Blogboard

The Houston Chronicle has posted a much-linked-to article on the ever-expanding teacher blogosphere. Money quote:

The number of blogs about "teaching" or "teachers" tracked by Technorati.com has jumped 10 percent in less than six months to nearly 950. LiveJournal, one of the most popular blogging sites, lists about 415 chat communities interested in teaching.

(We actually would have guessed the Technorati number might be higher.)

Among the reasons cited for the growth: In an education environment in which teachers feel they have less and less meaningful input, blogs give them a chance to air their opinions and frustrations.

The article stresses, however, that teacher-bloggers must often walk a very fine line between expression and discretion, often opting for anonymity.

Explains Mike in Texas: “School administrators tend to be pretty vindictive, and they don’t like people with different ideas from them. People who speak out are not regarded very highly.”

Let's just hope "Mike" isn't his real name. ...

Posted by Anthony Rebora, teachermagazine.org at 5:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Hobo Teacher, in fine form, imagines a new form of letter of recommendation that could save on postage.

Posted by Anthony Rebora, teachermagazine.org at 5:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Prompted by a reader’s comment on the difficulty of teaching writing to today’s tech-infused students, language arts teacher Bill Ferriter of The Tempered Radical begins to wonder about the role of writing instruction in our increasingly digitized world. Maybe, he suggests, the students are on to something:

Do you think that the definition of "writing correctly" is changing before our eyes? Could writing play a smaller role in the lives of future generations as technology makes video a more and more accessible--and influential--form of media and communication? Do we already see that transition playing out in the exploding growth of web services like You Tube and Jump Cut? …

Should we begin emphasizing new literacies in our classrooms that will prepare children for the world that they are going to inherit rather than the world we are most comfortable with?

Tough questions for a language arts teacher to be asking. And Ferriter is looking for help with the answers.

Posted by Anthony Rebora, teachermagazine.org at 10:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Here's something to get your week off to a good start: From the TFA Trenches features an inspiring story of a student with learning disabilities who finally achieves some success in math class after a lot of hard work by him and his teacher.

Posted by at 4:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Undertaking a somewhat random—but still amusing—thought experiment, Mister Teacher of Learn Me Good considers what life would be like if teachers were treated like professional basketball stars. Among his findings:

If we slipped and fell down on the job, someone would immediately rush out to wipe up our sweat, instead of just pointing and laughing.

It's certainly something to consider next time contract negotiations come around.

Posted by Anthony Rebora, teachermagazine.org at 9:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Mr. Lawrence of Goodbye, Mr. Chips claims he has found "hard evidence" in a veteran teacher's records that students' "academic abilities are slipping."

Posted by Anthony Rebora, teachermagazine.org at 11:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The high school math teacher at Three Standard Deviations to the Left shares his frustration that many of his seniors haven’t been able to pick up their new course textbooks from the school library because—despite his reminders—they still haven’t returned their books from last semester. When he overhears two of the negligent students talking about their Christmas vacations—one got an iPod, the other took a trip to New Zealand—his frustration grows and takes aim at parents:

Parents, when teachers say we would like parental support, we don't mean that you have to come to all the PTA meetings ... we know that you are busy. We need you to support your kid's education, and that includes not giving kids expensive toys and vacations if the kid hasn't even found a way to return or pay for books he's lost that belong to the school.

Posted by Anthony Rebora, teachermagazine.org at 11:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Mr. AB, the blogger at From the T.F.A. Trenches, just spent an evening typing up an "honest to goodness" lesson plan. It's not that he doesn't usually plan—he does. But usually, he plans in a manner than works for him—not in a manner that's suitable for evaluation. And it's his looming evaluation that's spurred him to produce his "real" lesson plan:

We are expected to do things for the purpose of evaluation that are entirely impractical to expect a regular basis. The result is a process far more akin to artistic performance than professional assessment...we are evaluated at carefully appointed dates and times. Consequently, we are able to assure that we will be teaching our best possible lesson and be at our most obscenely over-prepared, well-stocked with carefully differentiated materials, painstakingly made hands-on activities, key cross-disciplinary connections, and deeply meaningful realia, --- all the trappings of a great teacher, all impossible for the new teacher to have on hand with the daily frequency we wish we could.

The problem with this system, Mr. AB says, is that when all is said and done, the evaluator knows only that the novice teachers can follow directions to meet evaluation expectations—not that the teacher is actually learning how to best develop lessons. His much more practical solution is that new teachers should be submitting their weekly lesson plans from the school year's start—and then, as they learn best practices and professional development tips, subsequent weekly plans (and unannounced, observed lessons) should demonstrate this knowledge.

It's so simple, it just might work!

Posted by at 12:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The waning days of 2006 and a vacation from school (actual time for introspection!) inspired some education bloggers to consider their teaching-related resolutions for 2007. These ranged from the specific (Epiphany in Baltimore resolved to grade papers more quickly) to the general (Lady Strathconn resolved simply to try harder at everything) to the sarcastic (TeacherTalk's Erica Jacobs resolved to "be a beacon of light in fulfilling all administrative tasks such as creating innovative, common lesson plans that will not only be fun and engaging to students but will guarantee a 10% increase in their standardized test scores.") Jacobs also argued that, for educators, the New Year should rightly come in September, when school starts. Then there was Weblogg-ed, who blogs about using the Web in the classroom. He resolved to narrow his blog-reading on the topic from 125 (!) to 40, and to focus his blog on what other practitioners are doing—as opposed to himself. What about you? Did you make any teaching- or classroom-related New Year's resolutions?

Posted by at 11:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)