Is teaching all about Control?

“Do you have control over your class?” “ She does not have control over her class.” “ He does not control his class at all.” “ You need control over your students.” I have heard questions and statements like these a lot in my teaching career. It would appear that teaching is all about control, control, control. It is not. It is about building relationships with students. Learning follows. Get away from the “mind set” of control. Then sit back and watch the results.

For more on this topic see Beyond Discipline: From Compliance to Community, Alfie Kohn, http://amzn.to/kLSQzD as recommended by Scott McLeod below. @mcleod

A Short Conversation With…Greta Sandler @gret

How long have you been teaching?
I’ve been an English as a second language teacher for about 8 years. I used to teach young adults at the university level and then moved into elementary education. Teaching kids has made a huge difference for me. It’s such a gift to be able to reach out for them and help them flourish!

I’m still here, thinking.

I haven’t blogged much lately. However, I did have a very productive blogging period from January to April. I don’t have much to say right now but I’m still here, thinking. The end of the year is always busy with exams, paper work, etc. I am tired. We have lots of daylight, too. This always throws off my sleeping habits a little. I am sleepy a lot, as well as my students. But I’m still here.

6 things about my school.

1. We don’t have any cross-town school rivals. We are the only game in town.
If we want to play a sport against another high school, we have to fly to them or they fly to us.

2. We do have buses. Some students, however, choose to use their snowmobiles or 4 wheelers (in the fall) to get to school.

3. We do not get as many snow days as people might think. I think we had 1.5 so far this year.

4. Students call teachers by their first names. They call me Brian, not Mr. Barry. (I love that.)

5. My students’ first language is Inuktitut.

6. The grade nines go on 2 “day” trips a year. The first trip we learn how to build an Igloo; The second trip we go ice fishing. This happens in April.

11 reasons why I blog.

1 I blog to discover a deeper understanding of why I feel the way I do about a topic.

2. I blog to challenge the way I feel about a topic.

3. I blog to get feedback from others.

4. I blog to keep thinking and reflecting about education.

5. I blog to fight the resistance- My lizard brain.

6. I blog to be heard.

7. I blog so that I can share with others.

8. I blog to get to know others.

9. I blog to connect with the world.

10. I blog so that I can share posts with students. They get a deeper understanding of why I teach the way I do, why I conduct the class the way I do, why I do what I do.

11. I blog because I can.

Adding tabs and pages to Blogger

Recently it became necessary to add other pages to my blog in order organize similar themed posts. I came across this article by Quick Online Tips and decided to share it in a post. I have made a few changes to the original because their suggestions had a few kinks for me. Enjoy.

How to Create Pages and Tabs in Blogger

How can you create pages in Google Blogger blogging platform? Well Blogger introduced the ability to create pages in Blogger recently and now all bloggers can easily create pages.

Pages are a key way to highlight important information pages on your blog and are not published in the blog timeline. WordPress has long had pages and Blogger was lacking in this essential feature for a long time.

On your Blogger dashboard, go to Posting > Edit Pages > New Page

Note: Once you add a page don’t forget to press Publish Post.

Create Blogger Pages

Unlike unlimited pages that you can create in WordPress, Blogger still lets you create only 10 pages, so you need to chose clearly which pages you want. Then if you need to insert pages in the layout, they have created a new gadget which you can use.

Go to Design > Add a Gadget under Navbar> Search for Pages Gadget

Add the gadget to the top of your page. You can change the order of links too. Note: If there is no Add a Gadget under the navbar available, try adding the Gadget to the sidebar instead.