Paul Cancellieri's Profile

Susie noted the "I Stand For" activity, a powerful culminating event that several other TLN members have also helped organize in their schools.

The end-of-year activity I remember the most emerged from a conversation in another online teacher community I’ve been a part of for some years. During the “I Stand For” activity, teachers take turns rising and naming a student for whom they have made a difference in some way. It can be very powerful, and there’s a good article about it at the Education World website with tips about how to use the idea most effectively. And here are some teacher comments.

One teacher said (quoting from EW) that “the ‘I Stand Activity” works because it reminds teachers of why they entered the profession. It helps them to focus on the most important aspect of teaching -- the children themselves." This teacher feels that "the opportunity to point out students who need to be taken under the next teacher's ‘wing’ is also invaluable.”

Well, maybe. It’s also worth thinking about what Neil
Postman wrote, in Technopoly:

“…those who cultivate competence in
the use of a new technology become an elite group that is granted undeserved
authority and prestige by those who have no such competence.”

In a society that reveres the new, there aren’t many people
speaking up for preserving what is good and real in old-fashioned learning. You
don’t hear many people these days saying they wish their children would write poems
in a secret diary, master singing in harmony, plant and tend a garden, make ice
cream or watch the stars over time. Why should they? These experiences and products are now readily
available without personal effort or involvement.

I’m sure that we could gather quantitative information on
our students’ preferences for any number of things. Mrs. X would certainly have
received high marks. Postman again:

To a man with a
hammer, everything looks like a nail. To a man with a computer, everything
looks like data.