educating for the journey

Equality means giving everyone equal opportunities to learn NOT teaching everyone in exactly the same way.
- Susan Winebrenner

The quote above is the mantra of CMS’s Optimal Learning Centre. This is a school wide program that works with at risk students in a variety of different ways. The other day i tripped upon Vmath Live, it looked like a way to enhance students’ mental math in a fun competitive way while at the same time using the internet to interact with students all over the world. Two birds, one stone. Unable to find pricing on the site i arrived at its parent Voyager Expanded Learning. TheirVMath, Passport, Pasaporte and Extended Day programs are the most interesting to us at CMS. Have any of you used progams such as these to assist your at risk students? Have you used other ones, that you would like to share?

Now i am a tech facilitator; unsurprisingly i believe firmly that technology is the most powerful tool available to teachers in search of opportunities for differentiation. Whether you are looking to differentiate the content, process, product or environment - technology can provide you with a array of opportunities; an array that grows daily. There is a huge amount of reserach and writing on this, some examples:

• Using Technology to Support Diverse Learners
• Differentiating Instruction
• Technology and Differentiation: A Harmonious Fit

I live a charmed life; personally and professionally. Three out of my four classes are driven by a student’s individual wants and needs. The student comes to me with a goal and ideas with how to reach that goal. I twist and tweak this to stretch the learning and together we construct assessment rubrics and timelines that are udated weekly. When done right, we have constructed a path for each individual student in my class. A path designed to maximize the student’s abilities, interests, learning needs and experiences. Yes it is a charmed life (and the position is still open for next year!).

GaDeV (Gracias a Dios es Viernes),
a very busy week here at CMS: we are continuing to move towards our transition to PowerSchool, learning scheduling “on the fly” in CenterPoint, constructing and re-constructing websites, editing and producing DVDs, filming Senior Extended Essays oral defenses (including a live onsite video feed), SumoBot Showdown is in full swing, we retained a key player in reaching our long term technology goals, ES is gone WikiWild (extra big thanks too the hard work of the teachers and facilitator Jeff Dungan) and we have begun to plan the construction of our new media center which will begin this summer and be fully functioning by September 2008. Something tells me i will be here for much of the weekend, even if i do get my work down Sunday is SpringFest here and neither myself or Oliver will want to miss it! esta es mi vida, y mi encanta.