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[quote=Anonymous]I’m quickly chiming in as a full-time substitute, at times, and I’ve observed that a lot of behavioral issues are indeed with boys, though they seem to be somewhat diminished when I’m there. (For context I’m male.) I think it’s a combination of issues at play, though I note with interest that the times I’ve had to contact parents about their son (or daughter) that sometimes I get a brush-off. (Or in extreme cases when the school wants to send them home, the parents refuse to pick them up, citing that their children are our problem.)

I have tried to get hired for full-time work with the district for years now, as I’m often able to engage and teach students, but it seems like schools like to hire internally, often people with no experience in that given field, and the turnover is more than it should be. Having said that, I am also not fluent in Spanish, and I regret that, as that would be even moreso helpful in reaching my students. So it goes.

With regards to the Boxlight, it’s just a replacement for the chalk board, as it were, no more, no less. The times I've done read-alouds, I’ve borrowed digital copies from the public library and move the pages with a presentation clicker. This allows all my students to see the pages blown up, rather than trying to show off a physical copy. I’m also able to walk around the room, making sure everyone is paying attention and not acting up.

The funny thing is that I’m old enough to remember taking computer classes in elementary school, on IBM PCjrs, learning BASIC, and getting fast on word processors and typewriters. And I distinctly recall, at the time, people saying that all that access to video games (Atari and later N64, for me) and even home computers was going to rot our brains. It’s a miracle anyone survived the 1980s and 1990s, if so. \s (When I went to college Netscape was just being adopted and then, oh boy, we had AOL, Geocities, and so much more. And card catalogs went the way of the dodo.)

So, I don’t think technology (or the amount of it) is necessarily the issue, so much as the implementation, as with anything with MCPS. So much is rolled out without proper integration with the curriculum or the right training to make it work best for the teacher and for the students.

Teachers are doing the best they can with what they have. There are just so many other variables at play that it’s hard to say that it’s just one or two that need to be tackled, rather than a basket full of them.[/quote]

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