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West Hempstead Weekly Update
January 2 2023
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
Gather Data Through All Senses
“Nothing reaches the intellect before making its appearance in the senses.”
Latin proverb
Does this quotation shock you? Or should we say, shock your senses? Perhaps it is surprising to realize that your brain reduces the world to its elementary parts: photons of light, molecules of smell, sound waves, vibrations of touch first. These elementary parts send electrochemical signals to individual brain cells that store information about lines, movements, colors, smells and other sensory inputs.
All external information gets into your brain through one of these sensory pathways;
- gustatory: the tastes you gather through your mouth.
- olfactory: the smells you inhale through your nose.
- tactile: the sensations you feel through your skin.
- kinesthetic: the positions you take through your movements and posture.
- auditory: the sounds you hear through your ears.
- visual: the sights you see through your eyes.
And it is not the single input of any one of these but the interplay within and between all of these systems that is how your brain functions. When one of these pathways is either blocked or compromised, the others are heightened so that you can make sense of the world.
For more visit: https://www.habitsofmindinstitute.org/gathering-data-through-all-senses/
Ideas to Consider
I believe the educational community in West Hempstead, from the staff to the educators to the administrators, is on the right track. We are building a comprehensive PreK-12 educational journey that provides a foundation for learning with students and staff integrating different virtues of learning identified as mastery, identity, and creativity. In this compelling learning environment, students and staff have opportunities to develop knowledge and skill (mastery), they come to see their core selves as vitally connected to what they are learning and doing (identity), and they have opportunities to enact their learning by producing something rather than simply receiving knowledge (creativity).
If you are unfamiliar with ChatGPT, here is the explanation from the Open AI website, "We’ve trained a model called ChatGPT, which interacts in a conversational way. The dialogue format makes it possible for ChatGPT to answer follow-up questions, admit its mistakes, challenge incorrect premises, and reject inappropriate requests. ChatGPT is a sibling model to InstructGPT, which is trained to follow instruction in a prompt and provide a detailed response."
Why would I mention this AI technology? This can be a disruptor in education, and I am not sure it will be in a way that is beneficial to students. In a recent article, a company called Kalidescope is deeply considering how ChatGPT will change how teachers teach, and students learn. I cannot say if this will have a positive influence on a students learning journey, but ideas of plagiarism, grading, and lesson planning instantly come to mind.
Larger than that is the idea that does anyone need to learn? To put in the time, it takes to become masterful? Think Malcolm Gladwell and 10,000 hours of deliberate practice. How does one develop their own identity? Everyone is shouting into their phones and social media accounts about disparity, but is this idea "equalizing?" And what about creativity? If every student is "dumping" an idea into a black box, and it spits back a complete idea, what have we learned? I understand this idea is more complex than that, but on the surface, it seems problematic. It is akin to people driving and using Waze everywhere they go. It is my impression that people have lost their way directionally and metaphorically.
There must be something t my thinking because the NYC Department of Education has already banned ChatGPT from its networks and devices. They state that ChatGPT is having a negative impact on student learning and has concerns with the accuracy of the information being provided. Seeing how this is a new technology, and as stated on the Open AI website, we already know the information is inaccurate. So, do we ban it, or do we use it as a teaching tool? It could be an opportunity to teach critical thinking and problem-solving. Maybe in tech classes and not literature, this idea could be explored.
Another tech trend that has me thinking is cell phones and, to a greater extent, social media. I use social media for school and in my personal life. If I am not cognizant, I can easily go down the "rabbit hole" and spend too much time in these spaces. I wonder how easy it is for young people to get lost and the impact of this. I do not need to wonder, as there is plenty of research and information out there to tell me that they are. And it is disconcerting.
From the Atlantic article, Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?, "All screen activities are linked to less happiness, and all nonscreen activities are linked to more happiness. Eighth-graders who spend 10 or more hours a week on social media are 56 percent more likely to say they’re unhappy than those who devote less time to social media. Admittedly, 10 hours a week is a lot. But those who spend six to nine hours a week on social media are still 47 percent more likely to say they are unhappy than those who use social media even less. The opposite is true of in-person interactions. Those who spend an above-average amount of time with their friends in person are 20 percent less likely to say they’re unhappy than those who hang out for a below-average amount of time."
We are learning more about the impact of the pandemic, but I think the impact of the pandemic has led to an even more disturbing trend in cell phone and social media use. "[P]sychologist Jean Twenge had found spiraling levels of depression, anxiety, and isolation among teens. “I had been studying mental health and social behavior for decades and I had never seen anything like it,” Twenge wrote in her 2017 book iGen.
This historic downturn in the well-being of young people coincided almost exactly with the dramatic rise of the smartphone and social media. More specifically, it coincided with the moment when they both became universal and being disconnected or an infrequent user was no longer viable...
...Research by Twenge and others found that teenagers’ media use roughly doubled between 2006 and 2016 across gender, race, and class. In competition against the smartphone, the book, the idea of reading, lost significant ground. By 2016, just 16 percent of 12th-grade students read a book or magazine daily. As recently as 1995, 41 percent did. Meanwhile, social media was on the rise. By 2016, about three-quarters of teenagers reported using social media almost every day..." (full article).
I think it is time for parents, staff, and educators to give serious thought to severely limiting the use of cell phones. I can't tell a parent if and when to give a cell phone to their child, but I know my children did not get cell phones until they were in high school. If you want a good read on these ideas, check out The Chaos Machine by Max Fisher.
Health trackers have piqued my interest. In the end, I am hesitant to suggest using them in schools as it is more technology. There is limited research on health trackers (https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/21/14067/pdf) and their impact. I think we need a community-wide commitment to ensuring our students/children are playing and getting exercise. An excellent read on exercise and the brain is called Spark. Exercise:
- positively impacts cognitive functioning (meaning exercise can help us learn).
- helps you handle stress.
- helps us become more social and boosts confidence.
- may help reduce anxiety.
- releases endorphins.
- increases self-regulation and self-control.
This may seem like doom and gloom, but it is not. The goal is for learners to be apprenticed into expertise through inquiry, where developed knowledge is generative and unconstrained. It is learning how to find and solve problems and design solutions by using the stances and strategies of expert practitioners.
PreK
I am reading, Reading for Our Lives by Maya Payne Smart, and over the next several newsletters, I will share some of her ideas from her writing.
Chapter 7 focuses on supporting the teaching of reading at home. The author suggests the following to try:
Add Sights to Sounds
Phonological awareness is a critical pillar of early literacy hat parents don't hear enough about and could do a lot to nurture. This chapter described several activities, from the Name Game and spoonerisms to Pig Latin and nursery rhymes, that you can use to raise your child's awareness of the sounds within words.
One pro tip for taking your efforts to the next level is to get physical by bringing objects and gestures into sound lessons. There's something about a strong visual or tactile element in addition to the auditory dimension that helps kids grasp the sound blending and segmentation tasks at hand.
When highlighting syllables or onsets and rimes, you can put your hands in fists to illustrate different segments and bring them together to show blends. "What does putting cup [hold up right fist and cake [hold up left fist] together make? Cupcake." (Bring fists together.) The same goes for segmenting the /k/ sound from the "at" in cat.
You have only two hands, so you'll need some other tools when tackling multisyllabic words or when you want to address individual sounds in words. Blocks, coins, or other small tokens that you have on hand can make sound tasks more concrete-and interesting. For example, you could line up four pennies to represent the different sounds heard in the word sled: /s/, /I/, lel, Id/. You could say each sound slowly while pointing at the coin that represents it and then run your finger across each coin quickly as you pronounce the whole word. The physical materials help bring attention to the individual sounds.
-Adapted from, Reading for Our Lives by Maya Payne Smart
UPK Interest Survey Closes 1/10/23 - Drawing 1/11/23
https://www.whufsd.com/o/chestnut-street/page/universal-pre-kindergarten
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Everyone involved is a volunteer focused on meeting student needs. The difference between a great school and a wonderful school community is the strong relationships between teachers, administrators, staff, and parents.
Why join?
- You can have your voice and perspective heard.
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- You can learn about the school community, and they can learn about you.
- You can be “reflective.” Your children can submit their work to The National PTA’s Reflections program. This 50-year-old program provides opportunities for recognition and access to the arts. Students submit artworks in several categories based on the year’s theme.
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