Tim Childers’ Blog

I am sitting in the middle of the huge general sessions auditorium that easily holds the entire crowd of middle school teachers attending NMSA in Houston, TX.  It is Friday morning, and the line to get into the auditorium (at 7:30 AM) extended past the entire length of the convention center.

Using a combination of YouTube worthy videos and a stand-up routine by both the Teacher-of-the-Year and Jack Berkmeyer, the crowd was made ready for 2 middle school students to introduce The Iron Man, Cal Ripkin, Jr.

Cal is sharing with us his 8 traits for success.  Fortunately, his number of traits matched his uniform number.  Great for the book deal!  Of course, this is his original list and does not match what the editors did for the book.

•  The Right Attitude
• A Strong Will To Succeed
  • Not important how much you have, but how you use it
  • His will to succeed caused him to act destructively as a child (tantrums, throwing bats).  Parents encouraged him to harness the energy rather than stifle it (do push up, long bike rides, batting practice) - Good tips for teachers
• Passion
  • Dad told him too many people were doing things they hate.  You must love what you do.
  • Parents who push too hard may cause kids to walk away from problems when parents are no longer there.
• Love to Compete
  • This is internal and external competition
  • His successive game streak was an internal competition - he wanted to walk away from it many times.
• Consistency
  • Adjust and re-adjust (modify and accommodate?)
  • Solving problems and finding quick solutions makes you irreplaceable
  • There was a time when Cal would call pitches from shortstop rather than the catcher.  Helped poor performing pitchers turn their game around.  This helped managers decide to leave him in the game even when he wasn’t hitting.  It led to his consecutive game streak.
• Conviction
  • This involves having a thick skin, being stubborn, and seeing things through to the end
  • He was criticized by the press and others for hogging the lineup, but he truly believed he was adding value to the game and stayed the course.
  • Remember for kids (my thoughts here), stubborn is good when it is harnessed for good.  Help kids channel their stubbornness to the things that matter.
• Strength
  • There is a connection between physical and mental strength (exercise and maintaining focus)
  • After retirement, he broke the link.  He gained weight and began to be more tired.
• Life Management
  • Keep balance between professional and family lives.  Either can control you if you are not careful.
  • In 21 years of consecutive games, Cal had 9 different managers.  How many principals have you had?  Change can happen even when you don’t move.

Time is up and we are about to move to our first session.  See you on the flip side!

In China, middle school students line up after class to ask the teacher for more homework.  No, this is not a teacher’s dream sequence.  It is an actual happening witnessed by Alan November when he visited China recently.  Can you imagine this happening at your school?  Neither can I.

But the truth is, according to November, kids will rise to any challenge you give them provided the challenge makes sense in their world.  What is their world?  Well, it is social.  So kids want to do something that is seen by others (yes, that’s one reason why so many misbehave).  Their world is also digital.  Pencil and paper will often freeze them up.  Their world is filled with online gaming.  Yes, this is the freeze tag and hide-and-seek of my generation.  Think how you felt in elementary school  when recess was cancelled.  That’s how these kids feel when their favorite website is blocked at school.

So here’s another tidbit from Alan November about how to get kids, especially boys, to open up and write in class.  Have them play their favorite online game.  Yes, even the one you thought you should keep them from because it seemed so inappropriate.  If your state or district hasn’t blocked it yet, it must be okay, right? (OK, that was me, not Alan).  Then, put them on a blog and have them write about their strategies to win the game.  They are writing, right?

Next, have them read the blog posts of other students.  They will undoubtedly be drawn to write comments about others’ strategies.  They won’t all be playing the same game, but they will probably be blogging about games they all know.  They all have opinions.  Let them write.  They won’t even know they are practicing literacy skills!

Don’t know where to start with blogging?  Ask how many of your kids blog on their MySpace account.  They know how to blog.  Remember, it isn’t important that you know how.  It is just important that you know why and when.  You can set up a free blog account at Blogmeister, and educational blog site established by David Warlick.

Now go play some games!

Teachers are the bottleneck that prevents us from using technology in the classroom. Although not a direct quote, this is the sentiment outlined by Alan November at our NMSA session earlier today. He couldn’t be more right.

There were over 100 people in attendance at Alan’s talk. Out of those, I was the only one in the crowd who had ever seen a TED Talk video. Less than a dozen had a Skype account. Barely a dozen had heard of Audacity. For me, this explained why the crowd was so thin. Middle school teachers are not current when it comes to technology. Many of us have not even immigrated to the web, so “Digital Immigrants” does not apply to everyone.

Here’s a gem from today’s conference: If you want to learn to podcast, take a couple of 12 year olds to your training session. You can grade a lot of papers and let the kids learn how to podcast. They’ll pick it up in a heartbeat. It isn’t necessary for teachers to know how, according to November. It is only important that we know why and when. The kids will do the rest.

Class 208 has a podcast on iTunes. This is a group of 2nd graders who podcast every week to explain what they learned the previous week. The teacher is pretty much hands-off. The kids organize it, write it, record it, and upload it.

Look for more information from Alan’s session in a later post. I can’t stop talking about how exciting some of these things were to witness at NMSA!