Arbitrary Contemplations of an Educator

A Locals Convention

Craig Statucki — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 13:03:34 +0000

Friday was our school district’s third staff development day of this school year. Unlike the previous two development days, it was an opportunity to meet with CTE teachers from across the district and to attend sessions relevant to our specific field. The great thing about this staff development day was that the staff from CTE setup and ran this staff development day like a convention. There was an opening session, three mini-sessions, and a closing session. Unlike staff development days in previous years, there was a wide variety of sessions available. Considering how broad of a teacher spectrum that CTE covers, having so many session topics to choose from was a pleasant surprise.

This staff development day wasn’t just about us because the school that hosted the event has culinary and hospitality programs and the students involved in these programs provided food, direction, and helped run the event. It was a great opportunity for these students to showcase their skills and they did themselves, their teachers, and their school proud.

Principles of Animation Minus the Technology

Craig Statucki — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 06:57:27 +0000

My animation and graphics class was being introduced to the principles of animation earlier this week. The problem that I was having when planning this lecture and exercise was that half of my students had already had a small unit on the principles in their digital game programming class. My concern was that half of my class would be bored and off-task during the lesson.

To solve my problem, I decided to do a quick lesson and review on what the purpose behind the the principles of animation and a list of the twelve principles of animation. After my little lecture, I divided the class into the students who had already learned about the principles (Group A) and those who hadn’t (Group B). The Group A students had to find one or two Group B students and form a group. Once they students were in their combined groups, they were assigned two of the twelve principles and had to create a one to two minute skit that demonstrated each of their assigned principles. The Group A students had to teach the Group B students about their assigned principles and prepare a skit in 25 minutes.

Once the groups finished preparing their skits, they performed them in front of the class. Students in the audience had to determine which principle was being demonstrated. The kids and I had a lot of fun watching and performing in the skits. Hopefully, when it comes to apply these principles into practice that the students will remember the principles because of something that happened during the skits.

A Learning Experience

Craig Statucki — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 04:23:51 +0000

When my students become seniors, they will have an opportunity to work as interns in either web design or video game design. Our resources for internship placements are limited and a potential solution is to create “in-school” companies that will be responsible for getting clients and creating a final product for the client. I decided to let my freshman work on creating a company names, logos for each of the program areas (web design and video game), and a logo in case we decide to combine the two program areas into one company.

During the last two days that my computer graphics classes met, my students presented the logo designs and company names to members of our staff and local community partners. The presentations themselves were a mixed bag from pretty good to very bad. While the assignment had two original purposes, to create the names and logos and to learn how to use Illustrator, it turned out that all the groups got a valuable lesson on feedback.

Before the presentations began, I had seen and given feedback on all of the logos presented. As a teacher, I am fairly nice about my criticisms and I think that my students were expecting the panelists to be equally as nice about their work. The best way to describe some of the reactions from students after receiving feedback from the panelists was that the students went back to their seats looking like they just got run over by a truck. The panelists played their role as the client perfectly and were more than willing to pile on the criticism of subpar and average logos. Even the best designs did not escape some tough scrutiny. Many of the comments were similar to the feedback I had been giving over the course of the last couple of weeks, but the impact of it coming from someone outside of the classroom had a huge effect on how the students viewed all of the projects.

This was the first time that I had used community partners on presentation panels and I think the students now have a new perspective on what it takes to be successful. It will be interesting to see what the students do with that feedback next class and on future assignments. I am sure that some of the students hope that they will never have to see their logos again, but I have other plans for the students. They are going to start making the modifications suggested by the panelists and their next presentations will be on a much larger scale. After the next round of modifications, I will post them on my classroom blog and open the criticism to a much larger panel.

Time and Place

Craig Statucki — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 01:47:16 +0000

This isn’t a topic that I planned on discussing, but I recently received an email from a potential student that makes me wonder what some people think is proper etiquette in professional emails. I will be the first to admit that I am not even close to being perfect when it comes to spelling and grammar, but I am generally in the ballpark.

The email from this potential student was filled with “texting” spelling and grammar. The main point of the email was to request information on what is involved in the video game program area that we offer. There is a time and place for using “texting” language, but I don’t think that your first email to a potential teacher should be filled with “texting” language. I’m not sure if that makes me old school or not. I am sure that if this student enrolls in my program area, one of the lessons he will learn is when it is appropriate time to use “texting” language and when proper grammar is required.

ACTE 2009 Review

Craig Statucki — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 19:44:12 +0000

It has been a almost a week since I got back from the ACTE 2009 conference in Nashville. I try not to tweet or blog right away after a session or a conference because I am worried that I might be overly critical of bad sessions or give too much praise to good sessions without any proper reflection. Posted below are some of my thoughts from the ACTE conference.

I never get into the exhibits at these conferences too much because I am not a fan of textbooks for the ever-changing software that I use. I was able to see one software package from isupportlearning.com that interested me and I will look at further. The other booths that interested me were the companies that were offering certification testing for students which is a goal of mine and the school.

The sessions I attended were either very good and informative or very bad. There wasn’t much in between. I won’t dwell on specifics of the bad sessions other than by the time I left the conference, I wouldn’t mind if I never saw another PowerPoint presentation ever again. That is not to say that the good sessions had no PowerPoint slides involved, but their presentations did not revolve around the slides. The good sessions effectively demonstrated how technology was utilized in their classrooms, sample student projects, and allowed for discussion before the end of the session. These presentations didn’t seem like a lecture and I got several resources, contacts, and, most importantly, inspiration from them.

I am looking forward to the ACTE conference next year since it is here in Las Vegas and maybe I will get to be one of the people who inspires a group of attendees.

A Week of Moodle

Craig Statucki — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 06:25:39 +0000

This past week was my first full week of using Moodle in my classroom. I am primarily using it as a place for students to submit assignments, but I plan on expanding to using discussion forums inside of Moodle.

Right now, I am kind of doing double-duty by posting my assignments and lessons on the class website and posting the assignments in Moodle so students can submit their work. While this is taking me a little more time, the benefit of being able to grade through Moodle is outweighing the few extra minutes it takes to add an assignment to Moodle.

I had been using a different web 2.0 tool for students to submit their work to, but the process of grading was too time-consuming for what I need to grade. As I start to expand my Moodle knowledge and use, I will post my successes and failures on this blog.

Recruiting Season…Already

Craig Statucki — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 11:48:57 +0000

This past Saturday, I spent about five hours at one of the local malls recruiting for next year’s freshman class. Since we are a new school and I didn’t transfer until after recruiting season last year, this was m first experience trying to recruit students to a school. We had several of the counselors and administration at the event, but I was the only teacher and we only had one student there. In fairness to the other teachers and programs, we did receive short notice about the event.

I learned a couple of things about recruiting. One, a student is the best seller of a school regardless of which program the student is involved in. The student was one of my web design students, but he had no problem talking about the automotive, culinary, fashion, or any of the programs we offer. Two, many of the parents who visited our both were more interested to hear from the student than the rest of us. Three, some parents are more excited about getting their child into a career technical academy (CTA) than the child is. This seems to be further proof that parents do know what is good for their child and have done some homework on the CTAs in town.

Finally, every once in awhile the school district does something right. This year, all of the schools were provided colorful maps of where the transportation boundaries are. The maps help parents determine whether or not their child qualifies for busing. Parents could look at the busing maps, see what CTAs they qualified for busing, and then be able to talk to the specific schools in their area instead of visiting all of the booths.

In addition to the maps, the school district has decided to limit how many CTAs a student can apply for. While I am not normally a fan of limitations, this small decision helps all of the CTAs in February and March when they send out their acceptance letters. In the past, a student could get accepted at more than one CTA. The student would pick one of the CTAs to attend and the other CTAs would have to move down their wait list to find a replacement student. This represents an extra burden, time and money, on the CTA’s staff to find a replacement student.

Overall, the event was well organized and ran smoothly. I had a good time talking to future students and parents and I look forward to the next event.

Finding a Balance?

Craig Statucki — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 04:37:07 +0000

I am starting to discover that when my mind is full of ideas or frustration, I want to put my thoughts into a blog post and then severely edit the post to avoid a ranting tone. It does seem that this helps give me some order.

With those thoughts in mind, the dilemma that I find myself with tonight deals with project-based learning (PBL). The main focus of our school is on PBL. Right now, I find myself having a short lecture (15-20 minutes) on one part of the project, a small assignment on that topic (5-10 minutes), and the remainer of the 85 minute class period working on the project.

I am trying to find the balance between lecture and PBL. Is there a balance? If you are using PBL, are you even supposed to give a traditional lecture? For a long project, should I just take two days and lecture on the outline of the topics covered in the project, and let the students have a week or so to complete the project?

I am sure that I am making this out to be more complicated than it already is. I have always used projects for the students to demonstrate their knowledge, but for some reason it feels different this year – not sure why, though. A change in schools has apparently caused me to rethink everything and now I am not sure what I am thinking. Your opinions would be greatly appreciated.

Treading Water

Craig Statucki — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 05:24:39 +0000

Colin Maxwell (@camaxwell) sent me a direct message the other day reminding me that I haven’t posted here in the last three weeks. He reminded me that although it is the beginning of the term, that bad habits are easy to form.

I have been posting some small blog posts on my class website for my students, but have been ignoring this blog lately. I know that the beginning of the year is one of the busiest times of the school year. I am starting my 9th year teaching and this is by far the most hectic start of a year so far. For those of you who don’t know, I am working at a brand new career and technical academy in Las Vegas as the program leader for the video game technology and web design programs.

Opening a new school is a great experience that at times is frustrating, but I would have not traded this experience for any other that I have had in teaching. I have learned some valuable lessons about how a large school district works and about my own personal abilities. There are some days that I feel that I am just treading water trying to get through the day and it seems that these days are occurring a little more frequently this year.

At the peak of my frustration after last weekend, I was ready to take a personal day just to get a day off and rest. I came into work on Monday morning to find a message in my email from our school principal. It started with some things for the staff to remember to get done for the week, but at the end was a note that the staff of the school voted for me to be one of the teachers of the month. An hour or so later, I received another email which contained all of the comments/reasons why staff members nominated me for teacher of the month. If that wasn’t enough to re-energize me, my principal sent me text message thanking me for all of my hard work.

Those couple of messages was enough to get me re-focused for the week. I have always worked with great staff and administration, but I can’t help feeling that this collection of educators is something special.

Best Laid Plans…

Craig Statucki — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 02:18:30 +0000

I have spend most of today working on lesson plans for the next few weeks. Ideally, I would have had these done weeks ago. Not knowing whether or not I was going to have computers in my classroom has wrecked havoc on my planning style.

I wasn’t working off of a complete blank slate regardless of whether or not I had computers because I did have an idea of what I was going to do in either situation. The one lesson that I have learned so far this school year is to be flexible. It is mentioned in almost every staff meeting and DC/Program Leader meeting.