Hey, What's All The Muss?!

  “But just hang on because it gets better.” Or does it? In this week’s research on bullying and cyberbullying in schools, I was shocked to learn that not only does it not get better in high school, but it can also continue right through high school, university, and into the workforce. In the workforce, it may go by a different name (incivility, mobbing) but the underlying characteristics are woefully familiar.   In K-12 school, university, and the adult work, bullying and cyberbullying all include “ repeated aggressive behaviours that are intended to cause harm to a victim with relatively less power to defend themselves” (Faucher, Cassidy, and Jackson, 2015).   The authors report the results in children are impactful primarily for the victims: “depression, poor self-esteem, concentration problems, anxiety, stress…” (2015). Those symptoms alone can have long-lasting deleterious effects.   However, when the bullying continues into the workforce, the effects ar...

Easy for Bogart to say!   But when you are an English Language Learner, phrases like this can be challenging.   Finding the right words for the immediate situation is truly a struggle.   However, when we practice anything, the process becomes less stressful and more successful.   The same is true for our immigrant families. How can we, as educators, teachers, and librarians personalize this practice for our at-risk students?             As librarians, we are a fully cooperating partner on the student’s instructional team.   Mackin Education Resources sponsored a Future Ready Librarian webinar in 2016 that outlined key aspects of personalized learning and centered on how librarians can use their expertise in this endeavor.   One tenet specific to our ELL students is the directive to “target instruction to support learners while continuing to challenge each learner” (edWeb.net, 2016).   Here you se...

  A seemingly simple invitation that could spell pain.  Imagine yourself with arthritis in your hands.  All doorknobs might look like this.   Happily,  that is NOT the only way to enter a room.  Look at this simple fix. Now the door welcomes all visitors with a pain-free invitation!      This is an example of a concept called Universal Design.  First applied primarily to architectural decisions, it refers  “to the idea of designing spaces, products, services, and more in a way that makes them as functional as possible for people of all ages, abilities, and backgrounds” (Spina, 2017). Since Ronald L. Mace proposed the idea of Universal Design in the 1990s, there is an emphasis placed not on fixing the world for the disabled, but instead on improving usability across the board, for every human.  And we use the word “human” purposely, as does Don Norman, the author of The Design of Everyday Things, in this video about the b...