Curriculum Matters

Those of you who've been wondering when the next round of common, multistate standards would appear may want to clear some time in mid-December. That's when the first draft of K-12 standards are likely to be unveiled, says one of the officials leading that process.

Dane Linn of the National Governors Association, one of two organizations guiding the Common Core State Standards Initiative, said at a forum on Wednesday that committees have been working on the K-12 document for a while now and a draft should be ready by the middle of next month. The K-12 document, as many readers know, is part two of the multistate standards project. Part one was the unveiling of draft college and career-readiness standards, back in September.

Officials from the NGA and Council of Chief State School Officers also expect to have members of a "validation" committee review the K-12 and end-of-high school documents at the same time, and have them approved by February, Linn added.

Linn was speaking on a panel on national standards hosted by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, in Washington. Joining him at the event, which was moderated by Chester Finn, Fordham's president, were Sheila Byrd Carmichael, an education policy consultant; Stephen Wilson, a professor of mathematics at Johns Hopkins University; and Sandy Kress, who was a senior adviser to George W. Bush and involved in the crafting of the No Child Left Behind Act.

Linn also said his team has surveyed the state officials they work with about how soon they might adopt common standards, once those documents are complete. Of 41 states that responded, 16 predicted that work could be done in one to six months, Linn said; 15 said it could take 6-12 months; 10 others indicated it would take 12 months or more.

What remains unclear is how the states' schedules for adopting common standards will mesh with the Race to the Top guidelines, which seem to set a more aggressive timeline for state action, as my colleague Michele McNeil noted in a recent story.

The Obama administration has proposed giving a competitive advantage to states applying for $4 billion in federal Race to the Top funding if they adopt common standards. It has also offered $350 million in competitive federal aid to states to craft common assessments based on common standards. Finn asked the NGA official if he expected that all states would adopt one common test, or if consortia or groups of states would band together to create their own assessments. Linn said Common Core officials had been talking with state leaders about the "pros and cons," of each approach and he expected a clearer picture to emerge in the next month or so.

Kress, during his opening remarks, argued that the standards won't mean much unless states agree to revamp teacher training and instructional materials to make the effort worthwhile. They'll also need good tests that measure what the standards call for and set high passing thresholds, he said. Without all that, standards amount to a "leaky bucket," Kress said, quoting from a recent paper by Russ Whitehurst, of the Brookings Institution. He also said the Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, before rewarding states with federal funding for common standards, should make sure they're taking steps "to actually implement them, and effectively so."

"I say unless a state can can show it's doing all of these things," Kress said of standards, "what good are they?"

Want to hear more? Fordham's event was streamed live, and a recording should be available soon at the institute's site.

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 9:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

The board that sets policy for the National Assessment of Educational Progress has proposed new policies that would overhaul the rules for how English-language learners and students with disabilities are tested on that exam. The goal is to bring more uniformity and clarity to those policies, which have drawn a lot of complaints over the years. Some say NAEP scores are skewed by states and cities excluding and accommodating very different portions of their test-takers.

Next Monday, Nov. 9, at 9:30 a.m., interested parties will be able to give their opinions on the issue. The National Assessment Governing Board will hold a public hearing on the topic in Washington, D.C. (An earlier hearing was held in Los Angeles.) Public testimony will be allowed, as will the submission of written comments.

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"Dear editors," the letter reads, "Please do not continue to encourage the improper use of the word 'forensics.' The courses referred to in the article ... are courses in forensic science. Forensics is to argue in a court of law. It is also used, and has been for the past 100+ years, to refer to debate."

A reader from Colorado takes exception to my use of the word "forensics" as shorthand for the study of "forensic science" in schools. I wrote about the proliferation of classes on that topic this week.

Ask teachers and students today what's meant by forensics, and I'll bet that most of them will associate it with the study of crime scenes, criminal evidence, "CSI," and so on.

Yet this was not always so, and it should not be the case today, the reader contends. He explains that his school offers "forensics" classes that focus on the study of debate—in addition to forensic-science classes, which look at "finding evidence for argument in criminal cases." (A colleague in my office recently said a similar thing, observing that she could remember when forensics meant "debate.")

But it appears that the definition of "forensics" has evolved over time.

An edition of the 1985 American Heritage Dictionary defines "forensics" as simply "the study or practice of formal debate; argumentation." It defines "forensic," as an adjective, as 1) "pertaining to or employed in legal proceedings or argumentation: forensic medicine; 2) Of, pertaining to, or employed in the debate or argument; rhetorical." No mention of crime scenes, blood spatter, fingerprint analysis, etc.

Yet when I consult my own 2001 edition of Webster's New World College Dictionary, it defines "forensic" (from the Latin term forensis, for public) as 1) "of, characteristic of, or suitable for a law court, public debate, or formal argumentation; 2) specializing in or having to do with the application of scientific, esp. medical, knowledge to legal matters, as in the investigation of a crime." Used as a noun, it refers to "debate or formal argumentation."

So it seems the definition has shifted a bit toward the CSI-side-of-things in recent years. Even so, to the reader from Colorado, I say point taken! You may be waging a lonely, and ultimately futile battle against the weight of popular culture and journalistic imprecision, but it's a distinction worth noting. Of course, if you really want your argument carried to a larger audience, you'd lobby the creators of "CSI" to slip some relevant dialogue on this subject onto the show.

I'll pose this question to teachers and school administrators: Do you refer to the debate classes and activities in your schools as "forensics"? Or simply "debate"?

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 10:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

We've written, as have others, about high school graduates who lack the academic skills necessary to make it in college and the workforce, and efforts to rectify that problem. But a new report examines a different, and perhaps equally vexing issue: What if students simply aren't interested in going into the fields where the jobs are?

A new report by the ACT looks at that mismatch and unearths some interesting results. The report lists the five highest-growth occupations, based on U.S. Department of Labor projections, requiring at least a two-year college degree. In this order, they are: education, including secondary school teachers and administrators; computer/information specialists, who would include computer programmers, database administrators; community service professionals, such as social workers and school counselors; management, such as hotel and restaurant managers; and marketing and sales employees. In all five fields, the percentage of high school graduates who said they were interested in those careers—ACT takers were the ones surveyed—falls short of projections. See the accompanying chart from the ACT, below.

Some academic researchers have questioned state and local efforts to raise academic requirements in subjects such as math and science, saying the new, tougher mandates aren't always aligned with what the job market is actually demanding. The ACT report, on the one hand, notes that too many high school graduates aren't meeting academic standards for college readiness. Yet it also seems to beg the question: Even if students have the academic talent and academic preparation needed to make it in the job market, are they going to end up in the jobs where they're needed the most?

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Earlier this year, President Obama spoke of the need to have students spend more time in school, by extending the school day, and possibly shortening the summer recess. The current school calendar, he argued, puts the United States at a "competitive disadvantage" with top-performing nations. Over the past few weeks, there's been a surge of recycled interest in what Obama said months ago, much of apparently stemming from a recent story in the Associated Press, which lays out some of the pros and cons of extended learning time (Though the headline on the story version I saw was the rather doomsdayish "Obama Would Curtail Summer Vacation.").

A new white paper by the National Academy of Education examines extended learning time in more depth, saying that its success usually depends on several factors, particularly whether the extra time is tied to new efforts to improve instruction, rather than just doing more of the same.

I saw a mix of positive and ambivalent reactions to Obama's pitch, but the white paper suggests that strong majorities of Americans support different kinds of extended learning time, at least in theory. Ninety-six percent of respondents in a 2007 Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup poll said that extended learning time would be a way of helping more low-performing students.

The Academy report recommends that the federal government support research to test "promising" practices to increase learning time, to determine what exactly is about them works well.

A second white paper (which you can link to, above) from the Academy calls for the federal government to support the redesign of tests to accomplish several goals. Those include establishing clearer connections between "content" and "performance" standards—basically, expectations for what students need to know, and standards by which their performance is judged. The paper also calls for the feds to support testing that more precisely measures not only students' current performance, but also their academic progress.

"We are poised to make dramatic advances in assessment within a decade if we can make the commitment needed now," Lorrie Shepard, a University of Colorado professor who co-edited the paper on assessment, said in a statement that accompanied the paper. "We need to marshal the resources of the federal government and our best researchers in a program of research and development to significantly improve our assessment tools."

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 9:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Stanford University professor Mike Kirst lays out his concerns about the proposed common academic standards, in a new online essay. Kirst's basic argument is that the draft document wrongly suggests that the skills that students need for colleges (two- and four-year) and very different jobs in the workplace are the same. The Stanford scholar made some of these points in our recent EdWeek story on the draft, but he goes into more detail here.

Kirst discusses his recent work on an expert panel that examined the feasibility of judging college and workforce preparation on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, scale. That panel, he notes, found that many occupations don't have consistent training requirements; some require a lot geometry, for instance, while other demand more algebra, or number computation. It examined job training programs for certain "exemplar" occupations, he says. This seems like a more precise way of judging the skills need for workforce success than what the standards-writers are using.

Do you agree with Kirst's point of view?

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In an online opinion piece in the Washington Post, Daniel Willingham argues that the draft common standards released last week wrongly suggest that reading comprehension is a skill, or single strategy that can be taught. In fact, reading comprehension is built on prior knowledge—"the stuff readers already know that enables them to create understanding as they read," the University of Virginia psychology professor contends.

Willingham says that schools tend to teach reading comprehension as a series of reading strategies "that can be practiced and mastered." The writers of the "Common Core" standards reinforce the theme, he contends. The document recommends that students have a strong "content base," because that's part of what makes a reader ready for college, he notes. But they miss the essential point, he says: that content is a way "to ensure that they are good readers!"

Why is prior knowledge so crucial to reading comprehension? Because writers leave out information they assume is understood, Willingham says. What happens if a reader lacks that prior knowledge? Comprehension comes off the tracks:

"This is exactly what happens for millions of poor readers," he writes. "They can 'read' (they can sound out the words on the page), but they can't consistently comprehend. They read it, but they don't 'get it.' "

Remarkably, if you take kids who score poorly on a reading test and ask them to read on a topic they know something about (baseball, say, or dinosaurs), all of a sudden their comprehension is terrific—better than kids who score well on reading tests but who don't know a lot about baseball or dinosaurs."

How do students, he asks, pick up this prior knowledge?

"It accumulates through years of exposure to newspapers, serious magazines, books, conversations with knowledgeable people. It should also come from a content-rich curriculum in school."

[Editorial comment: The world's print journalists salute you, Mr. Willingham.]

I'll invite the reading teachers and scholars out there to offer their own opinions on his essay.

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 11:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

A new version of the Common Core multistate standards has been released for public consumption. Many of the biggest changes were made in the language arts section, as opposed to the math, as I reported in my story today.

The new draft greatly expands the number of "illustrative texts," meant to show reading materials at the level of complexity that students need to be ready for on-campus studies and life in the labor market. The Declaration of Independence is in there, as was the case with the earlier draft, but so are documents like the Rev. Martin Luther King's 1963 "Letter from a Birmingham Jail," written to ministers and others who had been critical of him. Check out the Common Core documents to see more of those texts. The authors are quick to point out that this is not meant to be a prescriptive "reading list" for states.

The Council of Great City Schools is out the gate with a positive response to the latest draft. The organization says it offered comments on the early draft, and it even suggests that some of the big cities it represents might serve as "initial test sites" for implementing the standards.

UPDATE: Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who has offered states a financial carrot to adopt common standards through Race to the Top funding, speaks favorably of the revised document:

"I applaud the leadership of this coalition of states in joining together to develop a common core of academic standards. The draft college- and career-ready standards that were released today as part of those efforts are an important step forward, and it is now in the hands of the public to provide critical feedback to state leadership. There is no work more important than preparing our students to compete and succeed in a global economy, and it is to the credit of these states that this work is getting done."

The American Federation of Teachers also likes what it sees. The union's president, Randi Weingarten, who has spoken favorably of creating national standards in the past, said AFT representatives had looked over an earlier draft, and the views of teachers are being taken seriously.

"We expect to see even more teacher input during the comment period and in future efforts to develop standards to guide the work of K-12 teachers," Weingarten said in a statement. "We encourage math and language arts teachers from across the country to make suggestions throughout this process...The question is: Do these standards reflect what we expect our children to know and what they should be able to do upon graduation, whether they enter the workforce or go onto college? We realize the answer is far from simple, but these standards are a solid first step."

Lynne Munson, of the group Common Core (not to be confused with the group drafting the standards) advocates for students receiving a content-rich curriculum. She likes the changes from the earlier draft, particularly the inclusion of more illustrative texts. But she questions why business memos, newspaper pages , and the like appear alongside passages of literature and historical documents. "It would be hard to imagine that someone who could master Austen, Whitman, and King would struggle to grasp the contents of a homepage, front page, or a memo on medical benefits," she writes in a blog post. "Sure, these resemble the kind of reading people must navigate daily, but school is a time when you encounter uncommon works of enduring value. The standards make that point, but more obliquely than they should."

Photo of MLK, courtesy of the Library of Congress.

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When the title of the article is “Dehumanized: When Math and Science Rule the School,” it’s safe to assume that the author is not buying the prevailing line about the United States’ shortcomings in those subjects, and their alleged consequences for society. Mark Slouka, in a piece in published in this month’s issue of Harper’s Magazine, derides the continuous “ritual” of pointing out new crises in math and science, a campaign that he says is being pushed along by corporate America with uncritical assistance from politicians, colleges and universities, and the news media.

Slouka is not arguing that math and science are not important. His point is that business and political leaders have become so intent at revamping those subjects in the name of job creation, economic prosperity, national security and so on, that they ignore that vital role that the humanities play in encouraging students to think critically and function as active, intelligent members of a civic society. “The humanities, in short, are a superb delivery mechanism for what me might call democratic values,” Slouka said. “There is no better that I am aware of.”

About the current wave of interest in improving students’ math and science skills, he writes:

"Typically, the call to arms comes from the business community. We’re losing our competitive edge, sounds the cry. Singapore is pulling ahead. The president swings into action. He orders up a blue-chip commission of high-ranking business executives (the 2006 Commission on the Future of Higher Education, led by business executive Charles Miller, for example) to study the problem and come up with “real world” solutions.

Thus empowered, the commission crunches the numbers, notes the depths to which we’ve sunk, and emerges into the light to underscore the need for more accountability. To whom? Well, to business, naturally. To whom else would you account? And that’s it, more or less. Cue the curtain. The commission’s president answers all reasonable questions. Eventually, everyone goes home and gets with the program.”

But it’s a shortsighted point of view, Slouka argues:

“The case for the humanities is not hard to make, though it can be difficult—to such an extent have we been marginalized, so long have we acceded to that marginalization—not to sound either defensive or naive. The humanities, done right, are the crucible within which our evolving notions of what it means to be fully human are put to the test; they teach us, incrementally, endlessly, not what to do but how to be."

The humanities “complicate our vision, pull our most cherished notions out by the roots, flay our pieties,” he says. Grounding students in the humanities moreover, is “value—and cheap at the price,” Slouka adds. “This is utility of a higher order. Considering where the rising arcs of our ignorance and our deference lead, what could represent a better investment?”

Slouka is, of course, hardly the only observer to warn of the downside for U.S. schools focusing on core academic subjects without giving sufficient time to history, literature, social studies, and the arts. I recently reported on the work of some scholars who believe that the roots of innovation and creativity in math and science rise are made stronger by the cultivation of arts and music skill.

Slouka’s point is different: not that the humanities are important because they build a math and science workforce, but because they build the individual, and build a better democratic society. What do you make of his arguments?

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 11:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Frank McCourt, who died over the weekend at the age of 78, is known to many Americans as the author of the memoir Angela’s Ashes, which has sold 4 million copies, been been translated into 27 languages and was made into a Hollywood film. Yet the Irish-American author was also known to many a class of New York public school students as a teacher of creative writing. Like many aspects of McCourt’s life, his experiences in the classroom were largely defined by the sweep of colorful narrative that brought him there.

McCourt was born to Irish parents in Brooklyn, N.Y., but his family moved back to their homeland during the Depression in search of work. They found little to comfort them back in Limerick, where they lived in extreme poverty, as McCourt described in his memoir. He quit school at age 13 and worked odd jobs, and at age 19, moved back to New York. After serving in the U.S. military, McCourt was determined to put together a career of something more than odd jobs. He talked his way into New York University (which he attended with the help of the GI Bill), and eventually was hired by the city's public schools as a creative writing teacher—without even having a high school degree. He worked in the schools for 27 years, writing both Angela’s Ashes, and another book, 'Tis, after his retirement from the system.

In interviews after he became well known, McCourt described his myriad challenges as a new teacher. One hurdle was his having been taught in the strict and stodgy Irish education system of the day, in which, to hear him tell it, students were told to keep their mouths shut, memorize material for the test, and never question anything. Students in New York were more assertive in McCourt's presence, to say the least. Yet his charges also seemed puzzled and intrigued by his accent and Irish background, and the fact that he hadn’t gone to high school, enough so some of them cut him a break. He later wrote a memoir about his time in the classroom, Teacher Man. (For more information, check out Teacher Magazine’s Web Watch on McCourt.)

Is there a place for people with McCourt’s background in today’s education system? Should there be? In public schools, hirings like his seem entirely doubtful nowadays. Private schools would of course have much more leeway in hiring a writer with an unconventional background, though how far down that road they’d be willing to go, I don’t know.

Photo: Author Frank McCourt gestures during an interview at his apartment in New York, Tuesday, Oct. 18, 2005. In his latest memoir, "Teacher Man," McCourt shares his memories of being a public school teacher in New York for 30 years. (Mary Altaffer/AP

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Few report cards these days include a line to mark achievement in an age-old skill that our parents and grandparents toiled over in school. Even when I was a kid, a good grade in penmanship or handwriting was enough to elicit pride and boastfulness in both parent and student, not to mention the teacher who forced us to practice perfect little curves and carefully crossed 'T' s.

Now with computer keyboarding and text messaging taking on greater importance than legible cursive, many a curmudgeon have decried the state of children's handwriting.

There's even a new book that chronicles the history of this phenomenon. Script and Scribble: The Rise and Fall of Handwriting, is reviewed by Michael Dirda in this Washington Post Book World piece from last month.

Thousands of schoolchildren around the country, however, put their best pencil forward recently when they were asked to write, in their own hand, a letter to President Obama. On Wednesday, more than 34,000 of the letters were delivered to Washington filled with advice for how Mr. Obama should wield his influence to improve the nation's schools. The project was sponsored by the publisher of the "Handwriting Without Tears" curriculum.

Here are some of their requests:

"I would like you to let teachers have more money to buy school supplies. My teacher had to use her money to buy supplies. It makes me unhappy."
Ian
Grade 6
Florida

"I think you should make schools better by keeping kids safer, having more field trips and having more than one teacher in a classroom."
Savannah
California

"Next year nearly 500 to 700 schools will be closing because of budget cuts.
I think that when we end the war in Iraq you should try to fund schools."
Krissy
Grade 5
Washington

"As a student, I would like you to cut back on all the tests we take and let the teachers teach more."
Nicholas
Grade 5
New York

In this exercise, penmanship counts. But I think the students' sentiments might be what gets them the extra credit.

Posted by Kathleen Kennedy Manzo, edweek.org at 4:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

It's been nearly a month since Jim Burke announced that his long-running CATEnet listserv, an e-mail forum for California English teachers, was heading into early retirement and it's taken me that long to get over the news.

Burke, a veteran English teacher at Burlingame High School in the San Francisco area, started the listserv nearly 16 years ago to foster discussion, professionalism, and collaboration among his California colleagues. I know that he also attracted many list members from around the country. CATEnet has been required reading for me throughout my 12 years of covering reading policy and curriculum for Ed Week. And it was always a great way to reach out to teachers to find out how policy was affecting classrooms.

Now it's back under new management, and educators can sign on by emailing askstanford@gmail.com.

Under Burke, the listserv had periods of little activity, but I remember some very heady discussions and debates about English/language arts curriculum and pedagogy, as well as policy implications.

Burke is still providing an online community for English/language arts educators through his website and blog, the English Companion. There are some pretty interesting discussions going on as well at the English Companion Ning, which has a couple of thousand members.

Posted by Kathleen Kennedy Manzo, edweek.org at 11:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I recently came across an intriguing item about a new resource called "Wordnik," an online dictionary that is supposed to provide users with a wealth of information they would not be able to get by looking up a word in print.

Created by a Chicago lexicographer (someone who writes or compiles a dictionary), Wordnik is designed to provide a wealth of resources on the meaning and even the pronunciation of words. As I understand it from reading the story in the Christian Science Monitor, Wordnik would allow a user to click on a term and receive an audio replay of how it is pronounced, as well as its definition and how it is used in context. The database so far includes 4 billion words. A user can see examples of words used in the same context as the ones they've looked up. Other features include a "frequency graph," a resource that allows viewers to see how often a word has been used in print in a year.

Unfortunately, the link to Wordnik has been down when I've tried it. The creators are redirecting people to a blog for now.

To what extent might a tool like Wordnik help K-12 teachers? Would language arts teachers and other educators approach it cautiously? And what would it take for them to embrace Wordnik as a credible, authoritative resource?

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 10:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I got my chuckle for the day over a blog post by Timothy McSweeney that's being passed around. It reduces William Shakespeare's "Hamlet" to a Facebook news feed. Even Robert Pondiscio over at the Core Knowledge Blog acknowledges that the Facebook rendition of "Hamlet" is a good example of world-class skills and world-class content working together hand in hand.

My favorite stanza (if it can be called that) is the one that refers to how Hamlet's mother took a husband immediately after her first husband, Hamlet's father, went to his grave.

The king poked the queen.

The queen poked the king back.

Hamlet and the queen are no longer friends.

Marcellus is pretty sure something’s rotten around here.

Hamlet became a fan of daggers.

I saw "Hamlet" most recently last summer, performed by the Shakespeare Theater Company as a "free for all" in a local park. Hamlet's madness seemed surprisingly contemporary. Why shouldn't it be adapted for Facebook?

Posted by Mary Ann Zehr at 12:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

An issue brief by the NGA Center for Best Practices cites examples of a number of states that have developed K-12 literacy plans. It's not enough to have a literacy plan only for students in grades K-3, such as the ones many states created to participate in Reading First, the flagship reading program under the No Child Left Behind Act, according to the National Governors Association. The 15-page brief says that "reading on grade level by 3rd grade is not sufficient for preparing students for success in high school and beyond."

Alabama sponsored summer training sessions to expand a statewide reading initiative to secondary schools. Florida and Ohio appointed adolescent reading coordinators in their state departments of education.

The brief stresses the need to identify struggling readers at all grade levels and to intervene. Rhode Island requires "personal literacy plans" for any students in grades K-12 who are reading three or more years below grade level. Initially the state required such plans only for students in grades K-5, according to the brief.

There seem to be lots of good ideas here on how to take efforts to improve literacy among adolescents to scale on a statewide level.

Posted by Mary Ann Zehr at 5:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A press conference about "Writing in the 21st Century" hosted by the National Council of Teachers of English today here in the nation's capital promoted two seemingly different strains of thought concerning the teaching of writing to students.

Kathleen Blake Yancey, a professor of English at Florida State University, spoke about the value of teachers' supporting students in writing through new modes of communication, such as Facebook, Twitter, and blogs. People are writing "with new audiences, for new audiences, and to new audiences," she said. She stressed that the emphasis on audience with the new modes adds relevancy to writing for students. Yancey authored a report, "Writing in the 21st Century," released at the press conference, which calls for the creation of new curricula, teaching models, and teaching methods for teachers and college professors to engage students in using new technologies for writing.

But a second purpose of the conference was to announce the council's partnership with the Norman Mailer Writers Colony to establish a national writing contest for high school and college students for creative nonfiction. Gay Talese, a best-selling author and the late Mailer's friend, was on hand to promote the contest. Talese said the dominance of technology over students, writers, and even journalists is "dangerous" and cautioned against "Googling our way through life," while sitting in front of a computer screen rather than "getting up and getting information." During a Q & A period, he gave details about his own process of writing and the importance of spending time to listen to the people he is writing about and to understand them. In order to write a book about people who built a bridge, for instance, Talese said that he spent two years "hanging out" with the bridge builders.

Yancey steered attendees away from thinking that teachers had to make a choice in embracing new technological modes for writing or rejecting them. "It's not an either/or world," she said.

Posted by Mary Ann Zehr at 1:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Over at Jim Burke's Ning at The English Companion, a teacher raised the question of what to do with the remaining budget her department has for the rest of the school year. All $37.40!

In the comments, someone suggested buying coffee and bagels and getting the teachers together for a brainstorming session on how to tap into other resources. The department had to make an expensive purchase of textbooks for middle school students, but now there is little left for the interactive whiteboard they were hoping to buy for one classroom.

I'm sure a lot of districts are facing this same issue. So what do you do when the funding well is almost dry but needs are ongoing for materials and equipment that will help teachers and students?

Posted by Kathleen Kennedy Manzo, edweek.org at 4:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)