows one to learn about historic events that occurred on each day of the month. What a great way for history teachers to focus on meaningful events! I have found that often I am so busy in trainings trying to make it through the agenda that I neglect to pass on these websites to our teachers. It's time to make a concerted effort to get great websites into the hands of some of our most important people in the district - our teachers! Btw - I'm playing with the site - hope you like my "friends photo" LOL!