Get ready teachers! The country is priming for that once a year period where you are venerated by America for the work that you do—for all the children you just finished testing the heck out of—through little fault of your own. It’s Teacher Appreciation Week! Want to see how so-called leaders and the media are […]
Girl Scout Badges Made Just for Teachers!
A new corporate idea being revved up for public schools involves teachers earning badges…because there is nothing that says Free Market more than teachers competing with Girl Scouts. Here are some badges you can earn, teachers: Money Counts. Teachers, earn this badge when you spend 50% of your paycheck on materials that the school cannot […]
Schools and Tornadoes
So here they come again. If you live in the heartland you know what I’m talking about. I am still not used to spring in the Mid-south, and I thought this was going to be a good year. I guess not. Once again we sadly watch as people describe what it was like to live […]
Better Prepared Teachers? Coffee Chat with Arne and Andrea
The other day I watched Andrea Mitchell interview Arne Duncan. It’s always difficult for me to listen to authorities on teaching who have never been teachers, or who have never even studied what it takes to be a teacher. When they bloviate what the government needs to do to make good teachers, I want to […]
Refusing to Kiss the Chimp—Professionals, Crazy Stunts, and High-Stakes Testing
Years ago, back before test motivation had anything to do with calculated stunts, a friend of mine, who did some nice things for our school, brought in an adorable chimpanzee. It was a real hit with the students. At one point I was put on the spot to kiss it. Despite student begging—they drastically wanted […]
What President Obama Got Right—Warning—It’s Wild and There Was No Drill!
OK. You don’t like Race to the Top or the corporate education agenda that all presidents subscribe to. Me neither. Maybe you don’t like a lot of President Obama’s policies and can’t wait for a new guy…or gal! I get it. But how can you not appreciate the way President Obama has been practicing his […]
Special Ed. Labels—Why We Still Need Them in the Era of Common Core
Work hard at living the idea that differentness is just fine—not bad. Your child will learn most from your example. Help him to think of problems as things that can be solved if people work at them together. ~Nicholas Hobbs from The Futures of Children (p.288) Years ago a poster circulated that said “Labels are […]
The New Teacher Project’s Speedy Miracle Immersions! Who’s Your Child’s Teacher?
My husband is an accounting professor. Two weeks ago he received a perky email from Anh-Thi Mouradav out of Nashville’s The New Teacher Project (TNTP) Teaching Fellows looking for him to forward her email request to accounting students who would make, in her words, “highly-effective math teachers.” He was quick to reply telling her that […]
How Children Learn—Listening, Jeb Bush Et Al?
How do children learn? Why do they even bother with it? The best way to answer this question is to think back to how you learned when you were young. As a child what inspired you? When you were in school, what subjects did you like? Dislike? To borrow a term from the cooking diva […]
Announcing My New Website Format and Blog!
My new website covers Activism and School Curriculum and I still have the Blog. It is more manageable now. Point and clink on the title and the link should appear. The Activism site focuses on groups , organizations and people who are currently working to oppose the harmful reform taking place in our public schools. […]