leadership in high schools

This is another great site for teachers to investigate.  What I like about it is the variety of ways blogs are used in classrooms. 

http://del.icio.us/abpcjohn

Check out this blog written by a superintendent – Niel Rochelle of Iroquois Central School District.  In his blog written for students, they can respond to his comments and ask questions of him. This works like a Q & A session and also a forum to communicate with the highest officer in the school district. 

http://thesuperlearnerblogs.org

Another blog of interest is:

http://changinghighschools.blogspot .com

Yesterday I ran into Tom Talbot and Pat Trask the at LoGuidice Educational Center, Erie 2 BOCES.  Both Tom and Pat were at the presentation I gave on Blogs last Friday for In-service of Teachers.  Tom shared that he was taken aback by the “volume of words” I write.  He is intimidated by this and it is holding him up in terms of writing his own introduction.  I think the answer to this is to decide who the readership might be of your blog.  My suggestion…….if I were a teacher right now, I would use my blog to seek commentary and force creative writing responses from my students.  I would ask questions of needing use of a critical lens and ask students for a response using my blog.  I would tie this into a homework assignment/classroom work.  In addition, I would use the blog to post my each of my weekly lessons.  This way if one of my students is assigned ISS/OSS or is just absent he/she can access the blog to discover what assignments and lesson topics they have missed.  I would make the blog accessible to parents as well, who might be interested in learning about what I teach and who might want to lend some expertise to my lesson topic. 

Pat Trask has assures me that she will get up and running with her blog.  In the meantime I will be posting sample teacher blogs to this site, in hopes that you can all get started.