Blogboard

Musings From a Not-So Master Teacher feels like he’s being transformed into a prototype with his school district’s new daily lesson plan requirement:

…it is in the subtle acts like a Lesson Plan Template that teachers lose their professional autonomy and academic freedom. The district now tells me what to teach, how to assess it, what my room should look like, when I should teach what information and with what strategies. From the planning to the delivery to the assessment, Big Brother is there for me, looking over my shoulder and encouraging uniformity.

Posted by Rachel Gang at 11:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)

Despite her reluctance to deal with "that beginning of school thing," Bellringers has reasons to look forward to the coming school year—five reasons to be specific. And though the monthly paycheck comes in a close second, Bellringers is most excited about a new beginning:

The new school year offers the chance to start over. The perfect clean slate. The perfect opportunity to adjust, correct, redirect, regenerate, rejuvenate. The perfect place to try (yet again) to open the door of possibilities.”

Perhaps the prospect of starting over will make it a bit easier for Bellringers to face the fall.

Posted by Danielle Woods at 3:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Although professional actors, athletes and teachers commonly belong to unions, it always seems like actors and athletes are getting a better deal. What It’s Like on the Inside contemplates what it would be like to negotiate teacher salaries in the same fashion as the film and sports industries.

If you're a superstar teacher who gets results in student learning and achievement (however defined by the organization), why not have the ability to contract for a commensurate salary? Why should you be stuck at the same wage as a teacher who does little more than surf the net while kids fill out worksheets every day? Shouldn't school districts compete for the best talent they can get?

Posted by Rachel Gang at 4:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

This may surprise you ed-techies out there: Will Richardson has some harsh words on Twitter, particularly regarding its effect on the edtech blogging community:

I can’t help feeling like it’s just making all of us, myself included, lazy. We’ve lamented this before, this “fact” that the whole community is blogging less since Twitter, engaging less deeply, it seems. Reading less. Maybe it’s just me (again) or maybe it’s my long term attachment to this blogging thing and my not so major attachment to texting, but it feels like the “conversation” is evolving (or would that be devlolving) into pieces instead of wholes, that the connections and the threads are unraveling, almost literally. That while, on some level, the Twitterverse feels even more connected, in reality it’s breaking some of the connectedness.

Posted by Anthony Rebora, teachermagazine.org at 3:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Eduwonkette calculates that the black-white math achievement gap in New York City, in a best-case scenario, won't be closed for another 21 years.

Posted by Anthony Rebora, teachermagazine.org at 3:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

At a recent conference, Happychik discovered that the hot new acronym in eduspeak is RTI, standing for Response to Intervention. She does some investigating on the Internet, and isn't very impressed:

I don't want to judge this RTI stuff without truly knowing what I'm talking about, but I hope it's not coming to a school near me. I'd like to think we already have it--perhaps under different terms. Although I welcome new strategies to perfect my craft, I don't need than more than I have now.

All I know is that this Ed Week story has gotten a crazy number of eyeballs this year.

Posted by Anthony Rebora, teachermagazine.org at 2:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

In an environment wrought with political, emotional, and social issues, educators are asked to use their best judgment when making decisions while also abiding by the law. However, not everyone makes the right decision and lawsuits often follow. Blogger An Audience of One takes education law classes so he knows when and when not to worry if a student threatens to sue.

“We live in a litigious society and schools are often at the center of that litigation. I am always aware that as an agent of the state everything I do in the workplace is an official act. If I mess it up a lawsuit could follow. It pays to be very aware of what is going on in the legal system out there. I would really rather finish my career without my name being attached to one of those cases for someone else to study some day.”

Should all educators be required to take education law courses?

Posted by Vicki Kriz at 4:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

DC educator Camp Teacherman expresses angst over discussing New York Times’ best seller, The Kite Runner with his high school juniors:

Tonight's reading covers the rape scene in chapter 6, and tomorrow we have a Socratic Seminar covering the book so far. I'm a little worried, as many of these students can be homophobic and might miss the point that Assef wasn't raping Hassan for sexual reasons. For those that haven't done SS before, the idea is that the teacher launches a question and then steps back and lets the class discuss and ask their own questions.

Hopefully Camp Teacherman’s Socratic Seminar won’t bring out the worst in his students.

Posted by Rachel Gang at 3:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

After reading a recent Associated Press article on summer school budget cuts, AssortedStuff’s Tim Stalmer thinks he sees an even better solution to allowing all students to have access to year-round educational activities: permanently end summer school programs in favor of establishing a more flexible school year calendar.

“And is it possible that low-income kids fall behind over the 2-3 month break while affluent kids don’t for reasons that have nothing to do with summer school?

So maybe, rather than just cutting back on summer school programs (and restoring them when the economy improves), we should take this opportunity to kill it altogether.”

Is year-round schooling the solution?

Posted by Vicki Kriz at 3:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

Although Ryan, blogger of I Thought a Think, agrees with The Flypaper blogger Liam Julian that teachers too often play the “How would you know, you’re not a teacher” card, he admits, with help from “famous education observer” Rambo, that the only way to truly understand the teaching position is to do just that—teach:

“I think it can be universally accepted that teaching requires a certain skill set to transmit information to the students and get them to retain it. There's a science to teaching, and there's an art to teaching. I don't think it's out of line to suggest that if you haven't practiced the craft then you don't really have an authentic understanding of what's involved.”

Posted by Vicki Kriz at 3:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

An e-mail from a former student gives Mr. McNamar of The Daily Grind the gratifying sense that his work has been done:

"While reading the e-mail, the corners of my mouth moved upwards, and I chuckled outloud. She had learned to be a pioneer woman, to forge her own path, to listen to her life and what it was saying. Can I really take credit for that, who knows? What I do know is that I am extremely proud of her, that I believe she will succeed and flourish while there."

Cheers to Mr. McNamar! May all teachers recognize their success, even if it's one student at a time.

Posted by Vicki Kriz at 4:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The news that Carleen Gulstad, Minnesota's 2008 Teacher of the Year, has relinguished the title for personal reasons has caused a minor uproar in the state and fueled some useless/idiotic speculation. But as a former state teacher of the year in Michigan, Nancy Flanagan has sympathy for Gulstad and guesses that her reasons for begging out might have something to do with curious nature of the TOY institution:

It’s totally not my business, either—but I’m guessing she took a hard look at the schedule set for her to meet the demands of her “honor,” then very gently and politely said no thanks. And that is certainly her right—and may turn out to be a good decision for her. ... It is generally a wonderful, enlightening experience, but it is often exhausting. Being a Teacher of the Year also involves a different skill set than being an excellent classroom practitioner, and represents the involuntary assumption of a new job for a year—a job for which you have no preparation.

Incidentally, Gulstad's counterpart in North Carolina, Cindi Rigsbee, recently wrote an article for Teacher about some of the qualms she felt about taking on her TOY position.

It does seem a little ironic that states officially recognize the extraordinary dedication and talent of these educators and then voluntarily remove them from the classroom for a year.

Posted by Anthony Rebora, teachermagazine.org at 2:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

In a post on NCLB reauthorization, J.M. Holland of Circle Time suggests that a return to state control over education reform efforts would be more conducive to effective teaching:

In our current situation I can’t help but think of the decision to leave education to the states and out of the constitution, as a good decision. By leaving education up to the states we have had a continually improving national school system. A pluralistic approach enabled states to adopt best practices and still empower communities to try to “do” education their own way. This combination of flexible pluralism and adoption of best practices is similar to the process of teaching that has been used in classrooms for hundreds of years.

Posted by Anthony Rebora, teachermagazine.org at 2:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It’s only a few weeks into summer, and fourth-year teacher Mildly Melancholy misses her students and classroom already. She has some first-time realizations:

I realized anew how much I love field trips. Even when they don't go well. And to be honest, if they don't go well, it's because someone else organized it. ;) I so enjoy exploring new places alongside my students, watching them have a good time learning. It's also the best time for me to be more Normal Person than Strict Teacher, to build a rapport with the kids.

Posted by Rachel Gang at 3:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)