I am in favor of paying students according to their merit, but the system still has to work. If it doesn’t make sense, it certainly doesn’t sufficiently reward the best teachers. This video shows what happens when legislators configure a shoddy system of tying a teacher’s worth with data from standardised testing.
It seems to me that parents don’t have the same hesitation when it come to medicating their children as they used to. Take this worrying trend as an example:
One in five NSW families are doping their children with medication to keep them quiet on long road trips, a new national study of motorists has revealed.
The driving survey, commissioned by insurer GIO, shone a light on the behaviour of 3700 parents, including 600 within NSW, who embark on extended road journeys.
While four in five families give youngsters hand-held computer games, including iPads, and 70 per cent keep treats up their sleeve, 18 per cent of NSW drivers admit to tranquillising their children with drugs that sedate – such as the antihistamine Phenergan – to make the journey more comfortable.
Those warnings have been in place since 2006 when the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) identified links between the drug and 22 cases of respiratory depression among infants, seven of which proved fatal. Labels also often state that caution should be applied when the medicine is given to children 2 years of age and older.
Westmead Children’s Hospital head of general medicine Joanne Ging told The Sun-Herald: “In terms of sedation, this is an unpredictable drug.
“We would never recommend it for children on plane trips, car trips or wherever, because its side effects can trigger the exact opposite effect, including hallucinations. It’s a medication that really should only ever be used for allergies.”
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Courtesy of Yahoo’s food editor, :
When it comes to chocolate, go dark. It contains nutritional benefits such as antioxidants and iron, whereas milk chocolate does not. “My kids will eat dark chocolate,” says Shapiro. “They don’t really know the difference, because the flavor was introduced at a young age.”
Mix chocolate with other things. “You consume less chocolate when you eat in conjunction with something else,” says Shapiro. “At any supermarket, you can find chocolate-covered strawberries,” or you can make chocolate-dipped bananas or dried apricots. Trader Joe’s sells chocolate-dipped almonds, which Shapiro says are a good option if nuts aren’t an issue for your children. She also likes making chocolate bark by melting 70% dark Valrhona chocolate discs, spreading it on parchment paper, and topping it with Goji berries, puffed quinoa, and sea salt. “It’s like a healthy Nestle Crunch.” Here’s a recipe to try from Food52.
There’s nothing wrong with carrot sticks. “Just because it’s an Easter basket doesn’t mean you should stay away from something truly healthy,” says Shapiro. “Plus carrots relate to what the Easter bunny eats.” So put some carrot and celery sticks in there!
Think about healthy egg-shaped items. “Hard-boiled eggs are a great source of protein, and you can naturally color them using beet juice or boiled cabbage,” Shapiro said. “Clementines, too, are kind of the shape of the egg — round and springy-colored — and don’t go bad quickly.” You can also try filling plastic eggs with mixed nuts or dried fruit. “Everybody loves to open up a little toy and see what’s inside.”
Incorporate some games. “An Easter basket doesn’t always have to be about food,” Shapiro said. Bubbles, Play-Doh, pastel-colored crayons, coloring books, and stickers “take up some space and makes it not just make it about eating.” You could even add a jump rope, a Slinky, or a bouncy ball, “things that get the kids actively moving so they wear off that sugar high!”
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This teacher seems to have been fired for a most dangerous classroom experiment gone wrong. I love ideas which engage students, but never at the cost of the health of the students. You may want to avoid the video as it fairly confronting.
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Here’s the thing. There are teachers and there are parents. A teacher’s responsibility is to teach in a room called a classroom. A parents job is parent.
It is not the job of a teacher to parent children. They may approve or disapprove of a parent’s methods, but unless they are abusing their children in some way, it is not the business of a teacher to report the parent to authorities.
Of course young children should not be playing Grand Theft Auto. But it is completely wrong for teachers to have the authority to report parents whenever they feel the parent has made a bad call:
Parents are in danger of being reported to police by their children’s head teachers if they allow them to play video games for over 18s.
A letter sent by a group of schools in Cheshire raised concerns about the ‘levels of violence and sexual content’ young people are being exposed to by playing games such as Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto, which are renowned for their violent characters and have an 18 classification.
It warns that if teachers are made aware their pupils have been playing these video games they will contact police and social services.
The letter, sent by Nantwich Education Partnership, said allowing children to play these type of games on Xboxes and Playstations is deemed ‘neglectful’.
It comes amid fears children could be left more vulnerable to grooming and abuse by being exposed to early sexualised behaviour as well as extreme brutality, often seen in video games in the upper age classifications.
The letter says: ‘Call of Duty, Grand Theft Auto, Dogs of War and other similar games, are all inappropriate for children and they should not have access to them.
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We all make mistakes. The idea is to own them and celebrate them in the classroom. That way our students can see that mistakes are OK, and they often help the learning process.
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No teacher’s personal journey and story has inspired me as much as the great Brad Cohen. Brad, who suffers from Tourette Syndrome, didn’t let his condition get in the way of his dream on becoming a classroom teacher. Above is the very faithful movie version of his life. I urge you to watch this and recommend it to others.
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Is it just me that hasn’t noticed an increase in aggression in the playground? If anything, I just think we are more aware of it and better understand the implications of playground conflict:
Tag…a simple game of tag. Seems innocent enough. But is it? Not according to many teachers.
Kids are starting to hit with such force that they often end up whacking their opponent across the back in a monstrous slap. I’ve seen this myself many times. “Ouch!” one kid cries, now on their hands and knees and fighting off tears. “Don’t hit so hard!” they yell up at the child standing over them. Often, you hear the other child whine, “I didn’t mean too…” Many times the act seems unintentional, although painful for the victim nonetheless. Tag is now becoming such an issue that schools are starting to ban this once beloved game.
In the fall of 2013, the problem of banning the childhood game hit a little too close to home. At a local New Hampshire school, tag was no longer a reality for many children. A classic game that was cherished through the ages was dismissed due to safety concerns. Parents and children were confused and some were outraged. Headlines stated everything from, “Banning Tag is Dumb” to “More Schools Banning Tag because of Injuries.” Curious, I started interviewing teachers in Maine and New Hampshire about what they were seeing at recess time.
One teacher said, “Kids are becoming more aggressive. When they play games like tag, they push with great force, often hurting the other child. We had to implement a ‘two-finger’ touch rule, so that kids couldn’t push so hard.” Another teacher that had been around for 30 years, saidshe had seen an increase in aggressive behavior as well. “They can’t seem to keep their hands off each other! Kids are always getting hurt.” A local principal stated that tag had become such a problem that they had to get creative. They gave the children foam noodles to “tag” the other children with and avoid actual contact with the hands.
The problem? Due to less time in active play these days, children are not developing the senses in their joints and muscles (proprioceptive sense) like they used to. In the past, it was more common for children to help with the outdoor chores. They would assist with raking leaves, shoveling the snow, and would even earn money by mowing lawns in their neighborhood. They’d also play for hours outside – moving heavy rocks to build a dam, scaling trees to new heights, and digging moats in the dirt. All of this “heavy work” helped children to develop a strong and healthy proprioceptive system.
Pediatric occupational therapists often prescribe “heavy work” to young children who have trouble with their proprioceptive sense. This usually consists of anything that gives weighted input to the joints and muscles, such as pulling a wagon that is loaded with bricks, carrying grocery bags, and digging in the garden. These are things that children would be naturally getting if they spent a considerable amount of time outside.
Due to the busy schedules of today, children often don’t have hours to explore the outdoors, to help with the outside chores, or even do small jobs that require manual labor. Therefore, many children don’t have the same opportunities to fully develop and fine-tune the senses in the joints and muscles. As a result, more and more children are starting to have trouble regulating how much force to use when pushing and pulling and even interacting with the objects and people around them.
This is why we are seeing children hit with too much force during a game of tag. Their senses are not quite working right – all because they are not engaged in an adequate amount of active play and movement on a regular basis.
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By the time they have reached primary school age, many of our students have become veterans in the art of the tantrum. Perhaps the problem is that some parents see their kids’ tantrums as a social media sport rather than a habit worth breaking:
Those moments when you accidentally break the end off the banana and your child has a meltdown and doesn’t want it, because it is broken.
When they ask for Weetbix but when you give it to them they chuck a wobbly because now they want toast.
Or when the water is not cold, or the cup is the wrong colour, or they want a different bowl, or they don’t like their clothes for a thousand different trivial reasons.
Tantrums and toddlers go hand in hand. And no matter what you do, they will always find something completely ridiculous to have a problem with.
Sometimes you want to tear your hair out, sometimes you roll your eyes and sometimes you laugh at them behind their back, at least I do.
One thing I have never contemplated doing is taking a photo and positing it to social media, but other parents are.
A public Instagram account called a**holeparents started last week and encourages parents to take photos of their kids’ meltdowns and post them to the account.
I have to be honest and say I had a little giggle about the posts, until the reality of the photos set in and I felt disgusted that parents could be so cruel to their children.
If you looked at the photos, without the captions, without knowing the premise of the account, all you would see were pics of kids that looked in pain, crying, upset.
I don’t know about you, but when my kids cry and are upset, I never stop to take a photo first.
Reading in the abstract about the crazy things that sets kids off is amusing because, as I said, we have all been there.
I love reading about toddler tantrums so I know everyone else’s children are just as crazy as mine.
Sharing exasperated sighs and funny tales with family and friends is completely natural and a good way to let some of the stress go that comes with demanding and frustrating toddlers.
But I think sharing pictures of this with the world is just taking it a bit too far and is actually quite cruel.
What toddlers are experiencing is real to them and also completely natural.
Michael Potegal is a paediatric neuropsychologist at the University of Minnesota, in Minneapolis, and specialises in studying tantrums and how and why young children have them.
He has said their outbursts are as normal a biological response to anger and frustration as a yawn is to fatigue.
So normal, in fact, that you can make a science out of the progression of a tantrum and predict one down to the second and that kids from about 18 months to 4 years are simply hardwired to misbehave.
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Photo from The Courier Post Online
Bethany Simpson, a heroic ten-year-old, has been in the news recently for saving her stepdad’s life by giving him cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) just weeks after learning it at school.
Bethany’s mum called 999 when she found that Robert’s breathing became shallow, erratic and laboured. However, when Robert stopped breathing completely, Bethany’s mum did not know what to do. Bethany quickly took charge and saved Robert’s life. Bethany learnt the skills from the St John Ambulance trainers who visited her school in late February.
English schools have no obligation to teach first aid. This begs the question: why is first aid not a mandatory skill on the school curriculum?
This news story outlines just how important it is for people, whatever age, to know CPR and first aid. It didn’t matter that Bethany’s family was around; no one else knew what to do, or reacted…
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