Anti-Bullying Campaign

In September, the suicide of Jamey Rodemeyer brought the serious issue of school bullying to the national spotlight. Not only did his name and story become associated with the popular NoH8 movement, but it even inspired Lady Gaga to dedicate a song to Jamey, who was a self-proclaimed "Gaga Monster." These events hit my school especially hard since we are located only a few miles from Jamey's hometown.

To help combat bullying, yesterday was proclaimed Anti-Bullying Day in our school. Students wore blue clothing to support the victims of bullying, and hundreds of kids signed an anti-bullying pledge inspired by Dr. Phil. To help spread our passionate message against bullying, some of my students worked together to create anti-bullying public service announcements. In the first 24 hours, they have received hundreds of hits on Youtube, and were even featured on the local evening news.

Please take a moment to view the results of their hard work, and if bullying is something your school finds to be an important issue, feel free to share the links. Our goal is to promote the message that bullying cannot be tolerated. If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem.

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Respect

"Respect seems to be like a boomerang in the sense that you must send it out before it will come back to you."
-Author Unknown

We have a young man on our team this year who has had a less than ideal middle school experience. He's a good kid, but his impulsive nature and short attention span often gets him into trouble (sounds like most middle school boys, right?), and he has also been on the receiving end of bullying more times than most. I have helped him out of a few tough spots during the past year and I'd like to think we have a pretty good teacher-student relationship because of it. He's well-behaved in my classroom and he works hard. In return, I keep an eye on him.

I keep an eye out for all my students. My team has always worked hard to build a strong community among our students, and it shows. We rarely have cliques form and every student can – at the very least – tolerate working productively with anyone else on the team. Discipline issues are also a rarity in our classrooms. I always tell students that we look out for each other, and I mean it.

Recently, my school hired a new music teacher who also happens to be a friend of mine. On the first day of school, I dropped by her room to take a peak at her roster and I noticed she started the day with this boy in her class. Knowing his track record in off-team classes, I decided to beat him to the punch and talk to him before trouble brewed. I started the conversation by reminding him about how I always say I look out for my team. I then explained that I also look out for my friends and this teacher happens to be a friend of mine.

I didn't have to say anything else – he understood that I'd be all over him if he caused trouble. And you know what? He has been excellent so far.

Does this boy suddenly love music class? Doubt it. Has he learned to control his impulsive nature? Unlikely. Instead, his good behavior is a testament to his respect for me and his understanding of my expectations.

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A Quick Note: If this post seemed like it was just me patting myself on the back, you're not far off. I recently joined Steve Hargadon's Teacher 2.0 experience on MightyBell and the first “experience” called for me to write about one thing I'm good at. For some reason, the situation with this student immediately popped into my head. If you would like to learn more about Hargadon's social assignments or perhaps want to join me, you can learn more about it here.

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5 Tools for Online Collaboration

Yesterday I presented at Niagara's Exploration of Technology in Teaching conference on tools for online collaboration. Social media tools like Facebook and Twitter are either ignored or banned completely in education, so I thought this was a valuable topic to share with the 150 or so teachers in attendance. Our students are always-on creatures who do most of their communicating - and therefore collaboration as well - in an environment that most schools don't even consider.

Typically when thinking about online collaboration, two things come to mind - wikis and Google Docs. Both of these are fantastic resources for teachers, but my suspicion was that most of the teachers at the conference either already knew what these tools were, or at the very least knew how to independently find information on their uses. Instead, I chose to highlight 5 lesser-known tools that could be used for collaboration in the classroom. Below is a quick summary for each as well as the SlideRocket presentation I used at the conference.

Tool #1 - Edmodo

I wrote at the beginning of summer about how impressed I was with Edmodo, and the shine has yet to tarnish. Students find the Facebook-esque layout to be intuitive and teacher will find that Edmodo makes it surprisingly easy to manage multiple conversations with students online. Social networks are the epitome of online communication and collaboration, and Edmodo is an excellent and safe way to incorporate them in the classroom.

Tool #2 - BoostCam

BoostCam is a great alternative to video conferencing products such as Skype and Oovoo. While it is certainly more primitive, teachers will find appeal in the fact that it doesn't require registration or any software downloads. If you're looking to create fast, single-serving video connections, BoostCam is a great option.

Tool #3 - Etherpad

Etherpad is a synchronous collaborative workspace similar to Google Docs. In 2009, Google purchased the site and immediately shut it down (were they afraid of a little competition?). Fortunately, they also released the source code. There are now many derivative sites based on this code, all of which are excellent resources (iEtherpad, PrimaryPad, TypeWith.Me, for example) for teachers looking for ways of getting students to write collaboratively in an online environment.

Tool #4 - Crocodoc

Admittedly, this tool was just recently shared with me by one of my graduate students, but it's a wonderful resource for teachers looking to get quality editing out of students. Crocodoc basically creates a layer to any document uploaded to the site. There, students can mark up and annotate on the layer. This provides feedback to the author without giving the peer who is editing the ability to physically change the writing.

Tool #5 - WallWisher

There are other sites that create an online "bulletin board," but to my knowledge WallWisher was one of the first, so I felt it was notable enough to add to the list. Basically, it's an online wall where students can collaboratively post and arrange sticky notes. During my presentation at NETT, one teacher also suggested that it could be used for classification activities - the teacher populates the wall with notes, and then students have to rearrange them. A clever use for this tool!

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How to Quickly Create and Share Videos

Next year, my students will walk through my classroom doors holding brand new netbooks as part of my school's 1:1 computing initiative. I am well aware that this is going to be a paradigm shift, so I am already trying to prepare myself for when this happens. As a result, I am quietly collecting resources that I will be able to use when the netbooks enter our building.

Every machine comes equipped with a webcam, and I have been brainstorming how to best use this in the classroom. Tools like Skype are certainly valuable, but a bit difficult to manage with a group of 100+ students. I want something simple that can create and share videos without struggling to upload to 3rd party sites like Youtube, or worrying that large files will cause my inbox to explode.

Mailvu.com seems to be the solution to these problems. Mailvu creates videos that can be shared via a link either copy and pasted from the site, or sent to an email recipient. There is also a free app for iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch that brings this video production to mobile devices.

Below is a student tutorial I made. Feel free to use with your own students!

How to Create and Send Video Messages

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Playing the Game of School

This year, I had a group of 10 8th graders as part of a special team designed to help at-risk students before they move on to high school. When describing the goal of the program, perhaps my principal put it best – Our job was to get these kids to buy into school.

The year was not without its challenges, but I enjoyed it. At night while eating dinner with my family and sharing stories of our day, the group affectionately became known as “the bad kids” by my four-year-old daughter. And by the standards of school, that’s what they were. They were always in trouble. They swore. They fought. They were late to class (if they even bothered to come to school in the first place).

Last Tuesday, we loaded the group onto a school bus and headed to a nearby state park for a field trip. We spent the day geocaching, fishing (yes, we let the “bad kids” handle sharp hooks), and cooking hotdogs. And you know what? It was the best field trip I have ever been on. The kids were an absolute delight. They were patient while we bushwhacked our way through the woods in search of hidden caches. They were supportive of each other while fishing – taking turns with the poles and helping each other get their catches off the line. We even let one girl who aspires to attend culinary school someday man the grill and cook for us.

While playing Kanjam with the group, one of the kids joked that he never realized that his teachers were actually normal people who fish and play games, and eat hotdogs. I don’t think he realized how insightful the comment was. Because it wasn’t until that moment that I realized that this wasn’t a group of bad kids. It wasn’t a group of at-risk, attendance problems. It was just a group of kids.


So what if they aren’t good at school. That doesn’t mean they aren’t smart.

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I'm Just a Teacher.

This morning, I returned a phone call from a mother of one of my students. The child’s father answered and was less than pleasant with me. After introducing myself, he tersely asked, “Are you someone important, or just another teacher?” I remained professional and politely deflected the aggressive statement, but below is what I would have liked to have said.

Yes, I am just a teacher. I just teach:

social skills
collaboration
self esteem
responsibility
civil duty
ethics
pride
humility
sensitivity
critical thinking
problem solving
drive
peer relationships
community building
leadership
trust
conviction
overcoming adversity
support
analysis
organization
public speaking
professional discourse
manners
honesty
character
focus
independence
perseverance

Oh, and I also teach your child how to read and write.

You're welcome.

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How I Justify Teaching to the Test

Today was the New York State English Language Arts assessment. I know that it's a mere snapshot of my students' abilities, and that it shouldn't be transformed into the driving force of instruction, but that's essentially what happens for the month or so leading to the day of the exam. This is because, regardless of how hard my students work in class, no matter how much progress they make during the year, and regardless of how passionate they are to learn, it all gets boiled down to a four-point rating scale on this single exam. It sucks, but that's just the way high stakes testing works.

Try this little experiment. Ask the next teacher you see if he/she thinks it's okay to teach to the test. They will probably look at you uncomfortably and murmur something about how it's not necessary if the teaching in the classroom is of high quality. This is the perfect college methods course answer, but the reality is that this answer is completely wrong. (In fact, I conducted this survey last year via Twitter that proves that teachers, when anonymous, admit to the need to teach to the test.)

I liken it to learning how to drive.

To do so, you must learn the essential skills - starting the vehicle, accelerating and braking, turning, etc. But once these skills are mastered, are you ready to cruise around in anything with a motor and wheels? No way. It takes a specific skill set to show mastery of these basic skills while driving a motorcycle, for example, compared to driving a dump truck or a school bus. The vehicle is different and this factors in to how successful you can be with your ability to drive.

It's the same thing with state testing.

I don't spend the entire year examining item analysis information, and I certainly don't model every assessment in class after the big exam. But I think it's important for students to know the format and the expectations of the exam. They need to know if it's a dump truck or a school bus that they will be asked to drive.

This is not the first time I've written about my personal struggle with high stakes testing. Read more here.


Standardized Testing, Simpsons Style

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How to Create Soundboards Without Flash

I just finished an annual expressive writing unit with my 7th graders where they studied old time radio plays to learn about the importance of description, details, and imagery in dialogue. After listening to several examples, students are put into groups and then collaborate to write their own authentic radio play. To add to this authenticity, students also integrate sounds effects to help enhance the imagery of their plays.

In the past, I've struggled with how to handle these sound effects. There are plenty of sites with free wav and mp3 files, but the actual method for playing these can be difficult to coordinate with a live performance. But this year, I had an idea. What if it was possible to create soundboards for each group?

Soundboards are (usually flash) web applications with buttons that link to brief sound clips. They are typically the weapon of choice for juvenile prank phone calls, but I decided they would also be great tools for our radio play performances. My first instinct was to coerce my super-tech brother into creating a customizable flash file for each group. This would have gotten the job done, but with far more effort on my part than necessary. Fortunately, I then had a much easier idea – PowerPoint.

I personally despise PowerPoint as a presentation tool, but it turns out the program makes a great soundboard. The performances were a success and the sound effects flowed seamlessly. This tool can be integrated into any kind of performance, oral reading, or skit – even schools where students run morning announcements could find use in this simple method of adding sounds to a project.

Here are directions for creating a soundboard in either OpenOffice or PowerPoint. Feel free to use my template – download it here.

1. Open a new file.


2. If you're not using my template, use the shape tool to create “buttons” that students will click to trigger the sound.


3. Right click on the shape and choose “action settings” in PowerPoint or “Interaction” in OpenOffice.


4. Browse for the file that you wish to add to the soundboard.


5. When all of your sounds have been added to the soundboard, view the slideshow and your buttons should now be able to be clicked to play the correct sound.

The Interaction menu in OpenOffice Impress

Action Settings in PowerPoint

A Few Hints

• Create a small wav file with a few seconds of silence (Audacity can do this quickly and easily) and add to the soundboard as a “stop sound” button. This way students can control how long a clip is played.


• Wav files can be embedded in the file. This makes it easy to manage the soundboard, but it can also make the file very large. MP3 files do not embed but create relative links within the presentation. This means the actual file is small, but must remain in the relative location to the sound files. (If all of this is confusing, you may just want to stick with using wav files. Free software like Format Factory can convert mp3 to wav for your soundboard.


• There are tons of websites for free sound effects, but I've had the most luck with Wavcentral, Soundjay, Soundzabound, and Freeplaymusic. When in doubt, google works wonders.

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This is not really about cookies.

I had a unsettling revelation the other evening: Cookies are not as good as they used to be.

Don’t get me wrong – I still enjoy cookies, but I remember them being better when I was a kid. Cookies from the past are what all present-day cookies are judged by, and to put it frankly, they just aren’t measuring up.

My first impulse was to blame the process that was used in preparing the recipe. But after close inspection, it was clear that this was not the source of the problem. Sure there are changes – electric beaters instead of hand mixers, fancy convection ovens instead of Grandma’s ancient oven – but the job gets done all the same.

What about the bakers? Are they not as good as the bakers of yester-year? I don’t think that’s the problem either. They love to bake and wouldn’t be in the profession if there wasn’t a desire to do so (or a desire to produce delicious cookies, either).

So why aren’t cookies as good as they used to be? Cookies are a big part of my life, and I simply could not abandon such an important question. It’s not because of the recipe and it’s not the fault of those who bake the cookie, so what could it be? Then it hit me.

The ingredients.

Perhaps the reason bakers cannot produce a high quality cookie anymore is because they do not have access to quality ingredients in which to bake with.

But this is an even bigger problem. Bakers can only control what goes on in their kitchen. They cannot control how ingredients are prepared before being packaged and shipped to them. All they can do is bake with passion and desire – and make the best cookie they can with the ingredients that are sent to them.

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5 Things Students Do (That Drive Me Insane)

Write on my whiteboard
It seems that the moment a dry erase marker is left unattended someone feels the compelling urge to document who is their best friend on my whiteboard. Is it genetic? I suspect a correlation between whiteboard graffiti and children who get immunization shots. How's that for a possible case study?

After missing a day of class, ask “Did we do anything while I was out?”
We actually spent the day coloring you a get well card. Did it arrive yet?

Slam Books on the Floor
When I ask kids to clear their desks, I generally get three types of responses. A minority of students calmly take their belongings and place them beside their chairs. Well done. Another third of the class flings their things, with a wide sweeping motion of their arm, across the floor around them. It’s sloppy, but I can deal with it. It’s the remaining students that drive me nuts. Upon hearing my command to remove their belongings, the proceed to take their textbook (weighing no less than 18 pounds, or so it would seem) and hold it about shoulder height like a waiter carrying a tray. Then with a swiftness of hand, allow the book to fall flat to the ground. The sound of textbook-on-tile is the teacher equivalent to a mortar going off on a battlefield. Flashbacks after retirement are inevitable.

Ask to use the Bathroom at the Most Inconvenient Times
Let me illustrate this one with a fictional story (fictional only in the sense that the names and lesson are imagined – this scenario happens daily).

The teacher looked out at her students. “Time to practice math facts!” As she began calling out numbers, students’ hands shot into the air.
“Six times five,” called the teacher. “Go ahead, Jimmy.”
“Thirty.”
“Nice job. Three times three,” continued the teacher. “Katelyn?”
“Nine.”
“Good! How about eight times four?”
Josh raised his hand. “Is it forty?”
“Incorrect, Josh,” replied the teacher. “Who can help him out?”
Sam raised his hand.
“Yes, Sam?” asked the teacher, point at his outstretched arm.
“Can I go to the bathroom?”

Nothing brings a lesson to a screeching halt like learning of a student's need to urinate.

Sit in My Chair
When did it become okay to sit at the teacher’s desk? When I was in school I just assumed teachers lived in their classrooms. Sitting at their desk would be the same as inviting myself to their house for coffee and dessert. My chair is not community butt space. Stay out of it.

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Modeling How to Use the Flip Camera with Students

Every day, my team begins our daily meeting by entering homework into the team calendar on our school website. It's a nice way to communicate to parents, and also serves as a way to hold kids accountable when they are absent. Understandably so, it's not the most popular page on the website. Based on a quick poll in class, I'd guess less than a third of our kids frequent it more than once a week.

I'm trying to change that. For the past week, I've been taking the last 10 minutes of my silent reading group and filming skits with them that go along with the day's homework. It's giving me practice with my new Flip camera (yesterday's post explained how I got it), and since I upload the finished movie directly into the calendar, I'm assuming more kids are visiting it from home.

Right now the skits are more about the message than the process. I'm the one who writes up the dialogue, and the one who records and edits the video. But I'm hoping by modeling this process on a daily basis, students will soon be able to take over the task. Actually, that's already happening. Today, several students knocked on my door to ask if they could borrow the Flip for a Social Studies project.

Those kids probably aren't going to check the homework tonight, but I can guarantee they wouldn't have thought of adding a technology piece to their project if they hadn't seen how it was done first.

Here are our video skits for the last two days. I hope you enjoy!

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Teaching Irony

Last evening a six-year-old named Falcon Heene dominated the news and social media as the world looked on anxiously as a mylar balloon presumably containing the boy drifted across the state of Colorado. Turns out he was in no harm, having instead nested comfortably in a box tucked into the corner of the family's attic. Followers of the story are now singing a chorus of “Foul!” with rumors circulating that the spectacle was all an elaborate publicity stunt for a family who seems to love being in the spotlight.

Unlike countless other bloggers logging in to contribute their two cents to the story, I don't really have much to say about the family, their possible motivations, or the viral (and admittedly very funny) meme videos that are surfacing. Instead, I want to share something that one of my students said to me this morning.

A few weeks ago I began preparing my classes to read the O. Henry short story, “The Ransom of Red Chief.” It seems nearsighted to teach O. Henry without first discussing irony, so after taking a day to give the classes a definition and a few clear examples (none of them being the ironically un-ironic song by Alanis Morrisette), we were set to read. (If interested, here are some of the examples I used.) Students were able to identify irony in Red Chief, so I felt I did an adequate job.

This morning I had a student come to me with an exciting observation. While watching one of the major news outlets cover the story of the “Balloon Boy,” she had overheard the reporter mention that it was ironic that a boy named Falcon has been suspected of taking to the skies. My ever-observant student couldn't wait to share the reporter's error with me.

She eagerly explained that the reporter had mistaken a coincidence for irony. After all, the student noted, our class definition of irony is an outcome that is the opposite of what is expected. In this case, it would have been ironic only if the boy's name had been that of a land-dwelling creature. A boy named Turtle or Goldfish flying off into the Colorado skyline would have been ironic.

The true test of learning is the transference of knowledge. My students will soon forget the specifics of the story they read with me, but they will never forget what irony is.

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Digital Cheating

When I was in 7th grade, I watched a girl in French class get caught cheating. She had answers written all over the palms of her hands When she finished, she thoughtlessly raised her hand and accidentally showed her cheat sheet to the entire class - and the teacher.

This was in 1993.

Today, ask Google how to cheat on a test and you'll get close to 600,000 possible answers, more than 5,000 of them in the form of video tutorials on sites like Metacafe and Youtube. They range from simple solutions like writing definitions on a stretched rubberband, to intricate redesigns of Coca-Cola labels.

This is the other side of the digital coin.

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Top 3 Moments in NY State Testing

With the end of the year looming just over the horizon, there is only one obstacle left for students before summer freedom can begin – final exams. In New York, state assessments are staggered throughout the year, but the race to get through local exams got me thinking of my favorite moments in state testing. Here are my top three.


#3 - New York State English Language Arts Exam, 2005 Grade 8 Listening Section

Kids had to listen to a speech on the accomplishments of Jacques Cousteau and his impact on the conservationist movement, then write an essay. These are actual responses I had to score:

1. Ocean conservation is very important because without water we would all drop dead of dehydration.
2. The author who said "Cousteau is the voice of the ocean" was using personification. Oceans cannot talk, and the author knows this.
3. A man named Francis Plann was going to dump toxic barrels in the ocean, but Cousteau stopped him (This one is humorous, because the reading talked about France's plan to dump waste...)
4. Jacques was able to make an impact on marine life because he was a nice guy, and whales would not bite him.
5. Even though fish can't speak, it doesn't mean they shouldn't have the right to.
6. Jacques Cousteau was most famous for inventing the Iron Lung.

#2 - New York State English Language Arts Exam, 2006, Grade 8 Reading and Writing Section

By mid eighth grade, most kids are able to find subtle sexual innuendo in pretty much everything. In today's world, this means shouting “That's what she said!” after everything, but 2006 was a simpler time. They had to rely on state exams to get their jollies.

Take the reading passage from the 8th grade exam, for example. It was a poem called “Purple Snake.” The title along was enough to set some kids to giggling, but once they started reading, there was no stopping them. It was really about an old man creating a wood carving, but I doubt that's what my 13-year-olds were visualizing.

You can read the full poem here, or take a look at the highlights down below:

“It’s in there, sleeping,” Don Luis says and winks. He knows I want to feel the animal asleep in a piece of wood.

Slowly he strokes the wood, rough and wrinkled like his hands.

Don Luis rubs and strokes the animal.

Did the state education department think 8th graders would overlook something like this? Their teachers certainly didn't.

#1 - New York State Social Studies Exam, 2006 Grade 8 Multiple Choice

In addition to fretting over my own exam, I am also responsible for proctoring other state exams. My greatest moment in state testing comes from such an occasion.

I had a group of about 25 8th graders taking the multiple choice section of the Social Studies exam. Desks were in rows, and kids were spaced out as much as the room would allow. During the test I paced the room more to assert my presence than to look for trouble. Perhaps I should have paid closer attention.

After the test was over and I had collected the materials, a boy came up to my desk and asked me to check his bubble sheet. It was completely smeared with erasure marks. I asked him why, thinking that he had accidentally double-bubbled an answer thus throwing off all the following answers. Instead, he calmly explained that the boy next to him had been cheating off his paper. Rather than be the tattle-tale, he had purposely marked all the wrong answers, then went back and corrected them after the peeping eyes had gotten distracted elsewhere.

He got an 89% on the test, and his cheating neighbor scored somewhere in the 20s.

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Things Students Say (And What They Really Mean)

When kids say... I don't understand.
They really mean... I wasn't paying attention when you gave directions.

When kids say... I have to use the bathroom.
They really mean... Your lesson is boring so I think I'll walk the halls for a bit.

When kids say... I have use the bathroom because I have my period.
They really mean... I plan on doing whatever I want for the next 20 minutes because there is no way on Earth you are going to ask me why I took so long.

When kids say... I can't find my homework.
They really mean... I'm too lazy to come up with a good excuse why my homework isn't done.

When kids say... Can I do extra credit?
They really mean... My parents are mad at me because of my grades.

When kids say... Can we sit where we want today?
They really mean... I have no plans of paying attention today, and sitting next to my friends will make it much easier to discuss more important things.

When kids say... I'm sorry for cheating.
They really mean... I'm sorry I got caught cheating.

When kids say... This is stupid.
They really mean... This stuff is way over my head.

When kids say... What time does this period end?
They really mean... How much longer do I have to sit here? I don't know how to read an analog clock.

When kids say... Can I type this?
They really mean... Can I copy and paste the Wikipedia entry then spend the rest of the period checking email, playing games, and Google searching pictures of Angelina Jolie?

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Rationalizing Student Behavior

When I was in sixth grade, my English teacher started each week with a spelling pretest. At some point during the week the words would be used in class or as part of a homework assignment, and then the final test was on Friday. This routine was followed every week. By about June, I finally figured it out.

Every class has that kid who wanders in the door only to gasp, “There's a test today?!” I was that kid. And it wasn't because I was trying to be funny; I truly couldn't see the big picture.

It's easy to forget that our students are just kids, especially at the middle school level. They aren't going to be able to conceptualize ideas (or in my case, sequence of events!), and they aren't going to have very good follow-through. It's just the nature of the beast.

It's easy to say this right now because I don't have a bumbling student standing in front of me trying to explain his erratic behavior. But the next time I do, I hope I can think back to myself in sixth grade. Teachers should have high expectations of their students, but let's never forget that at the end of the day, they're just kids.

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How to Use Glogster in the Classroom

One of the first sites I nosed out on Twitter was glogster.com/edu from @pamillamc and @rcurrin. According to the site, Glogster is: A web 2.0 platform that easily allows users to upload photos, videos, text, audio and more to create a unique online, interactive poster. To see its true potential, I decided to give it a go with my group of about 80 7th grade students.

Here's the how-to I used with my kids. The project concludes tomorrow - I'll post some student samples as well as a full review.

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Essays & Theses School Work project worksheet

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Why it is Important to Fail Students

This post is in response to the FOXNews.com article, Are 'No-fail' grading systems helping or hurting students?

When I was about 4 years old, I was babysat by a family friend who lived in an area that would fittingly be described as the boonies. They owned animals - not for the companionship but for consumption, and they were too far from civilization for garbage trucks to trek, so they burned their trash in a barrel behind the house. No heating or cooling systems either – in the summer, the windows were opened, and in the winter, warmth blasted from the colossus cast iron stove that filled much of the living room.

That stove intrigued me. And despite the constant warning, I had to learn for myself that it was not to be touched by little hands. I wasn't burned badly enough to require grafting, or even more than a wet washcloth, but you better believe that I learned my lesson and never touched that stove again.

Why did I touch the stove despite repeated warnings not to? Because you don't learn what hot is without experiencing it. It's an idea too abstract for a young mind to grasp without direct experience.

The same can be said about the ideas of success and failure. As teachers, how are we to convey financial security, homeownership, and all the other attributes of success to students whose only priority is getting home to play Call of Duty? To keep with the hot stove analogy – Students need to feel the heat now, so they don't get burned later in life.

This is why it scares me that schools are doing away with failure policies. Who cares if it hurts the kids' self esteem. So will foreclosure, and unemployment, and poverty, and welfare, and... well, you get the idea. By doing away with the dreaded 'F' we are not allowing our kids to be successful. We are simply making the searing pain of failure much worse later in life.

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