Lee Sattelmeyer is a STAR member of the Discovery Educator Network. Thirty-six years and counting, but I finally found my voice and have something to share!
Discovery Education has another great on-line resource for teachers. Discovery Education has a home on YouTube! The Discovery Education Channel has a variety of video resources to support teachers. The resources range from relatively short ‘How To’ videos to the longer professional development Webinars.
I’ve attended a number of the Webinars both in person when streamed and as archived resources. I’m impressed with the quality of the content that explores various topics from effective use of the DE Web Home to the ever evolving Web 2.0 on the Internet.
Exploring Discovery Education’s channel, I found out about Daniel Pink. Never heard of him before but let me tell you his ideas about today’s world requiring right and left brain thinking intrigued me. The four-minute video titled “Daniel Pink: Education and the Changing World of Work” led me on a personal research quest to find out more about him and how his thoughts apply to education. The end result? I ended up deciding to purchase his book, A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future, in the Kindle format to read on my laptop.
A really fascinating YouTube video on Daniel Pink’s first book, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, By RSA Animate can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc .
Summertime is a time to relax. I find it the perfect time for me to explore new things that will make instruction more effective in my classroom. I probably never would have discovered the highly motivational Daniel Pink without giving this DE resource a ‘spin’. Why don’t you give the Discovery Education Channel a try.
Yours,
Lee M. Sattelmeyer
Posted on July 7, 2011 in Culture, Vision by Lee Sattelmeyer
I grew up in an era of the great Broadway musicals: Oklahoma, Kismet, The King and I, Flower Drum Song, The Sound of Music, and of course, South Pacific.
This great era of musical creativity became very much a part of the popular culture of the time. Perhaps, these musicals were popular because of the singable songs with memorable lyrics or because the musical’s book told believable stories about the human condition.
Whatever the reasons for such cultural impact on American society, the music from these Broadway productions became part of my life. I played the LPs of the Broadway casts over and over. There were certain favorite songs of mine that gave voice to a very complicated adolescent growing up.
It is no wonder that even now conversations with others sometime trigger musical memories that apply to the content of our conversation.
One such piece of music is ‘You Have to Be Carefully Taught’ from Oscar and Hammerstein’s musical South Pacific.
You’ve got to be taught
To hate and fear,
You’ve got to be taught
From year to year,
It’s got to be drummed
In your dear little ear
You’ve got to be carefully taught.
In this song, Lt. Cable sings that our prejudices are passed down from our family, peers, and social groups. It doesn’t matter if you want to weigh in on whether prejudice is a learned behavior or an acquired genetic survival trait. If you look at the song closely, I think it is also saying that we need to teach more appropriate behavior to our children.
That today’s children lack a bit of social grace in dealing with others is evident. I was taught to let the adult through first as a sign of courtesy and respect. My wife still enjoys that I’ll open the car door for her or hold the door to let her pass through first. No respectful adult male every entered a home or building without first taking his hat/cap off. We were certainly not perfect as the later decades began to show the weaknesses behind the facade. But these social graces, helped us get along.
For whatever reason, today’s children need a lot more support from their teachers and schools in learning how to get along with others and deal with the frustrations of interacting with the rest of us who are less than perfect.
Unfortunately, our current cultural models, such as TV, interactive video games, and movies ‘don’t cut the mustard’.
Well, Discovery Education has some really wonderful videos for elementary age children that teach how to get along with others more effectively.
To find available resources, you only have to type “citizenship”, “getting along”, or other behavioral terms in the keyword search box at the top of your home page.
Two of my favorite series that I like to use with my students are the ‘Getting Along’ series by the Center for Educational Resources and ‘A Kid’s Guide’ by Learning Tree.
The ‘Getting Along’ series includes six different titles from my favorite “Don’t Make Me Stop This Car!” to “No Fair!” All of the videos begin with a scenario where a child or group of children are not getting along. There is an adult role model, Scott, that talks with the children about feelings and how someone might behave positively to resolve a conflict. There is a literature piece where a character named, Banya, reads a book that is appropriate for the videos topic (My students’ favorite saying comes from Banya who says, “Are ya not listening? She bugs me.”). After getting advice, students watching the video get a chance to see the child/children put the advice into practice.
Another good series for helping children learn to get along is ‘A Kid’s Guide’ by Learning Tree. There are almost 30 different topics in the series from learning to be a ‘good kid’ to ‘telling the truth’.
Both series do a good job in helping children move from an egocentric point of view to one that is more socially centric. These series in Discovery Education are developmentally appropriate for children in the elementary grades, especially the primary grades. Behaviors and feelings are identified not scolded, specific advice is given to help children work through their feelings, and the advice in practice is demonstrated.
There are many more titles in DE’s catalog that are useful for teaching citizenship and social behaviors. All of them have have been split into segments so that you can show the whole video or just the part you need. The great thing is that DE has taken all the work out of finding and using them.
Try some of them out with your class this Fall. Who knows? You just might find yourself singing along with Anna Leonowens…
