Blogboard

Sam of Clean Up On Aisle Life is almost beside herself with joy and disbelief about the school where she's landed:

There is a procedure for everything, and it is spelled out for you in efficiently run meetings, then followed up with real action. Whenever I speak with a teacher, they say, "This school is so great because of the administration." Whenever I speak with an administrator, they say, "This school is so great because of the teachers." I feel as if I have entered an education fantasy land of mutual respect, genuine concern for student goals that leads to amazing student production, and general happiness with the school environment.

She adds that this educational dreamscape is, in fact, a New York City public school, located in a poor neighborhood, and focused on special ed for kids with emotional disorders.

Is this place accepting applications?

Posted by at 12:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Joanne Jacobs takes a look at a newly published book, The Overachievers: The Secret Lives of Driven Kids, thoughtfully left on her kitchen table by her daughter, "a classic overachiever."

According to a review of the book posted on amazon.com, author Alexandra Robbins

follows the lives of students from a Bethesda, Md., high school as they navigate the SAT and college application process. These students are obsessed with success, contending with illness, physical deterioration ... cheating ... obsessed parents. (Publishers' Weekly)

Sounds like the stuff neuroses are made of.

"The book paints a true picture for a few students," Jacobs writes, but she agrees with Washington Post education reporter Jay Mathews, that, well, contrary to the book's conclusion, " ... most kids are coasting," not exactly stressing.

Matthews writes:

... our real national problem is not that we ask most teens to do too much, but too little.

I sense a lot of teachers might agree with that. Jacobs surely does.

Posted by Jeanne McCann at 12:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Vicki A. Davis at Cool Cat Teacher reports on her six-week odyssey moving from a manual system to an automated one: the PowerSchool system.

It was a long six weeks. But, says Ms. Davis:

Moving from manual systems to PowerSchool has gone relatively smoothly largely because of the amazing leadership from administration.

Ms. Davis outlines some detailed lessons she learned along the way, including reflections about ownership, communication, and empathy.

And, the proof is in the pudding.

When the teachers opened up the gradebook and already had rosters with parent names and phone numbers, squeals of delight filled the classroom!

Nothing a little "hard work, ownership, vision, and leadership" can't accomplish, she says.

Posted by Jeanne McCann at 1:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Polski3, a middle-school teacher who blogs at Polski's View From Here, ventures into his classroom for a quick look-see before school starts. He has a brief chat with the principal, who says that

... he wants all the teachers in lock-step; everyone teaching the same thing on the same day, being on the "SAME PAGE" at the same time, including testing the students with the SAME TEST on the SAME DAY ...

Polski3 isn't sure that's quite the right approach.

He adds:

Our opening day inservice is "Step Up to Writing." We've done some of this before, but I don't know of anyone actively using it ... it doesn't fit into the packaged curriculum that our LA department is having to .. implement.

Implement, eh? "A tool or instrument used in doing work," (American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language).

"Hmmm," muses Polski3. "... maybe the word "implementer" will replace the word 'teacher.'"

Posted by Jeanne McCann at 2:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Administrators in Mei Flower's district, having decided that teachers needed just half a day of classroom preparation before the onslaught of classes, planned a half-day inservice "pep rally" for the afternoon. The program included such standards as the Pledge of Allegiance ("This went well. We all knew the words.") and an address by the local union president, plus "special" fare like a slideshow from the previous year ("I already lived through last year, thanks, let's move on.") and local kids singing a medley of Broadway show tunes ("I don't understand why we had a concert forced upon us when we could have been preparing for our classes which we start when? Oh, TOMORROW.") By that time, Mei Flower explains, everyone was more than ready to leave. But instead, they were treated to a "professional speaker"—a lawyer with enunciation problems:

...for a "Professional Speaker" our guy had very poor articulation. This, coupled with a meager sound system and the horrible acoustics that all gymnasiums have, reduced the man's speech to (approximately), "Hibbedy gibbedy." I seriously had no idea what he was saying, so I was not motivated at all...Well, in truth, I was motivated to take out a piece of paper, write RANDOM COUNTY SCHOOLS at the top, and find as many words as I could using just those letters. I challenged myself and used words with four letters or more, but I still filled up the whole page and that guy was still talking.

All we can say is that there's a reason for the similarities in the terms "inservice" and "serving time."

Posted by at 1:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

It’s that time of year when many, if not most, teachers may be wondering: “Where’d the summer go?” Hobo Teacher, indulging his inner conspiracy theorist, has even taken to speculating that there may be a secret plot to gradually eliminate teachers’ summers entirely:

Conspiracy Hobo Teacher is thinking that the district is shaving off days of summer break ever so discretely. There's a day knocked off the beginning, one dropped from the end, little by little, until BAM--no more summer break. I half expect that the administration will slip a mickey into the punch bowl at the next end of the year party, only for them to revive us a few hours later, telling us to hurry and get to our classrooms because students will be arriving tomorrow for the first day of school. Then, we would stagger off in all different directions, mumbling, not knowing any better. …

Sounds like it's been a restful summer ...

Posted by at 6:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)