About Rachel Perry-Haen

Rachel Perry-Haen is an kindergarten teacher in Minnesota's, St. Louis Park Public Schools. She lives, works and plays in the community where her own child goes to school.

Perry-Haen earned her B.A. at the University of Iowa focusing on early childhood education and gerontology and her M.A. at Saint Mary's University. Her teaching experience have ranged from the Amana Colonies of Iowa, Minneapolis and several suburbs. Her experiences as a daughter of two educators growing up in a diverse setting in the private and public schools of Kalamazoo, Michigan, have given her a foundational appreciation for meeting the needs of every child. She waves her own flag for eliminating the racially predictable achievement gap in all schools and seeks ways to experiment with instruction, parent/school involvement, and raising student achievement on a daily basis in her own classroom and school community.

About Bill Stenross

Bill Stenross is proud to teach in the St. Louis Park Public Schools as a 21st Technology Trainer, helping teachers use new technology in their teaching, a school district that is working hard to reduce the achievement gap. He received an AB in Philosophy from the University of Chicago and his MAT in Elementary Education from the National College of Education in Evanston, IL.

His goal with this blog is to help teachers create lessons where cultural awareness is a part of the lesson, rather than the lesson. These posts will hopefully allow teachers to easily integrate cultural aware information into already established curriculum. It will go beyond the "celebrate diversity" and

Publication Schedule

Mondays: Link from Bill

Tuesdays: Teaching Strategies from Rachel

Wednesdays: Link from Rachel

Thursdays: Culturally relevant tie-ins to curriculum from Bill

Fridays: Article or Review from Bill or Rachel

Screen Capture in Mac OS X

Here's a guide on how to capture screen shots in Mac OS X.

http://guides.macrumors.com/Taking_Screenshots_in_Mac_OS_X

Black Boys lagging in Public Schools

Here's a report, although lacking a link to the original research, that supports other research that shows black boys are significantly lagging behind in test scores. Interesting reading. What kind of school system do we have in this country if 12 percent of 4th grade black boys are proficient in reading? 12 percent? Really?

black boys lagging badly in school

What to do when the Screen is Garbled

On old MacBooks with the mini-DVI video output ports (currently used by teachers at the Junior High, Senior High and PSI, as well as some principals and TOSA's) the screen can become garbled at certain times while using the Projector. What causes this is that the a program wants to use "full screen mode". These Macbooks apparently can't support that, and the screen on the MacBook becomes garbled, while the projector continues to project correctly.

The programs that often will cause this include:
Powerpoint (slideshow)
Screensaver
SmartBoard Notebook (fullscreen)

You can continue using these programs without an issue, or you could try these fixes. None of these will permanently fix the problem, however.

1. Unplug the projector from your computer, allow the screen to reset, then plug the projector back in. Sometimes this works, sometimes not.

2. Quit out of the program. Restart the program, and do not use the settings that cause the screen to become garbled.

3. Go into Apple(in the upper lefthand corner of the screen)-->system preferences-->desktop and screensaver-->screensaver and slide the toggle under "start screen saver" to "never". This will prevent the screensaver from causing the problem.

Hope this helps!

Screen is messed up when I plug in my Projector

When we get questions like this there are two possible scenarios. If your screen is garbled, please read the guide here. That only seems to be a problem with the older MacBooks. If you can see your screen fine, but everything is too big, then it's because of the screen resolution. I have created a quick little video to show how to change your resolution when you plug in your projector, but I will also detail how to fix it below.

1. Go to the apple on your menu bar
2. Choose system preferences, and then select display.
3. With our projectors, you will want to select 1024 x 768 (stretched). It should save this setting.
4. Click the button that says "show displays in menu bar". This will add a icon near your wireless icon that you can use to change the screen resolution on your computer and on your projector.

Hope this helps!