Commentary on my middle school Special Ed. class, the system that it's in, and the systems that affect it.
1 month ago
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| Notes: 9
"Ms. Basye, is zero even or odd? It’s neither, right? And it’s not positive, and it’s not negative. It just is?? In the middle? That’s hard to think of."
- Marvin
1 month ago
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| Notes: 58
"The problem is that we’ve built an education system based on our distrust of educators, and we didn’t rethink it when we embraced accountability. For years, well-intentioned policy makers have attempted to safeguard children by micromanaging principals and teachers through mandates and process requirements. Our education policies are a patchwork of thousands of top-down regulations that tie educators’ hands rather than empowering them with the freedom over how they run their schools and classrooms."
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How Micromanaging Educators Stifles Reform - Wendy Kopp - National - The Atlantic (via informate)
See, she isn’t that bad…
(via informate)
2 months ago
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| Notes: 377
"How can we expect them to connect Hemingway, vectors, pottery, cells, and ancient Greece every day? It’s a disjointed nightmare—to which you might say, “deal with it, that’s school.” But what I see in my students is that “dealing with it” results in a lot of material crammed for a test and then forgotten. Here’s the worst part: All of that planning teachers do to create beautifully succinct lessons is exactly where the deep thinking is happening. Students need to be a part of that. They need to see that you can’t always get the right answers from the back of a book. How many times were you allowed to mess up a chemistry lab in high school? Most likely you were graded on how well you reproduced a set of instructions the first time you tried it. That’s not how anyone really learns. Students need to know that things go wrong, and they need to be comfortable—dare I say happy—with failing and retrying."
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Why It’s Time to Eliminate Class Schedules - Education - GOOD (via infoneer-pulse)
Amen. Good night.
(via infoneer-pulse)
4 months ago
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| Notes: 8
“I like the quote but does it really mean anything? I see no action items ;)
4 months ago
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| Notes: 1981
"Teachers matter. So instead of bashing them, or defending the status quo, let’s offer schools a deal. Give them the resources to keep good teachers on the job, and reward the best ones. In return, grant schools flexibility: To teach with creativity and passion; to stop teaching to the test; and to replace teachers who just aren’t helping kids learn."
- Obama (via kateoplis)
4 months ago
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| Notes: 126
Matt Damon and Mother Reject Union's Award because the union is too cozy with TFA.
Source: thanksandyesWe’re officially in Wonderland.
Well of course teachers with more intensive training are preferable, but unfortunately they don’t want to work in the schools and districts that TFA often places in! The school I work in shows the need for TFA teachers: this year, approximately 1 of every 3 staff members quit, and the majority of the staff is now made up of TFA teachers (who have worked there all year, and most the year previously as well) who will not quit. I know that hiring is different in every region, but without TFA, there would be hundreds of classrooms in New Orleans without teachers.
I wish that people who entered education through the traditional pathways were less snippy about TFA’s existence.
4 months ago
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| Notes: 7
"Ms. Basye, I think what happened is that..why we did bad on our quiz is that…I think that when Ms. Old Teacher left, we didn’t learn anything and so that is why right now we are…well, we are lazy right now."
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Evan
Couldn’t have said it better myself
5 months ago
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| Notes: 23
"Barnett Berry, head of the Center for Teaching Quality, based in North Carolina, knows that too many urban kids are taught by ill-prepared substitutes. And it is a problem that TFA, in a finger-in-the-dyke approach, can help solve: “They can provide a teacher that the kids might not have otherwise, because the alternative could be a substitute with barely a college education. It’s not a question of whether we shouldn’t draw upon a bright, young, energetic group of people. Of course we should.”
“But,” Berry continues, “to suggest that TFA is the solution to the nation’s teaching quality gap is misguided at best.”
Berry likens the TFA recruits to sprinters—talented athletes, but insufficient if one wants to build a well-rounded track team. “TFA gets its recruits ready for a sprint, not a 10K or a marathon,” Berry notes. “They look like they are working harder than the veteran teachers. But the veteran teacher has experience and knows that if you want to make a career of teaching, a sprinting pace will burn you out."
6 months ago
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| Notes: 12
"As TFA tried to grow and gain private and federal money, they had to develop a public relations machine. They found ways to spotlight their few successes. There were some dynamo teachers — there were bound to be. And then some of those teachers advanced to leadership roles. Some started schools, like the KIPP program which started in Houston in 1995. Some got appointed to big education jobs, like Michelle Rhee as D.C. chancellor, and some got elected to public office, like Michael Johnston as a state senator in Colorado. More and more alumni started charter schools rather than take the long route of becoming an assistant principal at a ‘district’ school and then advancing to principal. Some of these charter schools were successful, some weren’t. Some of the successful ones, it is documented, mysteriously lose their toughest to educate kids. TFA ignored this as they needed success stories to grow."
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Why I did TFA, and why you shouldn’t | Gary Rubinstein’s TFA Blog
This, this, this! As a corps member and alum, this is my biggest complaint about TFA. This particular strain of successes are the ones that grow and get blown up because they are the money-earners. I mean, from a business standpoint, it’s understandable, but I hope it’s a sign of a young organization. That is, as they get more established, they expand in other ways. This is also the part that puts me in a difficult position—I am grateful for TFA, and I respect it for the attempt, but the school closures and relentless pursuit for numbers/data is a very thin, starved approach.
6 months ago
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| Notes: 20
Source: Mother JonesBeing Poor in America Really Sucks
The Pew Economic Mobility Project gives us a clue today. The chart on compares four big English-speaking countries on a single measure: vocabulary test scores of five-year-olds. You’d expect that children of highly educated parents would do well and children of poorly educated parents would do badly. And you’d be right. On average, the children of poorly educated parents have both genetic and environmental disadvantages, so it’s no surprise that they do worse than average.
6 months ago
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| Notes: 29
Girl with a Lesson Plan: Thanks for all the feedback on my single-word answer on wether being extroverted is required to teach...
I forgot to publish this. I think it’s true.
Source: girlwithalessonplanBut I still maintain an extroverted teacher makes a better, stronger teacher. You don’t have to agree with me.
An extroverted teacher physically and mentally lasts longer in the day, tends to have a tougher skin when the kids act like jerks, and is willing to take more risks to overcome other…
8 months ago
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| Notes: 257
"Being a K-12 teacher in an American public school is like being a sailor on a leaky naval vessel under fire from a superior enemy closing in fast and you have been assigned by the Captain six jobs to be done ASAP, and half of them involve finding a bucket of steam, and the other half are life or death matters."
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Could you sustain the energy level required to be a teacher?
Aaaaaaand, this is why I’m home today.
(via girlwithalessonplan)
Aaaaaaand this is why I’ve passed out at 9:45 every day this week.
(via ladyinspain)
And this is why I can’t quit pepsi and sometimes go to bed at 7:45.
(via positivelypersistentteach)
And this is why.
9 months ago
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| Notes: 73
"
The biggest difference is that students have begun to be just what we call data points. They’re scores. And so instead of looking at their potential, the deep, immense potential, that intelligence that all students have, people have started just looking at, well, how well does somebody do in reading or math, as opposed to let’s see what we’re going to do to enrich their experience.
And that’s not what happens, usually, in programs for students of color. In fact, what has happened is that students are categorized. This label that’s called the gap has come into being, which is such a pernicious label because what it says is that we’re going to measure the distance between students in terms of their race, as opposed to in terms of the distance between their potential and their achievement.
"- Yvette Jackson on NPR
