Catering for gifted students is a significant challenge for a teacher. Teachers can go dizzy trying to find time with students at both ends of the spectrum, whilst also working to help the rest of the class progress.
SCHOOLS are failing the state’s best and brightest students, a damning parliamentary report has found.
A 15-month inquiry has found the education provided to gifted students is often inadequate – sometimes with severe and devastating consequences.
The report, tabled in Parliament today, said up to 85,000 Victorian students fit the category of gifted.
“These students are frequently frustrated and disengaged,” the education and training committee report said.
“And rightfully so: they are being let down by the education system. These neglected students represent our state’s future visionaries and innovators.”
All teachers should be capable of recognising and teaching the gifted, the report said.
Education Minister Martin Dixon welcomed the report and said he “looked forward to responding to it in detail”.
“Our job in education is to engage, excite and extend students,” he said.
This problem is very real, but let’s not forget the difficulties teachers face with an ever-increasing workload and an overcrowded curriculum.
A new study from the University of B.C. shows kids might be generous and giving because it makes them happy, contrary to the popular belief children are inherently selfish.
Adults report feeling better when spending money on other people instead of themselves and research shows the part of the brain that processes rewards is activated when donating to charity.
Three UBC researchers hypothesized very young children — under age two — experience similar emotional benefits from generosity. For adults, the happiness that results from giving could be caused by many things, like conforming with social pressure or receiving rewards.
“But looking at young kids helps us get a little closer to understanding whether this is something rooted in human nature or not,” said Lara Aknin, a PhD in social psychology. Aknin designed the study with her UBC thesis supervisor, Elizabeth Dunn, and developmental psychologist Kiley Hamlin.
This is the first study to look at the emotional benefits of giving in young children.
Aknin cited news and parenting websites that argue young kids are innately selfish and self-absorbed, and she admitted some studies have shown kids can be territorial with their possessions.
“But you also don’t have to look far to see really young kids wanting to share their soggy Cheerios,” she said. “There is this dichotomy when we look at kids, and I think most people’s assumptions are that kids are self-oriented and hoard things for themselves.”
It just goes to show how effectively adults can model good behaviour.
It seems that we have given up on promoting healthy lifestyles and educating our students about nutrition. It’s now all about avoiding obesity:
The American Medical Association on Wednesday put its weight behind requiring yearly instruction aimed at preventing obesity for public schoolchildren and teens.
The nation’s largest physicians group agreed to support legislation that would require classes in causes, consequences and prevention of obesity for first through 12th graders. Doctors will be encouraged to volunteer their time to help with that under the new policy adopted on the final day of the AMA’s annual policymaking meeting.
I couldn’t disagree more with the opinions expressed in Susie O’Brien’s column today. Allowing teachers to touch students, even innocently, is a step backwards. Every day we read news articles of teachers who have misused the privilege of working with kids and have overstepped the boundaries. It’s because of the evil minority that continue to heap shame on our wonderful profession, that these regulations are vital.
The rules that restrict teachers from hugging and touching our students without justifiable cause are not about political correctness, they are about common sense. They exist to protect students, but in doing so, they also protect teachers from false accusations. I agree that it’s a sad state of affairs that I am obliged to keep my door open when having a private meeting with a student, but isn’t that a small price to pay for transparency?
I find Ms. O’Brien’s intimation that I can’t provide my students with the same standard of care due to the fact that I don’t touch them quite upsetting:
WHY can’t teachers touch kids any more? It used to be that teachers had total control over the children in their care.
They were allowed to hit them, cane them and handle them in pretty much any way they saw fit.
But they could also hug them, comfort them, and even check their hair for nits.
With the advent of political correctness, everything changed.
Teachers should be able to judge for themselves what contact is appropriate in any situation.
If we think any teacher lacks the ability to make such judgments, then they shouldn’t be in front of our classrooms.
For instance, take a look at the rules imposed on teachers in this state by the Victorian Institute of Teaching, which is the professional regulation body.
Their code of conduct says teachers are violating their professional relationships when they touch a student without a valid reason.
It’s a bit depressing that it’s come to this.
The code says teachers can touch students, but goes on to say it is a “difficult issue for teachers in the present climate”.
Apparently, teachers can touch students for comfort, guidance or acknowledgment, but not for any other reason.
And teachers are not meant to have any meeting with a student alone with their door closed.
It seems a pretty sad state of affairs.
As sad as it is that the evil few spoil it for the majority, these rules are vital. They protect teachers and students alike.
The result of that call, to be unveiled Tuesday, is Share My Lesson, an online portal that teachers will be able to access free of charge. It is expected to contain more than 100,000 user-generated materials.
“We’ve been trying to find a way to have teachers be able to access information quickly, actively and share with each other,” Weingarten said. “It felt to me almost too good to be true, that some private entity had created a platform for teachers to be able to share.”
Share My Lesson is expected to be the largest online resource for teachers in the U.S. and comes at a time when cuts to education budgets have led many districts to slash professional development. AFT and TSL have pledged $10 million to develop and maintain the site, which should be ready for teachers by August.
“We must support the incredibly complex work teachers do at every opportunity, including by sharing and promoting best practices through online resources and communities of practice,” Education Secretary Arne Duncan said.
He said the program would benefit teachers everywhere.
If I had to assess the effectiveness of our education system in one sweeping statement, it would be that our system is concerned with process over people.
What we must remember is, we are not only teaching human beings, we are teaching the next generation of citizens. The method in which we teach them and the way we treat them will have a dramatic impact on their view of the world. If we treat them with respect and empathy, they are more likely to grow up to be decent and generous people. If we treat them as guinea pigs the outcomes will not be as positive.
Autistic students are being told they can no longer attend specialist schools because their language skills are assessed to be too high in controversial year 6 tests.
Parents say their children, many of whom have attended autism schools all their lives, will be unable to cope and vulnerable to bullying if forced to go to a mainstream school.
Some have resorted to desperate tactics such as threatening to go to the media or applying to have their children reclassified as having a Severe Behaviour Disorder rather than autism so they can remain at autism schools.
Janeane Baker, whose 11-year-old son William has been at Northern School for Autism since prep, was horrified to learn her son no longer qualified for funding to remain at the school because he had passed a language test. ”It doesn’t matter that his mother has worked in the mainstream education system and knows that he would never survive there,” Ms Baker said. ”It doesn’t matter that his highly qualified teachers have never thought he would be able to be integrated. He can speak; therefore the government obviously thinks he is cured. They are very wrong – autism is for life.”Ms Baker had tried to integrate William with mainstream peers at junior cricket and Scouts but he got bullied because he was ”just that little bit too left of centre”.
Instead of treating this issue as a process dependant on academic evaluations, we must see this as a human issue. If children with disabilities are more likely to thrive in specialists schools we must do whatever we can to make sure that option is available to them.
One of the major stumbling blocks in the fight against bullying is the passive nature of bystanders. The last thing we want to see is children who would ordinarily stand up to bullies show a reluctance because of a lack of leadership and support from their school.
A Florida teen who decided to stand up against kids who were bullying a mentally disabled student on the bus is being called a bully herself.
Stormy Rich, 18, had been riding on a middle school bus because she had enough credits to start classes later in the day at Umatilla High School, the Daily Commercial reported, but she says she was shocked by how some of the middle school girls were treating a student with mental disabilities.
She thought she was doing the right thing in reporting bullying incidents she witnessed against a mentally-challenged middle school girl by a group of girls on morning bus rides to school.“I’m a very outspoken person,” Rich said. “I stick up for what I feel is right. In the school code of conduct handbook, it is clearly stated that bullying is a non-tolerable offense.”
Rich first complained to the bus driver but the bullying continued. She then complained to a high school official, who said he would contact the middle school, but nothing changed.
“I would sit on the bus every single day and see the bullying was still going on and nothing was being done,” Rich told the Daily Commercial. “It was aggravating,” she added.
The senior demanded the bullies stop, which worked for a while. She said they then began threatening her, even though she complained about this to school personnel on almost a daily basis for about two weeks. The mother and daughter even contacted police.
“Enough is enough,” Rich said in her written complaint. “Something should be done.”
What happened next stunned Stormy and her mother, Brenda.
On May 4, they got a letter from the school saying her daughter was kicked off the middle school bus. A district school official said Rich displayed bullying behavior in her comments.
“She said what I did made me the bully, with me telling the kids that if they didn’t stop, and if the school didn’t do anything, that I would have to handle it,” Rich said. “To me, it was just going too far.”
According to Christopher Patton, communications officer for Lake County Schools, a courtesy had been extended to Rich to ride the middle school bus.
“Due to circumstances on the bus, the privileges were revoked,” he said.
Patton said he could not discuss the bullying complaints filed by Rich or her mother. He also could not say if any action was taken about those complaints.
Below is a trailer from the soon to be released film How to UnMake a Bystander, which couldn’t come at a better time.
Whilst I am sympathetic to the 13 year-old boy that wishes to play netball, I don’t think it’s appropriate for a teenage boy to play in an all-girls team. Not only will boys ruin the enjoyment that girls have for the sport but girls are entitled to raise concerns about the body contact that exists within the game.
MEMBERS of a junior netball club have slammed a VCAT decision to allow a 185-centimetre tall, 13-year-old boy interim permission to play in an all-girls’ competition.
Despite Netball Victoria discouraging teams from speaking out, the coach, parents and players from one of the boy’s rival teams, St Therese’s of Essendon, say it would be a disaster if VCAT made the ruling permanent that boys can play in the 15 and under matches.
They fear it would smash girls’ confidence on court, and spell an end to girls having the choice to play in a team of their own gender. St Therese’s head coach Dianne McCormack wrote to The Age saying it was not a personal comment on the boy, who plays for Banyule in the Parkville Netball association’s 15 and under C Grade.
A St Therese’s C-Grade player, Ally, 12, has written to the sports minister and Netball Victoria saying that when she played against the boy in the 13 and under competition, ”no one wanted to play a strong defence because it meant you had to put your body up against his”.Ally said when she got older she might want to play mixed, ”but now I just want to play against other girls”. ”Most boys I know are already bigger and stronger than me.
”Please stick up for me and all girls who play in girls’ competitions. I don’t think it’s fair for any boy to take away my right and any girl’s right to play in an all-girls’ competition.”
The moment Facebook first made the sensible and responsible age requirement rules they have been trying to soften, if not repeal them. The age restriction guidelines exist for the safety and wellbeing of underaged children. Yet we are constantly confronted with the reality that Facebook is desperate to recruit the underaged demographic.
An alliance of consumer rights groups on Monday pressed Facebook not to aim advertisements at preteen children or track their activities online if it formally opens its site to them.
Facebook has millions of underage users who claim to be over the required age of 13, and the company has had discussions with some advocacy groups over how to keep children safe on the site if they insist on signing up.
The topic of whether children under 13 should be on Facebook is hugely contested. One side argues that under no circumstances should young children be permitted on a social networking site, and another argues for an array of restrictions and conditions on how they can use the site.
The groups that sent the letter on Monday to Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive of Facebook, include Consumers Union, the Center for Digital Democracy, Consumer Action and the Consumer Federation of America. They called on Facebook to refrain from tracking children under 13 both on the Facebook site and on other sites that have Facebook widgets, such as the “like” button. In addition, they called on Facebook to enable parents to monitor and review their preteen children’s activities, offer parents “granular control” over every application they use on the Facebook platform and keep children’s account settings as private as possible.
The letter read: “We want assurances that any space created for children under the age of 13 on the site is safe, parent-guided and controlled, and, most importantly, free of ads.”
Advertising is not the only reason Facebook would want to allow under-13s on its site. It could widen its user base, guard against children becoming attached to another social network, and potentially build a trove of information on users as they grow into adulthood. By developing special conditions for them, the company could also protect itself from a federal regulation that requires companies that gather information about children under 13 to obtain written consent from their parents; those regulations are being revised.
I noticed while teaching students about persuasive writing how difficult they find it to form opinions of their own. It is almost as if children today do what they have learned to do without ever reflecting on the reasons why. This poses a significant problem when it comes to peer pressure. If you don’t have the tools to work out right from wrong, positive from negative, you can be very easily lead.
WHILE parents have been teaching their kids not to argue with adults for generations, new research shows it may have its benefits.
A study by the University of Virginia shows that young teenagers who are taught to argue effectively are more likely to resist peer pressure to use drugs or alcohol later in adolescence.
“It turns out that what goes on in the family is actually a training ground for teens in terms of how to negotiate with other people,” said Joseph Allen, psychology professor and lead author of the study, results of which were published in a recent edition of the journal Child Development.
Prof Allen said that parents are often “scared to death about peer pressure” but also frustrated by argumentative children.
“What we’re finding is there’s a surprising connection between the two,” he said.
Prof Allen said that teens “learn they can be taken seriously” through interactions with their parents.
“Sometimes, it can be counterintuitive to tell parents to let their teens argue with them,” said Joanna Chango, a clinical psychology graduate student who worked on the study.
In fact, learning effective argumentation skills can help teenagers learn to “assert themselves and establish a sense of autonomy”, she said.
I don’t agree with the assertion that we should encourage our children to argue with us. Instead, teachers and parents alike, should encourage students to question everything, to feel confident to form their own opinions and not to follow a crowd just for the sake of safety in numbers.
Topical Teaching 