My students 10th grade final is to build the 21st Century School.  They need a visual and a written product.  One talented student created a website for his school.  Click on the link bellow to view it.  The pictures are of different 21st Century schools created by some awesome students.  




Derek Love High School

At the end of every semester, I like to hear from my students about how I did and what I can do to improve.  Be nice but be honest. 




First part

What did you find helpful about the class or Mr. J's method of instruction (way of teaching)?




Second Part

List 2-3 suggestions to improve the class or to help students more.




Third Part

Anything else you want to add?

We are studying Jamaica and Bob Marley, and my students are writing songs.  Every year I like to play and sing to my students during this unit while we are writing.   We will be publishing the songs on www.teenink.com and they will be at the bottom of the publishing page on my website as I link them. 

The teacher next to my classroom, Mr. Quale, said, "you know, they don't listen to each other."  What he meant was that during class discussions our students don't hear each other's points and consider them when responding.  I didn't want to believe Mr. Quale's point, but I couldn't deny it either.  I decided to test it out.  During preceding class discussions, I would ask students to repeat what the person before them said, and they wouldn't be able to.  Then I remembered some marriage advice that I got a while back: try repeating what the other said by saying, "so, what I hear you saying is .  . ."  Practicing that with my wife was funny because we would totally miss what the other was saying, and summarizing what the other said before we made our own point allowed us to correct any misunderstandings.  I've brought this strategy to the classroom.  We are practicing repeating what the student before said using the sentence frame and then getting to what we think.  See how it goes here. 

Ned Vizzini, author of It's Kind of a Funny Story, died December 19 of blunt impact injuries to the head, torso and extremities. Vizzini committed suicide, according to the New York City medical examiner's office, though the office did not immediately say how. He was 32.

I just saw on CNN that an author a lot of my students read, Ned Vizzini, has committed suicide.  Here is the link to the CNN article This is extremely sad.  His books are It's Kind of a Funny Story, Teen Angst? Naah, and Be More Chill.  It's Kind of a Funny Story was made into a movie.  It seems that most of his writing centered around teenage depression.  Here is a list of quotes from his books on GoodReads.com.  Most are sad given that Vizzini lost his struggle with depression, so I'm going to post one that has more hope connected to it--as I'm sure Vizzini would want to be remembered.

"Dreams are only dreams until you wake up and make them real."

I hope we can learn from this tragic story and learn to live our dreams.    


  

Pacific plays for a national championship this weekend!