Blogboard

As teachers move away from pull-down maps and rely more and more on online resources like Google Earth, Assorted Stuff asks whose version of geography should be taught in classrooms. Assorted Stuff notes the Chinese government already has a list of 10,000 “unapproved” maps and believes that the issue will become more relevant closer to the 2008 Olympics, which will be hosted in China. Assorted Stuff urges teachers to “take some time from test prep to include our students in the discussion.”

Posted by Autumn Sanders at 1:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Hobo Teacher's school is having a paper-recycling drive. Seems like a fine idea, except that there are now "piles and piles" of paper stacked in the classrooms—which only adds to Hobo's oft-referenced fear of a grand plot against teachers (himself in particular):

I know I’ve said this before, but this just confirms my suspicion that administration gets some black ops training. This has to be some sort of torture that they’re conducting. It’s like they’re trying to mess with my senses by giving me a dreadful teaching environment. I’ve got to keep an eye on the piles at all times, in case of a paper avalanche or something. The next thing you know they’ll cut the power and blast Twisted Sister into my room.

(I'm sorry: This guy cracks me up for some reason.)

Posted by Anthony Rebora, teachermagazine.org at 12:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Nancy Flanagan argues that there are disturbing parallels between the Bush administration's approach to invading Iraq and its strategy for improving schools. In both cases, she says, it "put proclamations and plans ahead of thoughtful intelligence-gathering," and now we're stuck with an unalterable "infrastructure investment" in a flawed policy.

Posted by Anthony Rebora, teachermagazine.org at 11:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach points to the interesting case of an Australian educator whose classroom blog has been disabled by a government agency—for seemingly vague reasons having to do with "risk and management issues." Nussbaum-Beach believes the incident—as well as others like it—is a challenge to all educators trying to harness the educational potential of new technologies in the schools. In short:

We all need to know how to advocate for our students- and how to explain how principled changes in education need to occur if we are going to remain relevant in our student's lives. ... How would you respond if faced with a similar challenge. Can you articulate what you believe well enough to defend why you are using these tools? Do you know the foundational research that undergirds why students using social networking tools is important to their future and success?

Hat tip: John Norton.

Posted by Anthony Rebora, teachermagazine.org at 12:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Epiphany in Baltimore reports (quite casually) that his classroom has had a bucket-filling leak since Thanksgiving, and that a ceiling tile recently fell on one of his students during class. Now he's discovered that there are mushrooms growing under his book case. Lovely. How is it that we are letting kids go to school in conditions like these?

Posted by Anthony Rebora, teachermagazine.org at 11:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

In a "Letter to Our Next President," education scholar Gloria Ladson-Billings—author of The Dreamkeepers—advises would-be commanders in chief to reconceptualize the achievment gap as the "education debt":

The debt language totally changes the relationship between students and their schooling. For instance, when we think of what we are combating as an achievement gap, we implicitly place the onus for closing that gap on the students, their families, and their individual teachers and schools. But, the notion of education debt requires us to think about how all of us, as members of a democratic society, are implicated in creating these achievement disparities.

Hat tip: Renee Moore.

Posted by Anthony Rebora, teachermagazine.org at 10:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Eduwonkette profiles another cool teacher you should know.

Posted by Anthony Rebora, teachermagazine.org at 10:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

A cautionary tale: Like many other teachers, literacy teacher Cindi Rigsbee figured that learning the popular "Soulja Boy" dance was a fun way of connecting with her students. Then she found out what the lyrics mean.

Posted by Anthony Rebora, teachermagazine.org at 6:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

To motivate her students to turn in their homework, Bluebird's Classroom implemented a few controversial practices, including, giving students the answers to their homework.

Homework is, after all, practice. If a kid doesn't get it, and does the homework wrong (if he does it at all), then he's repeating the wrong thing. He's learning and remembering something that is wrong. However, if you give the kid a key to check the work, then they're doing it correctly, and learning it correctly.

Posted by Danielle Woods at 5:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

The previous post may make you question whether students should be allowed to bring cell phones to school, but Will Richardson has a different view. For Richardson, just back from a visit to an NYC high school, school cell-phone bans make little economic or educational sense, from a big-picture perspective. The goal, he says, should to be teach kids how to use phones constructively for learning:

To me, this is the vision thing again. In a school where there are about 300 computers for 3,000 students, doesn’t it make more sense to get creative about not only how we might use phones in the classroom but teach phones and phone use in the curriculum? I mean, are the economies worth working toward a solution of the “disruption” problem? And I’m sorry, but I just believe that if we show kids from an early age the appropriate and effective use of the technology, if we make it a valuable and necessary part of the way they do their school business, the widespread disruptions will abate.

Posted by Anthony Rebora, teachermagazine.org at 1:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Scott McLeod of Dangerously Irrevelvant posts a selection of videos of classroom incidents caught on students' cellphones. It's not, I'm afraid, a very flattering portrait of the teaching profession—or of schools in general.

Hat Tip: Learn Me Good.

Posted by Anthony Rebora, teachermagazine.org at 10:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Conservative-leaning education pundit and think tank leader Chester Finn has recently published an education-reform memoir, as well as an article on the lessons he's learned over the course of his career. Veteran teachers Susan Graham and Nancy Flanagan each have some ... well, let's just say, some thoughts on the matter.

Posted by Anthony Rebora, teachermagazine.org at 12:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Bill Ferriter warns against the tendency to equate teacher leadership with new-teacher mentoring. He asks:

Does the belief that mentoring = teacher leadership limit the impact that can we have on other areas of our profession because no one is particularly inclined to see us as anything other than strong shoulders of support for beginning teachers?

Posted by Anthony Rebora, teachermagazine.org at 11:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Susan Ens Funk grapples with the perennial question of how to get her 4th and 5th grade boys more interested in reading. Doug Noon, referencing a literacy text, responds that part of the problem may derive from literacy teachers' traditional emphasis on "literature to the exclusion of critical approaches to non-narrative texts. Boys tend to like informational texts more than literature." A greater emphasis on informational texts, he adds, might also make more sense in the present cultural context:

And I’m not thinking about the boys’ problems with reading here, especially, as much as I’m reconsidering the how and the why of teaching reading using informational texts vs. narrative texts. Since just about everyone seems to think we’re living in The Information Age now, maybe it’s time we put literature on a back burner, and begin to focus more on teaching strategies for content area reading. That’s where I’m heading now.

But then, I think you could also argue that it is precisely because we live in an information-saturated age that educators need to keep in mind the counter-balancing importance of reflective literature.

Posted by Anthony Rebora, teachermagazine.org at 9:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (11)

Epiphany in Baltimore, a high school English teacher and baseball coach, says coaching has made him try to be a better person.

Posted by Anthony Rebora, teachermagazine.org at 6:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)