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Apathy or boredom?
We just watched a funny movie from America’s Hat (aka Canada) called “The Trotsky.” It is about students forming a union… check it out.
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The high cost of low teacher salaries
Dave Egger’s opinion piece in the Times today.
Dave Eggers runs literacy centers across the country. He is the author of “A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius,” and “What is the What?” among others.
He’s pretty cool.
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Talking with Moses
So, I have been getting picked up at 5:30 every morning for the last three weeks to go swim with a friend. He flaked on my on Friday, but I forced myself to go anyway – since I was up. It turned out to be great that he didn’t come. I got to sit in the hot tub post swim, which is nice in and of itself, and dearly needed after all this swimming. However, the really nice thing was that I ran into my friend from Spot, Moses. I only know him from Spot, and since Spot has been closed for 6 months or so, I haven’t seen him.
He is a policeman. His “beat” is East High, and has been for 15 years or so. I asked if the re-structuring of East had really had an impact on the school or if it was all smoke and mirrors. He said that it had had a huge impact. He said that the change in attitude/methods of the administration really affects the mood at the school and that the students are much better. He didn’t really go into details, but I thought it was interesting.
He had a lot to say about how teachers need to try to understand the students and where they are coming from because the students can’t concentrate on Math or whatever if they feel like no one cares or understands what they are going through at home. It made me feel like Warner had done a decent job of preparing us for this part of teaching, as well as a good job of choosing pre-service teachers who has this in mind when they entered the program.
He launched from there into a critique of African American society (he is black), which was interesting, but I don’t want to go into here.
Now, if Spot would just re-open, I could continue to explore his perspectives.
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Why we need a scientifically literate public…
“Andrew Wakefield has become one of the most reviled doctors of his generation, blamed directly and indirectly, depending on the accuser, for irresponsibly starting a panic with tragic repercussions: vaccination rates so low that childhood diseases once all but eradicated here — whooping cough and measles, among them — have re-emerged, endangering young lives.”
If the public understood how science worked, they would have let his idea die years ago after study after study refuted it.
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from WBEZ in Chicago…
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Bye Bye Brizard…
will be interesting to see what happens with “Equitable Student Funding” and all that…
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School 23
I have been working on my 5th and 6th grade extension observations the last two weeks, as you may know. Friday was my last day there. It was an AWESOME day, and I feel much better about sending my daughter there next year. I was in the 5th grade MAP class. The students were organized, engaged, entertaining, etcetera. The day started with the 5th grade winner of the district wide storytelling contest. This little girl voluntarily went over to the kindergarten class and performed her story for them. It was truly impressive, and the kindergartners LOVED it. She had all these voices and acted out parts. Amazing.
The next cool thing, the teacher had the students write a description about how they eat Oreo cookies. To entice the students to present, the teacher told them that they would get one Oreo to demonstrate how they eat the cookie to the rest of the class. This created some really funny demonstrations. Clearly the students were enjoying themselves. It was great.
After lunch, while the 5th graders were doing math, the teacher I worked with last week (who is awesome) came and found me because she thought I might be interested in what was going on upstairs. I was. Upstairs in the sunny common area, the two fourth grade classes were having a competition to see whose structure (made of straws and paper clips) was the strongest. It was really exciting watching the students carefully add weights to the stop of their structures. When the structure collapsed, they calculated the ratio of straws to weights. The students had worked in teams and one group from each class won. There were parents there, and lots of teachers and staff watching. It was great… AND it was inquiry. (It was sponsored/initiated by volunteers from Kodak.)
After that, I went back to the 5th grade class and students headed over to the kindergarten room to read to their reading buddies. They do this every week. It was totally adorable.
The whole day, as well as talking to more parents that I know from the neighborhood, made me feel like we were making a good decision sending our daughter there next year. There are so many great things going on in the district, and people working so hard to make it better. I have been asking everyone possible how they feel about the school and all the parents say that they love it. My husband pointed out that this was a bias sample, and I agreed… but countered with the observation that the majority of the people who do not send their children to the city schools have never tried it, so they really have no idea what it is like. They just “hear” about it…
How can we improve the reputation? I don’t think many people have any idea how many great things are happening in RCSD.
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Anacondas
Hmmm… do you think this could be approrpriate for a HS class? Certainly it could be modified to be appropriate…
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way cool scientist
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Recess
I have been thinking a lot about recess lately because my daughter will be going to a school with no recess. (ugh.) This article takes the thoughts farther than I got. I was just thinking that they need recess, this is about recess coaches. Coaches sound fine. I just want them to go OUTSIDE.
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/07/the-power-of-the-playground/
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