My Life as a Mosquito

Today was a pretty cool day. My students have been working on their 5th Six Week's Video Project for about 5 weeks. They were itching to present them and to show the class. All were GREAT. It is amazing that they get better and better every year. But, technology and the human mind keeps advancing.

Don't let people convince you that kids get worse and more stupid every year. It is simply not true. I find that each year I teach the students are more engaged, philanthropic and have more of a sense of service to their community. I know people are going to read this and think I am diluted. It is simply my world and my observation and it is true of the students that I am very lucky to have.

Today at the end of one a video about Malaria (it kills a person in Africa every 30 seconds), the kids had a bit of fun:

The two students who were presenting had a message to the kids, donate to Nothingbutnets.net to help send nets to African families. $10 can get a net for a family. It saves lives.

Then they had a slide with a caption: "Because we all know mosquitoes are not as friendly as we think." (yep that's me. the class busted out laughing)

It made my day. I am a lucky teacher.

What Do Teachers Make?

I put this together for a training that we are doing in April. It's a bit of "Fresh Air" or an Ice breaker between parts of our training. It is called "What Do Teachers Make?" I adapted it from an email that made the rounds a few years ago. What do you think?

What Do Teachers Make

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Presentations Academic Work teaching inspiration

Note: I had no idea when I created this that it was an original poem created by Taylor Mali. He has a great story about it here: What Teachers Make - "Inspired Email Spam" versions
Original Poem here: What Teachers Make by Taylor Mali

Thanks to MsTeacher for pointing this out! Check out her awesome blog here

Six Phases of Teaching

I put this together tonight. I'm going to show it as an "ice breaker" or "fresh air" during my 2 day AVID training next month. It was originally an email that was sent to me a bunch of times by teachers a few years ago. I converted it to a power point, but it really works better in a video.

What do you think?


Six Phases of Teaching from fordee on Vimeo.