ENEMY of the Free World, BB, Week 2

Today in class we wrestled with Blackboard. It was a noteworthy fight. Few were standing at the end, but we will prevail! After considerable thought and deep prayer, I decided to refocus our energy on Blogger. My hope is that BB will rejoin our effort towards scholarly learning and blogging. We'll see.

The good news is that most students are official Bloggers as of now. A few have even mastered the art of Hyperlinking!

What I noticed that surprised me today: that there are a lot of secondary education majors in our class, that everyone returned after class #1, and that I was on time (for those that know me this is a big, big, really big deal). I'm always amazed how students follow me outside to take part in the ceremonial starting activity. Today was sword fighting with a bit of scaffolding. We started with simple drama, then added a bit of suspense, and at the top tier required pairs to sword fight (dramatize something). I also liked yoga. I wish I took more time to do that! BTW - namaste is what you say after finishing yoga. (extra credit for anyone who can tell me more about what the SCRIB site is all about).

What I wonder about: how much we will learn and share by practicing differentiated instruction and how I can best transition our basic understanding of disability history, legislation and schooling into a more focused experience. This week we touched on Chapter 9 about students with talents and gifts. We didn't spend much time on this topic, so I'll revisit it again this coming week. Not sure what I think about the "label" of students with talents and gifts. This label honors person first language, but it doesn't make much sense to me. Here's a really interesting blogsite with lessons for teachers and here's one specifically for secondary educators. I wonder how many students with talents and gifts that teachers miss? What about kids who are extremely intelligent but misbehave?

See you next week!

Namaste