The video above is a recording of the song, Marš Na Drinu or “March on the Drina” by Serbian composer Stanislav Binički from Friday night’s concert of the Belgrade Philharmonic. The concert was part of their New Year’s Cycle which celebrates different New Year celebrations throughout the year. Friday evening was the New Year in the Julian Calendar, which several Orthodox Christian churches in Eastern Europe still follow.

I think the song should be the Serbian national anthem. Binički was inspired by the Serbian army’s Battle of Cer against the Austro-Hungarian army in World War I. The lyrics celebrate the bravery of the Serbian soldiers and the flowing rivers of Drina. The Drina River is a tributary of the Sava River and forms the border between Bosnia & Herzegovina and Serbia. I love the melody when I first heard it played at the stadium during Serbia’s run to the World Cup a couple of years ago. I especially like the haunting rhythms which begin about halfway through the four-minute composition.

The song was overwhelmingly voted by the Serbian public as the national anthem, but due to its use by the Bosnian Serb armies in the wars of the 1990′s and the song was associated with the war. Too bad, because the current Serbian national anthem, is a weak, rip-off of the Monarchist God Save the Queen.

It is somewhat similar to Australia, where Waltzing Matilda is a much more loved song than the Scottish written, Advance Australia Fair, the official national anthem.

The song was the encore to Friday’s concert which featured Russian and Serbian works of classical music. As time goes on and the wars of Yugoslavian Secession move out of people’s living memory, the song will eventually be adopted as the national anthem.

Nadia and I really enjoyed the concert! The Belgrade Philharmonic this year has spiced up their concerts with bringing in opera singers and as you can see in the video, a “stereo” choir on both sides of the auditorium.

Bill and Nadia Relax After the Concert

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Central Square in Vilnius, originally uploaded by bill kralovec.

I’ve been in Vilnius, Lithuania for the past several days attending the CEESA Secondary Principals’ and Athletic Directors’ Conference. Due to the few flights leaving Belgrade, we had a couple of extra days in the city. This is my second visit to Vilnius and I got to know the city and culture better. Below are my thoughts.

Lithuania is where the Baltic States meet the Slavic world. The Poles and Lithuanians have a long history together and undoubtedly had a profound influence on each other. The languages however, are much different. Lithuanian is an ancient language which is related to Sanskrit of all things. It is one of the most difficult languages to learn.

Vilnius does have a beautiful, historic old city. We stayed in the heart of it and walked around the tiny streets, admiring the ornate architecture and quaint plazas. The Lithuanians are much more reserved than the Serbs. They are just as tall however, and they are a good looking, thin, race of people like the Serbs, although with blue eyes. Basketball is very popular here, dating back to before World War II. I wonder how it got started?

Basketball is King in LIthuania

The highlight of my trip beside the gorgeous walks around the city and a round of golf, was the trip to the Genocide Museum. The museum is housed in the former headquarters of both the Gestapo and KGB and documents their activities in Lithuania. The Soviets were very cruel to the Lithanians, deporting entire families to Siberia. I can’t imagine the impact of the war and two invading armies (Red Army and Nazis) on Lithuanian society. The Russians and eventually Lithuanian communist party members controlled society through informants and spies. It must have been horrible to live with that. The most impacting for me was the basement cells and interrogation rooms. The amount of suffering, fear, and sadness that passed down there! Tragic! I don’t understand why the Russians would want to basically occupy and enslave the Lithuanians. I also can’t believe that only 20 years ago, it was Lithuania S.S.R. and not an independent nation. It has come a long way and they are making stronger relations with their fellow Baltic countries and other north eastern European nations.

Birdie Putt

Achoo Vilnius!

We had a nice weekend in Belgrade. The snow was melting during the day so we were making Easter Island-like snow balls. I see the appeal of ancient people and moving huge objects.

On Friday night Nadia and I went out to dinner at the Iguana Restaurant. The restaurant is on the Sava River in a refurbished warehouse/dock. There are a couple of restaurants, clubs, and shops nearby. They had live jazz music which was a great way to spend a Friday evening.

We then went and saw the Academy Award Winning “The King’s Speech” after dinner. I struggled with stuttering for much of my youth so I could really empathize with King George. Stuttering or stammering is very misunderstood. It is hard to describe to someone that never had the problem. In the movie, King George’s therapist worked on “rhythym” by getting him to sing or use profanity to gain fluency.

I went to speech therapy for years in my schooling, and was helped by Mrs. Kathy Campaign, the speech therapist at my local school. She got me to speak slowly and read aloud to gain this ryhthm. Even today, I read aloud before I speak publicly to help me. I read where most people outgrow this and I am glad that I did, but I still have to be aware of my speech, especially when I am nervous, or tired. I am still amazed that I do a lot of public speaking in my job. The movie cut out the real bad stammers of King George to make the film bearable. It gave a truthful view of stuttering and I am glad the film won. I would also like to thank Mrs. Campaign for her work with me. I saw her about ten years ago when subbed at my old high school and it was good to be able to thank her in person. She is now retired, but she really helped me. I still use her techniques today. I am happy that none of my children are struggling with it.

On Saturday we had that Balkan/Slavic/Eastern European treat called “sarma,” which are cabbage rolls. The Serbs got the dish from the Ottoman Turks. In southeastern Europe, they use sauer kraut, or fermented cabbage instead of regular cabbage. Inside is a combination of beef, bacon, and rice. It is served with sour cream and it is a winter and Christmas dish in Serbia. I love it and our friends Claudiu and Vesna, invited us over for Vesna’s Romanian mother’s version. Absolutely delicious!

With Nadia at an Educational Conference in Dubai until Monday, I have a full weekend with the kids. We are starting the Ski Week Holiday also on Monday so I’ll have more time to blog.

We started the holiday last night by playing some pick up basketball at the school with the teachers. Owen and I then went to Kolorac Hall in downtown Belgrade to watch the Belgrade Philharmonic Orchestra. We have season tickets for the “New Years Cycle” which is a series of six concerts having the theme of New Year. Last night it was the theme was Chinese New Year, which the actual date happened earlier this month. It is the year of the Rabbit.

The concert last night featured a Chinese pianist named Haochen Zhang. The first piece was aptly a piano concerto and the big Steinway was in the center of the stage. Zhang came out and played Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto Number 1. Zhang made it look easy. The highlight for me was introducing Owen to the orchestra and the different instruments and Tchaikovsky. He did fall asleep in the second movement, but did get to get the feeling of it. The theater was warm (In Serbia in the winter, everyone cranks the heat because they are afraid of cold drafts causing sicknesses.) and cozy.

The video above is Zhang playing a Chinese folk song which I’ve heard before in some movie. I really like the song and if any reader of my blog knows the name of it, please send it my way.

Sitting Around the Campfire at Golden Lake

My village of Caspian is located in a beautiful, sparsely populated region of the USA. The Upper Peninsula of Michigan is located between the Great Lakes of Superior and Michigan. It has the area of Maryland (500 km long and 200 km wide) and only about 300,000 people. It is a land of forests, rivers, lakes and cool weather. This summer renewed my love of this land. We hiked, camped, swam, etc. in the beauty of the northwoods. It is a great place for enjoying wilderness and has a slower pace because of the lack of people. It reinforced my desire to eventually retire or live up here, at least on a part-time basis. Real estate is cheap as well as the cost of living. We also have lots of family and friends in the region. It is a summer paradise for kids.

The Mighty Fishermen

Above is a photo of our campsite at Golden Lake (285 acres – max depth of 100 feet). We actually enjoyed a night in a tent and the kids loved the camping experience. We’ll definitely have to do it again. We also stayed at the Aurora Borealis Resort in Skanee, Michigan last week. We spent two days swimming  and beach combing at Lake Superior. Ocean is shown below on the beach front of Huron Bay. The resort is owned by a retired doctor from Milwaukee, and him and his wife have made the cabins and gardens look like Martha Stewart designed it.

Ocean Posing in Skanee Michigan

On Mac’s Bridge, originally uploaded by bill kralovec.

Yesterday we once again attempted to catch a fish in Iron County and were unsuccessful. It was a great day however, because we all spent time in the beautiful northwoods on one of the best trout streams in the world. We are seen above on a bridge at Don McDonald’s camp. “Mac” is a legendary fly fisherman and he was very hospitable. Grandpa Kralovec provided the poles – thank you.

We had a full day with an afternoon of swimming at Hagerman Lake and a large family BBQ at our rented log home in the Ski Brule resort.

Owen gets water from a spring

What will I take back to Belgrade?

10 – 2 Rule: For every ten minutes of teacher centered talk, there must be 2 minutes of student talk.

These are the strategies to get the students talking.

• “Paired Verbal Fluency” – Take what you heard and put it to long-term memory. Important to shift from teacher to talk and more for the students to talk.
• Think Pair Share – teacher assigns a question,  students solve it.
• Journal Entry on Blog –
• Graphic Organizer

Collegiality versus Congeniality – everyone brings food/sunshine club, which is nice, but schools need to have professional learning community.

Five Behaviors for a Highly Collegial School

1)      Talk concretely, precisely about teaching and learning

2)      Planning and making materials together (not planning in isolation) it is easier

3)      Observing each other’s classroom – Go on an strategy hunt

4)      Teachers share their expertise – faculty meetings take place in various teacher classrooms

5)      Teachers are asking questions and providing assistance to one another

Another idea was to get a sub for the teacher and have them follow a student for a day.

The average number of pages in a textbook in the USA is 800 pages.

She loves the standards AERO because they are geared to international schools. http://www.projectaero.org/

M.A.P. has a good correlation to the AERO standards.  

What are the indicators for a Standards-Based School?

Published criteria, posted work , students are able to tell you what they did and what

Shift from focus on teaching to learning.

Shift from a coverage mentality to a mastery mentality.

Engage teams in building shared knowledge with documents

Teams help looking rubrics at “rater reliability” –

Beginning the Lesson – Frame the Learning for your students

• Standard, mastery objective, essential questions, – tell the students what they will learn – remember, no secrets
• Activators – relate the material to what the students have already learned or know
• Rubrics - http://rubistar.4teachers.org/; free easy site for teachers to do rubrics quickly and easily
• Word Splash (this is an activator) – splash words on a page that the students will be learning – have the students make predictive statements on how the terms are related - 

http://www.wordle.net/ this is a good web site for creating word splashes,

• K / W / L -

Confusers – ex) having latitude and longitude in the same lesson 

Examplars are great for kids – for example a good lab report with arrows pointing to points in the rubric

Middle of the Lesson – Checking for Understanding

• White boards (mini slate) for each student – ask a question to one student, and only one student is understanding – quiet ones demonstrate  (content check)
• Signal Cards – red/yellow/green (thumbs up / thumbs down /thumbs sideways
• Sentence Stems – put these on 3by5 cards and it can be used by the index cards
• Descriptive Feedback –

Important to have detailed feedback for the student – Ex) Your L look like the letter Y instead of sloppy

Do a re-write so you can incorporate it in the text.

Teachers do not put a final grade on the paper instead have the students judge themselves.

Good feedback tells me how to improve, non-judgmental, limited focus, specific, based on the standards,

The “stand up and talk” dialogue and the movement really helps the students to focus. Big sitting down is less oxygen in the brain – many people think better when they are running.

Walk – Talk - This is a good kinestetic strategy, we read an article about feedback and then walked and talked about it.

Personal Relationship Building is a spoke on the umbrella and class climate is the umbrella. Respect, courtesy, fairness, honesty, realness, humor, (Much like the IB Learner Profile)

Pouring on praise on a student actually shuts down thinking and conversation. It makes teacher’s pets, and creates a competitive environment. (Arthur Casta – says not to put a value on it, no student gets a judgment. )

Performance Goal  - Don’t take risks, wants to maintain the seven.

Learning Goal – With great feedback, this becomes front and center instead of the performance goal.

How to Train Students to Think Creativity

E. Paul Torrance / Alex Osbourne

1) Elaboration (not a new idea, take a basic idea and elaborate)

2) Fluency – Mental stamina,

3) Flexibility – mental, move your brain to different ideas smoothly

4) Originality

The End of the class: Evidence of Student Learning

“The Important Thing” (summarizer)

I like the term, SELF ADJUSTMENT.