Summer School Fun

 

Sorry, Emery. Pacman is a playable character.

Just finished my first week of teaching two summer courses. The first one is for a teacher certification program. That course covers planning, management, and evaluation. It’s an odd class to be teaching when students aren’t able to put into practice the material they with which they come into contact. They are out in the field and some will actually teach this summer, but I wonder how much they will remember for the fall when they begin teaching.

My other course is secondary school curriculum. It’s my third time teaching this graduate course for secondary school teachers and I love it. Their conversations and engagement with the course content is complex, multi-layered, and challenging. Their experiences are as diverse as their educational philosophies that discussions sometimes become quite heated—but no fist fights as of yet.

We meet three times a week for approximately three hours each meeting. Here’s how I structure the course (you know I love routine as much as I love a good gimmick):

TED Tuesdays—Watch and discuss TED talks about education.

Work Wednesdays—Work on final group projects.

Theater Thursdays—Watch a film or television show that relates to the week’s readings and focus topic (We watch clips from season 4 of The Wire, Waiting for Superman, Teach: Tony Danza, and Chalk).

Each class session begins with a student-led discussion over the day’s readings, and then we move to the focus of the day. On TED Tuesdays, we watch TED talks about education including those by the creator of Kahn Academy, an innovative approach to schools in England called Studio Schools, and a TEDxMahattan talk by Michelle Rhee.

I then have my students create a lesson based on either a TED talk or an Youtube video using TED-Ed’s software. It’s really user friendly and fun to use. I think I might get Emery to create one on video games . . .

Speaking of Emery, I hope he tells you about the new game he previewed at Best Buy this past week . . . The picture at the top of the blog is a hint.

The Summer Doldrums

We have now hit what I think of as the summer doldrums. For those of you familiar with your children’s literature, a reference can be found to the doldrums in the Phantom Tollbooth as a place where people are stuck in a routine of lounging around. And, they also refer to, if I remember correctly, calms spots of weather, without winds or storms, on the ocean.

A quick google search confirms that we are in the summer doldrums as this USA Today Money article notes. Only, they are referring to the financial markets. I’m referring, however, to the period of time that exists between the end of school and the beginning of summer camps.

During this time, parents often have to scramble to find temporary child-care options. That might mean visiting grandparents, friends whose parents work at home (or are not teaching), or taking your children to work with you.

For professor-types, the doldrums (at least for those of us who teach in the summer) exist in the days after the semester has ended and the beginning of summer classes. Summer reading, video games, and gardening beckon. Alas, who can justify relaxing when in just two weeks, classes start and there are syllabi to update, course material to read, and papers to be written?

Redmag's blogs for moms has a column on 10 tips for getting kids to read. While I applaud their

I asked Emery what he was going to do this week. In addition to posting more videos to his Youtube Channel, here’s his list:

Monday-fun, violin, movie night

Tuesday-help mom cook

Wednesday- set info for server

Thursday-make minecraft server, clean house

Friday-Friends come over

p.s. Redbook magazine's Momrama blog has a column on 10 tips for getting kids to read. While I applaud their efforts and like the tips about finding what your kids are curious about and find books about those topics, they overlooked a very simple tip--give them good books. I wish they had listed some sources on how to find those books, and it's quite possible that my next post should be on locating good books for your kids. Because no matter how much kids love learning about the planets, they will not bother with a  poorly written book on the topic, and we shouldn't make them read them. 

why you-tubing is hard with Emery

Youtube's more metallic than ever

a few weeks after my mom did the you tube post i got a you tube channel. took forever to find channel art, made a couple videos(edited out deaths) and typed them in to see how they looked.(Just so you know my videos are on video games so if you or your children want to see them there will be a link). I typed it in and saw there was a bunch of videos on the same game! (donkey kong tropical freeze). it was impossible for someone to find it!. i thought of sending a link to my friends but they never check it. so i watched some ideas on getting your channel known and found out to use social media. checking my channel i saw on history a bunch of nail polish vlogs my mom watches! not knowing what to do i go to dad to see if he can share the channel on his twitter. the next day he said yes. I went to my mom to see if i could do this post. if you haven't figured it out she said yes. going back to the channel i figured out how to delete videos on history. then saw I had 4 subscribers! I thanked the ones with non-hidden channels and told my parents. making this i think of doing a sneak peak of best buy's E3 nintendo if the camera doesn't shake to much. also to make a channel trailer and  series on mario kart 8. i hope you enjoyed this!

here's the link to the channel:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCt0qDmg1BRTmQnE2CClQg-w

Jackie's comments. Wait a minute. He erased my videos on history? I'm not sure what that means, but he'll tell me. Yep, Emery's been busy this past week--he gets up around 5:30 a.m., figures out what he's going to capture, yells at us (we're still trying to sleep) to stay out of the living room because he's recording, and then he does his thing. All without my help. 

But, I didn't realize that half his plan included researching a marketing strategy. 

Rejection versus Losing: Which is Better for our Children?

The Bring It moms show off their dance moves. 

As I’m writing this, I’m watching the last episode of this season’s Bring It. The episode before this one, the Dancing Dolls came in second place at a large competition. But the way it was represented it was as if they lost. There is loss and rejection in the show. Sunjai, for example, gets cut (a sort of rejection) almost every week from the elite stand battle team. She must deal with the rejection of not making the cut. And, when the team doesn’t make first place, it’s as if they seem to “lose”. And the team has to discuss how to deal with that “loss”. (I say loss because really is second place that bad?)

Our children experience both loss and rejection in their lives. I never thought about it until one of the parents at an audition Emery was at today commented on the fact that her child had chosen an activity (acting) that has a 90% rejection rate. She might be exaggerating, but it was a profound observation to me. A child might be rejected for a role because he or she is not tall enough or loud enough or cute enough. They don’t get to continue beyond the audition. Whereas a child on a basketball team (or golf or art contest) might submit a work or play in a game where they are not the “winner”. But, they get to play in the game. Which is worse? Which is harder? Is there a difference between rejection and losing?

I don’t know. Personally, winning or losing or rejecting wasn’t something I really noticed when I was a child. I didn’t mind losing the run for student council secretary when I was chosen as drum major. Which leads me to the realization that I need to just back off. Perhaps our children don’t recognize the difference or even the implications in the way we do.

I loved watching the Bring It moms put on costumes and dance for the season finale (they even do a stand battle!). I can’t sing and act like Emery can. It makes me realize that my child is capable of things I was never capable of at his age, and that I was able to do things he is not capable of. But my job is to provide him with the resources that he needs and not push him into things he doesn’t enjoy.  

So, what do you think? Is it easier to deal with rejection or losing? Should we avoid activities that favor one or the other? 

Emery's comment: It's true. I'm cool with it but sometimes they hire someone when they are terrible at the part but look like that character. I'm auditioning for a big part and most likely they will choose the one that looks like more like the character. Oh well.

Emery wants his own Youtube channel and Boyd’s book It’s complicated.

First, grad students can be wonderful resources for information. They may not recognize it yet, but they really do have the luxury to stay current and immersed in a particular area of interest. And, they are innovative. Rarely do I have the wonderful, crazy, provocative ideas I once did when I was reading Lacan for one course, watching punk rock movies in another, and discussing the future of education in another.

Which is why I am grateful I expressed my woes about Emery wanting his own Youtube channel so he can make his own “Let’s Plays.” This student recommended that I read Danah Boyd’s (2014) It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens, which I had actually already heard about on NPR, but then immediately dismissed as one of those books I didn’t need to read yet (heaven help Emery when I can finally justify how to prepare your child for college books). This student patiently explained to me (my apologies if I paraphrase this conversation inaccurately) that Boyd argues that many parents’ fears about their children going online might not come true—that our children have this “imagined community” with whom they will interact, and really, how many people are going to seek out his channel. So, I went to my library and, would you believe it, found an online version of the book.

The book is divided into several chapters and based on eight years of research. Here are the chapter titles:

-identity why do teens seem strange online?

-privacy why do youth share so publicly?

-addiction what makes teens obsessed with social media?

-danger are sexual predators lurking everywhere?

-bullying is social media amplifying meanness and cruelty?

-inequality can social media resolve social divisions?

-literacy are today’s youth digital natives?

-searching for a public of their own

I tried to figure out which chapter to read first by trying to figure out my objections to Emery’s getting his own channel (Victor’s is easy—he would read the bullying chapter as he is afraid of the cruel comments people might make on the site. He might be speaking from personal experience). To be honest, my fear is all of the work I’m going to have to do—help Emery create the channel, purchase all of the equipment he kindly wrote for me in a list and left by my stack of work stuff, figure out how to use all of that equipment, etc. Unfortunately, there’s no chapter on children whose pursuits make more work for the mom who can’t let her son figure it out for himself. . .

So, I read the chapter on addiction because as someone who only blogs (I opened a Twitter account but haven’t posted or even looked back at it since then), it’s hard for me to understand why Victor has to check his Twitter every few minutes during dinner or a concert or while driving.

Basically, Boyd begins with the notion that maybe addiction (she likens the passage of time that goes by to being in Csikszentmihalyi’s flow) is a little too strong of a word and that the public is blaming social media instead of other social ills. She likens the amount of time spent social networking to the time teens used to spend on the phone (I spent hours on the phone as a teen). She says teens are not addicted to the technology but to each other (p. 80).She then moves to a discussion about how societal changes (parental fear, increased structured activity time for youth, etc.) has led to less down time for kids to spend with each other face to face. Guilty as charged.

Boyd ends the chapter without a recommended list of strategies for parents or even an idea of how much is too much but instead with the words: “Rather, adults must recognize what teens are trying to achieve and work with them to find balance and to help them think about what they are encountering” (p. 99).

I think this is a book Victor won’t read, but Emery will. I think it would be a good way to start some of the discussions we should be having—and maybe something he needs to do before we agree to his request.

I just didn’t think it would happen so soon.

Emery's comment: she knows me. now i'm probably going to read the book. also, heaven help me when mom prepares me for college books. i can help figuring out the equipment and i can self-teach quickly! ... okay, i'll need help with imovie but thats about it! though, part 4 of the book does make me re-think this. 

Another Nerdy Saturday Night and Summer Camps

Victor and Emery are playing Lord of the Rings Monopoly while watching The Hobbit, part 2.

I think the only thing to top that would be if we were reading another Shakespeare play out loud.

So, have you signed up for your summer camps yet? If not, you’re probably too late to get into the more popular ones. Like the Percy Jackson one held in Austin, TX each year--registration begins in November. 

As you know from a post I did last year, we sign up for camps early each year. We’ve had a lot of success and failures (I’ve lost many dollars on camps Emery left early). We’re only doing two camps this year, both theatre camps, because we’re taking a very exciting trip. More on that later, but just a few additions to my choosing summer camps rules:

1.    Don’t regret missing a camp because you’ve scheduled a big trip. It’s going to be okay if your kid can’t star in the local kids' version of Peter Pan.

2.    By all means, get your kid’s opinion but you have the final word. Research, find out information from others who have attended the camp before and make an informed decision. 

3.    Don’t put a kid in a camp with a friend just so he can be with that friend. It’s not fair for anybody to make sacrifices with money or time, just so they can be together—there are always times outside of camps.

4.    I can’t comment on overnight camps, but if your kid says he doesn’t want to go, don’t make him. Even if it’s the super awesome sounding Stagedoor Manor (I just read Theater Geeks, written by the same guy, Mickey Rapkin, who wrote the book Pitch Perfect was based on which is about a theater camp).

5.    An educational camp is still education, even if it’s a camp that uses science to teach Minecraft. School is school.

Now that camps are signed up for, it’s time to think about the summer project for Emery. Two years ago, it was the Medieval Times, last year Shakespeare, I suppose this year it needs to be something science-related.

I always liked physics. 

Don’t read this if your kid plays video games and you want him to stop

An updated version of the video game walkthrough--the wiki page.  Thank you contributors. 

A student in my class referred to Seymour Papert’s 1993 book The Children’s Machine: Rethinking School in the Age of the Computer this week. Not familiar with his work, I turned to trusty Amazon to read the first few pages. In doing so, I came across this statement found in the preface:

         "The love affair [he had been discussing how parents sometimes view their children as being addicted to computers and video games] involves more than the desire to do things with computers. It also has an element of possessiveness and, most importantly, of assertion of intellectual identity.”

I could just see Emery using this statement on me someday. He might stop letting me play his Nintendo. But, taken another way, imagine what our children can and do teach us about their technological worlds—see Emery’s “Let’s Plays” post.

My students are always quick to point out the dangers of the computer (cyberbullying, false, misleading information, and they point out that many of their students don’t have access to them).

But this post is really about something else—I played video games before Emery did. Some of my fondest memories were of my family playing Atari games together (my parents had fierce battles playing what I think was called Megalomania). I, like many of my contemporaries, grew up with Nintendo’s Mario and Zelda. And, then I stopped playing for many years.

The next time I picked up a console happened shortly after Emery’s birth. Well, before that Victor and I played some PC games, one of our favorites was an Alice in Wonderland adventure. Victor and I can’t remember if someone gave us one, or if we bought it, but for the next several years, we played game after game (he always watching, and yelling at me what to do—although he did get me through a sticky spot in Zelda: Orcania of Time).

I say this because I’ve gone back to one of my favorite games—Oblivion, and frankly, I don’t want to share it with Emery. Not yet.  

EMERY'S COMMENT: i'm back and i love it. mom has started playing video games again like pikmin 3 and more LEGEND Of ZELDA with help from me. i guess i owed her for when i would ask for help when i was young. She will soon finish the legend of zelda: A Link between Worlds and she will play other games with me more.