Moondog training day -14th June. Please post on this thread if...

[lougle]

Could you post if:

A) You have booked and received a confirmation by email.

B) You have sent the form and cheque but have not had confirmation of your booking.

Or

C) Intend to book but have not yet sent the form/cheque.

Moondog has received 12 bookings so far, but I have had 26 forms requested.

If Moondog receives less than 15 bookings the event can't go ahead, so she may have to open it up to people from other places, but ideally we'd like to keep it to MNSN only.

I'm trying to get an idea of who else wants to come

Actually, I think I paid a pound or two more but it was sold as half price. Not sure I remember sorry.

*onto

Don't care if they've doubled the price - I love those chicken clickers

Moondog Have you seen this? sencologyblog.wordpress.com

Nice, Star.
I think looking after and training an animal is a brilliant thing for children like the ones we are often thinking about. He says outcomes are good.

'All participants not only demonstrated an increased interest and enthusiasm in the dogs and the subject, but also developed better listening skills and abilities to communicate with others.

The dogs themselves at the end of the course also showed better concentration, social skills and improved obedience; which of course is credit to the students and parents/carers practising.'

But.....WHERE IS THE DATA?

I put this link into the handout I gave everyone, but there are many links so people may not realise how important this one is. A blog written by another Lovely Colleague (I am fortunate to have a plethora of Lovely Colleagues) who is probably the top guy in Britain when it comes to Precision Teaching. I owe so much to this man.

Lovely Colleague's dazzlingly brilliant blog

Yes, yes to Star's comment re clickers. They come in a box of 6 which was not obvious. I am on my third box, because I keep on giving them away, such is the positive response to them when I get one out.
I am overcome by a rush of bonhomie and then press said clicker into said person's hands.
I am going to bankrupt myself.

I would strongly encourage a site to share data.
Peer coaching is a crucial element of this work.
That is why, on the SCC, there are so many labels-supervisor/manager so on, because the protocol is that all the SCCs are viewed by everyone once a week so all are up to date with how progress is (or isn't) going.

There are two steps to data collection

1. Learning how to take data
2. Using the data to guide and inform teaching

Many people get stuck at 1. but I always have to remind them you are not taking data to look fancy or impress others. It is only useful if you use it. Means nowt, stuck in a file in a corner.
Who cares?

I doubt there's data. Just thought the concept was interesting and how wonderful it would be to have a community that did this but using children instead of dogs. It's such a wonderful model of teacher, parent, peer training and development. Data would of course justify the model and funding.

Trouble is Moondog, your links often mean that I spend all day reading, instead of all day 'doing'. I think it is important to start with one or two important tasks/skill development, get them into a regular routine of action and then add as you discover new things.

I'm trying to put together a home-education curriculum for a period of HE. Quite apart from the distraction of discovering a million HE groups all suddenly inviting me and ds to participate in wonderful collage-design workshops, and making bee conservation areas, I am getting a bit lost in the desire to design the best outcome-based, fluency-focused efficient HE programme of all time that matches ds' current levels that I am also discovering are quite different from what the school is reporting, both way above and way below for the same topics.

Oh I hear you Star!
I have exactly the same issue.
Did you see that hoarding programme a few weeks ago where the guy had a compulsion to read/record tonnes of info? He was ordering 20 newspapers and magazines a day!
I can relate to that.
Trouble is you then become bogged down and worry about what you don't know rather than the all important doing

I'll still nudge you all in direction of Lovely Colleague No. 2's blog because it is a great place to find most of the stuff that I talk about in one place.

Effective HE (I was HEd for a while, due to remote Pacific location I was brought up in) quickly learn they can get all the academic stuff done very quickly which frees up swathes of time for friendship bracelet making/table drum lessons/nettle stewing/Mongolian throat singing because the kid has already tackled the pesky business of reading, writing and 'rithmatic.

I am constantly amazed at how inefficient classrooms are in the main. Takes so long to do something! They need lessons in fluency from McDonalds. Those folk have it cracked.

The downside of HEing is the kid has limited opportunity to rub along and make do with the masses, as well as missing out on so many opportunities for socialising, communicating, negotiating, arguing, resolving.....
My worry is that, as you gain more control of your environment, you end up being less tolerant of other environment.
Then tis but a small step from the fenced compound in Utah.

I am being facetious and I suppose voicing my views that no one place or one person is perfect.
Each family has to work out the effort/benefit ratio for themselves.

Well I'm going to go ahead and make the FB group, even if I'm the only one in it - I can post my charts and congratulate myself that I've done it, then I'll be triple reinforced - once for doing the chart and once for posting it and once for commenting on it.

Right, have to go and sort out car insurance. What a tedious task on a glorious sunny day when I am off work!

There's a book called 'The McDonaldization of Society' books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_McDonaldization_of_Society.html?id=JAHhSDKSxz0C I studied it during my degree.

They even chose the colour scheme because red makes you agitated and want to move on. It's marvellous, really.

'My worry is that, as you gain more control of your environment, you end up being less tolerant of other environment.'

Funny. A HT I recently spoke to of a school ds may attend one day said the same thing when I told her that we'll be HEing for a period. She said 'Make sure you don't let him control everything' I replied that it is in fact my 2year old that controls everything and not ds.

As DS will be having his needs met during the school hours he's going to have his afterschool hours dictated by dd's need for activities etc. They also share a bedroom and I will shortly be adding 2yr old to their room. He'll also continue with some of his 'non-negotiable' group activities.

I went to a HE festival last year and saw the worst as well as the best in children who are HE. Confidence was right there, but so was entitlement to have the world revolve around them (mistaken as confidence by their parents). My kids all know that the world revolves around ME!!! ha ha

Lougle I'm in. Of course I am. Quadruple reinforcement for you....

Damn, you've drawn me back in.
Looks interesting.
I am twitching her, wanting to bring up Amazon.
Damn you Lougle!

I think we have to get away from this perception that efficient means bad and that a more mentalistic, slower, touchy feely approach is good. I say this because I have, over the years, seen so many incompetent folk hide beneath the cloak of care and concern and the 'let's talk about it' approach.
It is doubly difficult to confront these people because their very involvement in the 'caring professions; seems to provide them with an invisible shield.

I'll never forget one (very senior) person I confronted several years ago, concerning near criminal neglect and incompetency (of the sort that meant a judicial review was looming) and the way, in a meeting, her eyes filled and she said, in quavering voice
'Don't accuse me of .....NOT CARING!'
This is obviously seen as the ultimate crime-the inability to have feelings.

I didn't actually give two hoots if she 'cared' (a term that is meaningless in any case). I wanted her to do the job she was paid handsomely for and hadn't been doing for years, because in her eyes, she cared and that was all that mattered.
Remember Batman?
'We are what we do, not what we believe'

The brilliant Vicki Snider sums this up in her book. When I read this, I felt like I had been doused in icy water, dragged around a field and booted up the backside, before being put in a half Nelson, dragged into an alley and duffed up.
Incredible.
Essential reading to anyone fed up with the current state of education but not able to articulate exactly why

Then I put it down and started to take control and never looked back. What a woman!!!!

Oooh, I'll have to read that book. I worked in McDonalds once way back and met an interior designer who was in charge of designing the insides of the new restaurants in Poland. She told me that the seats have to be just comfortable enough for the time it takes to eat your food fast, but once you are done motivate you to get up. Tables just small enough to make your rubbish look like an almighty mess that you are motivated to clean up, with bins placed at convenient location to help direct your cleaning up movements towards the door.

Er, and that book too. Damn it, my child will spend his HE experience on minecraft........

LA personnel ALWAYS brought up the 'caring' crap at every meeting I went to. 'We all want what is best for ds' and 'We DO care very much about him/his progress'. I did say once that caring is the remit of his parents not them, and especially not if it is detrimental to his progress'.

I don't think they ever got it. I can't believe I said that now. Whole different place that I am in.

Yes, I've started going to McDonalds while my kids are in karate, to see what is going on, much to bewilderment of folk around me who see me as a lentil weaver (which I am).
I am very interested in what is going on there.
I note the music is annoying and speakers poor quality-I assume to drive folk out after a short period.
Staff are always very charming and efficient and, in our setting, everything is done in our indigenous minority language. A true blending of the old and the new.
I like the honesty. You know what you are getting.
No false promises.
Who doesn't walk into a McDonalds without very clear expectations?
Would that our schools could offer even a fraction of that!

You know what? When the LA ultimately ask me to submit my report outlining my Educational Philosophy I will just give them the IBSN number of Vicki Snider's book and say that she wrote it for me. I MIGHT even buy a copy for the EWO Inspector in charge of HE.

It was after that encounter at McDonalds that I decided to study psychology for my degree. I became both fascinated and paranoid about such things and wanted more information.

For a while I used to go into the McDonalds Franchises for the fun of trying to find the errors. Not rotating staff often enough, not using the right language, not emptying the bins in the right order etc etc.

Such a sad person I was. It wasn't stuff I could ever share with anyone. 'Hey, guess what I saw today? Well, I was in McDonalds and they didn't shake the fries before they turned off the bleeper'.

Crikey, no need to apologise zz.
I'm with you all the way.
'Caring' ain't working.

Hehe, yes indeed Star!
BUT, in all seriousness, exploding in foaming ball of bile, while satisfying, does not help.
Many people have just been drawn into the caring carrot model (puts hands up in shame-I was, for years!) and would like to get out but don't know how. They have fallen victim to miasma of touchy feely nonsense that pervades all.

This is when you have to face the unpalatable truth that you either do it yourself or make friends with the touchy feelies and win them over by giving them concrete examples of good measurable practice.

It is a battle to win hearts and minds.