Blogboard

Quitting

TMAO of Teaching at the 408, a signature teacher-blogger who's long been frustrated with his school system, announces his resignation—and describes the TFA type he expects will have to replace him.

Paths to Teaching

Cindi Rigsbee is inspired by the maturity of a group of high school juniors she recently met who, as participants in grow-your-own programs, are already on career paths to teaching. A lot, she reflects, has changed since she was that age:

I think back on my junior year...I made a 3 on an Algebra test (out of 100), I broke my nose on the school bus, I "forgot" about my history report because I had to cheer at a basketball game (with a "mask" on my nose,) I went to the prom with my sister's future husband, and he barely said three words (okay, so he talks now), but mostly I remember that college, not to mention my career, were light years away.

Well, she apparently made up ground pretty quickly, since she was actually just named North Carolina's Teacher of the Year. Congrats.

Dream Keeper

Classroom tech innovator Will Richardson even dreams about communicating through technology—from beyond the grave no less.

At the Movies

Nancy Flanagan considers the best teacher movies of all time. One way you know they don't reflect reality in schools, she notes, is that their lead characters are seldom women. Even so, gender aside, she admits her favorite is Mr. Holland's Opus—in part, it seems, because it's all too realistic:

You have to love any movie where a teacher plans to cut and run for a real career, ends up staying in the classroom and impacting lives, then gets the boot as irrelevant after thirty years of masterful work. That’s entertainment.

Gifted Teachers

Teacher blogger Tamara Fisher addresses the question of what makes a great gifted education teacher? One factor is getting over the assumption that "gifted children will make it just fine on their own."

Mixed Messages

Brooklyn teacher Ariel Sacks feels that the controversial acquittal of the NYC police officers who killed Sean Bell (who was unarmed and brought down in barrage of more than 50 bullets) complicates her own message to students:

I have been trying to compel my students, all of whom are black, to participate wholeheartedly in their education through the public system. I want my students to believe that if they continue on in school and go to college, the world holds unlimited opportunities for them. And it does… except that the verdict in Sean Bell’s case reminds us that this same system does not feel obliged to protect black citizens from violence perpetrated by the very people it hires to keep people safe. How can my students not feel betrayed by this decision?

Policy Failures

In a post on the disconnect between top-down education policy and on-the-ground realities, Doug Noon reacts to the recent report on the ineffectiveness of the federal Reading First program. He's not suprised:

One of the core issues in current policy discussions is from what level curriculum control should emerge. Top down program administration too easily misses the fine print and messy details that come with the teacher’s territory. The only people who are surprised by a billion dollar per year program bust are the clueless pundits and policy pushers who believe that “scientifically based reading research” is about science and reading, and not about ideology and profiteering. I knew when I started this job that I’d become a cynic. It only hurts when I care, which is most of the time.

Homeland Security High School

A charter high school in Wilmington, Del., will be the first to train its students to become part of Homeland Security. The Delaware Academy for Public Safety and Security will train as many as 600 of Wilmington’s inner-city youth in areas such as prison guarding, professional demolition, and special weapons. Cadets, as they will be called, will learn Arabic, Chinese, or Russian as part of the curriculum.

But a concerned ParentDish blogger who says the move is “reminiscent of the Hitler-Jugend,” is not convinced.

Maybe this will turn out to be the best thing since sliced bread … [but]…It just seems a little too familiar.

Bill Ayers, Teachers, and Social Justice

A must read over on edweek.org: Eduwonkette examines controversy surrounding social justice teaching in education schools, and elicits reponses in defense from Bill Ayers—yes, that Bill Ayers—and in opposition from Sol Stern of the Manhattan Institute. Some samples:

Eduwonkette:

In short, it’s not clear that “social justice teaching” is a coherent and distinctive pedagogy that’s taught at schools of education across the country . It’s also worth noting that teachers are relatively conservative. If education schools have been engaged in an active project to disseminate social justice teaching, they largely have been unsuccessful.

Ayers:

Practically all schools want their students to study hard, stay away from drugs, do their homework, and so on. In fact none of these features distinguishes schools in the old Soviet Union or fascist Germany from schools in a democracy. But in a democracy one would expect something more—a commitment to free inquiry, questioning, and participation; a push for access and equity; a curriculum that encouraged free thought and independent judgment; a standard of full recognition of the humanity of each individual. In other words, social justice.

Stern:

So it seems to me that the question isn’t precisely how widespread social justice teaching is right now (although more studies would be welcome) but rather what public school leaders – state education commissioners, teachers union leaders and district superintendents – might do to make sure that intrusion of left wing or right wing political ideology into the classroom doesn’t spread any further. We need a professional code of ethics for teachers, a Hippocratic Oath if you will, that makes clear that our public school classrooms are not laboratories for social and political change, with the kids serving as guinea pigs.

But read the whole thing.

Excluding Teachers

Ms. Frizzle was also interested in attending the upcoming education bloggers summit in D.C., but points out that its timing virtually excludes the very folks who are, as they put it, "in the trenches."

Most of the people I know who blog about education also happen to be teachers… and this summit is on a Wednesday-Thursday. It makes me a little sad & irritated that a summit intended to be about education reform would occur at a time that is virtually impossible for any actual working educators to attend. We have an obligation to our kids to be present pretty much every weekday between now and the end of June. That doesn’t mean we don’t have opinions or experience relevant to education policy - on the contrary, what is policy without the voices of practitioners?

Good question. Unfortunately, this sort of oversight—or is it neglect?—is not uncommon.

All in the Timing

Mister Teacher questions (to put it mildly) his school's decision to send home report cards the day before students take state tests:

I'm sure that there was absolutely no chance of any risk whatsoever regarding student confidence being lowered due to a less than desired grade. Hey, maybe tomorrow morning right before they put pencil to the test, we can tell them all they were adopted!!

World War I Is Over

TMAO finds it absurd that, for an upcoming ed blogging conference in Washington, he's been slotted to be on the panel for a session titled "Blogging From the Trenches":

[It's] one of those ed phrases that just drives me nuts. My job is difficult, and on days like yesterday, appallingly frustrating, but no one's chucking mustard gas at me and I've never been asked to charge a fortified position, so maybe we could dial down the rhetoric a wee bit, hmm?

No need to make teaching more dramatic than it already is, I guess ...

Honesty on Grades

The Teachers Leaders Network has launched a new blog by Ariel Sacks, a young NYC English teacher who's already gained a voice as an educator-writer to watch. In an early post on the blog, she writes with honesty about the conflicts she has over her grading system:

Recipe formulas for calculating grades tend to turn out numbers that represent a mishmash of student effort (as perceived by teacher), task completion (which may not require effort for all students), knowledge acquired, and skill development (both evidenced in student work). Lately I’m struggling with the creeping notion that the net result of this mishmash is a totally inadequate measure of student learning. In an effort to grade almost every aspect of a student’s involvement in my class, in the end I’ve graded nothing in particular!

Scholarly Trends

Planning on doing a Master's thesis in education? Apparently, it's advisable (or unavoidable) to use the word "quintile" a lot.

Tough Love

The social disadvantages and day-to-day tribulations faced by low-income students are all too real, says Mr. ab. All the more reason, he contends, that educators need to avoid letting them get in the way:

The necessity of learning to read or add does not decline with the difficulties of life. By now, millions of children, of all colors and countries, have acquired their basic skills despite the grandest obstacles. I don’t know what common strengths they have shared ... but I deeply suspect that one asset was not a teacher so “understanding” as to permit them to fail. As a self-purported “No Excuses” teacher, I am still cognizant of [the out-of-school issues students face] as they weigh in [their] minds. The difference is that while I might accommodate them in my approach they do not modify my expectations. To a degree it is heartless. It must be. My students cannot afford another year of failure. I care about their trials and traumas, but I choose to focus on helping them succeed anyway. ...

Nor does he see the wisdom in blaming external factors for schools' problems:

Blaming the families or the children will always be a fruitful approach for those who seek to conceal their own shortcomings, whether it is a lack of competence as an educator or a lack of compassion as a citizen. I have no time nor tolerance for it. We can change nothing about our children’s heritage or color. We can change little about their families’ focus and our society’s racism. We can change everything about our schools. Let’s start there.