February 16th, 2010
Filed under: Pre-School, Rants, Work | Tags: childhood, children, guns, Pre-School
Guns in Early Childhood Education
Currently my centre has a No Gun policy. They don’t allow toy guns and we are meant to tell the kids that guns are not allowed at pre-school if we see them pretending they have one.
This in my mind is stupid.
First of all, trust me when I say that I’m no gun activist. In fact, I’m completely against guns being used against human beings. But that being said I sure as hell played with water pistols when I was a child and I even had a BB Gun when I was in high school. I have fond memories of my friends all going down to the local primary school with our BB Guns and glasses and having wars late into the night. I still enjoy the odd paintball game now a days. This didn’t make me into a crazed killer. This was just a part of my boyhood.
Second, aren’t we meant to be working with the children’s interests? The kids at my centre are very interested in guns. Wouldn’t it be awesome to do a project on guns. Learn about the different types of guns. Learn what guns are used for? Learn about how to safely use guns. Learn about gun licenses? Make some gun licenses? Teach them what to do if they ever find a real gun? To me this sounds like a great idea, but I’ve had some pretty horrible “great” ideas in my life time. But then again what’s the alternative? Make guns, which are seen by kids everyday in their cartoons and stories, a taboo subject. Just pretend they don’t exist?
What’s your thoughts on toy guns at centres? Would you allow them at your child’s centre? If so, why and what rules would you expect to come with them? Would you forbid them? If so, why and how would you stop a child from pretending a stick is a gun?
December 5th, 2009
Filed under: Rants, Web | Tags: christian, judge, judgement, ki, side hug, vlog
Discussing my thoughts on judging people that were brought up by comments on my Christian Side Hug Video.
October 30th, 2009
Filed under: Rants | Tags: praise, students, teaching
Pick me! Pick me!
Praise your students for answering questions incorrectly! You heard me right, shower your students with praise when they don’t know the right answer, but try to answer anyway. This may sound completely backwards when you first hear it, but just think about it and it becomes clear.
If you only praise students that answer correctly then no one learns anything. Why? Simple the students that can answer already know the answer, and the kids that can’t don’t want to answer because there is no motivation for them to. If they aren’t answering then you can bet your ass that they probably aren’t listening either. On the other hand, if someone answers and gets it wrong, then they naturally want to know what the right answer is, and so will others. You learn more from a wrong answer than you do from a right one. So instead, encourage participation over knowledge. Praise everyone that raises their hand or even shouts out! Count yourself lucky, if you have a classroom full of students so eager to participate that they can’t even wait to put up their hands.
So, how do you get them participating? I like to play games and award points for answering whether right or wrong. Make sure to make teams and have a rule that states each member must answer before another team mate can answer again. This will cause students to encourage each other to participate. Remember give verbal praise and points for all answers, if it happens to be wrong encourage other students to help come up with the answer and explain it. Once you’ve played a couple of times, students will just get use to participating, trying to answering questions and helping others who answer incorrectly. Your classroom will transform from a teacher lead Q&A session with only a few students joining in to a classroom full of students participating and discussing ideas and reasoning behind those ideas with each other.
If your students feel comfortable and safe enough to answer a question even if they are most likely going to get the answer wrong, then you my friend are in the top 10% of teachers. Once you have them participating, you’ve got them listening and thinking. With participation knowledge will follow, it’s inevitable! It really is that simple.
September 13th, 2009
Filed under: Pre-School, Rants, Work | Tags: mcdonalds, propaganda, ronald
Propaganda Machine
While the site was down, the pre-school where I work had a visitor. A nice clown that came to read books and sing about the importance of using your seat belt while in the car… whether you’re driving near or far. Anywho, as you’ve probably already noticed from the picture, this wasn’t just any clown this was Ronald McDonald! I can’t believe they let this guy in the door, talk about getting them when their young.
He did a great job of entertaining the kids and even talked to them about what they liked to eat. He said he liked apples? Make no mistakes, all these kids knew that this was the clown from McDonalds. While it sounds like he is promoting healthy eating by saying he likes apples, all he really doing is pumping the kids and parents full of propaganda that McDiddy’s is a healthy fun and family oriented restaurant. In reality no one should be eating at McD’s let alone any child! Do yourself and your children a favour and stay away from the golden arches and all their fast food friends.
September 13th, 2009
Filed under: Movies, Rants, Reviews | Tags: crazy, jackie chan, Movies, rush hour 3, subtitles
Rush Hour 3
I sat down and watched Rush Hour 3 on DVD for the first time a week or two ago. I knew it wasn’t going to be very good, but I’m a fan of Jackie Chan and the crazy moves he does so I had to do it. I was correct in my assumption that it wouldn’t be the best movie by a long shot, but that’s not what I’m ranting about today. For anyone who has seen Rush Hour 3, you’ll know that the movie is set in France, so logically there are a few scenes that involved a bit of French dialog. Not being able to understand French at all (sorry Mrs. Green for not paying attention in French class), I decided to check if there were English subtitles so I could follow what was being said. There was so I turned the on and watched a scene again. Check out the screen shot of what the subtitles gave me in all their glory…
Now bear in mind that “We’re gonna need…” is what they are saying in English. What they are saying in French is translated to “(Speaking in French)”! How useless is that!
July 17th, 2009
Filed under: Rants | Tags: book, television, tv
Nothing but Garbage on TV
I have become a fucking slave to television again. Everything in New Zealand closes the same time everyone gets off work, for some fucked up reason, so I spend my nights veged out in front of the box. My mind is turning into play dough, and not that colourful highlighter stuff you get at boutique toy stores or from the internet, nope the year old half dried grey coloured crap you find in the sale bin at K-Mart. It’s really quite depressing. But I’m actively trying to change that so I have started to read books again. Unfortunately I’m so hooked to the boob tube that I’m actually reading on my ipod. Must be getting some kind of fix from the pixelated goodness.
If there are any good books you can recommend to me leave them in the comments. If they aren’t available in ebook format that’s even better!
July 1st, 2009
Filed under: Life, Rants | Tags: cell phone, telecom, vodafone
Bloody Cell Phone Companies
I hate cell phone companies. If I could, I would not have a cell phone at all. But I don’t have a land line number, so a cell phone is pretty much a must.
In New Zealand there are two major cell phone companies; Telecom and Vodafone. I personally use Vodafone because they have cell phones that use sim cards unlike Telecom which allows me to use the same phone I use in Taiwan, Canada etc.
Both companies offer similar plans and charges for their users, for instance they both have a best mate number which you can choose which allows you to call one number as much as you want for a month for $6, and 2000 text plan where you can send up to 2000 text messages for $10 a month. The difference is that both companies only allow you to call and text other phones on their network for the special plan, otherwise you have to pay normal charges.
As you can imagine this means that you usually choose a company based on what all your family and friends use. For instance most of my friends are on Vodafone, so I text them whenever I want, but the few friends that I do have that are on Telecom I don’t usually text because it costs me $0.20 per text on top of my $10 2000 text plan.
Up until recently it was pretty easy to tell who was on which network because all Vodafone numbers began with 021 and all Telecom numbers began with 027. I say up until recently because they have started to allow users to keep their numbers while switching networks now.
This resulted in me wasting a bunch of money, as one of my friends changed to Telecom without telling me. I continued to text them thinking it wasn’t costing me anything all the while I was slowly but surely spending a lot of extra money. Of course I didn’t find out until weeks later when I ran out of money on my phone, much to my surprise.
That is just another reason why I hate cell phone companies. Bastards.
For the kind of teaching I do the rewards and team thing won’t work, but I will be aware of how I respond to the wrong answers in the future. Thanks for posting
Well, Ki, I believe your blog is very significant and you have valid thought and opinions. I must say, as an educator for more than ten years, I have always worked at child care centers where there is a no guns policy. No weapons period. That meant even if they made swords. The thing is is that as early educators, we have to think of the generalization of our children. What separates them from learning what is right from wrong at school and at home. We never know what is being taught at home about guns in general. Some parents have no problem with it and others may be totally against it. We don’t want to offend the parents that are totally against weapons. And we also want to let the parents know that they are the primary teacher of their children in that aspect. Kind of like religion as well. Which is why a lot of day care centers either don’t celebrate any holidays or celebrate them all.
But what I want to focus on is the point you made about working with the children’s interests. And you are so absolutely correct!!! This is something that educators tend to loose track of when it comes to sensitive issues like weapons. Of course if all the children were interested in dinosaurs, educators will go all out to create a extensive theme on dinosaurs and get extravagant… but not with weapons like guns. I could go on and on. Especially with this society and the views that it puts out there… For example, with police officers. Society tends to make it seems like police officers are bad and send a message to children that they are there to take you to jail if you’re bad, and child care centers work so hard to change their mind set from society that police officers are good and are there to protect and serve. Which is very true… and what we should think about police officers regardless of what children see and hear…
Guns and weapons are very taboo in the child care world. And educators have made it that way. There are many reasons why and why not. And we could go around in circles forever. I would say, that if it’s the child’s interest, especially if the curriculum you are using is child-centered, and it’s ok by the parents, if I were a director of a center, I would allow a thematic unit on guns.
I appreciate your feedback and will keep it in mind as I continue in my career in ECE. Thank you!