Girl With No Hands Wins Handwriting Contest

May 9, 2016

girl-with-no-hands

 

I don’t enjoy teaching handwriting, but I’m sure this girl’s teacher will always think positively about the teaching the skill.

What an achievement!

 

This 7-year-old was born without hands, but she has a can-do attitude and stu-pen-dous writing skills.

Despite her disability, first-grader Anaya Ellick has beautiful penmanship and recently became a winner in the Zaner-Bloser 2016 National Handwriting Competition. 

Anaya, who was presented with a check and trophy, won the Nicholas Maxim Special Award for Excellence in Manuscript Penmanship. The category is for individuals in kindergarten through eighth grade who have a cognitive delay, or an intellectual, physical or developmental disability.

handwriting

 

What’s the Most Important Skill a French Teacher Needs to Have?

May 2, 2016

moyer-french-teacher

 

 

Basic spoken French?

 

Apparently not.

 

A high school French teacher has been accused of not being able to speak the language he’s been teaching his students. 

Albert Moyer, said that the extent of his French education was just one year in high school, according to an investigation by KHOU 11

Moyer has been teaching at the Houston Independent School District’s Energy Institute High School, where one student said that the only word Moyer knows is ‘bonjour’. 

Moyer was hired to replace Jean Cius, a certified French teacher for more than 25 years.

Cius was removed from the school after a dispute in December, according to KHOU 11. 

But student Nathanial White’s told the station that his teacher knows the word ‘bonjour’ and has to look up anyhting more complex on Google. 

Replaced teacher Cius told the station: ‘It makes me extremely mad. I feel bad for the fact that the kids are not learning.’

Cius was later declared fit for duty, but the high school didn’t give him back his old job and instead he now works at another high school where he monitors the halls. 

‘I feel so bad for the taxpayers because they’re paying me for not doing anything at all,’ he told KHOU 11.

Click on the link to read Dumb Politicians Shouldn’t be Calling Teachers “Dumb”

Click on the link to read The Courageous Valedictorian

Click on the link to read Meet the School They Call “Stinky School”

Click on the link to read Is it Appropriate to Bribe Your Students?

Understanding Autism

April 25, 2016

girl-autism

How much do teachers and students really understand autism?

How much teacher training is dedicated to understanding and catering for students with autism and how much time is invested in helping students learn how to connect to someone who has it?

Reading this inspiring speech by a young girl with autism, I am struck by how effective it was for her to be given the platform. I hope she has inspired both her class and others.

 

autism

 

Click on the link to read my post on Autistic Girl’s Heartwarming Letter

Click on the link to read my post on The Difficulty of Going Back to School for Bullied Students

Click on the link to read my post on What This Teacher is Accused of Doing to an Autistic Boy

Click on the link to read my post on School is the Place to Make Better Connections with Our Disabled

Introducing the 5-Year-Old Math Genius (Video)

April 18, 2016

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAMxbHQyPdk

 

I love teaching math but I’m not putting up my hand to extend this 5-year-old’s skills.

 

 

Click on the link to read Parents Struggle with Modern Day Math Questions

Click on the link to read Teachers Deserve Blame for Maths Disaster

Click on the link to read Proof that Maths Can be Cool (Video)

Click on the link to read How Kids Learn Maths

Politicians Diminish the Role of Parents

April 14, 2016

sex-education-schools

 

By getting teachers to provide a message which is ostensibly the domain of the parent, it diminishes the vital role a parent should be playing as well as lumping an already time poor teacher with yet another topic to teach.

 

Students as young as 12 will study sexualised personal ads and write their own advertisements seeking the “perfect partner’’ as part of a new school curriculum supposed to combat family violence.

The classroom material includes an example ad from a “lustful, sexually generous’’ person seeking “sexy freak out with similarly intentioned woman’’.

Another ad — to be analysed by Year 8 students aged 12 and 13 — is from a “30-year-old blonde bombshell, wild and sexy, living in the fast lane’’.

“Can you keep up?’’ it asks.

A third example cites a “hot gay gal 19yo’’ who is seeking an “outgoing fem 18-25 into nature, sport and night-life for friendship and relationship’’.

Children are instructed to “write your own personal ad for the perfect partner’’.

The Building Respectful Relationships material, which is meant to prevent family violence, is replacing religious education lessons during class time in Victorian state schools this year. The Andrews Labor government yesterday announced it would spend $21.8 million over the next two years to expand the program to kindergarten and primary schools as part of its $572m package to combat family violence. The funding will target 120 “lighthouse schools’’ and train thousands of teachers, and up to 4000 childcare workers, to teach the respectful ­relationships program.

 

 

Click on the link to read Does Sex Education ‘Rape Children Of Their Innocence’?

Click on the link to read Sex Education is the Job of Parents Not Teachers

Click on the link to read It’s Time to Scrap Sex Ed in Schools

Click on the link to read Teacher Takes Class on a Field Trip to a Sex Shop

Time to Install CCTV Cameras in Classrooms

April 10, 2016

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHS0Bul8pSc

 

For every teacher we catch crossing the line, I fear we miss hundreds. By installing cameras in classrooms, we both deter teachers who might have considered unprofessional behaviour or at least catch them when they do.

 

Click on the link to read Another Brutal Corporal Punishment Incident (Video)

Click on the link to read If My School Approved of Corporal Punishment I Would Resign Instantly

Click on the link to read A Message to Those that Advocate Corporal Punishment

Click on the link to read YouTube Clip of High School Student Getting Slapped by Teacher

Click on the link to read 19 US States Still Allow Corporal Punishment in their Classrooms

Parents Struggle with Modern Day Math Questions

April 4, 2016

 

If this is supposed to make the Common Core look great and parents old-fashioned, it didn’t work. The parents, in their own way show up the Common Core to be a ridiculous way of teaching math.

 

Click on the link to read Teachers Deserve Blame for Maths Disaster

Click on the link to read Proof that Maths Can be Cool (Video)

Click on the link to read How Kids Learn Maths

Click on the link to read A Father’s Priceless Reaction to his Son’s Report Card (Video)

Watch a Teacher Go Berserk Over the Most Trivial Thing (Video)

March 31, 2016

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5yJyrCUqDo

 

Missing rubber bands? Really?

 

 

Click on the link to read Tips for Teaching Difficult Students

Click on the link to read Teacher Threatens to Give Away TV Show Spoilers if Class Misbehaves

Click on the link to read Teacher Called Cops Because Students Planned to Sabotage Class Photograph

Click on the link to read Teachers are Better with a Sense of Humour (Photo)

Why are So Many Teaching PD’s Dull?

March 29, 2016

boring-pd

 

I don’t get it!

 

Teaching isn’t dull.

The kids we teach are certainly not dull.

To be an effective teacher you have to be able to engage your class.

So why are so many professional development sessions on teaching so boring?

 

If you told me that you had just come from a boring accountancy PD I wouldn’t blink an eyelid. Accountancy is boring and the people that give these talks are accountants or former accountants (a profession where charm and personality is no prerequisite.

But teaching? Really?

How did these teachers survive in the classroom? Because based on their presentations, they have little clue about how to engage an audience and show little interest in what they are saying.

 

Maybe that’s where failed teachers go – to the PD circuit.

 

Click on the link to read Teacher Praised after Stripping in Front of Her Students

Click on the link to read Stopping the Doodling Epidemic

Click on the link to read Students Love it When Their Teacher Dares to be Outrageous

Click on the link to read The Questions that Great Teachers Ask Every Day

The Effect of Online Pornography on Kids

March 22, 2016

children-acces

 

The effect of pornography on kids cannot be understated. Although, we’d like to think that children under the age of 18 are not exposed to such material, we know better.

Take this disturbing piece of news:

 

CHILDREN as young as four are performing sex acts on each other in remote Aboriginal communities, according to a WA parenting expert who says online pornography is warping young people’s minds.

Safe4Kids founder Holly-ann Martin told a federal inquiry that children in remote WA were “at far greater risk” of being sexually abused because of easy access to pornography.

“I have walked into a classroom where I have witnessed children as young as four simulating sex on each other,” her submission said.

“I was also called into a community because four-year-olds were performing oral sex and digitally penetrating each other.

“Young Aboriginal men openly admit to watching pornography, telling me they want to learn ‘technique’ or ‘style’.

“Because these young men are not receiving good sex education and respectful relationships education, they are turning to online pornography for information.”

 

Click on the link to read School Rewards Good Grades With an Earlier Lunch

Click on the link to read What Kids are Thankful For (Video)

Click on the link to read Our Students Show us Up All the Time!

Click on the link to read Hilarious Video of Children Eating Candy