I’m thinking about trying several things in the following year. Apart from using Moodle still more and perhaps getting more of my colleagues hooked up to it I’d like to try some kind of classblogs. I’m still not sure if I do it from within Moodle or get some free blogs from Blogger et.al.

Moodle will offer a protected environment for my students. This should help to limit fears and get them to actually write something.
On the other hand, a blog on the internet definitely increases motivation – especially considering that strangers can post comments.

What to do?

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Does your school have a strict “no phone use on school grounds”-rule when it comes to students’ mobile phones?

Luckily, my school hasn’t and so I can let my students check facts on Wikipedia, look up words and definitions during writing exercises and so on. What really surprised me was that only very few students abuse the freedom and start texting or updating their Facebook status.

I’m very lucky, it seems.

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Here are some interesting links for history teachers:

• The National Archives have complete lesson plans over here. Very nice stuff. I wonder if there are similar sites for German history teachers.
• Similar to the above, but mostly useful if you are teaching history in English is SchoolHistory.co.uk – online history lessons, revision, games, worksheets, quizzes and links. Definitely a fun site to use!
• And last but not least: If Historical Events had Facebook Statuses. I think these would be great lesson starters if I only knew how to adapt them to our curriculum.

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I’ve always shunned the assumption that people who grew up with something that was introduced before they were born and is in widespread circulation when they grow up are inherently inclined to have superior knowledge about it. Like, you know, these “digital natives”.

From personal experience I can say that lots of my students are web-savvy. They have accounts at Facebook, SchülerVZ, MeinVZ, you name it. At the same time they have problems judging the validity of their Google search results. Additionally, they have trouble finding the correct expressions to feed into Google to actually get meaningful results.

But this is not all. A lot of their peers have trouble using a computer, connecting to and/or using the web with a web browser. Can we call these students “digital natives”? I think not. What is most interesting to me is that research has apparently come to the same conclusion by now.

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Thanks to @blauerpunto for focussing my attention on this: The Alot is Better Than You at Everything. I’m not going to enjoy forums or IRC chats anymore. Just because of the image of the burning alot in my head.

I might use the comic when we discuss chatspeak in class, though.

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More pupils with traumas or cases of neglect enter our school system every year. These pupils need a lot more attention than our regular students. So we as teachers should be in a situation to give these troubled characters the attention and time they deserve. They have the same right to learn as the other pupils but have to come to terms with their life/circumstances to be able to do it.

Now, as teachers do we have the time or resources to help?

Classes in German schools have (differing according to the type of school) 25-30 students. Now imagine that you have 3 to 5 troubled pupils in your class of 30. Are you ready and able to work with them and help them on their way to learning?

Of course we are ready! But unless you are Superman or Wonder Woman you’ll wear out fairly quickly. This is an inevitable result of multiple mental pressures: curriculum demands, colleagues’ demands, parents’ demands and last but not least our students’ demands.

The powers that be know about this. As previously stated,  teacher training takes the changed youth into account. But is there any other important support? Like a better student to teacher ratio?
This would result in smaller classes (perhaps around 15 pupils per class) and likewise more chance to encourage and support each student individually. I think this would not only change the ways to work with challenging students but also teaching in general.

But is this done in German schools? No, because it would immediately double the number of teachers. Needless to say this would be expensive. So, in these monetary challenging times smaller classes are not a viable option for the powers that be.
What a shame, because every Euro spent early in education is two to three spent less on dole-money later.

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You might already know the famous Horrible Histories by Terry Deary. If you live in the UK and have kids you might even know that there is a Horrible Histories show on CBBC. Here is an example in case you have no idea what I’m talking about:

I want a show like this in German TV (or on DVD or in the Medienzentren) now! No, not now, but yesterday. Why don’t we create such a show or, adapt or dub it? History is full of humour and irony. Time to show that to our students, too!

(via Britische Sitcoms)

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Sollte jemand noch mehr Ideen oder Unterrichtsmaterialien für so ziemlich alle Fächer suchen, wird er/sie/es hier sicherlich fündig werden.

Wolfgang Autenrieth hat dort mehr als 2010 Links zu Arbeitsblättern, Tipps usw zusammengetragen und nach Fächergruppen sortiert! Vielen Dank für diese Wahnsinnsarbeit!

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In the two years that German trainee teachers go through they learn to put the interests of their pupils above everything else. While this is certainly a valid point, I–and many others, too, it seems–think that doing this is like offering yourself to the burnout gods.
Let me explain.

In German teacher-trainings the changed and changing youth is one of the first topics to learn about/cope/deal with in the first month of training. One would expect the trainers to tell the future teachers the important things about basic mental health (and keeping it for the next thirty years).
But, alas, they normally don’t. They show you that children and teenagers have of course changed from the teenagers trainee teachers remember from their youth. At the same time, however, they force you to accept that your pupils’ interests are still paramount to any interests of your own (like being able to teach till your reach the regular pensioning age in good health).

I think this should change and I’m not alone with it. Marie Delaney seems to support me in this. She wrote the book Teaching the Unteachable and right in the first chapter states that being a good teacher (and that includes being a good teacher for pupils that others believe to be unteachable) strongly relates to your feelings as well as emotional and physical state.

Now, can we develop a balanced emotional and physical state while we  are neglecting ourselves? I don’t think so!
But this is exactly how our fresh teachers are prepared in the teacher-trainings. They produce burnout candidates and not teachers.

This has to change on both levels. If we as individual teachers are able to keep our emnotinal and physical state in a balance, we will be able to focus our attention on our students’ needs and making them top priority without burning out.

In teacher-trainings the ways to do this should be taught to give trainee teachers the chance to enter the job and flourish in it. Far too many colleagues  have entered and withered on the job.

Disclaimer:
Of course I do not think that German teachers aren’t well prepared for their job. They are! At the same time I firmly hold the belief that teacher-trainings do their best to prepare trainee teachers.
However, I strongly believe that a session on finding your balance should be mandatory. In the long run all we educators will benefit from this.

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I just stumbled upon this ebook (in PDF format, free of charge) and thought I would share the find.

Kick start your TEFL career: 20 classroom activities for elementary learners offers a wealth of ready to use activities for your English classroom. Nice to have, especially when you have to cover the lessons of an ill colleague.

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