Home a few days and then off again to a conference...

Here I am, taking a Sunday break from a very busy July filled with travel.  My feet are up, and I am blogging and reading blogs.  A quilt lies on the floor ready to be assembled tomorrow.  A pile of quilts is in the chair by the window that need to be folded and put away after having guest after guest in between travel trips.   The swamp cooler blows on me and explains why the curtain is wound around the rod.  Old episodes of The Amazing Race can be seen on the tv.

Many people think teachers have lots of time off during summer break.  What they may not realize is how much preparation, planning, and classes we have to take during our breaks.  I was home a few days before heading off to a teacher conference.

One class I took was how to put art into the core classes.  I learned that the state art museum can actually brings art to our schools for students to see and learn from.  They even gave us lesson plan ideas.

I attended with our art teacher.  It was a fun class we did together.  Here she is making a button she crafted. 

I did some straw blow painting.  I think the kids will love it!  I was thinking of trying it in a math class teaching the kids about ratios.  Perhaps we could do something with the paint to water ratios.

We were a group of teachers from the same school hanging out for 3 days of classes.  In the evenings they had full family activities.  Because we were out of town, there were no kids with us.  We did the fish pond anyway.

This is my math co-teacher.  She is amazing to work with.

The other math teacher at our school...

Our art teacher again...

The Key Note speakers are usually fabulous.  I would have to look up her name, but one lady spoke on the Dignity Index.  She taught about how to build skills to disagree appropriately.  At a time when our country feels hugely divided on opinions, I love the ideas in this index.  Her group is trying to teach about 8 levels in the index going from what she calls contempt to dignity.  The lowest level #1 is really horrible "They're not even human.  It's our moral duty to destroy them before they destroy us.".  The highest level #8 teaches "Each one of us is born with inherent worth, so we treat everyone with dignity -- no matter what."

I would love for our country to disagree appropriately.  Why do political candidates spend more time cutting the other person down rather than talk about ideas to solve problems?  The contempt in our nation is not necessary. This index teaches that we need not use words like "us" and "them".

I really like the orange one "Challenge ideas, don't attack people" and the blue one "Be curious, not furious".  They are all good though.

This keynote told us a website to go to where we can practice reading quotes and labeling them by number in the index to give us a better understanding of it.  I am thinking about adding one quote a week to my Learning Strategies class to help teach better citizenship skills to my students.

Look at these sad statistics.  Research shows that social media has really increased the suicide rates especially in our young people.  I took one class once that compared giving cell phones to our children to giving them a loaded gun and not teaching them how to use it safely.  Parents are giving kids technology to entertain them rather than playing and interacting with them.  Kids have actually been interviewed about their parent's cell phone use and they say that they feel unloved and ignored by parents who are only half listening to them and their needs due to phone distractions.

One class I took stated that as we add more technology to our classrooms, we need to add even more non-technology experiences to balance it. It is a teeter totter of what to do.  Kids need to have digital literacy to survive in today's world, but they also need to be protected from it and need LOTS of time away from it.