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300 Patriot Parkway Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35405 205-342-2800 [|http://www.hillcresthigh.net]
 * Hillcrest High School

Welcome to the Hillcrest Faculty Wiki. We have created this working space for our faculty to explore sucessful strategies for teaching at-risk students.**

Our 21st Century Team Project 2006-07
[|project-goal-year-two.doc] Goals and Objectives for 2006-07 Hillcrest High is in the Advanced Strand of our 21st Century Schools work with the Alabama Best Practices Center. During the first year of our designation of our school as a 21st Century School, we began the Hillcrest Faculty blog at [|http://www.Edublogs.org]. We began work with our blog late in the spring and we have added new material this fall. Our project for the second year is intended to aid us in what our test results indicate is a problem for us, dealing with at-risk students. Faculty members will be participating in staff development on the blog and in development from other sources intended to help us achieve our goal.


 * So Just What IS a Wiki?**

What’s a wiki? Why use them in the classroom? Click below to see a short video on the benefits of wikis in the classroom. http://news.zdnet.com/2036-2_22-5815948.html

Success with At-Risk Students
Welcome to the Hillcrest High learning community established to develop successful strategies for teaching at-risk students. It is our goal to research, discuss, and implement successful strategies in the classroom that will enable our at-risk students to successfully complete the 9-12 curriculum.

As we began our project, we read //Kids Who Outwit Adults,// by [|John Seita] (Author), [|Larry K. Brendtro] (Author). http://www.amazon.com/Kids-Outwit-Adults-John-Seita/dp/1932127321 as a whole school staff development activity. We discussed what we learned from it with special emphasis on how each department could implement some of the methods we had learned. We added new material to our Patriots Faculty blog and were hoping to present the project to the faculty in November but were unable to do so due to a technological snag. It has since been resolved and we are moving forward. We presented our learning community blog to the faculty on Feb. 5th, hoping to get all faculty members in the edublogs community by Feb. 9th. Edublogs itself experienced technical difficulties that prohibited us from signing up our faculty. It has just begun taking new accounts. We have begun to sign up our members and as more members of our faculty log on, we will begin to see the “fruit” of our labors. We will be able to share thoughtful discussion and provide each other with suggestions for addressing the difficulties of teaching at-risk students.

As of February 15, we have twenty-two contributing members of our faculty blog. We’re off to a great start.

It’s February 19th and we are experiencing technical difficulties again. It seems we cannot remain unblocked on our system’s security program for very long. Our system technology team unblocks the site and very little time elapses before we are blocked again. This places us in a difficult position and slows our progress significantly. We are continuing to work on the problem and are exploring other options for our 21st Century work including additional staff development on our wiki here instead of our blog which is still available to us. Our problem creates a situation where our faculty members may only access our staff development blog from their homes.

Feb. 21, 2007 update: Our Technology specialists have been working on the problem today and communicated with us several times this morning while attempting to solve the problem, but we are still having difficulties as of the end of the day.

We all have the capacity to create change. Read how several schools are making progress with the most difficult of students. Click on the link below: http://www2.edtrust.org/NR/rdonlyres/012DC865-97CA-4C2F-8A04-9924E2F392F0/0/ThePowerToChange.pdf
 * The Power to Change**

Read about successful strategies for teaching at risk students at this Glencoe site. http://www.glencoe.com/sec/teachingtoday/weeklytips.phtml/147
 * Successful Strategies with At-Risk Students**

This interesting article by **Regina Barreca** attempts to explain the rage and acting out that boys can exhibit. Weigh in with your assessment of her argument. You will find the article at __Education World__ with the link http://www.education-world.com/a_issues/columnists/barreca/barreca013.shtml
 * Channeling Boys Rage**

Education World magazine has an interesting article on reading body language of disruptive students and projecting the correct body language yourself. Check it out at the link below: http://www.education-world.com/a_curr/columnists/jones/jones011.shtml.
 * The Body Language Game: Meaning Business in the Classroom**


 * Teaching At-Risk Students**
 * Click below to view some helpful information on teaching at-risk students.**


 * [|Teaching At-Risk Students]**

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