“The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion
that it has taken place.”
~ George Bernard Shaw
In this day and age of technological communication, I find
the quote above to be quite true. For
example, I write this blog and communicate lots of information on a fairly
regular basis. I then expect people to
have knowledge of the information I have communicated, but how do I truly know it
has been communicated. I don’t know who
reads it each week. Even though I know a
certain number of people have signed up to receive an email of the blog, do
they truly read the information? Just because
I put the information out there, does not mean it has been communicated.
I think back to the “older days” when phone calls,
telegrams, and face to face communication were the norm. We could truly say that communication had
taken place because we had control of it and did it ourselves. While technology has sped up the process (of
that I’m grateful), it has also given us false assumptions in believing things
have truly been communicated. It has
placed half of the process out of our control.
How do we fix that? I don’t know
that we can. There is a certain amount
of responsibility on both parties to ensure the communication has taken
place. It is my responsibility to share
the information and your responsibility to take it. We must truly collaborate in the process of
communication for it to be successful.
Thank you for taking the time to read this blog and allowing the
communication circle to be complete.
We are having an issue in the Lower School with Pokémon
cards. The sharing and trading of them
have truly become a distraction to learning.
We started with saying they could play with the cards at recess, but
must keep them in their backpacks.
However, issues with trades and jealousy over cards have trickled into
the classrooms. At this point, I am
imposing a Pokémon card ban at school.
If a student has Pokémon cards, the teacher will take them the first
time and send them home at the end of the day.
The second time a student is caught with Pokémon cards at school,
parents will have to come to school and pick up the cards. Please help us in eliminating this learning
distraction the last few weeks of school.
The ban does extend to the TEL program after school, as well.
Last week the 2nd grade students held their
annual Readers Café. The students
studied various authors throughout the year, wrote a 3-point expository essay
about their favorite author (from the group studied), and read various books by
this author. At the Readers Café, they
were given the opportunity to share their essays and read aloud books by their
favorite author to visitors. Thank you
to so many of you for coming and supporting the learning of the 2nd
grade students. As you can see from the
pictures below, the students had lots of opportunities to share with other.
Next week we are having music Informances for kindergarten,
2nd grade, and 4th grade.
They are on Tuesday, May 20th and start with our all-day kindergarten
students at 4:30pm, 2nd grade at 6:00pm, and 4th grade at
7:00pm. The Informances are in the gym
and students should be in their homeroom classrooms 10 minutes prior to their
Informance. Please note that students are required to wear formal dress
uniforms for Informances, including brown or black dress shoes. I look forward to seeing you there!
Have a wonderful week!
Mrs. Baier
You have an interesting blog. thanks for sharing, I enjoyed reading your posts
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