My interactions with our school counselor

My interactions with our school counselor is a definite given due to nature and climate of our school especially when it comes to conflict and bullying. The reason I say this because whenever there's a conflict between two students and us teachers know about it and do not take action by reporting it to her she will immediately ask via email why and our administrators will know about it. Also, we have to answer to them about why. Even if we aren't aware of the conflict the students can and will create a falsehood to make us teachers seem as if we're being neglectful.


And based on my experience with this situation I make sure that any conflicts I witnessed she's notified via email as soon as possible. Also, the two conflicting parties (the students) are sent to our Responsible Thinking Classroom. Then a situation report is filled out by me and I make two copies. I give my counselor the master copy and I keep the other copy for my records.


With the help of my team I was able to direct the parent to counseling services provided by my counselors. That's it! We are not allowed to give any personal advice because we're not counselors. 

The Common Core & Me Blog #1

As for a foundation for me to implement the Common Core in my English/Language Arts (ELA) classes currently I am using the Hess model of the Depth of Knowledge (DOK) matrix based on Bloom's taxonomy. For example, I would have my students implement DOK Level 2 (Analyze) the different themes from the stories and novels we have previously read. Also, they would categorize the different types of figurative languages they have seen within the poetry we have read. Furthermore, DOK Level 3 (Evaluate) requires them to cite textual evidence from both informational and literature text. These are only but a few examples that is aligned with the required Common Core Standards.