September 2008 Archives

I am trying to wrap my head around our current fiscal crisis. Not only am I having a hard time trying to grasp the implications of the still-developing disaster or the proposed interventions, I'm having a hard time just trying to really get a fix on what $700 billion dollars is. This is what it looks like: $700,000,000,000.00 That’s a lot of zeros. I trolled the internet to get some perspective on what $700 billion really amounts to. If the federal government siphoned off Florida's gross domestic product, we could cover the bailout. Invading the ...

My TLN colleague Laura Reasoner Jones addressed gender equity last week in her Teaching Secrets: Bridging the Gender Gap essay here. I understood her point to be that each child is unique and that we need to be thoughtful in responding to them as individuals. It was really interesting to me that the responses her article solicited clearly demonstrate that the same information can be perceived differently by various readers. In fact, some of the responses were pretty inflamed, and I went back to see what was so controversial. Do you know what re-reading the piece and the comments caused ...

In the last two weeks, I’ve been hearing a lot about change. It seems that everyone is in favor of it. Me too! My poor old laptop was retired from active duty and replaced a new machine with more stamina, but less weight. My virtual teaching community moved on from a listserv to a slick new platform. My 54 year old house finally got the dream kitchen that I have been planning for 22 years. My 58 year old body got brand new legs in the form of titanium knees. And this week, after 20 years of teaching middle ...