Friendly Friday - Developmental Assets: What Are They?

As children grow and develop, we can reinforce their assets, skills, and actions, that help them succeed and believe in themselves and others.

Warriors to End Poverty

Photo by carf
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License

Over the years, many people have influenced the way I think about poverty and react to those in poverty. I think of these people as Warriors to End Poverty, because they must go against the never-ending myths that perpetuate poverty.

One of these myths is that those in poverty deserve their lot. That somehow through their own devices these people have caused their own poverty. One Warrior to End Poverty who fought this myth was Jane Addams, the first American woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931. She addressed this myth in her speech entitled, A New Conscience and an Ancient Evil where she discusses the ancient evil of slavery of women through ancient, slave rules of forced marriages, rape and forced prostitution...what we would call HUMAN TRAFFICKING today.

During Jane Addams' lifetime, these evil acts were blamed on the woman and her offspring of these heinous acts were treated with disrespect also. Is this situation any better today? Look around and "...be the change you want to see in the world..." (Ghandi). Help where you can. One of the most important ways to help is to protect women by making sure their privacy and rights are as well protected and respected as those of all other humans.

Where Others Fear To Tread

Through Fear by Martin Gommel
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License

Sometimes, it can be frightening to be a teacher, and it can really be frightening when the schools that hire you are in turmoil. Yesterday, while listening to NPR's All Things Considered, March 13, 2008, I heard that teachers will be dismissed, programs closed and students shuttled to classes not of their own choosing. I empathize with the teachers in California who will be laid off soon.

This terrible disservice and governmental disrespect, in California, for their children and those dedicated to teaching them, reminded me of a similar experience that happened to me early in my teaching career. Fortunately, the majority of the teachers in the state where I taught stood together in the face of (seemingly) more powerful groups. No one is more powerful than those dedicated to a righteous cause to help the teachers who teach our children.

I faced the most frightening experience early in my teaching career when our teacher professional group recommended a one day walkout to let the Louisiana state legislature know what the effect of our finding jobs in other states would do to their schools.

Amazing! I thought. I just started teaching two years before. Why me? Why should I get involved. I could be fired for participating in the walkout, but our salaries were a pittance compared to teachers in other states. For instance, my salary was 30% less in Louisiana than it would have been in Kansas, at that time. Just as today, teachers made thirty to fifty percent of what other college graduates with similar training were making.

The members of the Lousiana state legislature appeared deaf to requests from schools, teachers and the public, so there we were. A statewide teacher's walkout was called, and the state's school administrators figured out that a majority of teachers really were prepared to meet at the state capitol, in Baton Rouge, and take our case directly to the legislature.

Some of the teachers in my school were only teaching as a hobby or to occupy their time. It seemed to me that they were not as effective as they could be if they had dedicated more effort to their teaching. They could hide within the status quo, so they were definitely opposed to the teacher walkout. The other teachers, mostly the more experienced teachers who really dedicated themselves to their work, were going to the state capitol, in Baton Rouge.

Even though I knew that the walkout was right, I had to think about whether I would participate. A few days before we were to converge on the state legislature, I decided that I would go to the state capitol, supporting my students, my community, myself and my peers.

Right up to the Friday afternoon before we were going to walkout, during the following week, the press was reporting that the teachers could face firing if they walked out. It didn't matter, we were determined. When the governor realized that thousands of teachers would walkout, he called off school for the entire day.

Since school was closed all over the state, the problem of firing thousands of teachers was averted, but we still had not achieved our goal: convincing the legislature that teachers were serious about the necessary pay raise.

On the day of the proposed walkout, I traveled for hours to get to the state house, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Being there was a humbling experience that I will never forget. There really were thousands of teachers. Everywhere, on the streets, green spaces, sidewalks and other flat spaces. As far as the eye could see, there were teachers.

We had come to show our support for those Louisiana legislators who were trying to do right by the the children of Louisiana. There were speeches, group discussions, and most people had their signs. It was a truly historic, appropriate use of the right to assemble and petition the government with grievances. Teachers made their point, and the very next year we received an increase in the base salary.

The teachers in California can always make their point TOGETHER. When they work together, teachers can achieve any goal in education. When they really listen to each other....not just talk at each other.

Listening is a skill that teachers must constantly hone. By doing so, we will successfully achieve our goals for the future of education with the help of our real network.

Teachers go where no one else will go. They work with all children where they find them, and take them where they know they should be.

Teachers follow when others will not answer the calling. Everyone says that they would love to teach, but they usually admit that they couldn't stand up to the rigors and economic distress of the teaching life.

Teachers expand their families to include other people's children, spending hours grading or working at home each evening, weekends and holidays with their school family.

Teachers do what no other professionally trained college graduate will do today: TEACH, yet even when our ranks are dwindling and our hopes for semi-autonomy seem far, far, away...maybe even in another galaxy, states like California are committing unspeakable acts that further undermine teacher confidence in the public system.

What are these unspeakable acts? The continuing destruction of the California Public School System. Watching from another state, this story of California teachers seems like a Greek Tragedy, water torture or death by pinprick, but now it seems that so many multiple pinpricks have created gashes in the California educational
system.

Teachers are being ripped from their students, and students are being displaced, all in an effort to squeeze ten percent cuts from the already distressed public school system.

What can we do to help California teachers survive this unnatural disaster? We can connect with our social networks, and lend our support to our colleagues in California. We can find organizations that will help us support teachers in some way that will work for the California teachers.

I would like to ask these important questions, as a starting place for discourse about this crisis in California Public Schools:
Can the teachers being laid off depend on their peers who aren't being laid off?
Can they depend on their unions?

From a distance, it doesn't seem that they can. This is a sad time in our public life as many teachers think they only are looking out for themselves. In my experience, as a teacher, this tactic is not reliable in the long run. When they ignore injustice in their ranks, it really makes the bystander teachers more vulnerable, because the governmental agents learn that no one will complain if more children, teachers and communities are mistreated.

Voki, OK!

Voki, Oki, Oki, Oy! When the producers of Voki discovered this name, they were on to something engaging. The web application is cool, the name is cool and the ways you can use it are cool. Voki is very cool.

My first experience with Voki was on a profile page of one of my Classroom 2.0 colleagues, Jonelle. I was smitten. The realistic avatars, backgrounds and presentation box were so appealing that I had to find out about Voki.

Students are also enticed by Voki, even mature, sophisticates (young adults) have engaged Voki. They use it to tell about themselves, to share information about their school and to practice their online, interactive skills in a protected environment.

Since Voki is a widget, a web application, it stands alone. While you do sign up for Voki, you don't have to interact within a community to benefit from this application. I have seen Voki avatars in a variety of online places, including profiles, blogs, wikis and webspaces. Any of these places can provide students a protected environment where they can experiment and develop educational online experiences.

One aspect of Voki that can be interactive is the comment section of the Voki box, so students can respond to a Voki presentation, just as they might comment on a blog. While commenting or making their first Voki, students don't have to use their own voices. Voki has a text to talk mechanism with a choice of several accents and voices of both genders. I use the Kate voice who has a slight British accent, and I consider it most effective.

Earlier, I wrote a blogpost explaining how to accomplish a action research based evaluation of Voki, as used by students called, "Welcome to My Web!", Said the Spider to the Fly, included Voki and Weather Widget in a blogpost. The purpose of this first post included evaluating web based, online applications, so I reviewed Voki as soon as I started using it.

Recently, I decided to make another review of Voki, because I believe this widget has met critical mass among those teachers using online, web applications with their students. In one day, I found Voki on the majority of the new websites, blogs and wikis that I visited among a group of teachers planning an online educational conference. That is above and beyond all of my colleagues on various educational networks who are using Voki extensively.

Documenting this rise in the use of Voki, I made several searches, some were general search engines and the social bookmarking network, favored by teachers, del.icio.us. If there are other networks or search engines that I could use in the future, please let me know;D Here are some of the results:

*del.icio.us There were a total of 139 SEPARATE bookmarks for VOKI. Within those bookmarks, more than 5,000 users had also selected this combination of 139 bookmarks.

*google.com A total of 33,000 website references contained this search string: Voki, education, school. Amazing!

*yahoo.com More than 40,000 urls contained the same three tags: Voki, education, school. There are thousands more because I noticed that all tags of Voki in Classroom 2.0 were clustered in one search result, so that is probably the same situation in all the educational network searches.

*adonomics.com A Facebook analysis and developer services has many compare/contrast analyses. This one is comparing Voki to Meez.

References to Voki can be found in Digg and Ask.com, so it seems the point is proven that Voki has reached critical mass for educational use around the world. Have fun and learn with Voki;D

BTW: I find it very exciting to see the expression of the promise of a particular widget that I know has great educational potential. There are specific educational activities and projects that Voki can enable or enhance, and that is a blogpost all in itself.

Still on the Road

I am still on the road, and I will return home from Topeka tomorrow, Friday, October 5, 2007. Today's posting will be short, and I have nothing but good news to report. I have completed the entire teacher licensure renewal process on the 230 professional development points I earned in the last two years that I taught at USD #259, Wichita, KS.

So, what can I say, it is wonderful. The Wichita Public Schools educational system is one organized, professional student-centered school district. Wednesday, October 3, 2007, when I arrived at the school district offices where they take care of teachers' professional development transcripts, all my documents were ready. My professional development points transcript was printed, signed, and placed in a sealed envelope ready for me to carry to Topeka.

When I arrived in Topeka, I went to the KSDE office. I turned in my application for renewal and all the supporting documentation. The specialists there were very helpful. More details to follow later.

If you want to be the very best teacher possible, work hard, be supported, and change children's lives, you should consider teaching in Wichita, KS.