Pure Manaʻo

Source:  Foster, L. (2016, August 5). Builidng community with attendance questions. (Web log). Retrieved from http://www.edutopia.org/blog/building-community-with-attendance-questions-lizanne-foster What is Sacred: I guess I chose to read this because the picture of the Native American boarding schools kind of haunt me and I just wrote about the NMAI. We have the same type of pictures, but I also focused on being present and not absent, which then led me to this attendance article on the Edutopia  blog. This article is about using attendance as a community builder and a way to create a safe environment for students to really learn. This teacher uses an attendance question to create an open space for sharing. It is not connected to curriculum and there are no right or wrong answers. What got me excited was the focus on the word attend. When we trace back the meaning of attend  through Old French ( atendre ) to its Latin root ( attendere ), we can see t...

John McCarthy writes about Igniting Student Engagement , all things worthy of being pinned in my Teaching 101 Pinterest, but I just wanted to focus on one of his concepts, "be real," and "Hawaiian-ize" it for our community of students. He talks about connecting skills and content to students' interests and really that is the key. Content shouldn't happen until the teacher has created a true relationship with the student first. Creating a relationship with each student could take two months, and what is wrong with that? Other skills, expectations, content can happen, but by getting to know the students by understanding what family knowledge they come to school with, by humbling yourself, even if you are the teacher with all your degrees, so that you can learn from the students is the highest priority for the new school year and the best way to motivate students. When you can connect your content and skills to the knowledge and skills and interests of the...