Introduce yourself here

[Martin Powell-Davies]

I have been a secondary science teacher since 1986.

I taught in comprehensive schools in Kingston and Bromley, as well as a short spell teaching English as a Foreign Language in Crete, before taking up my present post in the London Borough of Lewisham in 1991.

I have always been active in the National Union of Teachers and, shortly after arriving in Lewisham, became the Local NUT Association Secretary and, in addition, the Joint Teacher Union Secretary. However, I have always opted to continue to be timetabled for at least one day a week in the classroom. At present I teach science, particularly the physics modules, to Years 10 and 11.

I have been involved in a number of local and national campaigns through the NUT and also, as a socialist, outside the Union as well.

I am presently one of four candidates standing for election to replace Doug McAvoy as the next General Secretary of the National Union of Teachers. I am the only candidate with recent classroom experience and the only one pledging to remain on a classroom teacher's salary if elected.

I am the father of four primary school children.

http://elect-martin.tripod.com

Edited February 3, 2004 by Martin Powell-Davies

[christine.rhodes]

HI My name is Christine Rhodes. I am a teacher in TAFE Technical and Futher Education in Mt Isa a small town in the far north west of Queensland Australia. I teach english as a second language and am interested in doing this online. I have just completed the Post Grad in Teaching Online and Cert 3 in IT to upgrade my skills online .

The world is an interesting place and I have travelled quite a lot to other countries.

My life at the moment is hectic because it is the start of the new teaching year and we are inundated with paper work.

Our team here travels out 2 to 6 hours to teach in remote aboriginal communities.

[djm1]

I am Don Mabry and I created and edit the Historical Text Archive (http://www.historicaltextarchive.com), a project I began in 1990, before the Web. In June, I retired from the history department of Mississippi State University after 33 years as an academic, becoming professor emeritus. I also taught at Syracuse University and at a community college in Florida.

During my active career, I had five books and various articles published; most of my publishing now is through the HTA. The HTA mostly publishes the work of others, however.

http://www.historicaltextarchive.com

[Isernia]

I am Phyllis Isernia with thirty years teaching and chairing in a grades 10-12 United States high school. My experience was largely in teaching European History and elective courses (Sociology, Government/Law, Contemporary Issues). I also taught an honors state university credited course in Western Civilization. For one semester I taught this same course to university freshmen. In addition, I served as scorer or reader of Advanced Placement European History exams, a national test taken by U.S. students each May which could translate into college credits accepted at key universities. The state where I lived established an assessment of beginning (2nd year) high school history/social studies teachers through portfolios and lesson video tapes. I served as an evaluator of these along with other experienced teachers.

Happily retired now, I participate in a variety of web forums on teaching, contributing ideas and sending teaching materials to new teachers requesting specific topic resources. I have always been a news junky, but now the habit has reached addiction proportions with time enough to check out C-span on TV, BBC and CBC on radio, and NATION, NY REVIEW OF BOOKS, ATLANTIC MONTHLY, NEW YORKER print that comes into our home.

Cheerio to all the English speaking folks contributing to The Education Forum.

I am not savvy enough technologically to even correctly use the options presented on this web site, so I hope to be helped by the many design and technical folks

who contribute ideas in teaching using the internet, powerpoint, etc.

Phyllis Isernia

[BeeD]

My name's Barbara Dieu and I teach English as a foreign language to high school students preparing for the French baccalauréat at the Lycée Pasteur, the Franco-Brazilian school in São Paulo.

I enjoy change and experimenting with new ideas, international projects, creating webpages, online material and webquests, surfing on the net, trying my hand on poessays, travelling and reading about culture, house decoration and architecture, education, ethnology, symbolism and semiotics.

On weekends, I relax in the countryside, read, do some special cooking for friends and family, go for walks with my dogs and watch the videos of all the films I have not found time to see while in the city.

I have organized and managed trips for students abroad and a number of international projects onlineinvolving different schools and institutions. I have also started a blog, where I record my comments and impressions on blogging and learning online.

[Anastassia]

Hello to all the members of The Education Forum!

My name is Αnastassia Athanassopoulou and I am Greek. I have studied greek philology and I finished my studies in 1999. I have been a tutor ever since but my biggest dream is to work as a teacher in a public school and teach my students the greek language and literature.

I am interested in learning problems, such as dyslexia, so I would like to work in a special education class.

Goodbye for the time being.

[Sofie Amos]

HI

My name is Sofie Amos, and i am a Year 12 student at the Australian Science and Mathematics School.

I was asked to join this forum by my english teacher, who thought would have some alternative views on the subjects discussed on the forum.

I am interested in politics, in particular subjects such as communism and the holocaust. i am also into psychology and hope to study political psychology and possibly teach psychology as a subject later in my life.

i hope to have a valuable input to the forum, and hope to read some interesting and alternative points of view here.

Sofie

[Karl Donert]

Hi

I am Karl Donert, I am Geographer working at Liverpool Hope University College. I work in Teacher Education, in IT and also in Geography and citizenship. My main responsibility is EU funding and European projects - so I will be interested in any interesting projects you are thinking of.

The projects I work on at the moment are:

eNews - environmental news

EUROGEO

Safer Internet

POESIA - Open Source Internet Filtering

I manage the European Resources Centre at Liverpool Hope and work also on the Spring Day in Europe: enlargement activities.

[Vittoria Di Fabio]

Hello! My name is Vittoria Di Fabio and I am from Italy.

I am a teacher of English Language and Civilization in a Liceo Classico in Rome. Considering effective communication a difficult achievement, I studied and wrote essays on verbal interaction and I had the chance to deepen my knowledge on the subject attending my Master as Project Manager, mainly based on the relation among the people forming an equipe and their different roles. As far as E. U. is concerned, I started dealing with the Charter of Fundamental Rights with my students as soon as it was signed in december 2000. Since then, I worked with them to develop their awareness of European citizenship, dealing with duties and rights connected to it. As a Spring Day teacher, I thought it might be useful to explore the common European culture to make them understand similarities and differences on a wider basis, while following the development of our Constitution (http://springday20.tripod.com). The fifth Enlargement and the common values, on which the E.U. has been built, is our goal as on the 1st of May the newcomers will be welcomed . Before that date our students must be taught that the differences, present in each national identity, are a precious chance to exchange experiences and points of view (http://liceoplautospringday.tripod.com).

My personal experience gave me the direct perception of the pleasure deriving from exploring new realities: I lived, in fact, abroad for several years, first in London, where I attended a course of journalism at the London School of Economics, then in Brussels.

The intermingling of cultures and the deriving fascinating effect were evident to me since then and I keep getting any chance to work for it as in Comenius 1 School Project with Germany and Bulgaria. At school we are working on a project “The future of Europe is in our hands” that concentrates on the six values our E. U. is based on and, from time to time, I send articles on the importance of tuition and the use of ICT to myEurope.

Let's work together! I will be ready to cooperate towards a better future in E.U.!

Yours,

Vittoria

http://springday20.tripod.com

http://liceoplautospringday@tripod.com

Edited February 15, 2004 by Vittoria Di Fabio

[jane shepherd]

I am a Teaching assistant at Shaftesbury School and Sports College in Dorset, England. I have been in this post for nearly eight years. I work with students who have problems in accessing the curriculum due to learning or behavioural difficulties. I also liase with the outside agencies like the Educational Psychologists, Speech and Language and Occupational Therapists and the Behaviour Management Specialist. I work with children both in the classroom and in a small group withdrawn from some lessons. It is a very rewarding job but very exhausting and often quite stressful. My specialist areas are Geography and Art (which is my passion) although I also work in other subjects as well.

As well as 9 O level and 3 A level exams, I have two City & Guilds qualifications, one as a Lab technician and one in Learning Support. I am currently doing NVQ3 teaching Assistants qualification and an HND Fine Art course on my day off at Salisbury College! I find the art course very useful when I am working in the art department.

[James A. Mowbray]

Jim Mowbray I am a professor of military history specializing in strategy and the employment of air power in war, and I have been teaching at the USAF Air War College for nearly twenty years. In the evenings I teach at two public (state) universities, Troy State University Montgomery and Auburn University Montgomery, both in the deep South, USA. This state (Alabama) is in a very deep educational crisis at all levels. I am interested in sharing and receiving the views of my colleagues, far and wide, about problems in education they are facing, and about approaches to problems that have worked elsewhere.

[Jude Owen]

I'm Jude Owen and am Second in the History Department in King George V School Hong Kong. KGV as it is better known, is a large International School which is part of the English School's Foundation. We follow the National Curriculum at KS3 and teach GCSE, AS and A Levels, usually EdExcel exam board. I am responsible for the History Departments' Web Site which has recently been updated. The site contains many detailed power points and links to other resources on numerous British, European, American and Asian topics. I am new to this game and would appreciate feedback.

http://www.kgv.edu.hk/history/

[Raymond Blair]

My name is Ray Blair and I am a history teacher at a private high school near Nashville, TN. I teach two courses, United States history and Twentiech Century History. Both are required year long courses. This is my fifth year at Battle Ground Academy.

I went to UC Santa Barbara for my BA in history.

California State--Northridge for my MA

and worked on a Phd at the University of Alabama.

I stopped at ABD with half of my dissertation completed because I saw the futulity of chasing after a tenure track position with an Alabama Phd.

I have only taken minimum required education courses to teach without a certificate and I generally am disappointed with Education Schools in the United States.

In addition to working as a graduate assistant at Alabama for six years, I have also taught adjunct courses at:

University of Alabama-Birmingham

Birmingham-Southern College

University of Montevallo

and

Tennessee State University

I am also lost without spell check

[cerebrator]

Hello good people,

My name is Roger Eberle and I have been teaching for 14 years, the past seven of which have been at Semiahmoo Secondary in White Rock, British Columbia, Canada. My subject is English. I teach grades 11 and 12. My passion is poetry, especially sonnets. Novels I teach are "The Martian Chronicles" by Ray Bradbury; "Lord of the Flies" by William Golding; "1984" by George Orwell; and "A Farewell to Arms" by Ernest Hemingway.

I look forward to dialoguing with you.

Sincereley,

Roger

[Ibrahim]

Hello interesting forum fellows,

Im a student from Australia, South Australia attending the Australian Science and Mathematics School. This is now my second year at the school and its been great. This is also only the second year that the school has been running. I was wondering if anyone on the other side of the world knows about or would like to know something about it.

Im in my final year of schooling now and still unsure about what career path to chose. I hope to be engaging in some interesting debates with all of you in the near future. I was just a bit shocked to see that everyone in the forum is a teacher of some sort.