June brought some really wonderful news to our school. My good friend and collaborator on claymation/movie projects — Mike Flynn — was awarded the Massachusetts Teacher of the Year designation for 2007. Mike is a wonderful second grade teacher whose emphasis on hands-on learning, project-based explorations and embedded mathematics certainly puts him in a top tier of teachers I know.
For the past three years, his second graders and my sixth graders have worked together on claymation movies and it has been a pleasure to develop the project with Mike. He is insightful, flexible and moves towards recognition of the abilities of all the children in his room. Last year, Mike also joined me in presenting a workshop on moviemaking in the classroom at our Technology, Teaching and Writing Conference at UMass (sponsored in part by the Western Massachusetts Writing Project).
He is also a talented musician and he and I have played together as part of an old band of his and he has brought his talents to the stage at our school when I have helped our Student Council organize concerts for Katrina victims and the Asian tsunami disaster. Like me, he finds creative refuge in writing songs.
Mike deserves all of the accolades and is now in the running for National Teacher of the Year (where do I cram the ballot boxes?).
Peace (in celebration),
Kevin
Hi Kevin
I’m sorry about your recent problems with edublogs (2 university blogs I manage are also hosted there so I can sympathise). However, the good news is that your comments on the help blog led to my finding your own blogs.
I’ve often found that serendipitous encounters are much more worthwhile than Googling for specifics, as is the case here – so thanks! (Love the vidclips)
John
University of Chichester, UK