Education, Stading Style

It’s the State of Alaska’s fault, really.  This is their standard from the State of Alaska website:

“EMPLOYABILITY STANDARD 1:  A student should be able to develop and be able to use employability skills in order to effectively make the transition from school to work and lifelong learning.

 A student who meets the content standard should: 

1) develop and maintain a work ethic necessary for success in the workplace that includes honesty, integrity, dependability, punctuality, self-discipline, initiative, reliability, accuracy, productivity, respect, and perseverance; “

——————————————————–

The question comes, how do we measure that?  How do you as a student and I as a teacher provide data that we are teaching and you are learning how to do this standard?

This affects so much in your schooling: 
…turn in a paper on time, you are dependable and punctual. 
…decide to jump into a project that is beyond what is required, you have initiative. 
…speak softly and with great compassion, you have respect.
…admit that you made poor choices instead of coming up with excuses, you have integrity.

So I’m giving this back to you.  We need to start this talk because accountibility is coming for this standard and I don’t know how to measure it.  Here are some questions to think about, and post about, please.

1.  What actually do all those words up there mean? 
2.  How can we measure it? 

This is a brainstorm.  Anything goes.  Nothing is stupid.  I really want to know what you think.  It’s your education, not mine…(or is it?)

It’s  a new school year, welcome back!

One of my goals this year is to use this blog a bit more as I integrate technology into my practice.  I’m not very good at keeping up with blogs, but I’ll give it a go.

Check out the new Summer Reading Challenge page.  We have prizes!

We’ve just finished a book called Using Energy Wisely in our elementary reading class.  The students should now be able to identify various problems with the different types of electricity production (burning fuels, nuclear, wind, solar, and hydroelectric power were in the book) as well as tell some ways to save electricity.  We are through the organization step of our writing project, persuasive letters encouraging the wise use of energy and hope that the Homer News will publish some of them as letters to the editor.  This is my first time to submit student writing to an outside publication, the kids seem interested in the possibility of being published so perhaps we shall see some names in print.

For lack of a better title at this point, welcome to Education, Stading Style.  My purpose for this blog is to let you view your child’s education through a different filter (mine), as well as have a publication venue for student writing.  We’ll see how it goes!