A friend of mine who teaches at the Santa Ana Unified School District has started a new blog for local teachers. The focus is on GATE training (gifted and talented education) but the scope is teaching in general. Here are a few excerpts from her opening post:
The idea for this blog came about at a recent GATE training provided by the Santa Ana Unified School District. At the training, teachers said they wished they had more opportunities to share, plan together, and process what they were learning. Well, now we do – right here. This blog was created by teachers for teachers – a place to discuss, reflect, get or give ideas, ask questions, encourage each other – you name it – this is the place. And, it’s certainly not just for teachers of identified GATE students. Many of the GATE strategies are good teaching for all our students.
The blog/website is definitely a work in progress, but here’s the basic idea: In addition to commenting on the posts authored by others, teachers may also send in their own items (santaanagateteachers@gmail.com) to be posted on the site, including posts (short articles), photos, documents, and videos. These will be uploaded and other teachers will then be able to make comments or even download the attached materials for their own use. You might want to send in something you’re working on or some ideas you have in order to get feedback from others, or you might want to make a lesson plan available for others to use. Maybe you’re so excited about how well a lesson turned out, you just really want to share what happened in a post. Or, maybe everything didn’t go as well as planned and you’d be willing to share that.
My oldest son is a product of GATE training and my eight year old looks to be following suit. It is a great program and I am glad to see it getting a boost with this new blog.
I have been told that Santa Ana education is a joke? Which is why I go to award winning schools in Tustin.
For the most part, true but the SAUSD charter and fundamental schools are often good choices. We still need more change on our school board but at least now we have a decent Superintendent in place.
Art, my experience is that all Santa Ana schools are filled with intelligent, hard-working teachers who are doing their best to help their students succeed.
Patricia,
Thanks for your comment. I have no doubt that you are correct – although I know for a fact that some of those teachers are not in fact very good and are in fact burned out. All of my four kids are in or have graduated from SAUSD schools. I have heard about both the good and the not so good teachers.
The real problem is two-fold – administration and federal policies that are unfunded mandates and often run counter to the goal of education. Teaching kids to take tests, for example.
And of course parents need to get involved and stay involved. They are a big part of the equation.
Admin,
I agree with you regarding having good teachers and the not so good teachers. There are PE Teachers that sit around and they hardly interact with the students. I agree, the parents are part of the equation but the problem is, no one including the “Big-Wigs” can figure out how to increase parent involvement. The huge problem is that SAUSD is too big to handle itself to run like a business. In other words, SAUSD needs to be broken up into two parts: Northern SAUSD and Southern SAUSD!!! Or, create an K-6 district and have a 7-12 district…you know, like Anaheim Union High School District and the Magnolia School District…