Even this year we’re going to rely mostly on Mentoring Minds‘ products, seen how positively they were received by our citizens. Particularly, the new Educational Reform (2011) that we Leaders promoted last year saw a massive usage of the newest research in the educational field, including Mentoring Minds’ teaching aids.

A few notes on teacher education products:

• they gave our teachers a boost in self-confidence and class-confidence to deliver better contents
• a closer look at Bloom’s Taxonomy helped all classes at all grades boost teaching effectiveness
• they helped promote of critical thinking among students at all grades
• they gave new insights on learning styles, vocabulary, classroom interventions, special-needs interventions, classroom management and tolerance.

The best statistics from 2011 is that absolutely NO student dropped out of school in Robocity! :D That’s amazing, considering that we had 3 drop-out students every 30 two years ago.

Donations from outsiders were also a big impact factor to keep our students in school. We get between $1,000 and $5,000 every month now! Thanks to donations, most students don’t need to leave school to search for a job, and lifestyle has improved considerably in Robocity since then.

A special thanks goes to our fellow citizen and Assistant, Ironhide Fastery (rony.enchanted.nu), who’s in charge of writing and maintaning our Robocity page on Squidoo.com. Well… most donations came from the Squidoo page, so— thank you, Rony, for your help! We owe it all to you. :D

As usual for October, we had a preliminary discussion on the Halloween Party planning and organization, which came down to having Goldbug as the party planner. Not bad. Secondly, a quick balance made us realize we have received over $2,300 USD this month in donation. Wow, thank you guys! That was maybe the greatest news of the whole month.

One discussion we had on the Reunion —which involved our inside teachers too— regarded Mentoring Minds‘ products and their possible use in our classrooms. I have to admit the idea was mine, but I’m so glad everybody was so ready to follow up and give me (and the other Leaders) such a good feedback. :)

Big points of our discussion were:

1. which teaching strategies to implement in order to manage classroom and get the best out of the lectures
2. how to develop critical thinking in primary and middle school students
3. how to increase students’ motivation to read.

That’s where Mentoring Minds‘ products come to use:

we plan on using both the Student Critical Thinking Guide and the Critical Thinking Questioning Stems to help our educators acquiring the right tools and strategies (based upon Bloom’s Taxonomy) that can aid Robocity students to develop their critical thinking skills.

The guide takes its inspiration from notorious scholars (Huitt, 1998; Thomas and Smoot, 1994) and bases its concept upon the fact that a clever use of new information (which is particularly relevant in our century) is crucial to the development of both the person and society.

Also, the Motivation Reading guide will help our teachers develop specific, to-the-point lessons to help students grow a love for reading (book, magazines, papers, etc.). One of the techniques implied includes not just reading, but also having teachers asking students to put what they think in writing and read it out loud. I’m particularly in favor of this last method.

We have another Extra Reunion on the last Tuesday of October —one day after the Monthly Reunion— and we’re going to talk about educational issues again. I asked Fulmine Petti to arrange the Reunion so that teachers would have a major role into it, while us Leaders would only be there to support and report on the event.

It’s going to be interesting, I feel it. :)

The last book I read is A Thousand Tomorrows by Karen Kingsbury. A great author, I love her writing style and characters psychology. There’s rarely a good book at the local store, so when I find something catching online I buy it. It’s well spent money, you know. :)

Tomorrow I’ve got an Extra Reunion with the other Leaders. Ugh. It shouldn’t last more than two hours, but I hope we’re going to be quick because I have stuff to do. Homework in the first place. ^^”

I think it’s time I start delegating my paperwork to Shotfire. :P My assistants are too nice to deserve that burden, ihih.

Alright, enough with work-related stuff now ^^ It’s a nice day and I might go out with Selenia later. I will blog again tonight.

P.S. I feel better, and I will soon un-password that post of some days ago *hugs to everyone*