Leading From The Heart

by Tracy Rosen, teaching & consulting since 1996, blogging about it here since 2007. All views are my own and you should take them with a grain of salt, I do.

Category: Teaching

  • The Changing Face of Economics Class (and advertising)

    **cross-posted at AdultEd.TracyRosen.Com**

    The idea of advertisement is in constant evolution. It is becoming more and more personal. Google’s ads are streamlined to reflect our search queries and sites like facebook do the same thing.

    Test it out. Do a search for something specific on Google. Like a particular kind of shoe or boot. Then log into facebook and lo and behold, the ads will suddenly be geared to just those shoes you were looking for!

    Just the other day, I heard about an app called Aurasma that brings static advertisements to life with your SMART phone. Someone with a SMART phone can not only view these ads but can create their own as well. More and more, companies rely on us for their advertising. If I talk about how much I love my new x, y, or z on facebook or twitter, I am helping out the company by effectively advertising to all of my contacts.

    If advertising is so much more than the print, radio, or tv ads of yore, how do we teach about it?

    I’d say it’s essential to read about how it is changing. And to bring that into our classrooms.

    Adweek.com is a good place, with a lot of content about the latest trends in advertising.

    Facebook’s New, Entirely Social Ads Will Recreate Marketing by E.B. Boyd at Fast Company, a company with, “… a focus on innovation in technology, ethonomics (ethical economics), leadership, and design. Written for, by, and about the most progressive business leaders…”

    AllTop Advertising – a collection of the top read advertising articles from across the Web.

    Another thought. How could these changes be reflected in the assignments we give our Economics students? Do you have any ideas? Do you know of anyone who is already integrating new advertising techniques into their class assignments?

  • In the name of honour…not: Teachable takeaway from the Shafia verdict

    Turning on the car yesterday morning and the first words I heard from CBC were Shafia. On the television, in the newspaper, on my Internet browser…Shafia, Shafia, Shafia.

    And honour killing.

    Afghans around the world were interviewed to comment on honour killing.
    Random people on the street felt their country’s values vindicated through the guilty verdicts with statements like – Canada is not a place for honour killing.
    Facebook statuses were updated in the same vein: my country = no honour killing

    This is what I take away as teachable from this case.

    Somehow this case became more about honour killing and less about what it actually is – the killing of women. In Canada. We need to question this.

    Is it because when we talk about honour killing we think we are talking about something that has been transplanted here by recent immigrants and therefore not Canadian?

    Why was it that this particular murder of women got so much press? That this particular murder of women is taken so seriously by Canadians? Is it because of that lens? That honour killing lens that allowed us to look at it from a distance?

    Is that why the Canadian public (news media, government…) doesn’t look at murders of women like the 600 and counting missing/murdered aboriginal women across Canada with such sensationalism and ease? Because we can’t reframe those murders as easily?

    Reframe it in any way. What it comes down to is that there are people (many people) who still think it is ok to kill women. And yes, in Canada. And the Shafia case is but one example of this.

    For that, I am happy about the verdict. But not for the reasons it is being lauded in the media. Not.

  • Teaching in the dark

    Lately I have been teaching in the dark.

    Our school has no Internet access. The students have none at home, either.

    What do we do? We read. We have conversations, live conversations, about what we read. We look for solutions together and they are made from the stuff of our brains.

    Did I mention that we read? My students in Grades 7 through 11 love to read. All of them. And they can have and do have conversations about the books they read. They can even make connections between them. They jump up and down with pure joy about some of the books they are reading. I actually have to tell students to stop reading.

    I see the Science teacher outside, collecting insects with the students, examining them under microscopes and in their terrariums. I see evidence of writing in French when they students laboriously and lovingly work on their scrapbooks by hand and write letters describing why they included what they did.

    At lunch time students play with each other. Yes. Even the boys in Grade 11.

    Lately I have been teaching in the dark and I’m surprised to say it has been illuminating.

  • How has your teaching practice changed?

    Mine is constantly changing, developing, evolving. I think if my teaching stayed the same for too long, I’d have to question what I was doing: stasis would undermine my determination to create meaningful learning situations. My students are always changing so how could I stay the same? Also, it would be really boring to do the same thing over and over again.

    Don't be afraid of change
    Image found at HumberPr Ning. Click to view source.


    When I started teaching, I was focused on reading. On helping every single student in my care to learn to read. Of course reading is still important but my focus has deepened to accept reading as a function of critical thinking. My practice has also changed in the deepening awareness I have in the importance of relationship to teaching – relationship with students, parents, colleagues. I think amazing things can happen if we are truly in relationship around what we do – be that teaching, firefighting, bookkeeping, farming.

    How has your teaching practice changed?

  • Trusting your teachers should trump tech savvy in administration

    Scott asks:

    Do administrators have to be technology-savvy themselves in order to be effective technology leaders in their organizations?

    I used to think yes, now I think not so much.

    What administrators need to be is trusting of their teachers. Technological change happens in the classroom. It won’t happen if it is dictated from above, it will happen if teachers are allowed to use what they see fit for their classroom, their students.

    Granted, administrators need to ok the purchase of expensive hardware but once that is in place so much can be done at the discretion of the teacher! If administrators have to know how to use each and every bit of technology, each and every app, before it is implemented in the classroom things will be slow.

    Trusting of your teachers. That is what administrators have to be.