To add to my PLN, I decided to follow several people who I found interesting and might help me in the future.
One person I followed was Katrina Wirth whose blog is called “Teaching and Learning in the Primary Classroom” . Her one recent post I found interesting is called “School Ditches Rules and Loses Bullies”. She shared an article about a school that ditched rules and let the students free on the playground which resulted in hardly any bullying. Definitely check out her blog and read the article, too.
The next one I followed was “Teach from the Heart” blog and one of the reasons I followed her was of a very recent post called “Cutting my Daughter some Slack”. It was so adorable about just showing your daughter that you can make some mistakes. It was such a real post and she seems like such a real person that I decided to follow her.
Another one I found was a “What if…” blog and the post that caught my attention was “What if there were no criteria to become a teacher?” I’ve linked it to the title there and I suggest all of you to go read it. It’s very interested and the one question he had in bold print was “Why do people who aren’t educators always think they can do a better job than people who have been to college to become educators?”. That should be enough to catch your attention and give this one a read.
The next one I decided to follow because I’m an English major is Renee DeAngelo . Her passion for reading and writing is similar to my own and the recent post she had was “How to Build a Fictional World” and the video she posted with it is linked here:
I really enjoyed the video — and it was through Ted Ed on YouTube which was pretty cool. I can’t wait to read all her posts and get more ideas for my own writing and the writings of my future classroom.
I also followed my new mentor, William Chamberlain @wmchamberlain . I think he will be a great contribution to my Personal Learning Network.
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Good stuff here Helyn.
Thanks, Dean!
Thank-you for sharing these valuable people that we can follow and connect with.
I also read the article about ditching rules and found it very interesting. I was very unsure of it as I was reading but then thought back to my upbringing and realized that this is how I grew up. We lived in the middle of no where on a ranch and when we were not working we needed to find something to amuse ourselves. My brother, sister and I would spend hours making up games and building forts with whatever we could find whether is was wood or bales. We bonded a lot and rarely fought during these times. When I was thinking back on this it made me realize that this theory of ditching rules and letting kids have more freedom is definitely feasible and something that I believe more schools should be thinking about.
What are your thoughts on this?
I’m on the fence about this. Because nowadays there are so many video games out there that may or may not influence more violence in young children. So, in that case, rules are a good thing to have. Also, in society, we have to follow rules or we get in trouble with the law. So in that aspect, it teaches students about following rules and respecting authority.
On the other hand, having too many rules and restricting students makes them feel too confined and feel as though they might not have enough freedom.
I can see both sides and I’m not quite sure which on I agree with. It would be interested to try a day without rules and see what happens in a school.
Helyn,
I love the idea of “Cutting My Daughter Some Slack,” as it reminds me that, as teachers, we need to cut our students some slack too, and remind them that we are also makers of mistakes.
I agree with you, Brittany. Definitely need to take it into consideration.