"They Succeed, Because They Think They Can" Virgil

The past two weeks we have worked with our small group of middle school students. They have been incredibly receptive to working within the group setting. The first week we talked about coping with transition and change. We did an activity that had students changing the foot they wore each shoe on to see how sometimes change feels weird and makes things harder. This week we focused on organization. We went through an imaginary student's day and looked at the places he could have been more organized. The students all had interesting ideas to add to how he could adjust and get organized.

We have also gone in and observed the use of Success Maker with a group of middle school students. The program was awesome! All of the students were engaged with the learning and it seemed to be a very helpful program. The teachers showed us all of the available data that could be gathered about the students' progress which was laid out in a way that would make it very easy to see how each student is doing. It also comes with easy options for print out worksheets for the Language Arts component. This will be a great addition to look into for our program.

Next up, will be a focus on learning about Read 180 and researching grants to get technology for the school. We will also be researching more about using Project Based Learning and other best practices that might be a good fit for our students.

"Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world." N. Mandela

Welcome to our blog! 

We are three educators on a mission to find a new way to educate our students. We will be creating a program to work with at risk students at the middle school level. We are looking for innovative methods to engage them in learning and increase their likelihood of success. We are passionate about education and want to start that fire in our students. We plan to give our students the support they need to help them learn. We will utilize technology in every way we can in order to offer a blended learning environment to our students.

We are now into our second week of the school year. We plan to visit other programs to find the successes they have had and apply those same ideals to our own program. We have met with several key people in our district so far and will be meeting with others in the weeks to come. It was very encouraging to meet with the administration of the middle school who is very motivated and supportive of this program. We will be at the open house for the middle school so we can connect with the parents of these students. We will also be working with a small group of students before we get this program off the ground for the beginning of the school year next year (2013-2014.) We can't wait to get going on our small group sessions!