Eveline M. Bailey

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Eveline M. Bailey

Global CXN: La Porte, Texas meets Hanoi, Vietnam, Part 1

Part 1: The Beginning

US Global Connections group. — US Global CXN group.

This year, students from La Porte, Texas, have the opportunity to correspond and collaborate with students attending The Olympia Schools in Hanoi, Vietnam, to learn about each other’s local communities, lifestyles, education, and other sociocultural issues. Initially begun as a way for US and Vietnamese students to engage in literary and cultural studies that would provide a basis for cultural awareness and allow them to interact and share their worlds, the group has moved far beyond our hopes and is now a thriving learning community of global citizens.

A few TOS students sharing a picture with us after a water fight at an autumn festival.

The idea for the group began last March when Christopher McDonald, Head of Schools for The Olympia Schools in Hanoi, Vietnam, and fellow AP English Literature grader sent me a television newscast video of the charitable work TOS was doing as part of a service learning project in their community. His students were interacting with the world around them and becoming better citizens and stewards of their community while learning valuable life skills and character development through experiences that complement the lessons taught in the classroom. While McDonald has cultivated many partner schools in the US and Canada, La Porte High School, the only high school in a suburban city of 35,000 people approximately 30 miles outside of Houston, is relatively insulated from the world. What better way to broaden my students’ worldviews than by introducing students from each school and providing an avenue for them to collaborate, as well as gain proficiency in 21^st century skills and the real-world application of those skills? McDonald and I discussed the possibility of a student-led collaboration between the two schools, and with high hopes and no idea where this project was headed, we created the Global CXN group. Continue reading “Global CXN: La Porte, Texas meets Hanoi, Vietnam, Part 1” →

November 27, 2015 2

12 Ways Teachers Know They Need Winter Break

For teachers, November can be a busy, difficult time. All our projects are finally launched, everyone is buried under 3 feet of paperwork, showers appear to be optional on weekends, and no one wants to make eye contact with administration because we all know that means we will be asked to do something else. It seems the only way to maintain sanity is to find the humor in what often seems humorless.

So, for all my colleagues, friends, family, and all the educators in the world, here’s to salvaging your sanity–

12 ways you know you need winter break:

12. You know there are exactly 112 days of school left.

11. Living in the mountains with no cell reception or internet begins to sound like a solid early retirement plan.

10. You stare at your living room wall for 20 minutes and your only thought is, “When did we paint it that color?!?” Continue reading “12 Ways Teachers Know They Need Winter Break” →

November 23, 2015 0

The Most Effective PLCs

The Professional Learning Community (PLC) has gained traction in recent years, even though its initial introduction to the education circuit began in earnest in the early 1990s when researchers documented the efficacy of the PLC to bring sustained school improvement and student achievement gains, to say nothing of the increase in teacher morale, improved professional development, and promotion of best practices. These benefits can be directly linked to teachers collaborating to study student formative and summative assessment data, write lesson plans, discuss the best teaching strategies and interventions, reflect, and support one another in a shared goal and purpose. Continue reading “The Most Effective PLCs” →

October 21, 2015 0

Taking student anxiety out of writing

During the first week of school, I give my seniors a questionnaire that, among other things, asks them to reflect on their writing strengths and challenges. One particular question asks students to discuss how they feel when they are given an in-class essay to write, and each time I ask, the overwhelming response is always “anxious” followed closely by dread. Worse, many of them describe their physical reactions to writing assignments with symptoms that are tantamount to anxiety attacks: an inability to breathe, clammy hands, headaches, racing heart beats, scattered or blank thoughts, blurred or tunnel vision, difficulty sitting still, nausea. When I ask students to consider why they feel this way when given a writing task, many of them cite failure and judgment as the chief reasons for their anxiety.

As every writer knows, there’s an element of exposure and vulnerability when writing for an audience that can be intimidating even for the most seasoned of us, but which for novice writers can easily become debilitating. Their struggle is real and rather than risk failure or a blow to their self-confidence, some students simply will choose not to write anything, feeling Continue reading “Taking student anxiety out of writing” →

October 8, 2015 2

What Students Wish Their Teachers Knew

Earlier last week, my students were working in small groups discussing their summer reading novel. As I moved around the classroom listening to and facilitating discussions, one thing I heard over and over again was how much the students really liked this year’s summer reading and that it was the only summer book they ever really read. The reason for that is the subject of another post entirely, but it is enough to say that as I listened, I also heard some other disturbing trends. One group of students complained that they had 4 tests the next day, which clearly was some Communist plot by teachers to ensure students didn’t have a life and/or failed their classes. Another group overheard and chimed in, criticizing their teachers’ handling of the material, specifically that some teachers didn’t seem to know the curriculum well enough to give correct information to students so they could study. A different group grumbled about band and sports practices after school that would keep them at school until long after dinner and they had hours’ worth of homework to do when they arrived home. I questioned them about their preferences or what they thought could be done to correct it, and before I knew it and could stop them, they were unloading years of bitterness about specific teachers and classes (they’re brutally honest!). Continue reading “What Students Wish Their Teachers Knew” →

September 24, 2015 3

A Call to Action to all Education Stakeholders

It seems no matter where we look, we are constantly bombarded by the many and various evils attacking our youths in today’s educational system: inappropriate student-teacher relationships, child abuse, unqualified teachers, unreasonable zero tolerance policies, volatile union riots, over-testing, questionable curricula, funding, the list goes on. It seems every day a new story is “exposed;” news channels like Fox News and NBC News even have segments called “The Trouble with Schools” and “Education Nation.” Simply watching the news or reading headlines could easily persuade us that schools today are corrupt, unhealthy places for children to be and the only answer for parents who care at all about their children is either private schooling or homeschooling, and if neither is an option for parents, then they may as well throw in the towel and accept the inevitable subpar education their child will receive because they can do nothing to change the outcome.

I may perhaps be overstating the case, although I’m not so sure when one considers the fear-mongering the media perpetuates by reporting nearly exclusively the terrible events happening in schools and the need for education reform. Certainly there are a few instances where the media occasionally features one good thing happening at one school in one corner of the United States, and every now and then, Hollywood gets on board by making a movie that highlights the positive impact a teacher had on his or her students such as Stand and Deliver, Lean on Me, Freedom Writers, Coach Carter, and The Ron Clark Story; or (as if excellent teachers are difficult to unearth somehow) they write fiction-feelgood: Dangerous Minds, Dead Poets Society, Mr. Holland’s Opus. However, more often than not, even Hollywood perpetuates the myth that teachers and schools are warped or deceptive: Bad Teacher, Teaching Mrs. Tingle, The Faculty, Election, The Breakfast Club, even Ferris Buehler’s Day Off (yes, I know—it’s a classic for all ages but it still misrepresents the motivations of teachers and schools). Continue reading “A Call to Action to all Education Stakeholders” →