Everyone's Blog Posts - The Freshman Transition Network2024-03-19T06:22:47Zhttp://freshmantransition.ning.com/profiles/blog/feed?xn_auth=noPromoting Psychological Science A Compendium of Laboratory Exercises For Teachers of High School Psychologytag:freshmantransition.ning.com,2018-04-03:2630686:BlogPost:664102018-04-03T04:17:45.000ZDr. Ronald G. Shapirohttp://freshmantransition.ning.com/profile/DrRonaldGShapiro
<p>A new e-book "<a href="http://teachpsych.org/resources/Documents/ebooks/LabExercisesEbook.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Promoting Psychological Science A Compendium of Laboratory Exercises For Teachers of High School Psychology</a>" is now available online. Two of my activities are included. This e-book may be of help to your colleagues who teach psychology. Please share the link. Many thanks!!! Ron</p>
<p>A new e-book "<a href="http://teachpsych.org/resources/Documents/ebooks/LabExercisesEbook.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Promoting Psychological Science A Compendium of Laboratory Exercises For Teachers of High School Psychology</a>" is now available online. Two of my activities are included. This e-book may be of help to your colleagues who teach psychology. Please share the link. Many thanks!!! Ron</p>How to Teach Freshman Students Avoid Plagiarismtag:freshmantransition.ning.com,2016-04-29:2630686:BlogPost:563652016-04-29T13:53:58.000ZLeona Hintonhttp://freshmantransition.ning.com/profile/LeonaHinton
<p>How many times have you received student work that was quite suspicious? I mean, you look through them and they <i>seem</i> fine and well written, but you have this gut feeling that something isn’t quite right. Sometimes it’s obvious when a work has been copied, especially when it’s <i>too</i> perfect or highbrow for a freshman to have produced it. And sometimes you just suspect there’s something wrong with the work without any clear indications.</p>
<p><b>What is the problem?</b></p>
<p>The…</p>
<p>How many times have you received student work that was quite suspicious? I mean, you look through them and they <i>seem</i> fine and well written, but you have this gut feeling that something isn’t quite right. Sometimes it’s obvious when a work has been copied, especially when it’s <i>too</i> perfect or highbrow for a freshman to have produced it. And sometimes you just suspect there’s something wrong with the work without any clear indications.</p>
<p><b>What is the problem?</b></p>
<p>The plagiarism issue worried me for a while. Students have always been cheating, and teachers for their part have tried various ways to mend this problem, but have failed. Cheating is flourishing among freshman students, and everyone seems to just accept it as a common fact. Now I am in the habit of using some online tools when checking student work. Do you know what made me start using them?</p>
<p>I was once grading a particular student assignment that was very good, and I gave it the highest grade possible. As it turned out, I later discovered it had been copied from an essay writing service, but it was too late to do anything about it. It doesn’t matter now, though, because I have found my own way to battle plagiarism.</p>
<p><b>What did I do?</b></p>
<p>I had firm intentions to stop cheating in my classes and tried different methods. I checked those websites, popular among students, where <a href="https://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2012/02/09/are-essay-mills-worth-worrying-about/">they download already written essays</a>. I tried inserting parts of their works into the search bar of search engines. Every time I found coincidences and wrote “Plagiarized” with a red pencil on my student works. But the problem was that I was spending way too much time checking homework assignments than before – sometimes two to three times more. It wasn’t sustainable. That’s when I realized what I needed to do: I needed to <i>automate</i> checking.</p>
<p><b>What can I recommend?</b></p>
<p>I tried a number of different kinds of software and chose <a href="http://unplag.com/">Unplag</a>. It’s an online plagiarism checker that detects if the work in question has text similarities to documents out on the Internet or among the files uploaded to one’s Unplag account. There are lots of different features to like about this software.</p>
<p>For example, a huge plus is that you can check many works at once. You just upload essays of all your students and press “Check for Plagiarism.” That’s it! The check can be performed in a background mode while you, for example, check your email or social media accounts.</p>
<p>The other helpful tool was <a href="http://thinkbinder.com/">ThinkBinder</a>. It’s great for brainstorming, organizing group discussions, asking and answering questions, and helping each other. Collaboration with students is possible in real time, and everyone has a chance to resolve one’s matter promptly. Students know that they can contact me and their classmates after school and receive a bit of advice or some feedback regarding their writing before they submit it. I guess it helps them be more unique and confident and, of course, avoid a number of mistakes.</p>
<p>Also, I’ve recommended that my freshman students use a range of reliable sources to make sure they write everything correctly. I believe these online libraries are going to be of great assistance to students: <a href="http://www.onelook.com/">OneLook</a> (dictionary search), <a href="http://www.planetebook.com/">Planet eBook</a> (classic literature), <a href="http://www.thefreelibrary.com/">The Free Library</a>, and <a href="https://openlibrary.org/">Open Library</a>.</p>
<p><b>What else can you do?</b></p>
<p>Additionally, I had a long conversation with my students about the plagiarism issue and explained why it’s wrong and how it can damage their reputation. Yes, I’ve destroyed their copy-and-paste plans and forced them to be original. Some time has passed, and now they understand there’s nothing left to do but put their effort into writing unique works. Now I give them high grades because they write amazing works where I hear their own voice, not a plagiarized one. It was worth the effort.</p>
<p>This is how I’ve knocked plagiarism out of my classroom. I’m happy to help <i>you</i> get rid of this parasite as well, so don’t hesitate to leave comments and ask me anything regarding the plagiarism issue and how to work with a plagiarism checker. It’s super easy and totally worth it.</p>TheFreshmanAcademy.comtag:freshmantransition.ning.com,2016-02-29:2630686:BlogPost:557342016-02-29T15:34:44.000ZTodd Novakhttp://freshmantransition.ning.com/profile/ToddNovak
<p>I have a new website that I've been working on to communicate to our staff and now to the Network about our progress in impacting students during their first year of high school. Would love your input!</p>
<p><a href="http://www.TheFreshmanAcademy.com">www.TheFreshmanAcademy.com</a></p>
<p></p>
<p>Thanks,</p>
<p>Todd Novak</p>
<p>Washington High School</p>
<p>Sioux Falls, SD</p>
<p>I have a new website that I've been working on to communicate to our staff and now to the Network about our progress in impacting students during their first year of high school. Would love your input!</p>
<p><a href="http://www.TheFreshmanAcademy.com">www.TheFreshmanAcademy.com</a></p>
<p></p>
<p>Thanks,</p>
<p>Todd Novak</p>
<p>Washington High School</p>
<p>Sioux Falls, SD</p>Transitioning Educationtag:freshmantransition.ning.com,2015-12-31:2630686:BlogPost:543682015-12-31T14:40:42.000ZDebbie Rustonhttp://freshmantransition.ning.com/profile/DebbieRuston
<p>This network is focused on transformation from the bottom up. I believe we must take a stand for what our students require to achieve success in the 21st century.</p>
<p></p>
<p>A big missing link is the high underemployment, and student debt young people are carrying. We have a whole generation of young people that have done what they have been taught to do...go to school, get a degree, and get a job. They have followed the advice of parents, educators and society in general. Yet,…</p>
<p>This network is focused on transformation from the bottom up. I believe we must take a stand for what our students require to achieve success in the 21st century.</p>
<p></p>
<p>A big missing link is the high underemployment, and student debt young people are carrying. We have a whole generation of young people that have done what they have been taught to do...go to school, get a degree, and get a job. They have followed the advice of parents, educators and society in general. Yet, they have been let down by this well meaning advice.</p>
<p></p>
<p>No one is teaching them to take control of their futures by taking their education and identifying their ideas and passions and finding ways to apply all of this to starting their own businesses. Society is so conditioned to believe the only way to work is for an employer. Most believe this is job security.</p>
<p>There is no such thing as job security today. The only job security there is, is the willingness to take full responsibility for creating one's own work, and not relying on government or education to provide the solutions.</p>
<p></p>
<p>The mindset around work has to change. We must start raising independent, responsible leaders that are not the victims of the economy, but the creators of it. This requires a change in thinking, and a change in the knowledge provided for our youth.</p>
<p>If we are truly going to bring about transformation, we must be willing to look outside of the box, let go of what we have always done, and be willing to embrace new ideas, new curriculums, new directions in educating our youth. We must stop believing that the only solutions lie within what we know, and what we have always done. We must start teaching our youth to live into their full human potential, and stop fitting them into boxes.</p>
<p></p>
<p>It's been said that over 65% of the work that will be done by today's youth hasn't been invented yet. With this in mind, let's start teaching them to be the CREATOR'S of their work and not the victims of underemployment, layoffs and downsizing. </p>
<p></p>
<p>If you are on the same page and want to bring about this transformation, I would like to speak with you. We have a multi award winning entrepreneurial leadership curriculum that develops this very mindset. Contact me directly to set up a time to discuss.</p>
<p></p>
<p>Best regards</p>
<p>Debbie Ruston</p>
<p>Debbie@TheSuccessEducator.com</p>PART SIX - Using Music to Inspire and Motivate Students in the Classroomtag:freshmantransition.ning.com,2015-08-03:2630686:BlogPost:532472015-08-03T19:00:00.000ZScott Habeebhttp://freshmantransition.ning.com/profile/ScottHabeeb
<p><i>There are several blog posts on this site related to</i> <i>using music in the classroom to inspire and motivate kids. Each has included a list of specific songs that can be used. Here are links to the previous 4 posts:</i></p>
<p><em><a href="http://freshmantransition.ning.com/profiles/blogs/use-music-to-inspire-and" target="_self">Part 1</a>, <a href="http://freshmantransition.ning.com/profiles/blogs/part-two-use-music-to-inspire" target="_self">Part 2,</a> …</em></p>
<p><i>There are several blog posts on this site related to</i> <i>using music in the classroom to inspire and motivate kids. Each has included a list of specific songs that can be used. Here are links to the previous 4 posts:</i></p>
<p><em><a href="http://freshmantransition.ning.com/profiles/blogs/use-music-to-inspire-and" target="_self">Part 1</a>, <a href="http://freshmantransition.ning.com/profiles/blogs/part-two-use-music-to-inspire" target="_self">Part 2,</a> <a href="http://freshmantransition.ning.com/profiles/blogs/musicpart4" target="_self">Part 3</a>, <a href="http://freshmantransition.ning.com/profiles/blogs/part-five-using-music-to-inspire-and-motivate-students-in-the-cla" target="_self">Part 4</a>, <a href="http://freshmantransition.ning.com/profiles/blogs/part-5-using-music-to-inspire-and-motivate-students-in-the-cla" target="_self">Part 5</a><a href="http://freshmantransition.ning.com/profiles/blogs/musicpart4" target="_self"><br/></a></em></p>
<p><i>This post is a follow up to</i> <em>t</em><i>hose earlier posts</i><i>. The first part of this post before the list of songs is copied verbatim from the</i> <a href="http://freshmantransition.ning.com/profiles/blogs/use-music-to-inspire-and"><i>original post</i></a><i>.</i></p>
<hr/><div>Kids respond to music. Use it to teach them lessons about life and to express your hopes for them. Use it to let them know you love them. Don't just wait for teachable moments to come along. Instead use music to <i>create</i> teachable moments.</div>
<div><br/> Here are 2 ideas for how you can use these songs:<br/> <br/> <strong><em>1. Use the song as a Do Now/Bell Ringer activity in your classroom. Make a PowerPoint with the words to the song. Then play the song and have the students read the words while they listen. After they listen to the song have them write a short reflection about how the song might apply to their lives, or about why they think you chose the song, or about what they can learn from the song. Give them a moment to share what they wrote. Then take a moment to share with them your feelings and thoughts.</em></strong><br/> <br/> <strong><em>2. The 2nd idea is very similar to the first. The only difference is that you first take digital pictures of your students and put them into a PowerPoint or digital movie. While the students listen to the song, you play the PowerPoint/movie of their pictures. Kids love seeing themselves in a presentation and it makes the message of the song hit home a little stronger.</em></strong><br/> <br/> Consider using music this way once a month - maybe even more often. The kids will begin to look forward to the times when you bring music into the classroom. Even more, they will appreciate the fact that you take the time to open up and share with them about more than just content.<br/> <br/> With each of the songs listed below, I have included a short idea about how you can use it to teach your students. By clicking on the song title you can go to Amazon.com and download an MP3 version of it. If you have any other songs to suggest, please do so as a reply to this post.<br/> <br/> <strong>1</strong>. <b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B005BW1IIK/solutietceduc-20" target="_blank">When You're Young</a> - 3 Doors Down</b><br/> Use this song to start a conversation with your students about where they're headed in the future and the insecurities they face in their lives currently.<br/> <strong>2</strong>. <b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B003RE2C1G/solutietceduc-20" target="_blank">Hands</a> - Jewel</b></div>
<div>Encourage to students to think about the impact they can have on the world around them. Their hands may be small, but they are their own, and they control what those hands do. They have power in their lives.</div>
<div><div><b>3. <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00BTZNGF6/solutietceduc-20" target="_blank">I Lived</a> - One Republic</b></div>
<div>Inspire young people to take chances and to make the most of life. Don't be afraid to fail, to feel pain, to take a risk, to experience life!</div>
<div><div><b>4. <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00TIYVGDY/solutietceduc-20" target="_blank">Fight Song</a> - Rachel Platten</b></div>
<div>Life is a game of CHOICES not a game of chance. Teach students to be fighters, to overcome, and to make choices that lead to success.</div>
<hr/><div>So, does anyone have any songs to add to the list? And for tons more ideas like these, visit <a href="http://GOBEYONDTHECONTENT.COM" target="_blank">GOBEYONDTHECONTENT.COM</a>!</div>
<div> </div>
</div>
</div>Why feeling sorry for yourself makes you destined to fail (by Donald Miller)tag:freshmantransition.ning.com,2015-05-31:2630686:BlogPost:515612015-05-31T20:27:01.000ZScott Habeebhttp://freshmantransition.ning.com/profile/ScottHabeeb
<p>Donald Miller isn't an educator, but he routinely shares ideas and blogs that are wonderful tools for teachers who are trying to go beyond the content with students. This post would be a great one to share with your students. Have them read it as a Do Now - or perhaps you could even tie it more directly into your content - and then lead a short discussion on what you learn from them. It's a good one. …</p>
<p></p>
<p>Donald Miller isn't an educator, but he routinely shares ideas and blogs that are wonderful tools for teachers who are trying to go beyond the content with students. This post would be a great one to share with your students. Have them read it as a Do Now - or perhaps you could even tie it more directly into your content - and then lead a short discussion on what you learn from them. It's a good one. </p>
<p><a href="http://storylineblog.com/2015/05/18/self-pity-how-to-be-downwardly-mobile/" target="_blank">http://storylineblog.com/2015/05/18/self-pity-how-to-be-downwardly-mobile/</a></p>
<p></p>
<p>For tons more ideas on going beyond the content, be sure to check out <a href="http://gobeyondthecontent.com" target="_blank">http://gobeyondthecontent.com</a>.</p>PART SIX - Using Music to Inspire and Motivate Students in the Classroomtag:freshmantransition.ning.com,2015-03-17:2630686:BlogPost:511502015-03-17T17:00:00.000ZScott Habeebhttp://freshmantransition.ning.com/profile/ScottHabeeb
<p style="text-align: center;"><strong>FOR EVEN MORE MUSIC SUGGESTIONS VISIT <a href="http://gobeyondthecontent.weebly.com/music.html" target="_blank">http://gobeyondthecontent.weebly.com/music.html</a></strong></p>
<hr></hr><p><i>There are several blog posts on this site related to</i> <i>using music in the classroom to inspire and motivate kids. Each has included a list of specific songs that can be used. Here are links to the previous 5 posts:…</i></p>
<p></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><strong>FOR EVEN MORE MUSIC SUGGESTIONS VISIT <a href="http://gobeyondthecontent.weebly.com/music.html" target="_blank">http://gobeyondthecontent.weebly.com/music.html</a></strong></p>
<hr/><p><i>There are several blog posts on this site related to</i> <i>using music in the classroom to inspire and motivate kids. Each has included a list of specific songs that can be used. Here are links to the previous 5 posts:</i></p>
<p><em><a href="http://freshmantransition.ning.com/profiles/blogs/use-music-to-inspire-and" target="_self">Part 1</a>, <a href="http://freshmantransition.ning.com/profiles/blogs/part-two-use-music-to-inspire" target="_self">Part 2,</a> <a href="http://freshmantransition.ning.com/profiles/blogs/musicpart4" target="_self">Part 3</a>, <a href="http://freshmantransition.ning.com/profiles/blogs/part-five-using-music-to-inspire-and-motivate-students-in-the-cla" target="_self">Part 4</a>, <a href="http://freshmantransition.ning.com/profiles/blogs/part-5-using-music-to-inspire-and-motivate-students-in-the-cla" target="_self">Part 5</a><a href="http://freshmantransition.ning.com/profiles/blogs/musicpart4" target="_self"><br/></a></em></p>
<p><i>This post is a follow up to</i> <em>t</em><i>hose earlier posts</i><i>. The first part of this post before the list of songs is copied verbatim from the</i> <a href="http://freshmantransition.ning.com/profiles/blogs/use-music-to-inspire-and"><i>original post</i></a><i>.</i></p>
<hr/><div>Kids respond to music. Use it to teach them lessons about life and to express your hopes for them. Use it to let them know you love them. Don't just wait for teachable moments to come along. Instead use music to <i>create</i> teachable moments.</div>
<div><br/> Here are 2 ideas for how you can use these songs:<br/> <br/> <strong><em>1. Use the song as a Do Now/Bell Ringer activity in your classroom. Make a PowerPoint with the words to the song. Then play the song and have the students read the words while they listen. After they listen to the song have them write a short reflection about how the song might apply to their lives, or about why they think you chose the song, or about what they can learn from the song. Give them a moment to share what they wrote. Then take a moment to share with them your feelings and thoughts.</em></strong><br/> <br/> <strong><em>2. The 2nd idea is very similar to the first. The only difference is that you first take digital pictures of your students and put them into a PowerPoint or digital movie. While the students listen to the song, you play the PowerPoint/movie of their pictures. Kids love seeing themselves in a presentation and it makes the message of the song hit home a little stronger.</em></strong><br/> <br/> Consider using music this way once a month - maybe even more often. The kids will begin to look forward to the times when you bring music into the classroom. Even more, they will appreciate the fact that you take the time to open up and share with them about more than just content.<br/> <br/> With each of the songs listed below, I have included a short idea about how you can use it to teach your students. By clicking on the song title you can go to Amazon.com and download an MP3 version of it. If you have any other songs to suggest, please do so as a reply to this post.<br/> <br/> <strong>1</strong>. <b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00124ADVE/solutietceduc-20" target="_blank">I'll Stand By You</a> - The Pretenders</b><br/> This is a great message of support and friendship to share with your students. They're probably not familiar with the song, but they'll appreciate a teacher who shares the message.<br/> <strong>2</strong>. <b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00137KKK4/solutietceduc-20" target="_blank">Forever Young</a> - Bob Dylan</b></div>
<div>This classic Dylan song reads like a blessing of hope to share with students. It's a great song to share at the end of the year.</div>
<div><div><b>3. <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B001KWGTRU/solutietceduc-20" target="_blank">Forever Young</a> - Rod Stewart</b></div>
<div>Rod Stewart stole this title from Bob Dylan but came up with a cool original song. Similar to the Dylan hit, this is a great song of hope for students as they move forward into their lives. It ties in great with the "Mt. Olympus" theme.</div>
<div><b>4. <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00DRDSL4Y/solutietceduc-20" target="_blank">Brave</a> - Sarah Bareilles</b></div>
<div><div>"Honestly, I want to see you be brave!" Share this song as a way to encourage students to not give in to the difficulties around them but to instead stand up for what's right.</div>
<div><div><b>5. <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0043ZBJ6W/solutietceduc-20" target="_blank">Count on Me</a> - Bruno Mars</b></div>
<div>A fun song of friendship about being there for someone no matter what happens in life. This is a great excuse to tell your students that they can count on you.</div>
<div><b>6. <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00FJEBYFC/solutietceduc-20" target="_blank">Compass</a> - Lady Antebellum</b></div>
<div><div>A song of encouragement, Compass is about being there for someone else and helping them find their way through life. This could go well with the <a href="http://freshmantransition.ning.com/video/mr-hollands-opus-stuck" target="_self">Opus clip about The Stuck Compass</a>.</div>
<div><b>7. <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B007RI58FA/solutietceduc-20" target="_blank">Bruises</a> - Train</b></div>
<div><div>Use this song to help your students understand that while life will be hard and there will be bruises, overcoming obstacles makes for a great life story.</div>
<div><b>8. <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00137KOPK/solutietceduc-20" target="_blank">Don't Blink</a> - Kenny Chesney</b></div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div>Life is short. Don't waste it. Use this song to help your students understand that time goes fast and we need to make the most of it.</div>
<div>So, does anyone have any songs to add to the list?</div>Texas high school basketball team gets unlikely supporttag:freshmantransition.ning.com,2015-03-05:2630686:BlogPost:510362015-03-05T13:34:53.000ZScott Habeebhttp://freshmantransition.ning.com/profile/ScottHabeeb
<p>Don't you love it when inspirational Go Beyond the Content stories come our way? Here's a great one you can share with your students about the power of showing kindness to others. </p>
<p></p>
<p>Below is the video and story that were published by Steve Hartman and CBS News on February 27, 2015. To see the <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/texas-high-school-basketball-team-incredible-sportsmanship/" target="_blank">original story</a> on the CBS website click…</p>
<p>Don't you love it when inspirational Go Beyond the Content stories come our way? Here's a great one you can share with your students about the power of showing kindness to others. </p>
<p></p>
<p>Below is the video and story that were published by Steve Hartman and CBS News on February 27, 2015. To see the <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/texas-high-school-basketball-team-incredible-sportsmanship/" target="_blank">original story</a> on the CBS website click <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/texas-high-school-basketball-team-incredible-sportsmanship/" target="_blank">here</a>.</p>
<p></p>
<p><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/AsrV9FP_JKE?wmode=opaque" frameborder="0"></iframe>
</p>
<p></p>
<p>If you're a fan of high school basketball, you're not alone. But if you're a fan of the Gainesville Tornadoes in Gainesville, Texas then you are alone.</p>
<p>"Usually our fan base was close to zero," said one Gainesville player.</p>
<p>"My parents came to one game but they didn't come to the other ones because they didn't have time," said another.</p>
<p><span>The other students at Gainesville - a juvenile correction facility for felony offenders - don't come to the games either, mostly because they can't get out. One of the few perks at the facility - for very good behavior - is a chance to leave the prison a few times a year to play basketball.</span></p>
<p><span><span>They play against private schools like Vanguard College Prep in Waco. And it was before that recent match-up that two Vanguard players - Hudson Bradley and Ben Martinson - announced they weren't going to play against a team with no fans.</span></span></p>
<p>"No one likes playing in an empty gym," said Martinson.</p>
<p>Bradley told me it "doesn't seem right" to play a team with no fans, regardless of the advantage it may give his own team.</p>
<p>So before their home game against Gainesville, Bradley and Martinson asked some Vanguard fans for a favor: To cheer for Gainesville instead.</p>
<p>The Gainesville players had no idea what was happening. They walked onto the court to find their own signs of support, their own cheerleaders, even their own fan section. Half the crowd was assigned to cheer for Gainesville. But as the game went on, everybody started to cheer for Gainesville.</p>
<p>"I mean every time they scored the gym was just lit up with cheering and clapping and everyone was on their feet," said Bradley. "I think in a way this is kind of how sports should be. It just kind of showed me the real impact that encouragement and support for anybody can make."</p>
<p>Bradley says we all need someone to believe in us. We all need someone who knows our mistakes and loves us anyway. And for that, the Gainesville players can't thank those boys enough.</p>
<p>"When I'm an old man I'll still be thinking about this," said one Gainesville player.</p>
<p>And finally, as for who won the game, well, obviously they didn't care - so why should we?</p>Why You Need a Copernicus Moment by John Richmondtag:freshmantransition.ning.com,2015-02-18:2630686:BlogPost:499262015-02-18T13:34:48.000ZScott Habeebhttp://freshmantransition.ning.com/profile/ScottHabeeb
<p>Here's an example of a Going Beyond the Content concept that also ties into the content - in this case, the content of World History. </p>
<p>Thanks to John Richmond for this wonderful post about realizing that you are not the center of the universe!</p>
<p>Check out "<a href="http://storylineblog.com/2015/02/17/why-you-need-a-copernicus-moment/" target="_blank">Why You Need a Copernicus Moment</a>"</p>
<p>Here's an example of a Going Beyond the Content concept that also ties into the content - in this case, the content of World History. </p>
<p>Thanks to John Richmond for this wonderful post about realizing that you are not the center of the universe!</p>
<p>Check out "<a href="http://storylineblog.com/2015/02/17/why-you-need-a-copernicus-moment/" target="_blank">Why You Need a Copernicus Moment</a>"</p>An Exhausting, True Love Called Teaching from Bre Bergertag:freshmantransition.ning.com,2015-02-01:2630686:BlogPost:486262015-02-01T18:13:16.000ZScott Habeebhttp://freshmantransition.ning.com/profile/ScottHabeeb
<p>This post from 1st grade teacher, Bre Berger, is an inspirational reminder for teachers of all grade levels.</p>
<p></p>
<p>Enjoy: <a href="http://teacherpop.org/2015/01/an-exhausting-true-love-called-teaching/" target="_blank">http://teacherpop.org/2015/01/an-exhausting-true-love-called-teaching/</a></p>
<p></p>
<p>Don't forget to check out <a href="http://gobeyondthecontent.weebly.com/" target="_blank">Go Beyond the Content</a> for more inspirational resources for teachers.</p>
<p>This post from 1st grade teacher, Bre Berger, is an inspirational reminder for teachers of all grade levels.</p>
<p></p>
<p>Enjoy: <a href="http://teacherpop.org/2015/01/an-exhausting-true-love-called-teaching/" target="_blank">http://teacherpop.org/2015/01/an-exhausting-true-love-called-teaching/</a></p>
<p></p>
<p>Don't forget to check out <a href="http://gobeyondthecontent.weebly.com/" target="_blank">Go Beyond the Content</a> for more inspirational resources for teachers.</p>The Heart of Teaching: What It Means to be a Great Teacher from Rusul Alrubailtag:freshmantransition.ning.com,2015-01-23:2630686:BlogPost:477142015-01-23T15:19:50.000ZScott Habeebhttp://freshmantransition.ning.com/profile/ScottHabeeb
<p>Rusul Alrubail's <a href="http://www.edutopia.org/discussion/heart-teaching-what-it-means-be-great-teacher" target="_blank">post</a> on Edutopia is a great reminder for teachers of the characteristics that are most important in the classroom. Here's the link:</p>
<p><a href="http://www.edutopia.org/discussion/heart-teaching-what-it-means-be-great-teacher" target="_blank">http://www.edutopia.org/discussion/heart-teaching-what-it-means-be-great-teacher</a></p>
<p></p>
<p>Readers who enjoy…</p>
<p>Rusul Alrubail's <a href="http://www.edutopia.org/discussion/heart-teaching-what-it-means-be-great-teacher" target="_blank">post</a> on Edutopia is a great reminder for teachers of the characteristics that are most important in the classroom. Here's the link:</p>
<p><a href="http://www.edutopia.org/discussion/heart-teaching-what-it-means-be-great-teacher" target="_blank">http://www.edutopia.org/discussion/heart-teaching-what-it-means-be-great-teacher</a></p>
<p></p>
<p>Readers who enjoy this post will also enjoy the strategies, ideas, and resources found on <a href="http://gobeyondthecontent.com" target="_blank">http://gobeyondthecontent.com</a>.</p>Keeping the Heart of An Educatortag:freshmantransition.ning.com,2014-09-02:2630686:BlogPost:472392014-09-02T00:58:20.000ZScott Habeebhttp://freshmantransition.ning.com/profile/ScottHabeeb
<p>If we are going to inspire our students, we need to be inspired as well. If we are going to reach their hearts, then our hearts must be in the right place.</p>
<p>Check out this wonderful reminder from William Parker - <a href="http://connectedprincipals.com/archives/10702" target="_blank">Keeping the Heart of an Educator</a>.</p>
<p>Thanks, William!</p>
<p>If we are going to inspire our students, we need to be inspired as well. If we are going to reach their hearts, then our hearts must be in the right place.</p>
<p>Check out this wonderful reminder from William Parker - <a href="http://connectedprincipals.com/archives/10702" target="_blank">Keeping the Heart of an Educator</a>.</p>
<p>Thanks, William!</p>How Phillip Phillips Can Start and End Your School Yeartag:freshmantransition.ning.com,2014-07-12:2630686:BlogPost:443572014-07-12T02:35:02.000ZScott Habeebhttp://freshmantransition.ning.com/profile/ScottHabeeb
<p>Readers of this blog know what a big fan I am of using music in the classroom. Kids love music. Many of them identify with music. Music often speaks to them and captures their attention far better than our words could ever hope to do. Music can be used to set a tone, to create a mood, and to build a positive atmosphere.</p>
<p></p>
<p>Music can also be used to communicate a message. As you seek to <a href="http://gobeyondthecontent.weebly.com/" target="_blank">Go Beyond the…</a></p>
<p>Readers of this blog know what a big fan I am of using music in the classroom. Kids love music. Many of them identify with music. Music often speaks to them and captures their attention far better than our words could ever hope to do. Music can be used to set a tone, to create a mood, and to build a positive atmosphere.</p>
<p></p>
<p>Music can also be used to communicate a message. As you seek to <a href="http://gobeyondthecontent.weebly.com/" target="_blank">Go Beyond the Content</a> with your students, do not underestimate the power of music. A song that tells a story can, when shared by a compassionate teacher, can serve as a compass in the life of a young person. For the teacher who wants her classroom to be more than just content and skills, for the teacher who wants to impact the direction of a young person's life, music is a powerful tool.</p>
<p></p>
<p><strong><span style="font-size: 13px;">(To learn more about what it means to</span> <a href="http://gobeyondthecontent.weebly.com/" target="_blank" style="font-size: 13px;">Go Beyond the Content,</a><span style="font-size: 13px;"> visit</span> <a href="http://gobeyondthecontent.com" target="_blank" style="font-size: 13px;">gobeyondthecontent.com</a><span style="font-size: 13px;">. For a detailed list of "Go Beyond the Content" songs to consider using in your classroom, visit</span> <a href="http://gobeyondthecontent.com/music.html" target="_blank" style="font-size: 13px;">gobeyondthecontent.com/music.html</a><span style="font-size: 13px;">.)</span></strong></p>
<p></p>
<p>So here's a suggestion for a way to use music to send a message in your classroom on Day 1 this year AND a suggestion for a great way to use music to wrap up your school year. Hey - I know it's summer and you'd rather not be thinking about the upcoming school just yet, but it will be here before you know it!</p>
<p></p>
<p><strong>The suggestion is: Try starting and finishing your school year with Phillip Phillips.</strong></p>
<p></p>
<p>Great teachers make sure that Day 1 starts with a BANG. The last thing you want to be is the teacher described as boring or dull by students when their parents ask them how their first day went. You want to get their attention right away, and the best way to do this is to <a href="http://gobeyondthecontent.weebly.com/" target="_blank">Go Beyond the Content</a> from Day 1. There will be plenty of time to go over your syllabus, to discuss late work policies, and state standards. On Day 1, WOW them. Let them see who you are as a person. Show them you care. Make them feel excited about being in your classroom. Share with them the vision you have for them - not just as students, but as people, and not just for content, but for life. </p>
<p></p>
<p><strong>(For ideas for starting your year off this way, you might check out <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0988217600/solutietceduc-20" target="_blank">Teach Like A Pirate</a> by Dave Burgess.)</strong></p>
<p></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 13px;">So how about if on Day 1 you play for your students </span><b style="font-size: 13px;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00A3AUH9Q/solutietceduc-20" target="_blank">Home</a> </b><span style="font-size: 13px;">by</span> <b style="font-size: 13px;">Phillip Phillips</b><span style="font-size: 13px;">? Are you familiar with</span> <b style="font-size: 13px;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00A3AUH9Q/solutietceduc-20" target="_blank">Home</a></b><span style="font-size: 13px;">? You could try showing them the music video. You could try making a PowerPoint with the lyrics. You could even have pictures of last year's students to help you illustrate your message, but use the song to explain to your students that you care deeply for them and plan to make your classroom their home this year. </span></p>
<p></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 13px;">Check out the lyrics below, and see if they don't apply wonderfully to the classroom - especially if your students are in a transition year:</span></p>
<p></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 13px;">Hold on, to me as we go</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 13px;">As we roll down this unfamiliar road</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 13px;">And although this wave (wave) is stringing us along</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 13px;">Just know you're not alone</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 13px;">Cause I'm gonna make this place your home</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 13px;">Settle down, it'll all be clear</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 13px;">Don't pay no mind to the demons</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 13px;">They fill you with fear</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 13px;">The trouble it might drag you down</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 13px;">You've get lost, you've can always be found</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 13px;">Just know you're not alone</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 13px;">Cause I'm gonna make this place your home</span></p>
<p></p>
<p>Think any of your students are a little worried about rolling down this unfamiliar road? Anyone in your classroom anxious about being alone? Ever met a young person filled with fear? I bet this describes 75% or more of your students! What a great message to send on Day 1: Don't be afraid. You're not alone, I'm here to make this place feel like home!</p>
<p></p>
<p>Once your students hear you explain the importance of a specific song, it begins to take on new meaning, even if it's a song they've heard a 1000 times before. I'd recommend not only playing this song on the first day, but finding opportunities for it to play throughout the school year. Perhaps quietly in the background when students are taking at test, or as they're entering the room to start class or the day, or while they're working in groups on an assignment or project. Whenever possible, refer back to the meaning of the song - you want your students to feel like they're at home - like they're part of a caring family - when they're in your classroom.</p>
<p></p>
<p>Then, on the last day of school, as a way to say good-bye to your students, play for them <b style="font-size: 13px;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00A3AUHXC/solutietceduc-20" target="_blank">Gone Gone Gone</a></b> also by <b style="font-size: 13px;">Phillip Phillips</b>. </p>
<p></p>
<p>Are you familiar with <b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00A3AUHXC/solutietceduc-20" target="_blank">Gone Gone Gone</a></b>? It's a song about loving someone and always being there for them - exactly the message your students need to hear as they leave you. Check out the lyrics below:</p>
<p></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 13px;">When life leaves you high and dry</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 13px;">I'll be at your door tonight</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 13px;">If you need help, if you need help.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 13px;">I'll shut down the city lights,</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 13px;">I'll lie, cheat, I'll beg and bribe</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 13px;">To make you well, to make you well.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 13px;">When enemies are at your door</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 13px;">I'll carry you away from war</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 13px;">If you need help, if you need help.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 13px;">Your hope dangling by a string</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 13px;">I'll share in your suffering</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 13px;">To make you well, to make you well.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 13px;">Give me reasons to believe</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 13px;">That you would do the same for me.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 13px;">And I would do it for you, for you.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 13px;">Baby, I'm not moving on</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 13px;">I'll love you long after you're gone.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 13px;">For you, for you.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 13px;">You will never sleep alone.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 13px;">I'll love you long after you're gone</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 13px;">And long after you're gone, gone, gone.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 13px;">When you fall like a statue</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 13px;">I'm gon' be there to catch you</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 13px;">Put you on your feet, you on your feet.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 13px;">And if your well is empty</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 13px;">Not a thing will prevent me.</span></p>
<p><span>Tell me what you need, what do you need?</span></p>
<p><span>I surrender honestly.</span></p>
<p><span>You've always done the same for me.</span></p>
<p><span>So I would do it for you, for you.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 13px;">You're my back bone.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 13px;">You're my cornerstone.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 13px;">You're my crutch when my legs stop moving.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 13px;">You're my head start.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 13px;">You're my rugged heart.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 13px;">You're the pulse that I've always needed.</span></p>
<p><span>Like a drum, baby, don't stop beating.</span></p>
<p><span>Like a drum my heart never stops beating...</span></p>
<p></p>
<p><span>Isn't this what your students want from a teacher? Don't they essentially want someone to be their "Mr. Feeny". Remember Mr. Feeny from Boy Meets World? (Of course you do!) He was the teacher who always there for them. The person Cory and Topanga could always go to no matter what the problem. The person they knew loved them, who would do anything for them, and who cared about them as people instead of just as students.</span></p>
<p></p>
<p><span>So start Day 1 off with a bang. Use <b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00A3AUH9Q/solutietceduc-20" target="_blank">Home</a> </b>by<b> Phillip Phillips</b> to get them excited about the culture you're going build for them. Then, as the year ends, use <b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00A3AUHXC/solutietceduc-20" target="_blank">Gone Gone Gone</a></b> by<b> Phillip Phillips</b> to make sure there's no way they get away from you not knowing how much you care and that you will always be there.</span></p>
<p></p>
<p><span>Any thoughts?</span></p>Summertime and Your Freshman Transition Programtag:freshmantransition.ning.com,2014-07-10:2630686:BlogPost:444402014-07-10T12:00:00.000ZScott Habeebhttp://freshmantransition.ning.com/profile/ScottHabeeb
<p>So you survived a school year - hopefully, you thrived instead of merely survived - and made it to summer. This fall a whole new batch of freshmen will enter your school, and your Freshman Transition Program (FTP) needs to be ready to meet their needs and support them through this often difficult transition. Is there anything you should be doing this summer?</p>
<p></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 13px;">Yes.</span></p>
<p></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 13px;">The summer can play a crucial…</span></p>
<p>So you survived a school year - hopefully, you thrived instead of merely survived - and made it to summer. This fall a whole new batch of freshmen will enter your school, and your Freshman Transition Program (FTP) needs to be ready to meet their needs and support them through this often difficult transition. Is there anything you should be doing this summer?</p>
<p></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 13px;">Yes.</span></p>
<p></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 13px;">The summer can play a crucial role in the long-term sustainability of your FTP - regardless of your model. It's when you bring new team members up to speed, give all involved teachers an opportunity to provide input, use your past experiences to shape your future, and build consensus around <a href="http://freshmantransition.ning.com/profiles/blogs/essential-components-of-a-2" target="_self">standardized expectations</a>.</span></p>
<p></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 13px;">For the sake of this discussion, I am going to refer to those teachers as members of Freshman Teams. (The benefits of teacher teams has been described in <a href="http://freshmantransition.ning.com/profiles/blogs/creating-a-freshman-transition" target="_self">several blog posts</a> on this site and in my book on Freshman Transition entitled <a href="http://solutionsetc.org/form/bookorder.html" target="_blank">The Ninth Grade Opportunity: Transforming School from the Bottom Up</a>.) Even if your school does use a teaming model, the ideas in this post should apply to your program.</span></p>
<p></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 13px;">Best practice includes bringing all Freshman Team teachers together for at least 1 day each summer. There are several things that should be done during this time:</span></p>
<ol>
<li>Especially if there are teachers new to the FTP involved, someone needs to remind the group of the overall mission and purpose of the FTP. This might be a good way for an administrator or school leader to be involved in the summer meeting.</li>
<li>The team teachers need to reflect on the past year. What went well? What successes did you have? What did not go as well as planned? Do you have ideas for improvements? Does the group see the need for any new strategies, programs, ideas, or procedures?</li>
<li>The teachers need to make one comprehensive list of all the strategies, expectations, practices, procedures, programs, and tools they have used as part of their Freshman Transition efforts.</li>
<li>If you're using a teaming model, your teams need to split up and each have a copy of the list you created in Step 3. If you're just one big group of teachers, then move on to Step 5.</li>
<li>Each team needs to place all the items on the list from Step 3 into 1 of 3 categories:<ul>
<li><span style="font-size: 13px;">Strategies that should be standardized by all Freshman Teams - or in all freshman classrooms</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 13px;">Strategies that will be standardized on your team - but don't need to be standardized on all teams</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 13px;">Everything else - maybe they're great ideas, but they can be up to individual teachers to adopt or not</span></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>The teams need to reconvene and compare lists. This is the time to debate, to discuss, to listen to each other, and to brainstorm. </li>
</ol>
<p></p>
<p>The end goal of this process is to reach consensus. Whatever the group decides is standardized stays standardized during the school year unless the entire group decides to change it. One teacher may not unilaterally stray from the consensus reached during the summer.</p>
<p></p>
<p>This participatory and democratic process allows the team teachers to have ownership of the FTP. It allows even brand new teachers to step into positions of leadership and have their voices heard. This is much more effective than having an administrator tell the teachers what the administrative team has determined. </p>
<p></p>
<p>Another benefit to this process is that it can be completely run by the teachers themselves. Therefore, as administrators come and go, if this process is in place the FTP can remain solvent for years to come.</p>
<p></p>
<p>The school year is over and a new one is just around the corner. Make the most of your summer so you'll be able to keep improving your ability to meet the needs of freshmen. Your mission is vital to the success of your school culture!</p>
<p></p>
<hr/><p>For questions about Freshman Transition or to schedule a workshop, feel free to contact me by email at scotthabeeb@gmail.com or by phone at 540-389-2610. You can also follow me on twitter at <a href="https://twitter.com/scotthabeeb" target="_blank">@scotthabeeb</a>.</p>What Students Really Need to Heartag:freshmantransition.ning.com,2014-06-06:2630686:BlogPost:415992014-06-06T18:00:00.000ZScott Habeebhttp://freshmantransition.ning.com/profile/ScottHabeeb
<p><span class="font-size-3">This is a great message to students from a teacher who truly cares about them. Consider how you might use your own personal voice to lovingly communicate a similar message. </span></p>
<p></p>
<p><span class="font-size-3">To read the post, follow this link: …</span></p>
<p></p>
<p><span class="font-size-3">This is a great message to students from a teacher who truly cares about them. Consider how you might use your own personal voice to lovingly communicate a similar message. </span></p>
<p></p>
<p><span class="font-size-3">To read the post, follow this link: </span></p>
<p><span class="font-size-3"><a href="http://affectiveliving.wordpress.com/2014/03/08/what-students-really-need-to-hear/" target="_blank" style="font-size: 13px;">http://affectiveliving.wordpress.com/2014/03/08/what-students-really-need-to-hear/</a></span></p>
<p></p>
<p><span class="font-size-3">Below is a link to a video based on the same idea:</span></p>
<p><span class="font-size-3"><a href="http://freshmantransition.ning.com/video/what-students-really-need-to-hear-video" target="_self">http://freshmantransition.ning.com/video/what-students-really-need-to-hear-video</a></span></p>
<p></p>
<p><span class="font-size-3">Thanks to Chase Mielke for writing such powerful words and to SHS Math Teacher, Erin Stenger, for sharing them with me.</span></p>2 Types of Pain You're Going to Experiencetag:freshmantransition.ning.com,2014-05-29:2630686:BlogPost:415812014-05-29T01:31:00.000ZScott Habeebhttp://freshmantransition.ning.com/profile/ScottHabeeb
<p>A key part of going beyond the content with young people is helping them understand how to adapt to and deal with all that life throws at them. </p>
<p></p>
<p>After reading this post written by Scott McClellan for Donald Miller's Storyline Blog, you'll be able to teach your students the difference between "stove pain" and "bicycle pain." By doing so, you'll help them gain a productive way to look at their lives.</p>
<p></p>
<p>Enjoy!…</p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<p>A key part of going beyond the content with young people is helping them understand how to adapt to and deal with all that life throws at them. </p>
<p></p>
<p>After reading this post written by Scott McClellan for Donald Miller's Storyline Blog, you'll be able to teach your students the difference between "stove pain" and "bicycle pain." By doing so, you'll help them gain a productive way to look at their lives.</p>
<p></p>
<p>Enjoy!</p>
<p></p>
<p><a href="http://storylineblog.com/2014/05/28/two-types-of-pain-youre-going-to-experience/" target="_blank">http://storylineblog.com/2014/05/28/two-types-of-pain-youre-going-to-experience/</a></p>PART FIVE - Using Music to Inspire and Motivate Students in the Classroomtag:freshmantransition.ning.com,2014-05-10:2630686:BlogPost:416432014-05-10T18:30:00.000ZScott Habeebhttp://freshmantransition.ning.com/profile/ScottHabeeb
<p><i>There are several blog posts on this site related to</i> <i>using music in the classroom to inspire and motivate kids. Each has included a list of specific songs that can be used. Here are links to the previous 4 posts:</i></p>
<p><em><a href="http://freshmantransition.ning.com/profiles/blogs/use-music-to-inspire-and" target="_self">Part 1</a>, <a href="http://freshmantransition.ning.com/profiles/blogs/part-two-use-music-to-inspire" target="_self">Part 2,</a> …</em></p>
<p><i>There are several blog posts on this site related to</i> <i>using music in the classroom to inspire and motivate kids. Each has included a list of specific songs that can be used. Here are links to the previous 4 posts:</i></p>
<p><em><a href="http://freshmantransition.ning.com/profiles/blogs/use-music-to-inspire-and" target="_self">Part 1</a>, <a href="http://freshmantransition.ning.com/profiles/blogs/part-two-use-music-to-inspire" target="_self">Part 2,</a> <a href="http://freshmantransition.ning.com/profiles/blogs/musicpart4" target="_self">Part 3</a>, <a href="http://freshmantransition.ning.com/profiles/blogs/part-five-using-music-to-inspire-and-motivate-students-in-the-cla" target="_self">Part 4</a><a href="http://freshmantransition.ning.com/profiles/blogs/musicpart4" target="_self"><br/></a></em></p>
<p><i>This post is a follow up to</i> <em>t</em><i>hose earlier posts</i><i>. The first part of this post before the list of songs is copied verbatim from the</i> <a href="http://freshmantransition.ning.com/profiles/blogs/use-music-to-inspire-and"><i>original post</i></a><i>.</i></p>
<hr/><div>Kids respond to music. Use it to teach them lessons about life and to express your hopes for them. Use it to let them know you love them. Don't just wait for teachable moments to come along. Instead use music to <i>create</i> teachable moments.</div>
<div><br/> Here are 2 ideas for how you can use these songs:<br/> <br/> <strong><em>1. Use the song as a Do Now/Bell Ringer activity in your classroom. Make a PowerPoint with the words to the song. Then play the song and have the students read the words while they listen. After they listen to the song have them write a short reflection about how the song might apply to their lives, or about why they think you chose the song, or about what they can learn from the song. Give them a moment to share what they wrote. Then take a moment to share with them your feelings and thoughts.</em></strong><br/> <br/> <strong><em>2. The 2nd idea is very similar to the first. The only difference is that you first take digital pictures of your students and put them into a PowerPoint or digital movie. While the students listen to the song, you play the PowerPoint/movie of their pictures. Kids love seeing themselves in a presentation and it makes the message of the song hit home a little stronger.</em></strong><br/> <br/> Consider using music this way once a month - maybe even more often. The kids will begin to look forward to the times when you bring music into the classroom. Even more, they will appreciate the fact that you take the time to open up and share with them about more than just content.<br/> <br/> With each of the songs listed below, I have included a short idea about how you can use it to teach your students. By clicking on the song title you can go to Amazon.com and download an MP3 version of it. If you have any other songs to suggest, please do so as a reply to this post.<br/> <br/> <strong>1</strong>. <b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00EH49FRE/solutietceduc-20" target="_blank">Roar</a> - Katy Perry</b><br/> Not only do kids like this song, but you can use the lyrics to encourage your students to take a stand and to live strong autonomous lives.<br/> <strong>2</strong>. <b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B001NY4B16/solutietceduc-20" target="_blank">The Living Years</a> - Mike and the Mechanics</b></div>
<div>Your students probably don't know this song, but the lyrics will challenge them to not waste time. Use every moment of their living years and have no regrets.</div>
<div><div><b>3. <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0013F0K1U/solutietceduc-20" target="_blank">Small Town</a> - John Cougar Mellencamp</b></div>
<div>If you and your students are located in a small town, this is a great song to encourage them to appreciate their roots.</div>
<div><div><b>4. <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00IZ6BFOG/solutietceduc-20" target="_blank">Invisible</a> - Hunter Hayes</b></div>
<div>Adolescence can be a difficult and painful time. Help your students positively deal with this time in their lives and always look to the future.</div>
<div><div><b>5. <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0013ADY54/solutietceduc-20" target="_blank">You've Got A Friend In Me</a> - Randy Newman</b></div>
<div>Who doesn't love Toy Story? Use this song to tell your students you're there for them!</div>
<div><div><b>6. <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B001O2AWEW/solutietceduc-20" target="_blank">Hammer and a Nail</a> - Indigo Girls</b></div>
<div>We were meant to DO things. It's not enough to just think about helping others. Get out there and do it!</div>
<div><div><b>7. <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B005DOJATA/solutietceduc-20" target="_blank">Someday Never Comes</a> - Creedence Clearwater Revival</b></div>
<div>This is WAY before their time, but your students could benefit from the message of "don't wait for someday."</div>
<div><div><b>8. <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B003KYOEQE/solutietceduc-20" target="_blank">Cat's in the Cradle</a> - Harry Chapin</b></div>
<div>Get your students thinking about the impact they can have on generations to come if they give their time to others.</div>
<div><div><b>9. <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00FLRELLG/solutietceduc-20" target="_blank">Nothing More</a> - Alternate Routes</b></div>
<div>A beautiful modern folk song about how we treat one another. How you treat someone defines you and can make you a hero.</div>
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<div> So, does anyone have any songs to add to the list? And for tons more ideas like these, visit <a href="http://GOBEYONDTHECONTENT.COM" target="_blank">GOBEYONDTHECONTENT.COM</a>!</div>
<div> </div>Be Inspired By "Secret Love Project for Mrs. Froehlich"tag:freshmantransition.ning.com,2014-05-10:2630686:BlogPost:417362014-05-10T13:43:31.000ZScott Habeebhttp://freshmantransition.ning.com/profile/ScottHabeeb
<p>This morning as I read the USA Today on my phone, I came across a wonderful reminder of the powerful ability a teacher has to impact lives when she chooses to go beyond the content. The video you see below tells the story of how a group of students decided to thank their very favorite teacher. Watch the video and be reminded of the unique nature of your profession. Your job is more than a job. You have potential to literally change…</p>
<p>This morning as I read the USA Today on my phone, I came across a wonderful reminder of the powerful ability a teacher has to impact lives when she chooses to go beyond the content. The video you see below tells the story of how a group of students decided to thank their very favorite teacher. Watch the video and be reminded of the unique nature of your profession. Your job is more than a job. You have potential to literally change lives.</p>
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<p>Isn't that awesome! This school year is close to being over. There really isn't much time left. But in the few remaining weeks or days you have left, there is still time to communicate the bigger picture of life to your students. There is still time to communicate that you care deeply for them and that what you are doing is about much more than content - it's about helping them get what they need to reach their Mt. Olympus!</p>
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<p>Want to see the full video the students made for Mrs. Froelich? Here it is:</p>
<p><iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/Ocn-IpRv7vE?wmode=opaque" frameborder="0"></iframe>
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<p>You and Mrs. Froelich don't do what you do to get a video made for you or to get in the USA Today. You do what you do because your love for young people compels you to pour out your life for them even when your own life feels beaten down and worn out. You know they need you, and you know their lives will be better off because of what you have to offer. So every day you go back into that classroom and build relationships and push students to be more than they ever knew was possible. </p>
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<p>You may never have a video made about what you do, but if you do your job with passion, you'll be worthy of it! What a profession!</p>When Do Assumptions Facilitate Problem Solving and When Do They Impede It?tag:freshmantransition.ning.com,2014-03-30:2630686:BlogPost:412892014-03-30T06:52:50.000ZDr. Ronald G. Shapirohttp://freshmantransition.ning.com/profile/DrRonaldGShapiro
<p>If you are teaching a class involving assumptions or problem solving (in, perhaps, ninth grade math or science) and would like an activity which has worked quite well for me please check out my article <strong>When Do Assumptions Facilitate Problem Solving and When Do They Impede It?</strong> in <a href="http://content.yudu.com/A2r1h1/RICM0214/resources/index.htm?referrerUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ricreativemag.com%2Fdownloadable-issues.html" target="_blank">Rhode Island Creative Magazine</a>,…</p>
<p>If you are teaching a class involving assumptions or problem solving (in, perhaps, ninth grade math or science) and would like an activity which has worked quite well for me please check out my article <strong>When Do Assumptions Facilitate Problem Solving and When Do They Impede It?</strong> in <a href="http://content.yudu.com/A2r1h1/RICM0214/resources/index.htm?referrerUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ricreativemag.com%2Fdownloadable-issues.html" target="_blank">Rhode Island Creative Magazine</a>, February 2014, page 14).</p>
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<p><a target="_self" href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/73426806?profile=original"><img width="750" class="align-full" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/73426806?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="750"/></a></p>Activity to Help Improve Family Communicationtag:freshmantransition.ning.com,2014-02-24:2630686:BlogPost:411532014-02-24T02:32:15.000ZDr. Ronald G. Shapirohttp://freshmantransition.ning.com/profile/DrRonaldGShapiro
<p>If you are planning a parent - student event for your ninth graders and would like an activity which has worked quite well for me please check out my article <a href="http://glossi.com/mgp1122/85256-thirty-something-magazine-february-2014?page_id=730266&sb=anon-38c1432d1442ccf9e3545c87a18a88e4" target="_blank">How Well Do We Describe Each Other?</a> in <a href="http://glossi.com/mgp1122/85256-thirty-something-magazine-february-2014" target="_blank">Thirty Something Magazine</a> (And,…</p>
<p>If you are planning a parent - student event for your ninth graders and would like an activity which has worked quite well for me please check out my article <a href="http://glossi.com/mgp1122/85256-thirty-something-magazine-february-2014?page_id=730266&sb=anon-38c1432d1442ccf9e3545c87a18a88e4" target="_blank">How Well Do We Describe Each Other?</a> in <a href="http://glossi.com/mgp1122/85256-thirty-something-magazine-february-2014" target="_blank">Thirty Something Magazine</a> (And, while you are on the Thirty Something Magazine site, please check out the entire magazine!!! If you like fashion, I think you will really like the magazine!!!). You might also browse the magazine web site: <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.thirtysomethingmag.com/#%21current-issue/c1xrr" class="ot-anchor aaTEdf">http://www.thirtysomethingmag.com/#!current-issue/c1xrr</a>.</p>
<p><br/>Ron<br/><a target="_self" href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/73426770?profile=original"><img width="750" class="align-full" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/73426770?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="750"/></a><a target="_self" href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/73426826?profile=original"><img width="750" class="align-full" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/73426826?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="750"/></a></p>The Case for Going Beyond the Contenttag:freshmantransition.ning.com,2014-02-22:2630686:BlogPost:412352014-02-22T23:00:00.000ZScott Habeebhttp://freshmantransition.ning.com/profile/ScottHabeeb
<p>Who is the teacher who had the most positive impact on your life? Would you say you ever had a teacher who could be described as a compass - pointing you to the truths of life you needed to learn? What was that teacher's name? What was it about that teacher that would cause you to name them as your answer to these questions?</p>
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<p>I have had the privilege of working with thousands of educators across the country. Often I will ask groups of teachers the following: "If given the…</p>
<p>Who is the teacher who had the most positive impact on your life? Would you say you ever had a teacher who could be described as a compass - pointing you to the truths of life you needed to learn? What was that teacher's name? What was it about that teacher that would cause you to name them as your answer to these questions?</p>
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<p>I have had the privilege of working with thousands of educators across the country. Often I will ask groups of teachers the following: "If given the choice, would you rather be remembered for making a lasting impact on someone's life or for teaching content." Over and over again, teachers say they want to be remembered as making a lasting impact on someone's life. They want to be that compass for a young person and point them to truth. They want to inspire, to motivate, to challenge, and to encourage. They hope to awake passion, help students find direction, and spur them to greatness. </p>
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<p>That doesn't denigrate the importance of teaching content in the slightest. In fact, teachers realize that if they can inspire, motivate, and encourage then they'll also be able to teach content and skills more effectively. However, most people entered this profession for the purpose of changing lives. Yes - they hope to use content and skills as a means to do that, but ultimately they want to be someone who guides and helps mold young people. They want to be compasses.</p>
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<p>How much of our professional development focus is spent learning ways to be compasses in the lives of young people? We go to workshops and conferences on assessment. We listen to speakers with ideas about grading, about pedagogy, and about classroom management. We take classes on our content areas and on using technology to teach them. All of those topics are necessary, useful, and appropriate, but how often do we spend meaningful time with our colleagues talking about ways to better love kids, to better guide them toward their purpose, and to better communicate just how beautiful life can be?</p>
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<p>Stop and think about the students that seem the most hard to reach. What makes teaching them so difficult? I contend it's due to a believing problem.
Consider the student who has a very high IQ but believes he will fail, who believes you and the entire system are against him, and who believes that there is no point to working hard because life will never be all that good anyway. That student is hard to teach despite his natural intelligence.</p>
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<p>Now consider another student. This student has a very low IQ but believes if he works hard he'll succeed in your class. He believes you, the other teachers, the administration, and the rest of the school are there to help him. He believes that if he makes the right decisions now, he'll be able to get somewhere exciting later on. He has the power to shape his life for the better. That student is fairly easy to teach.</p>
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<p>The "problem" with many of our students isn't a problem of intelligence or capability. It's a believing problem. There are ways of thinking and believing about life that do not lead to positive outcomes, and there are other ways of thinking and believing that put one on the path to living the kind of autonomous and productive life that has a positive impact on those around you.</p>
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<p>So if the problem is a believing problem, why do we spend so much time on pedagogy, content, technology, and assessment? Don't hear me wrong - those topics are essential for excellence in the classroom. But why don't we spend more time learning how to address student belief systems? Why not, instead of finding ways to pour content more efficiently into their heads, spend more time finding ways to build belief systems in students' hearts?</p>
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<p>I know many educators feel as though they don't have time to aim for the heart. After all, you barely have enough time to cover the head knowledge. How in the world can you possibly add in a whole new focus? Consider the following four truths of teaching:</p>
<ol>
<li>Hard work leads to success.</li>
<li>Students work harder for teachers they like.</li>
<li>Students like teachers they perceive as caring for them.</li>
<li>When a teacher takes time to go beyond the content with students, then the students believe the teacher cares.</li>
</ol>
<p></p>
<p>If you agree with those statements, then look at them in reverse order. If a teacher take the time to go beyond the content with students, then the students will believe the teacher cares. If the students believe the teacher cares, then the students will like the teacher. If the students like the teacher, they will work harder. Hard work leads to success.</p>
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<p>I would contend you don't have time NOT to go beyond the content with your students. And not just occasionally or accidentally when the teachable moment arrives. I would contend that just as one intentionally creates teachable moments for content, a teacher who wants to have a lasting impact on the lives of young people must intentionally create teachable moments that are <em>beyond</em> the content.</p>
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<p>So how does one do this? Well, the purpose of this blog post is to make the case <em>for</em> going beyond the content rather than going into detail on how to do so. However, I will leave you with two ideas for resources:</p>
<ol>
<li>Check out the following website: <a href="http://gobeyondthecontent.com" target="_blank">http://gobeyondthecontent.com</a>. There you will find tons of resources and ideas to help you in your quest to inspire and motivate young people.</li>
<li>Consider attending the VASCD's April 9, 2014 workshop in Richmond, Virginia on Going Beyond the Content. For more information, visit their website, <a href="http://www.vaascd.org/index.php/home/events_entry/go-beyond-the-content-creating-inspirational-culture" target="_blank">www.vaascd.org</a>. This will be an entire day spent on how better to love, motivate, and inspire students.</li>
</ol>
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<p>If you are an educator, what you do is profoundly important. For some students, you might be the only accurate compass they will encounter this year. Don't waste the opportunity to purposefully, intentionally, and lovingly go beyond the content with your students. Be the person they will remember as having a powerfully positive impact on their lives!</p>Psychology Student Networktag:freshmantransition.ning.com,2014-01-30:2630686:BlogPost:406212014-01-30T05:00:00.000ZDr. Ronald G. Shapirohttp://freshmantransition.ning.com/profile/DrRonaldGShapiro
<p>Since psychology is a very popular college major, I thought I'd post a link to Volume 2, Issue 1 (January, 2014) of the <a href="http://www.apa.org/ed/precollege/psn/index.aspx" target="_blank">Psychology Student Network</a>, a series of articles for undergraduate students thinking about a career with a psychology degree. The information may be helpful to some high school students beginning to think about possible careers. </p>
<p>Note: I wrote one of the articles,…</p>
<p>Since psychology is a very popular college major, I thought I'd post a link to Volume 2, Issue 1 (January, 2014) of the <a href="http://www.apa.org/ed/precollege/psn/index.aspx" target="_blank">Psychology Student Network</a>, a series of articles for undergraduate students thinking about a career with a psychology degree. The information may be helpful to some high school students beginning to think about possible careers. </p>
<p>Note: I wrote one of the articles, <a href="http://www.apa.org/ed/precollege/psn/2014/01/career-recommendation.aspx" target="_blank">A career recommendation for students interested in people and technology</a>, in this issue of the PSN. </p>
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<p></p>Honoring a Colleague about to be Deployed for Military Servicetag:freshmantransition.ning.com,2013-08-25:2630686:BlogPost:387712013-08-25T05:00:00.000ZDr. Ronald G. Shapirohttp://freshmantransition.ning.com/profile/DrRonaldGShapiro
<p>While doing a Google search yesterday I located an article in the <strong>Jackson Sun</strong> (TN) describing how the faculty, staff and students at <strong>University School of Jackson</strong> organized a surprise parade to honor <strong>Danielle Boyd,</strong> a staff member departing for six months of military service.</p>
<p>I thought that the parade provided a unique combination of honoring a colleague, staff member and friend, educating students about military service and…</p>
<p>While doing a Google search yesterday I located an article in the <strong>Jackson Sun</strong> (TN) describing how the faculty, staff and students at <strong>University School of Jackson</strong> organized a surprise parade to honor <strong>Danielle Boyd,</strong> a staff member departing for six months of military service.</p>
<p>I thought that the parade provided a unique combination of honoring a colleague, staff member and friend, educating students about military service and entertaining/having fun.</p>
<p>For a more complete narrative and photo album of this event, please refer to the school's website ( <a href="http://www.usjbruins.org/about/administration/sgt-boyd.php" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">http://www.usjbruins.org/about/administration/sgt-boyd.php</a> ) as the links to the original articles in the <b>Jackson Sun</b> are no longer available.</p>
<p><span style="color: #0000ff;"><em>Ron</em></span></p>
<p> </p>Are You Missing Your Own Reflection?tag:freshmantransition.ning.com,2013-07-26:2630686:BlogPost:384302013-07-26T17:25:14.000ZDr. Ronald G. Shapirohttp://freshmantransition.ning.com/profile/DrRonaldGShapiro
<div class="postbody"><div class="xg_user_generated"><p>I recently wrote an article titled <a href="http://issuu.com/gillantini/docs/webv2i5/25?e=4265616/4190968" target="_blank">Are You Missing Your Own Reflection?</a> which appears in the current edition of the <strong>Rhode Island Small Business Journal (RISBJ).</strong></p>
<p>While the article is designed for the business community, the concepts and the activity are relevant to parents, teachers and students transitioning to high school…</p>
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<div class="postbody"><div class="xg_user_generated"><p>I recently wrote an article titled <a href="http://issuu.com/gillantini/docs/webv2i5/25?e=4265616/4190968" target="_blank">Are You Missing Your Own Reflection?</a> which appears in the current edition of the <strong>Rhode Island Small Business Journal (RISBJ).</strong></p>
<p>While the article is designed for the business community, the concepts and the activity are relevant to parents, teachers and students transitioning to high school (as well as at other grade levels). Just substitute the word "students" for "customers" as you read the article.</p>
<p>For additional information (including instructions for leading the activity) please contact me. </p>
<p><span class="font-size-6" style="color: #0000ff;"><em>Ron</em></span></p>
<p>Ronald G. Shapiro, Ph. D.</p>
<p><a rel="nofollow" href="https://sites.google.com/site/educationbyentertainment" target="_blank">Education by Entertainment</a></p>
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</div>PART FOUR - Using Music to Inspire and Motivate Students in the Classroomtag:freshmantransition.ning.com,2013-07-18:2630686:BlogPost:379162013-07-18T02:00:00.000ZScott Habeebhttp://freshmantransition.ning.com/profile/ScottHabeeb
<p><i>There are several blog posts on this site related to</i> <i>using music in the classroom to inspire and motivate kids. Each has included a list of specific songs that can be used. Here are links to the previous 3 posts:</i></p>
<p><em><a href="http://freshmantransition.ning.com/profiles/blogs/use-music-to-inspire-and" target="_self">Part 1</a>, <a href="http://freshmantransition.ning.com/profiles/blogs/part-two-use-music-to-inspire" target="_self">Part 2,</a> …</em></p>
<p><i>There are several blog posts on this site related to</i> <i>using music in the classroom to inspire and motivate kids. Each has included a list of specific songs that can be used. Here are links to the previous 3 posts:</i></p>
<p><em><a href="http://freshmantransition.ning.com/profiles/blogs/use-music-to-inspire-and" target="_self">Part 1</a>, <a href="http://freshmantransition.ning.com/profiles/blogs/part-two-use-music-to-inspire" target="_self">Part 2,</a> <a href="http://freshmantransition.ning.com/profiles/blogs/musicpart4" target="_self">Part 3</a><a href="http://freshmantransition.ning.com/profiles/blogs/musicpart4" target="_self"><br/></a></em></p>
<p><i>This post is a follow up to</i> <em>t</em><i>hose earlier posts</i><i>. The first part of this post before the list of songs is copied verbatim from the</i> <a href="http://freshmantransition.ning.com/profiles/blogs/use-music-to-inspire-and"><i>original post</i></a><i>.</i></p>
<hr/><div>Kids respond to music. Use it to teach them lessons about life and to express your hopes for them. Use it to let them know you love them. Don't just wait for teachable moments to come along. Instead use music to <i>create</i> teachable moments.</div>
<div><br/> Here are 2 ideas for how you can use these songs:<br/> <br/> <strong><em>1. Use the song as a Do Now/Bell Ringer activity in your classroom. Make a PowerPoint with the words to the song. Then play the song and have the students read the words while they listen. After they listen to the song have them write a short reflection about how the song might apply to their lives, or about why they think you chose the song, or about what they can learn from the song. Give them a moment to share what they wrote. Then take a moment to share with them your feelings and thoughts.</em></strong><br/> <br/> <strong><em>2. The 2nd idea is very similar to the first. The only difference is that you first take digital pictures of your students and put them into a PowerPoint. While the students listen to the song, you play the PowerPoint of their pictures. Kids love seeing themselves in a presentation and it makes the message of the song hit home a little stronger.</em></strong><br/> <br/> With both of these ideas I would recommend trying to do it <b>at least</b> once a month - maybe even more often. The kids will begin to look forward to the times when you bring music into the classroom. Even more, they will appreciate the fact that you take the time to open up and share with them about more than just content.<br/> <br/> With each of the songs listed below, I have included a short idea about how you can use it to teach your students. By clicking on the song title you can go to Amazon.com and download an MP3 version of it. If you have any other songs to suggest, please do so as a reply to this post.<br/> <br/> 1. <b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000TE1BE6/solutietceduc-20" target="_blank">Don't Worry Be Happy</a> - Bobby McFerrin</b><br/> Has there ever been a more fun upbeat song? Just a great reminder of the power we have to CHOOSE how to react to life's events. We can be a victim and get mad - or we can CHOOSE TO BE HAPPY!<br/> <br/> 2. <b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0030PWPBE/solutietceduc-20" target="_blank">One Day</a> - Matisyahu</b><br/> Your students will like this reggae/rap song with the positive outlook on the future.<br/> <br/> 3. <b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00A3AUH9Q/solutietceduc-20" target="_blank">Home</a> - Phillip Phillips</b><br/> This is a great song to use early in the school year to communicate that as you and your students "roll down this unfamiliar road" they should know they're not alone because you're going to make this classroom their home.<br/> <br/> 4. <b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0035S3W18/solutietceduc-20" target="_blank">Get Back Up</a> - TobyMac</b><br/> The ultimate song about overcoming obstacles in life. No victim statements allowed. You gotta get back up again!<br/> <br/> 5. <b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0048ZK5QW/solutietceduc-20" target="_blank">We Shall Be Free</a> - Garth Brooks</b><br/> A positive song of hope about people loving others without prejudice and judgment.<br/> <br/> 6. <b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0022W6MJW/solutietceduc-20" target="_blank">Don't Stop</a> - Fleetwood Mac</b><br/> Our goal for kids is for them to not stop thinking about tomorrow. Encourage them to plan for their future.<br/> <br/> 7. <b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00A3AUHXC/solutietceduc-20" target="_blank">Gone Gone Gone</a> - Phillip Phillips</b><br/> Phillip Phillips' song <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00A3AUH9Q/solutietceduc-20" target="_blank">Home</a> can start your year and this song of his can end it. Great song to play for your students at the end of the year to let them know that no matter where they go from here, you love them.</div>
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<div> So, does anyone have any songs to add to the list? And for tons more ideas like these, visit <a href="http://GOBEYONDTHECONTENT.COM" target="_blank">GOBEYONDTHECONTENT.COM</a>!</div>
<div> </div>Frank Hall: An amazing example of loving studentstag:freshmantransition.ning.com,2013-06-30:2630686:BlogPost:377972013-06-30T18:54:06.000ZScott Habeebhttp://freshmantransition.ning.com/profile/ScottHabeeb
<p>Readers of this blog are familiar with the emphasis placed here on Going Beyond the Content. There is so much more to teaching than just mastering content - although that is definitely an exciting part. Teaching content is a privilege, but we educators have the opportunity to do far more than that. We have opportunities to change lives. We have opportunities to slightly alter the direction of young person's path. And changing a path by even a few small degrees can lead to a world of…</p>
<p>Readers of this blog are familiar with the emphasis placed here on Going Beyond the Content. There is so much more to teaching than just mastering content - although that is definitely an exciting part. Teaching content is a privilege, but we educators have the opportunity to do far more than that. We have opportunities to change lives. We have opportunities to slightly alter the direction of young person's path. And changing a path by even a few small degrees can lead to a world of difference down the road. We have the opportunity to impact lives through love.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>I often ask educators if they loves their students, and the answer is invariably "Yes." I have absolutely no doubt that these teachers are telling the truth. They do love their students - they may not like them 100% of the time, but they love them! :) </p>
<p> </p>
<p>I like to follow that question up with this one: "Do your students know you love them?" Most people find it a little more difficult to quickly answer this question with a "Yes." It would be nice if young people looked at all the hard work and long hours educators put in and equated that with love - but they usually do not. The teachers who can most honestly say, "Yes, my students know I love them," are the ones who are the most intentional about communicating that love.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Recently I came across the amazing story of Frank Hall, an educator from Ohio, who risked his life for the young people he loved when his school was victimized by a shooter. That act alone makes for a great story. But as I read the account of his deeds, what struck me as even more impressive was the fact that the students in the school ALREADY knew he loved them BEFORE he risked his life. Frank was very intentional about reaching out to all students in a way that communicated love. In fact, he had even reached out to the student who became the gunman.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>This story was <a href="http://www.sportsillustratedeverywhere.com/issues/protected/com.timeinc.si.web.inapp.06242013/frank-hall-american-hero-23662.html" target="_blank">published recently in Sports Illustrated</a> and written by Gary Smith. I have pasted it below. It's long - but worth the read. As you read it, notice the way everyone at the school seems to know they are loved by Frank. </p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong>I hope and pray you never have the situation occur at your school that occurred at Frank's. I hope you never have the opportunity to show your love for young people by risking your life like he did. But remember - every single day you have the opportunity to intentionally and purposefully communicate your love by your words, your actions, your smile, and your attention. You have the opportunity in your classroom to Go Beyond the Content - to be a <a href="http://freshmantransition.ning.com/video/mr-hollands-opus-stuck" target="_self">compass</a> in the lives of young people.</strong> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>For more ideas on how to Go Beyond the Content, visit <a href="http://freshmantransition.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-inspirational-corner">http://freshmantransition.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-inspirational-corner</a>.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Enjoy Frank's story!</p>
<hr/><p><strong><span style="font-size: 1.5em;">June 24, 2013</span></strong></p>
<h3>FRANK HALL, AMERICAN HERO</h3>
<p class="deck">In February 2012 a beloved football assistant faced down a killer in the midst of a school shooting. His courage that day saved lives and earned him the undying gratitude of his community. But while he and the town were changed forever, the culture of gun violence was not. Do you remember Chardon, Ohio?</p>
<p><span class="byLine">By Gary Smith</span></p>
<p></p>
<p><b>STOP ME,</b> please, if you've heard this one before. It's the story about the kid who pulls out a semiautomatic weapon in school and starts blowing away the students sitting near him, only this kid has a 6' 1", 350-pound football coach-a former all-state tackle and the sixth-best heavyweight wrestler in Ohio in 1992-standing 25 yards away.</p>
<p>Stop me, please, for it was all over the news for, well, at least 24 hours, one of those stories that sticks to the walls of everyone's heart, unless....</p>
<p>Stop me, for it was only last year that it occurred, in a little town named Chardon, about 30 miles east of Cleveland....</p>
<p>Stop me, now, because otherwise that means you too have already forgotten, and God knows how many more coaches and teachers and principals will have to make the terrible decision that Frank Hall made that winter day at 7:37 a.m.... and God knows how few will make it.</p>
<p><b>HE PULLED INTO</b> the school parking lot at 6:15 that Monday morning-Feb. 27, 2012-and hoisted himself out of the little red Chevy Aveo that left all the players and coaches at Chardon High racked by a riddle of physics: <i>So ... does someone pour you into it through a sunroof, Coach?</i></p>
<p>He lowered himself into his seat at the front of the cafeteria, where he spent each day monitoring study halls and lunch until football practice or weight workouts began.</p>
<p>"Something wrong?" wondered the head football coach, Mitch Hewitt, puzzled to see his 38-year-old offensive coordinator's big baby face and crew cut that early.</p>
<p>"Nope," said Frank, "just ..."</p>
<p><i>... living the dream,</i> Mitch and the entire football team could've chorused, they'd heard Frank say it so many times. Just showing up 45 minutes early to develop another play for Chardon's spread wing-T offense, diagramming a deep play-action pass that would make an opposing safety regret following Chardon's slot receiver in motion.</p>
<p>The cafeteria began filling at 7:05-70 students filing in for first-period study hall, 30 from Mr. Armelli's health class who came for the morning announcements because their classroom trailer outside had no TV monitor, and two dozen more awaiting a bus that would shuttle them to alternative schools nearby.</p>
<p>Odd, visitors would remark, how calm that cafeteria always was in spite of all the bodies and bustling. Odd only if you'd never heard your name explode from the bottom of Coach Hall's barrel chest and resound through the entire school ... or never spent even a few seconds in his presence-all it took to sense that the heart inside that barrel deserved only your best. Teachers who wanted a moment with Frank always had to thread through a knot of kids who would pull their chairs around his desk to laugh or chat or open their hearts to him, or to eat the food he'd stash away for those who missed breakfast or lunch. His code, in two sentences, was this: <i>Every kid there is someone's pride and joy, or wants to be someone's pride and joy, and it's my responsibility to be that someone for him. I keep thinking, How would I want my kid to be treated?-and then I treat 'em that way.</i></p>
<p>His eyes swept the room, his pen checking off the study-hall attendance list as morning announcements ended. The three football players always at his elbow at 7:37-fullback John Connick, who used Frank's file drawers as his personal locker, and the Izar twins, defensive end Tom and linebacker Quinn-were all missing that day, John off taking a test and the Izars, thank God, late for school. Besides the cafeteria staff, Frank was now the only adult in the room.</p>
<p>Two loud pops jerked his head to the right. His hearing had always been bad. Firecrackers, he thought. Then came another pop and another as he rose and took in the whirl of one boy slumped over a table, two others crumpled on the floor, two staggering away with bullet wounds, and a mad scramble of screaming children everywhere in the room.</p>
<p>Here it was, the question lodged in the recesses of all the educators' brains in America, the one that their minds race to and away from without ever resolving, the one to which the rest of us seem to have unconsciously agreed to condemn them all: What will I do if a kid in my school pulls out a gun and starts shooting?</p>
<p>Here's what Frank never could've guessed, all the years his mind had darted to and from that question: His anger trumped everything; it trampled thought and even fear. It sent his legs barging right through his brown table and straight at the gunman, sent his hand flying up, sent his voice booming, "Stop! Stop!"</p>
<p>Halfway there, the distance between them down to a dozen yards, Frank halted. Kids were diving under tables, bolting toward the kitchen and the faculty lounge, reeling into the hallway. The gunman had a knife in his free hand.</p>
<p>He turned and trained his Ruger .22-caliber semiautomatic pistol on the charging coach, and it finally dawned on Frank: One finger twitch and he was dead.</p>
<p>Their eyes met. The gunman's eyes, it struck Frank, were already dead.</p>
<p>Gripping that .22 was a frail 17-year-old named T.J. Lane, whom Frank recognized immediately but didn't know as well as the children who were fleeing, cringing, shrieking. T.J. was a dark-haired sophomore to whom Frank had said, "Hey, how's it going?" a number of times but from whom he had never gotten much back, a quiet boy who'd attended Chardon High as a freshman but came there now only to wait for a bus that took him to Lake Academy, a school for kids who struggled in traditional learning settings. A boy from a troubled home who didn't get into arguments or fights but who'd grown isolated from his middle-school friends over the past few years, sitting alone more and more in the cafeteria, and who'd posted a torrent of rambling, rhyming prose on Facebook just two months earlier:</p>
<p><i>In a quaint lonely town, sits a man with a frown. No job. No family. No crown. His luck had run out. Lost and alone. The streets were his home. His thoughts would solely consist of "Why do we exist?" His only company to confide in was the vermin in the street. He longed for only one thing, the world to bow at his feet. They too should feel his secret fear.... So, to the castle he proceeds, like an ominous breeze through the trees. "Stay back!" The Guards screamed as they were thrown to their knees. "Oh God, have mercy, please!"</i></p>
<p>Frank ducked behind a soda machine and heard a shot. The bullet, meant for him, whistled by and struck Joy Rickers, a senior, in the buttocks. Frank peered around the edge of the soda machine to see where the gunman was heading. The big coach's charge seemed to have unnerved him: T.J. had turned and headed into the wide hallway outside the cafeteria, Character Court, according to one of the green overhead signs that named Chardon's hallways as if they were streets.</p>
<p align="center"><b>THE MAN WHO WOULD BULL-RUSH THE UNHINGED KID WITH THE .22 CALLED HIMSELF A CHICKEN.</b></p>
<p>Jen Sprinzl, the principal's 51-year-old secretary, rushing out of the office to see what the bangs were, froze beside the sports trophy case. She was staring point-blank at the .22 and the knife.</p>
<p>Frank's heart raced, his neck throbbed. Now he faced a second choice: Do as he'd been trained to do in a lockdown drill that the school had conducted two years earlier, with a policeman pretending to be a live shooter-herd the kids into the kitchen and the faculty lounge and shove the largest thing he could find against the door-or....</p>
<p>At home he had four adopted sons: two African-American, two biracial. Another step toward the gunman could make all of them fatherless ... again.</p>
<p>"Get out!" cried Jen, collapsing to the floor beneath the gun.</p>
<p>Maybe it's not a decision. Maybe, in the end, it rests on the floorboards and beams already laid in a man's life.</p>
<p>"No!" bellowed Frank from 25 feet away. The kid turned the .22 on him again. Frank charged at him a second time.</p>
<p><b>HE SHOULDN'T</b> have been there that day. His principal, Andy Fetchik, had been urging him to do those 3½ months of student teaching, all he needed to be promoted out of cafeteria duty and into the classroom ... but he couldn't bring himself to do it. If he became a teacher, he might have to fail a kid one day, a kid just like himself. If he became a teacher, he might get to know only 150 teenagers a year instead of the whole student body, 1,100 kids.</p>
<p>He shouldn't have been there that day. Edgewood, the high school a half hour's drive away where he'd been an assistant coach for five years, had indicated four years earlier that the head coaching job was his, only to hand it to a man in his 70s, sending Frank on the job search that landed him at Chardon.</p>
<p>He shouldn't have been there that day. His dream, ever since he was a kid, had been to coach at his alma mater, Harbor High, in his hometown, Ashtabula, 35 miles away. His dream had been to buy one of the modest wood houses that lined Harbor's ancient Wenner Field, just a few blocks from the shore of Lake Erie, where the 50-year-old shift workers who'd sipped beer and watched him play from their front porches in the early 1990s could watch him now in their white-hair years as he led his Mariners charging out of their locker room and the band blared "Anchors Aweigh" and boys tapped that massive purple-and-gold anchor for luck and the 10-deep crowd ringing the end zone parted for the team's entry and the cinder-track dust and the brat smoke plumed beneath the lights on a fall Friday night. His dream had been to coach there for four decades and have his ashes spread over the 50-yard stripe, perhaps coaxing up some grass so that midfield bald spot wouldn't keep turning into the quagmire that once sucked a shoe right off his brother, John. But then heavy industry disintegrated, the Steel Belt rusted, Ashtabula went to hell, Harbor High closed, and Frank, eyes welling up, lifted his four-year-old son over the mesh fence to get him a brick from its ruins.</p>
<p>Still wearing his high school flattop, he went looking for something that tasted and smelled at least a little like his dream, someplace where God and family and high school football were bedrock ... and ended up as the crackerjack offensive coordinator and the widest, cuddliest creature at this small-town high school, Chardon, where a secretary and some of the kids called him Mr. Tickle. The rarest kind of football coach, an unshielded one. The kind who bawled his way through the movie <i>Rudy,</i> who made fun of his helplessness in front of a second heaping of chicken and dumplings and a second six-pack of soda, who self-reported when two motion-sensitive urinals flushed as he stepped away, laughing at himself louder than anybody else. No one who ever called him that nickname dreamed that everyone would end up trembling and hiding with everything riding on a diabetic named Mr. Tickle.</p>
<p><b>THE CHARGE</b> on the terrorists in the cockpit of United flight 93 on Sept. 11, 2001 was thought to have been led by four athletes: a rugby player, a judo champ, a quarterback, a shortstop. Men, like Frank, who'd spent years training to respond physically under pressure. "Sports," said Tim Armelli-the Chardon phys-ed and health teacher who, at this very moment 11 years later, was shouting, <i>Lockdown! Lockdown!</i> into the P.A. microphone-"is all about attacking and defending."</p>
<p>In a flash, Frank had determined that attack was the best defense, the only way to be who Frank Ray Hall always had been: the protector. The one who'd taken the steering wheel, collected the car keys and even the bail money when his friends back in high school got carried away, the only one who could cool the boiling blood of Ray Enricco, his buddy since kindergarten and his linemate in middle school, high school and college. The offensive tackle who vowed that he'd step in front of a bus to protect his quarterback, the one who'd grunted "Run it behind me" when the game hung in the balance. He honeymooned in New Orleans because ... well, someone had to clean up after Katrina.</p>
<p>It's true, he was caught off-guard just two months after his wedding when his bride, a social worker named Ashley, proposed adopting a biracial three-year-old named Christian, who'd already bounced in and out of a half-dozen homes, but in the end Frank couldn't bear the thought of a child going through life without a protector, so he said yes ... and yes again three years later to the biracial 13-year-old named Quincy on six medications for attention and learning problems, and yes again two years later to the four-year-old African-American twins, Mark and Shawn, the latter afflicted with tubular sclerosis: nonmalignant tumors on the heart.</p>
<p>None of which surprised Frank's mom, Mary, who'd grown up as Jerry West's next-door neighbor in Cabin Creek, W.Va. After all, her father-Frank Ray Farmer, the givingest man on earth-had died of black lung disease exactly nine months and four days before his namesake was born, and that little boy had grown up hearing his mom say that if she believed in such a thing, she'd <i>know</i> that the first Frank Ray had just body-swapped his way into the next one. Same huge heart, same fast-twitch compassion: Frank, who considered it his lifelong task to do what Grandpa would've done, dreamed of buying a house one day and giving it away to someone who really needed it.</p>
<p>For years young Frank's dad and uncles had tried to place a hunting gun in his beefy hands-surely, with bloodlines that flowed from the Appalachians of West Virginia and Kentucky, shooting would come to him as naturally as crawling and walking had. But no, he'd bounce bullets two feet short on a target range, talk twice too loud on the trail and always end up volunteering to cook and play penny-ante poker all day while most of his male kin bundled off at dawn to bag dinner. "Just not a hunter," his father, Feryl, would grouse. A protector.</p>
<p>Frank loathed confrontation, begged for truce in every squabble. He recoiled from roller coasters, hated heights, feared fright movies-he'd slip out of his easy chair when they came on, nestle up against Ashley on the couch, and jump through the ceiling when his eldest son, Quincy, sneaked up and yelped in the midst of one. The man who would bull-rush the unhinged kid with the .22 called himself a chicken.</p>
<p><b>T.J. LANE</b> wheeled and began running down Respect Road, a long hallway where a half-dozen teenagers fled in front of him. Here was Frank's third choice, if choice it were: Quit playing Russian roulette, stop running straight at a twitching .22 and go back to those three kids lying in pools of blood in the cafeteria, all so easily justifiable....</p>
<p>No. There were classrooms full of kids all along that hallway, and if that semiautomatic got into one....</p>
<p>Frank took off in pursuit and bellowed, "Stop!" Then everything fell silent, the 350-pound coach and the gunman in a tunnel, in a footrace down a 60-yard hallway lined with brown lockers and the most renowned athletes and alumni in the school's history staring down at them from framed photos. The teenager with a 25-foot head start, the coach with no ligaments left in his right ankle from years of football injuries.</p>
<p>The kid, it would come out later, suffered from depression and migraines and sometimes heard voices that came out of nowhere, a quiet psychosis that had not set off alarms. The kind of kid to whom Frank's heart naturally went out, its own wounds still fresh from the stutter that strangled him in school, the learning disability that made him tear a page of fourth-grade spelling words out of his textbook in despair, that compelled his high school guidance counselor to reply-when Frank asked about taking a foreign language-"Let's concentrate on the foreign language you're taking now, Frank."<i>Which one?</i> "English!" The learning disability that, after Frank led Harbor High to its first berth in Ohio's playoffs and made first-team all-state, capsized the Division I ride that should've been his.</p>
<p>He gave it one last shot after making honorable mention All-America at Iowa Central Community College and slipping into South Carolina State in 1994, the only white guy on the roster besides the kicker. He'd gained admission as a Prop 48, meaning that if he could just squeak out a 2.0 GPA in 24 credit hours, he could suit up and demonstrate the talent that had convinced his offensive coordinator there, former Redskins tight end Anthony Jones, that he might have a crack at the NFL. But he couldn't, calling his mother in tears when he failed, only to hear his father-who'd dropped out of middle school, worked in the Kentucky coal mines and then hitchhiked to Ashtabula at 16 to work in its factories rather than die of the black lung disease that had killed his dad and his wife's dad-grab the phone and say, "It's O.K., son, the world needs ditch diggers too."</p>
<p>It took Frank 15 years to become the first in his family to get a college degree, clawing it out a course or two per semester at the end as he worked in a group home for the mentally disabled. That included a three-year break during which he became a cop in Richmond, a career that ended after a drug-addled prisoner punched Frank's lieutenant and Frank hit the man so hard that it moved his nose to a new place, underneath his eye. He resigned because he knew then that he couldn't live with himself if he ever had to kill a man.</p>
<p>And here he was, closing on the school gunman-12 feet away ... 10 ... 8 ... 7-as they neared the doorway at the end of the hall: God, what would he do if he caught him? When he was 12 Frank had broken his older brother's nose with one blood-spurting punch, and several years later he shattered a windowpane in his family's front door with a head butt in his fury at something his father said, each explosion terrifying him into becoming a gentler and gentler giant. Now a plan flashed in his head: He'd seize T.J.'s neck with one hand and the gun with the other, slam him against the wall and pray that would suffice.</p>
<p>But, <i>no,</i> T.J. was lifting his gun again and aiming it at Nick Walczak, a 17-year-old who was trying to stagger to safety with two bullets already in his neck and one in his arm from the shooting in the cafeteria. Frank loved Nick, the kid who'd been elected Captain Crazy, the leader of the juniors' cheering section at games; the two of them joked all the time. <i>"Don't!"</i>screamed Frank.</p>
<p>T.J. dropped Nick with a bullet to the spine, paralyzing him from the waist down.</p>
<p>Frank stopped and bent over Nick-"Don't move, you'll be all right," he murmured-then looked up as T.J. burst through the doorway and vanished outside. Frank rose and slammed through the door after him, found himself blinking in the sunlight, turning left and right in a school parking lot.</p>
<p>He heard police sirens. He saw kids fleeing in every direction through snow that had fallen a few days before. He saw no trace of the gunman.</p>
<p>Now came the most terrible decision of all, the first one that gave him pause. He'd grown up in the Ashtabula Pentecostal Church of God, an hour and a half every Wednesday night and two-a-days every Sunday, and no matter how much his legs recoiled now, he felt the hand of God pushing him back through those doors, back down that hallway, back to the three boys shot in the head.</p>
<p><b>SPOOKY, WALKING</b> back into that building. The hallways empty, the classrooms dark, the teachers having shut off the lights just as they'd been trained. The students, out of sight, huddled in the backs of classrooms, breathless. Not a sound.</p>
<p>Frank braced himself, reentered the cafeteria and saw it was all true, just what he'd dreaded. It was only he and the three boys in the big room, silent but for the gurgling of blood. Three juniors whom Frank used to fist-bump and high-five all the time: Russell King Jr., slumped over the table, a kid with a part-time landscaping job and a love for hunting whom Frank would ask what he'd added of late to the family freezer. Demetrius Hewlin, lying on the floor, a strong, sweet kid who volunteered at a Habitat for Humanity resale shop and had been on the football roster briefly but was academically ineligible, Frank always urging him to hit the books and rejoin the fun. Danny Parmertor, on the floor as well, a little computer wizard, a class clown who'd swap zingers with Frank in seventh-period study hall about how massive one was and how slight the other: "Hey, Coach Hall," Danny would crack if Frank's shirt was snug, "your little brother wants his shirt back!"</p>
<p>Frank tried to move Russell's head out of the blood, to disentangle Demetrius and Danny from the table and chair legs. He cradled the boys, wiped their tears and begged them, "Hang on! <i>Hang on!</i> " He knew in the pit of his gut that none of them had a prayer, and so ... he prayed. "God, please, be here with each one of them. God, please, take care of them!"</p>
<p>God, please, where was some help? It went on forever, this horror, until at last Frank rose and ran to the hallway, his shoes and pant legs covered with blood, and yelled into the office, where athletic director Doug Snyder was doing all he could, locked in a 13½-minute phone call with the 911 dispatcher. Frank returned to the boys, then ran out a few minutes later to howl again: "Doug, we need help <i>now!</i> "</p>
<p>Outside, all hell was breaking loose. Medical and police helicopters swooping in, cop cars shrieking into the parking lot, children running and crying and hugging and speed-dialing home, desperate parents arriving on the fly. Handguns drawn, three Chardon police burst through the door and into the cafeteria nine minutes after the shooting. A moment later came the paramedics and gurneys.</p>
<p>Finally, when he was left alone, the question dawned on Frank: Where were all the other kids, the ones who hadn't been able to flee from the cafeteria at first? He hurried toward the faculty lounge and peered through the small window in the door, just above the piano the students had shoved against it, and saw a girl sobbing. All 30 of them lit up at the sight of Coach Hall's face and ran out, hugging him and crying. The kids who had hidden in the kitchen did likewise.</p>
<p>Now cops and FBI agents were swarming in, gathering information, sectioning off the crime scene. "You're Frank Hall?" a police officer said. "Frank, I'm your guy the rest of the day-you don't go anywhere without me."</p>
<p>And with that, he finally came out of combat mode, the gush of adrenaline beginning to drain from his body. In its place came a vast sadness for the dying and the wounded, and for the innocence and the trust forever destroyed in all those fleeing and frozen kids. He texted two mystifying words to his wife<i>-I'm O.K.-</i> and later, when the police were done interviewing him, called her from the principal's office and broke down, sobbing his apology for having made a choice that, by all odds, was likely to have turned her into a widow.</p>
<p>"Baby, it's O.K.," Ashley said, dissolving into tears with him.</p>
<p>T.J. Lane-having replaced his spent clip with a new one while running away through the woods, an exchange that Frank hadn't given him time to accomplish inside the school-was found by police on a wooded road a mile away about 45 minutes after the shooting, shivering and wearing a long-sleeved T-shirt with the word KILLER on it. Some students claimed that he'd targeted Russell King Jr. because Russell was dating T.J.'s former girlfriend, but when the police asked why T.J. had chosen those victims, he said, "I don't know." Asked why he'd run away, he said, "Because Coach Hall was chasing me."</p>
<p><b>THE HUMAN</b> mind is the coldest-blooded stalker of all. The day after a man does the most selfless thing a human being can do, and then doubles down on it by rejecting a flood of national media requests-Oprah Winfrey and Anderson Cooper and every major network begging him to let them shine their tungsten lamps upon his courage, TV vans parked day and night outside his home-his mind begins to devour him for what he couldn't do. You should've spotted that kid beforehand.... You should've done more....</p>
<p>"Keep an eye on him," Ashley warned athletic director Doug Snyder. "He's not talking about what happened."</p>
<p>Everyone else in northeastern Ohio was. When the early news flashes reported that a nameless teacher had chased the killer out of the school, Frank's relatives, friends and coaching fraternity knew at once: <i>Had to be Frank.</i> Then the details began to trickle out, and the entire student body siphoned strength from what its assistant football coach had done. For two days Chardon High was closed; then students sent out the electronic drumbeat for all to gather at the town square on Thursday morning. From there they marched arm in arm down blocks lined with cheering residents and red-ribboned trees, back to school.</p>
<p>For an entire hour, with 70 teachers and administrators embracing them and applauding till their hands were on fire and their arms numb, the students and their parents filed in ... and went straight to the place all the adults feared they wouldn't dare go near, the cafeteria. They <i>had</i> to go straight there: That's where Coach Hall was. A line formed, nearly 700 people long, and snaked deep into the hallway where Frank had chased the shooter, Chardon waiting half the morning for the chance to wrap Frank in a bear hug.</p>
<p>That night, when the Hilltoppers played in a first-round state playoff basketball game at Euclid High, 30 miles away, their student fans, known as the Chardon Crazies, showed up 600 strong, all clad in their school-color red T-shirts. The Crazies have a tradition. When their senior leader appears before them dressed as Moses-white hair, beard and robe-and pounds his walking staff on the floor, they fall away, creating a gap down the center of the bleachers through which he strides: Moses parting the Red Sea. But that night, when Frank began to make his way down the bleachers for a halftime hot dog, the inverse occurred, the Red Sea collapsing upon its new leader, swarming him and shouting, "We love you, Coach Hall!"</p>
<p>That week was a blur of memorial services, funerals and vigils. Just before entering one for which half the town of 5,100 seemed to have shown up, the place crawling with media, Frank turned to Doug Snyder with the look of a frightened little boy and pleaded, "Don't leave me, Coach." Finally realizing how fragile Frank was, Snyder had his coaches form a tight shield around Chardon's protector.</p>
<p>The flowers, the food baskets, the cakes and cookies and quilts and letters for the hero kept coming. A Fans of Coach Frank Hall page sprang up on Facebook. An homage to Frank began playing on local radio-a song by Alabama called "Angels Among Us" with Frank's words from a brief press conference spliced into it-misting up eyes at red lights across northeastern Ohio: <i>I believe there are angels among us/Sent down to us from somewhere up above/They come to you and me in our darkest hours/To show us how to live, to show us how to give/To guide us with the light of love.</i></p>
<p>He wasn't allowed to pay for his family's meals at local restaurants. He tried to give away the 10 $100 bills that showed up in an anonymous card addressed to him, until Snyder convinced him that would violate the intentions of the giver.</p>
<p>But the contradictions kept searing him deeper. He came from Appalachian stock for whom praise felt mistaken, from a father who'd wonder aloud, after Frank or his brother had pinned an opponent in a minute, if the job shouldn't have taken just half that. Every day for weeks, as people kept thronging the cafeteria to embrace him for all the kids he'd saved, he'd look over their shoulders at the spot where the three boys he hadn't saved had lain. <i>You failed those kids.... They died on your watch....</i></p>
<p>The cafeteria walls were painted a new color and a few tables realigned, but every workday he had to sit right there, where it all happened. On his 26-mile ride to work he began to cry and pray, <i>God, let me get through this day.... God, what if something happens there today? I'm too weak now, I couldn't help anyone....</i> Dodge balls banging against the wall between the gym and the cafeteria made him jump out of his skin. Thunderclaps triggered him, violence on TV made him sick. When he stopped on the way home from school one day to hit some golf balls and clear his head, the <i>pop-pop-pop</i>from a nearby shooting range sent him home, straight to bed.</p>
<p>He finally had to say something to the men in his extended family, a comment that he knew might not go down well. "Why does anyone need a semiautomatic weapon?" he asked one day at a gathering. "You can't convince me that a civilian needs a weapon like that with all those bullets in a clip." A family member started to say something about the possibility of a dictator taking over the country but then fell silent along with everyone else.</p>
<p>Frank's worried principal, Andy Fetchik, kept sending substitutes to the cafeteria to give him a break, kept urging him to speak to one of the therapists at school, but Frank kept waving him off. "If I get one more hug," he finally confided to Andy, "I think I'll lose my mind."</p>
<p>"Remember, they're hugging you because they need the hug too," said the principal, and so Frank waded right back into the hugathon.</p>
<p>He hung on for five weeks, then spring break came. At home, isolated from all those kids and hugs, it somehow grew worse. Images of the three dying boys kept flashing in his head. He couldn't play ball or video games with his own boys anymore. He lay in his recliner and tried to swallow the grief and remorse rising up his throat. <i>You should've been faster.... You should've caught him....</i> His mind, which used to rewind and run the three trap plays that he'd bit on as a defensive tackle in Harbor High's only defeat during his senior year-two of them resulting in long touchdown runs-now could only click and reclick the reel of 7:37 a.m., Feb. 27. <i>Why wasn't I looking over there? ... Maybe if I'd thrown a book at him when he started shooting.... Why didn't I dive at his feet?</i> Nightmares? He longed for nightmares-that would've meant he'd fallen asleep.</p>
<p>Spring break ended. He froze. Try as he might, he couldn't get himself to walk to his car at dawn and return to work. The phone calls and texts blinked in from Chardon High, but he couldn't answer them-he could barely draw a breath. He began to shake with fear at night. A presence was standing at the edge of his bed, a dark figure radiating fury at him, hissing <i>No, no, no. The devil,</i> he thought. It had to be the devil. He'd bolt out of bed to turn on the videotape of Chardon's 34-28 win over Riverside in 2011, keep rewinding that fake iso left and counter iso right that had sprung Alex Muir on the 47-yard game-winning TD run.</p>
<p>When he didn't show up at work for a third straight day, head coach Mitch Hewitt and assistant Don Navatsyk jumped into a car along with Al Stevenson, a pastor from New Covenant Fellowship Church. They showed up at Frank's house, clasped the haggard man, then began to pray and talk with him. "I don't know if I can go back," he confessed, tears streaming down his face.</p>
<p>"You can't bury yourself here," they pleaded. "You can't isolate yourself."</p>
<p>"I should've done more. I should've recognized what was happening."</p>
<p>"Frank, you did everything anyone possibly could have. God brought you to Chardon for a reason. You were the guy he wanted there for that moment. You were there at the end talking with those kids about eternity. You have to accept that you were put there for a reason."</p>
<p>He hadn't thought of it that way before. The men departed, and a little light crept into the darkness.</p>
<p>Everyone felt safer when Frank returned to school the next day; Chardon's dad was back. But the toxic drip in his mind didn't dry up until one day last summer in the museum aboard the USS <i>Intrepid,</i> of all places, during a family trip to New York City. There he saw a movie accompanied by a jarring simulation of the kamikaze attack on the aircraft carrier during World War II that killed 69 men, and when the voice of a crew member declared that it was the worst day in the <i>Intrepid's</i> history, but also the best day-because the survivors saved the ship, got back in the fight and helped turn the tide-something shifted in Frank. <i>That's just what happened at Chardon, it struck him. We got attacked, but we didn't let that kid pull us apart or break us down. It was our worst day, and our best day.</i></p>
<p>His mind, at last, fell quiet, allowing his big heart to breathe. That's how heroes finally get to sleep.</p>
<p><b>ANY LINGERING</b> doubts about where Frank Hall belonged, on that fatal day or any day for the rest of his coaching life, vanished once football rolled around last fall. Everyone-the student body, the entire town, the three boys gone and the one in a chair with two wheels-seemed to be in the Hilltoppers' huddle all season, so every player knew <i>for what and for whom</i> every step of the way.</p>
<p>Hewitt, the former Chardon star in his second year as a head coach, was a master at persuading a flock of boys to lay their bodies on the line for one another, but it sure didn't hurt to have an offensive coordinator who'd just done that for all of them in front of a semiautomatic. A team that hadn't finished over .500 since 2007 stormed to a 10-3 season and the third round of the state playoffs.</p>
<p>It wasn't all one long pep rally. Six Chardon High students attempted suicide in the half year after the shootings. It took Jen Sprinzl, the principal's secretary, four months of painful trauma therapy and repeated practice with a nurse standing in the hallway, assuring her that the coast was clear, just to be able to walk around that corner where she'd bumped into the gunman. But Frank was already laying plans, once his son Quincy finished his last year and a half of high school, to move his family to Chardon. The town and the school had become even more the close-knit and caring community that he remembered his old neighborhood and high school to have been. The school raised $9,000 to fight cancer on the first anniversary of the shooting, and the students made and sent more than 300 blankets to Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., after the slaughter that took 27 lives there last December.</p>
<p>The day the news broke from Newtown nearly broke Frank again. He couldn't remain in the cafeteria. He asked his wife to pick up their four children from school-<i>that</i> was too dangerous a place-and take them home; then he retreated to the TV in the principal's office and spent half the day staring at the horror unfolding all over again. When he heard that his cousin Joey's six-year-old daughter, Abigail, had asked, "Why didn't Uncle Frank save <i>those</i> kids?" it crushed him, because as crazy as it sounded, he felt as if he should have.</p>
<p>Two weeks later an undercurrent he hadn't even noticed building suddenly swept his life somewhere else. At his mother's house on New Year's Eve he read an article in <i>The Star Beacon,</i> Ashtabula's local paper. The football coach at Lakeside High-the school that Frank's alma mater, Harbor High, had morphed into after it closed in 2001-was quitting, declaring that the team had no business being in the Premier Athletic Conference, which it shared with Chardon, because it was "just too hard on the kids."</p>
<p>"Listen to this-can you believe it?" Frank kept repeating to his wife and parents. The kids from his hometown reading in the newspaper that their own coach didn't think they could compete? Kids just like him, from families with no college grads? Kids just like his own, from busted homes? A feeling overwhelmed him. Ashtabula had been so gutted by the collapse of manufacturing jobs, its stores closing, its crime rate and meth addictions soaring, that some residents had rechristened it Trashtabula. Someone had to stand up for these kids. Someone had to protect them. Done dawdling, Frank was, done regretting that his alma mater had been merged with its mortal archrival, Ashtabula High, and transformed into this hulking edifice rising out of swampland a half-dozen miles away from his old neighborhood. Time, the .22 had taught him, was too fleeting, too precious, and the stakes for children too high.</p>
<p>The day after New Year's, the day Lakeside reopened from winter break, Frank strode through its front door. "Frank Hall's here to see you," the school secretary informed the principal, Don Rapose. <i>Frank Hall?</i> The one in the news and the song? The man whose offense had devastated Lakeside 63-0 two months earlier? The man who'd sat blinking in Rapose's freshman math class at Harbor High a quarter-century ago?</p>
<p>Rapose rocketed out of his seat and ran into the lobby. "Are you here for what I hope you're here for?" he cried, shaking Frank's hand and his arm.</p>
<p>Don't do it, Frank's relatives and friends in the coaching fraternity begged him. School board won't have your back. Lucky to get a hundred fannies in the seats. Tax base in tatters there, no money for athletics; hell, half the families might not be able to afford the $250 they have to pony up for one of their kids to play a sport. <i>Two and</i> 28, Frank. That's Lakeside's record over the last three seasons, Big Guy. You'd take a 15% pay cut to go there? <i>C'mon.</i> Even Ray Enricco, Frank's lifelong pal and fellow assistant coach at Chardon, told him, "You go there, Frank, you're doing it alone."</p>
<p>Chardon was shocked. He was all but offered a lifetime job if he'd stay, and the chance to be the next head coach if Hewitt left. Lord, how could the school ever fill <i>that</i> vacancy-school superhero?</p>
<p>He could barely choke out a sentence when the football team gathered to hear his decision. "There are ... a lot of good people here ... that love you and are looking after you, but ... but I'm not sure the kids at Lakeside have that." Then he blurted, "Thank you-I love you," and bolted in tears.</p>
<p>Everyone was shook-up on his final day at Chardon, in March. Everyone was handing him gifts and cakes and cards, but the hug that meant most came from the boy in the wheelchair. "You're the reason I'm alive," Nick Walczak told him. Frank paused at the exit, a total eclipse of a doorway, quaking with emotion. He'd barely left when Coach Hewitt began drilling it into his players: They could run across the field to hug Coach Hall when they played Lakeside this autumn ... but it better be <i>after</i> the game, not before.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Ashtabula rejoiced. Thirty people showed up for the first booster club meeting, six times the attendance in the past. Patton Sidbeck, an eighth-grade center at Lakeside Junior High who prayed to God every night for six weeks when he heard the rumors that Frank might be coming home, started showing YouTube newsclips to the handful of athletes who hadn't heard or didn't believe what their new coach had done last year at Chardon. Fifty players reported to the weight room for off-season workouts, four times as many as often showed up last year. "This town has never been this excited," said Sidbeck. "What he did was crazy-a guy with a wife and four kids? We're back. Lakeside is back." Even Ray Enricco couldn't resist, leaving Chardon's staff to join Frank's long uphill climb at Lakeside.</p>
<p>The effect was immediate. At Lakeside, where Frank served as a counselor for kids with academic and personal problems, he spent every spare moment walking around the building, dispensing fist bumps and neck squeezes, building bonds. <i>How're your folks doing? How 'bout your brother? How're you getting along with your teachers? What'd you get in math? What about the girls-you staying away from the girls? Breezy, you having a good day?</i> The moment school ended, he was making over the weight room, raising funds, creating plans for every player and cheerleader to mentor a child in the nearby elementary school, breathing and bellowing life into off-season workouts and into kids with no clue what commitment looked like.</p>
<p>"C'mon, c'mon, get after it!" he thundered one day in April, charging from one weight station to the next. "Changing your life, Jamie! Changing your life! Go, Tyreek! Nothing's given! Gotta wake up and be great every day! Attack it! Building man hands! Great job!"</p>
<p>Then he divvied up the team for three savage rounds of tug-of-war on a giant rope, and called everyone together at the end. "Guys, remember our first tug-of-war eight weeks ago? It was <i>pathetic!</i> I had to pull on both sides of the rope just to keep it going! Now look at us! Great effort, everyone! On another note, a teacher told me today that Chad Brown and John McCormack sat down in the cafeteria with a kid who was sitting alone. That's <i>great!</i> Change the school! That's what I love! We can't all be football players or do tug-of-wars, but we can all do things like that and include everyone. O.K., everyone, hands together, on three: <i>Always defend! Never give up! Never give up!</i> "</p>
<p> </p>
<p><b>TWO MONTHS</b> after the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary, Rob Cox-the cofounder of a nonprofit formed in Newtown to help it heal-was leafing through a dozen boxes containing thousands of cards and letters that had poured in from around the world. He came upon one from Chardon, offering encouragement and details of what had happened there, and he was mortified.</p>
<p>He went around Newtown, asking neighbors and friends, but their responses were all exactly what his had been. <i>Chardon?</i> No trace in their memories of that town or school. No trace of a shooting there just 9½ months before their own. No memory of a football coach saving his school from a slaughter far worse than it might have been.</p>
<p>Which meant the clock was already ticking in the land of amnesia. How long before Newtown, too, was gone?</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>Do Your Sons and Daughters Understand Your Work? Probably Not!tag:freshmantransition.ning.com,2013-04-20:2630686:BlogPost:369212013-04-20T05:30:00.000ZDr. Ronald G. Shapirohttp://freshmantransition.ning.com/profile/DrRonaldGShapiro
<p>I recently wrote an article titled <a href="http://freshsqueezedgraphics.com/RI_Creative_0413/#/26" target="_blank">Do Your Sons and Daughters Understand Your Work? Probably Not!</a> which appears in the current edition of the <strong>Rhode Island Creative Magazine (RICM).</strong></p>
<p>While the article is designed for the artist community, the concepts and the activities are relevant to parents, teachers and students transitioning to high school (as well as at other grade…</p>
<p>I recently wrote an article titled <a href="http://freshsqueezedgraphics.com/RI_Creative_0413/#/26" target="_blank">Do Your Sons and Daughters Understand Your Work? Probably Not!</a> which appears in the current edition of the <strong>Rhode Island Creative Magazine (RICM).</strong></p>
<p>While the article is designed for the artist community, the concepts and the activities are relevant to parents, teachers and students transitioning to high school (as well as at other grade levels).</p>
<p>For additional information (including instructions for leading the activities) please contact me. </p>
<p><span class="font-size-6" style="color: #0000ff;"><em>Ron</em></span></p>
<p>Ronald G. Shapiro, Ph. D.</p>
<p><a rel="nofollow" href="https://sites.google.com/site/educationbyentertainment" target="_blank">Education by Entertainment</a></p>Ninth-grade transitioning through our weekly "Peer Advisory" programtag:freshmantransition.ning.com,2013-04-17:2630686:BlogPost:370022013-04-17T19:00:00.000ZRyan Fiskhttp://freshmantransition.ning.com/profile/RyanFisk
<p>Having recently joined the Freshman Transition Network and introducing myself <a href="http://freshmantransition.ning.com/xn/detail/2630686:Comment:36240" target="_self">here</a>, Scott suggested I elaborate on the ninth-grade Peer Advisory program I was fortunate enough to be a part of when I was still teaching:</p>
<p></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong>Overview</strong></span></p>
<p>Groups of 12-15 ninth graders would meet every Wednesday morning from 8:00am-8:33am…</p>
<p>Having recently joined the Freshman Transition Network and introducing myself <a href="http://freshmantransition.ning.com/xn/detail/2630686:Comment:36240" target="_self">here</a>, Scott suggested I elaborate on the ninth-grade Peer Advisory program I was fortunate enough to be a part of when I was still teaching:</p>
<p></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong>Overview</strong></span></p>
<p>Groups of 12-15 ninth graders would meet every Wednesday morning from 8:00am-8:33am in pre-arranged "advisory groups," participating in activities and games that would both acclimate them to the high school and foster and strengthen interpersonal relationships. Sessions were led by carefully selected and specially-trained high school juniors and seniors, or "Peer Leaders" of high moral standing; these sessions were supervised by a NYS-certified classroom teacher. Advisory topics included <span>time management, communication skills, planning and goal setting, stress management, and dealing with positive and negative pressures.</span></p>
<p></p>
<p><strong><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Logistics</span></strong></p>
<p>On Wednesdays (and some additional days in the beginning of the school year), each of the nine class periods were shortened by four minutes to create the time needed to run the advisory, while remaining within the confines of a regular school day. This alleviated any bus/transportation-related issues, and teachers that were assigned to supervise an advisory group were relieved of other contractual supervisions (school plays, sports contests, etc).</p>
<p>There was also a 10th grade advisory program that follows the same schedule but meets in different groups/classrooms with different topics. Both advisory programs conclude in January, but the Wednesday "advisory bell schedule" continues to the end of the school year, allowing all students/faculty an extra half-hour of free study/prep time before first period begins.</p>
<p>Juniors and seniors selected to be a part of the "Peer Leadership" program were enrolled in a training class that was scheduled alternating with their Health Education course during the school day. During classes, students would assist in designing activities, role play certain situations, and share successful management/motivational strategies from their own experiences.</p>
<p></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong>My Experience</strong></span></p>
<p>I was one of three teachers selected to train the peer leaders for their advisory sessions. I also volunteered to supervise an advisory group, in an effort to see the "finished product" and observe any transformation in my advisory group. During the half-year advisory program, I noticed a predictable increase in comfort amongst ninth-grade participants. Students formed friendships after discovering similar interests revealed through ice-breaker and other related activities. Upperclassmen would acknowledge and engage the ninth-graders in the hallways outside of the advisory setting (in hallways, during lunch, etc) and I'd say the program helped bring positive qualitative change to the school community during my time at this school.</p>
<p>Although I since left this school to begin my first administrative position, I believe their advisory program to be exemplary, and an important part of the ninth grade transition. I've attached a sample copy of the "Peer Leader Manual" we designed - this was distributed to student Peer Leaders and faculty involved with the program.</p>
<p></p>
<p>I hope others benefit from this brief write up and attached sample manual pages. Please feel free to reach out here or on Twitter (<a href="https://twitter.com/Ryan_Fisk" target="_blank">@Ryan_Fisk</a>) with any questions.</p>
<p></p>
<p>- Ryan</p>
<p></p>
<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/73426804?profile=original" target="_self"><img width="100" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/73426804?profile=RESIZE_180x180" width="100" class="align-full"/></a></p>
<p><strong><span class="font-size-4"><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/73426820?profile=original" target="_blank">9th Grade Peer Leader Manual - SAMPLE</a></span></strong></p>What's the Matter with Freshmen? Part 2 (Guest Post on NASSP Blog)tag:freshmantransition.ning.com,2013-02-26:2630686:BlogPost:348232013-02-26T13:32:41.000ZScott Habeebhttp://freshmantransition.ning.com/profile/ScottHabeeb
<p>I had another blog post published on the NASSP's Ignite Blog. </p>
<p><span style="font-size: 13px;">This one -</span> <a href="http://nasspblogs.org/ignite/2013/02/25/whats-the-matter-with-freshman-part-2/" style="font-size: 13px;" target="_blank">What's the Matter with Freshmen? Part 2</a><span style="font-size: 13px;"> - is a sequel to an</span> <a href="http://nasspblogs.org/ignite/2013/02/01/whats-the-matter-with-freshmen-part-1/" style="font-size: 13px;" target="_blank">earlier…</a></p>
<p>I had another blog post published on the NASSP's Ignite Blog. </p>
<p><span style="font-size: 13px;">This one -</span> <a href="http://nasspblogs.org/ignite/2013/02/25/whats-the-matter-with-freshman-part-2/" target="_blank" style="font-size: 13px;">What's the Matter with Freshmen? Part 2</a><span style="font-size: 13px;"> - is a sequel to an</span> <a href="http://nasspblogs.org/ignite/2013/02/01/whats-the-matter-with-freshmen-part-1/" target="_blank" style="font-size: 13px;">earlier post</a><span style="font-size: 13px;">. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 13px;">Here is a link to the new post: </span><a href="http://nasspblogs.org/ignite/2013/02/25/whats-the-matter-with-freshman-part-2/" target="_blank" style="font-size: 13px;">http://nasspblogs.org/ignite/2013/02/25/whats-the-matter-with-freshman-part-2/</a></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 13px;">I will be presenting on the topic of Freshman Transition later this week at the NASSP Ignite Conference in Washington DC.</span></p>The 9th Grade Challenge in Principal Leadershiptag:freshmantransition.ning.com,2013-02-06:2630686:BlogPost:346132013-02-06T00:49:08.000ZScott Habeebhttp://freshmantransition.ning.com/profile/ScottHabeeb
<p>I'm very excited to have an article on Freshman Transition published in the latest edition of the NASSP's Principal Leadership Magazine. </p>
<p></p>
<p>To read the article, visit <a href="http://www.nassp.org/tabid/2043/default.aspx" target="_blank">http://www.nassp.org/tabid/2043/default.aspx</a> and then click on the link for The Ninth-Grade Challenge. </p>
<p></p>
<p>You can also download a pdf version of the article by visiting …</p>
<p>I'm very excited to have an article on Freshman Transition published in the latest edition of the NASSP's Principal Leadership Magazine. </p>
<p></p>
<p>To read the article, visit <a href="http://www.nassp.org/tabid/2043/default.aspx" target="_blank">http://www.nassp.org/tabid/2043/default.aspx</a> and then click on the link for The Ninth-Grade Challenge. </p>
<p></p>
<p>You can also download a pdf version of the article by visiting <a href="http://www.nassp.org/Content/158/pl_feb13_habeeb.pdf" target="_blank">http://www.nassp.org/Content/158/pl_feb13_habeeb.pdf</a></p>
<p></p>
<p>I'd love to hear any feedback you might have!</p>