Blogboard

Hobo Teacher returned to school the other day to find that his school e-mail address had been revoked - which briefly led him to wonder whether he had been fired and to partake of daydreams in which, free of his teacherly burdens, he is hiking in New Zealand or building wooden tables in a restored farmhouse. But of course the e-mail problem turned out to be only a technical snafu. He writes sighingly:

Soon I found myself back in reality, working for a paycheck I can give to my student loans with only the apathy and snide remarks of my students to keep me going.

But hey, man, you could still probably try building the tables, at least. (Not unrelatedly, in our recent interview with him, Rafe Esquith says the first thing he says to teachers who feel burnt-out is: "What are you doing in your life that you enjoy doing?")

Posted by Anthony Rebora, teachermagazine.org at 1:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Teacher Ninja, an ESOL teacher, has some fun with Google Docs' translation tool, which he thinks might help him in communicating with Spanish-speaking parents.

Posted by Anthony Rebora, teachermagazine.org at 1:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

English teacher Renee Moore shares her methods of "pre-assessing" and getting to know students at the start of the year. Analyzing test data doesn't hack it for her:

All that sounds impressive, and may actually be of some value to somebody, but I found most of it useless and even inaccurate when it came to planning for instruction in my classroom. Most of the test data was too general (e.g., "Johnny needs help with grammar.." well, duh!).

Instead, she has her students write a free-form letter about themselves:

These writings are intentionally raw; I give very little instruction or guidance on either content or format, except for the topic on the board. I want to see what they will produce left to their own sense of what writing should be. First, I want to know who they are; what are their dreams, goals--do they have any? Next, I want to see for myself what their writing skills are. While they're composing, I'm taking notes on how they write: Who is making notes or lists; who is balling up paper because their handwriting isn't neat enough; who's drawing pictures; who looks terrified. This is a timed writing, so that I'll have time to introduce myself and give them the opening day talk and walk through procedures.

But it's what comes next that's the impressive part. Moore says she spends "hours, even days" reading the letters and writing personal responses to each student.

Students are used to us reacting to how they write, but not many are used to someone (at least not a teacher) responding to what they said or felt.

Posted by Anthony Rebora, teachermagazine.org at 1:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Nancy Flanagan isn't happy about the news that Tony Danza is going to be teaching in a Philadelphia high school this fall as part of a new T.V. reality show. Her take (based on experience): Classrooms and television-production values are a very bad mix.

Posted by Anthony Rebora, teachermagazine.org at 12:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Mildly Melancholy, an NYC teacher who was released last year from what sounded like the job from hell, jumps back into the fire (figuratively speaking, we hope).

Posted by Anthony Rebora, teachermagazine.org at 5:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Will Richardson argues that schools' restrictions on teachers' Internet use are part of a larger, societal distrust of teachers as knowledge workers. Which, considering what teachers actually do, would seem to be a little bit of a problem ...

Posted by Anthony Rebora, teachermagazine.org at 2:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Doug Noon expresses skepticism about his district's adoption of a Response to Intervention framework for the new school year. What bothers him, from his veteran teacher's point of view, is the seeming prescriptiveness and detachment of the program:

We were told that we’ll need to find some half-hour blocks where we can do “interventions” with groups of students who are not making adequate progress on the one-minute reading “fluency” tests, and that fidelity to any adopted programs will be critical to student success. This did not play well with veteran teaching staff who question the aims and practicality of this approach to reform. While I am in favor of formative assessment, I do not believe we should confuse reading rate with reading fluency, and I hope we do not make reading rates a district-wide instructional objective at the elementary level. ...

These sorts of initiatives serve a constructive purpose when they get us talking to one another and trying new things. But when our practical knowledge is discounted, incoherence is sure to follow. We need to build capacity for teachers to exercise professional judgment, and not simply train them to follow a manual.

Posted by Anthony Rebora, teachermagazine.org at 2:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Maureen Downey of the Atlanta Journal—Constitution’s Get Schooled blog pondered why schools often keep teacher assignments a mystery, when a little information could go a long way to ease a parent’s mind.

My system sends a letter in late July telling parents that their child has Mr. X or Ms. Y, but gives no other information. Since systems go to the expense and effort to write a letter to each parent and mail it, why not include something like: Timmy will have Mr. X, who comes to us from Elm Street School in Charlotte, N.C. where he taught fourth grade for six years. He is a graduate of UGA and GSU. Mr. X is a former high school soccer player and looks forward to playing with the students at recess.

Can anyone explain why systems don’t seem to have this down to a science? Are there implications in this issue that I am not seeing?

Posted by Bryan Toporek at 11:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)

Eduwonk thinks concerns about the recession increasing class sizes, as raised by a recent an Associated Press are off base. In his view, schools should be more focused on teacher effectiveness:

It’s actually a frustrating story because (a) there really isn’t much of a debate about whether class size matters more than teacher effectiveness, the research is clear it doesn’t, effectiveness matters more and (b) most districts pay little attention to effectiveness when they lay off teachers. Or much at all.

Eduwonk concedes with the right teaching staff, smaller class sizes (less than 20 students) do have noted benefits, especially for students in the very early grades. But he argues that the class sizes increases caused by the current recessionary cuts are of a different order altogether:

We’re not talking about targeted reductions being at-risk here nor are we talking about really small classes**, more like a student or two here and there and mostly across the board. For instance, the article cites LA where the problem is not whether classes are larger by one or two kids in middle or high school but rather that average class sizes there are, according to AP, 35-43 kids, to begin with. That’s nuts.

Posted by Bryan Toporek at 1:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)