Summer Plans

Thank you so much to the 6 people that voted in the last poll. I know it's the end of the school year so taking the time to vote is greatly appreciated. Now that the last day of school is done and summer vacation will start for teachers this Friday, I am thinking of what I can accomplish with this blog over the summer. Not much... what I really need to do is to PLAN how to get more people to check out the blog in September. Any suggestions? Well that leads me to thought #1: Ask questions. Maybe that will encourage people to give us feedback. Thought #2: Have a website feature of the week. Maybe that will encourage people to check us out. I will start sending out weekly reminders to people so they will hopefully vote on the polls each week. Still trying to reach out to teachers across the province...now how to do that...
Any suggestions?
Have a great summer!

Report cards are DONE!

It's the time of year all teachers dread... report card season. So much to say in all of those little boxes and then spellcheck deletes half of your work!
The blog has not had many responses... only 8 teachers voted on our last poll and 2 principals.
It's all about advertising and I am trying to get the message out there but it IS report card season and at the end of the year, let's face it- no one's really interested. So, although we have a link on the school board's site (buried where no one can find it - I haven't found it yet), I've requested a little note in our school board bulletin on the ecopage, and I've invited 2 school boards from the north areas of the province to check us out... the response is, well, underwhelming to say the least. I will keep blogging over the summer, just in case anyone... anyone at all... is reading it. I am signed up for some Environmental P.D. with O.S.E.E. (Ontario Society for Environmental Education) in July and I will pass on what I glean from it here in the blog. Check out their link if you are interested. Anyway, just in case anyone IS actually checking in, I'm putting up a new poll for this week. Chances are we'll get less than 5 votes, if that. Polls will be repeated in the fall when hopefully we'll get a better response. Have a great summer...6 days left - but who's counting?

Administrators want to have their say

Although we were planning to ask Administrators questions as well as teachers starting next week, my principal was feeling a bit left out. So now there is a question for teachers and one for Principals. Please vote only in the appropriate poll and don't forget to encourage your staff and education colleagues to visit our site. Thanks!

Freedom of communication! Thanks I.T.!

Well, here goes!
This will be the first day of open communication with our teaching colleagues. It's our hope that as many people as possible will be willing to help out by checking in weekly for new polls and by contributing to the blog discussions.
If you have voted this week, please pass on the website to any of your teaching colleagues, Catholic or Public, and invite them to join our discussions.
Thanks everyone for your participation. Your help is greatly appreciated!

Cross your fingers!

The IT Dept. has been contacted and although they didn't say "yes" they did say they would look it over and get back to me. How long that takes I don't know, but since I didn't get a definite "no" I hold out hope. In the meantime, our schoolboard's "Head of Environmental Affairs" (she doesn't get an official title from our board b/c the board is not that progressive -yet-) has given us an email list of all the Ecoschool Reps and schools interested in the environment. Before I email everyone on the list, I am hoping to have a clear path to our blog site so that teachers can access it from school. If I.T. gets back to me and says "nope" then I will send it out and hope that people are willing to access the blog from home and participate in our online discussions. We need participation so if you are reading this - THANKS and please leave us your comments and thoughts.

"Page Blocked"

Ready... set... stop? It seems we have hit a slight snag in our blogging plans. Our schoolboard's protective screening seems to have a problem with our blog and therefore we can't access it from our school computers. What gives? Was it the word "ecology" that made them nervous? Well cross your fingers that a phone call to the IT Dept. will release us from this bond of censorship (that does have its purposes mind you). In the meantime, we'll have to ask our colleagues to check out our blog from home but I'm not sure they will. 4 days left to vote...no votes yet...I guess we'll have to reset the question but hopefully we'll get more than just a few votes from people we already know are teaching environmental ed. We want to find the people that aren't and give them a hand to do it and have fun with it.

Is it just one more thing to teach?

So many of us struggle just to get through the curriculum as it is without having to worry about adding something like Environmental Education on top of it all, but in case you haven't had a chance to look at the new Science Curriculum for Ontario, ecological thinking is now tied directly to the science curriculum so you'll have to teach it next year. What we'd like to know is how many people are already teaching it now and how are you doing it? Have you been teaching it in other KLA's (Key Learning Areas) or as a part of your own philosophies?