Joyce Valenza’s Neverending Search

It’s been a lovely week for collaboration! Yesterday morning Ken and I brainstormed new strategies to get his seniors to better understand characters and motivation in Hamlet.  This led to a nifty new strategy.  We grouped the students into Hamlet communities–Hamlet, Gertrude, Claudius, and their choice of one other character.  Students are each maintaining blogs as their [...]

Yesterday, Michael, our technology director, Carol, our English Chair, and I presented a full day technology workshop for new faculty. Our focus was, technology and how to use technology to support research, communication, critical thinking, and learning. You can see our agenda and the resources for my alternate 2.0 focused wikiworshop. Here’s what really shocked [...]

Last week I judged the video competition among Ken Rodoff’s seniors. The goal: Create a 30-second trailer for Ayn Rand’s Anthem, to be used to motivate the juniors who will be reading the book next year.  We are slowly working our way through the entire reading list. This particular group of students had never before [...]

Google is crawling its way into the education world. A journalist phoned me this afternoon and asked what I thought about Google’s new program for educators. I went back and took a look. In a pilot program, Google is looking to certify selected California teachers at a November 7th Teacher’s Academy to be held at [...]

Around two weeks ago Springfield got some great news. We were granted one of Governor Rendell’s Classrooms for the Future grants. A press release describes the changes proposed for the 103 high schools selected in this first round of the grant. Among the many goals of this ambitious high school reform program is: to put [...]