Literacy for the iGeneration

I did my stand up routine this week to go over classroom management, behavior management, and the relationship to literacy assessment. It was way too much teacher talk. We then worked on planning for the first two weeks of school. Students will be posting those to their wikis and hopefully use some of it when they actually go to teach. I really didn’t do enough with linking literacy, literacy assessment to classroom management and behavior. In hindsight, I wish I had shown the following clips. I think it would have made the point so much better than my blathering on did.

I made the point in one class, but not the other that behavior problems often are related to literacy issues. If a student is struggling, he or she often acts out. It’s safer to be thought lazy, or “bad” than dumb.

At least there is always next year.

Up the Down Staircase

Blackboard Jungle 

The beautiful thing about these clips is that they’re from old movies. The point is that the issues teachers are dealing with today, aren’t new. The teens portrayed in these two films are now old enough to be parents or maybe even grandparents. So if Harry Wong and all those other classroom management/behavior management gurus had the answers, why are we still struggling? I think the issues are muh deeper and something we need to continue to explore.