The St. Louis Post-Dispatch ran a column on how a school can involve parents and motivate students last week. I didn’t realize it had run till I googled. It’s all part of my relentless book promotion campaign.
Monthly Archive for November, 2005
Suspension isn’t much of a punishment for students with a TV, cell phones, video games, a parent-free house and no homework, the Washington Post notes.
This was Kymber and Shawnte Andre-Sanders’s punishment early this month:The Prince William County sisters spent the day in their pajamas, luxuriating in front of the television, contemplating 50 Cent’s song “Window Shopper,” T.G.I. Friday’s chicken-sandwich commercial and, occasionally, such CNN news flashes as “Elvis Foils Robbers.”
There’s little stigma in suspension either.
It took me 20 minutes to find Border’s Parenting/Education section, but I finally spotted my book on the shelves! Only two copies. Well, maybe there were lots and they were snapped up. Or the store didn’t order enough. I left one there and moved the other to the table of “new hard covers” by the front door. I was going to put it on top of Mary Mapes’ book but I chose a more prominent location.
I’ll be reading at Kepler’s Books in Menlo Park on Jan. 20. So it’s now Cody’s in Berkeley on Jan. 18, Capitola Book Cafe on Jan. 19, Kepler’s on Jan. 20, Books, Inc. in Mountain View on Jan. 24 and Book Passage in Corte Madera on Jan. 30. And let me once again mention the Dec. 14 book launch at Downtown College Prep, 1460 The Alameda, San Jose at 7 pm. RSVP to Irma Trejo at itrejo@downtowncollegeprep.org or 408-271-1730 ext. 240.
Update: I’ll also be at Border’s Books in San Jose on Saturday, Jan. 28 at 2 pm. Here’s the events list from the Our School site.
“Character education” tends to mean vapid posters exhorting students to niceness, notes Betsy, who endorses a NRO column on teaching character through literature or even movies, such as the new adapation of Pride and Prejudice or Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.
One of the most magical things about J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books and now films, the last two of which have been just splendid, is the way they subtly weave lessons about ethical choice and character into their gripping plots. Indeed, the plots themselves pivot on the crucial choices of the major characters for good or for evil, choices that at once form and reveal character.Attention to moments of choice and to the development of character, for example, in the latest Potter film and in the wonderful film version of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, can help to educate the moral imagination of young and old alike.
P&P is about making sound judgments in a world that resembles a gossipy. status-conscious high school. Harry Potter must face his insecurities to muster his courage to fight evil.
Today is publication day for Our School: The Inspiring Story of Two Teachers, One Big Idea, and the School That Beat the Odds. It’s been five years since I decided to write a book about the creation of a charter school. I remember using Thanksgiving vacation to think about whether to leave the San Jose Mercury News and what to do if I quit. I drew up a plan that has worked so far — except for the part about finishing the book in one year.
I must take time from my busy day of book pumping to visit a few book stores and see if it’s on the shelves. Maybe then I’ll believe that I really did it.
High school jocks in Miami whose grades are too low for an athletic scholarship can boost their GPAs at a high school diploma mill, reports the New York Times.
By the end of his junior year at Miami Killian High School, Demetrice Morley flashed the speed, size and talent of a top college football prospect. His classroom performance, however, failed to match his athletic skills.He received three F’s that year and had a 2.09 grade point average in his core courses, giving him little hope of qualifying for a scholarship under National Collegiate Athletic Association guidelines.
In December of his senior year, Morley led Killian to the 2004 state title while taking a full course load. He also took seven courses at University High School, a local correspondence school, scoring all A’s and B’s. He graduated that December, not from Killian but from University High. His grade point average in his core courses was 2.75, precisely what he wound up needing to qualify for a scholarship.
By graduating from the private school, athletes also avoid the need to pass Florida’s graduation exam. But they have trouble passing college classes.
Via Eduwonk.
New Orleans is relying heavily on newly created charter schools to “lure displaced residents back to the city,” reports USA Today. Can charters meet the challenge?
“The schools in New Orleans prior to the storms were in such terrible shape academically, financially and physically, I don’t believe people would want to come back home and bring their children into that school system,” says Barry Erwin, president of the Council for a Better Louisiana, a policy group funded by individuals and corporations.“If we can give people a reason to be hopeful that those schools are going to be totally different from what they were before, that’s a tremendous selling point for those who were displaced.”
Just two of New Orleans’ 117 public schools have reopened — both of them charter schools that began a few years ago. Many former New Orleans students have enrolled in private schools or in public schools in neighboring communities.
Today, the city has its first reopening of a traditional public school. Five charter schools approved last month are to open Dec. 14. Another five new charter schools are to open Jan. 3.
Some parents saw an opportunity to push for charters with the disarray following Katrina and a pending state takeover of more than 100 schools that fall below state averages on test scores.
With all the uncertainty about how many students will return to New Orleans, it will be enormously difficult to plan and finance these new schools. The state will run some new schools itself and let others be run as charters by universities, nonprofit foundations or other independent groups.
The University of California doesn’t accept some coursework from Christian schools as meeting its academic requirements. Does UC discriminate against Christians? Students from Calvary Chapel Christian School in Murietta have filed suit. If UC’s ban is upheld, schools like Calvary Chapel will be pressured by parents to secularize their curriculum so graduates can win admission to the prestigious and relatively affordable UC system.
Tomorrow is the publication date for my book, Our School: The Inspiring Story of Two Teachers, One Big Idea, and the School That Beat the Odds, but Amazon already is shipping copies. And there’s a used copy for sale (“like new”) at a discount and four new copies, two for considerably more than Amazon’s price. How do the resellers get copies? I still only have one copy myself, though my “author’s copies” are supposed to be here any day now.
I realize all you faithful readers have ordered a copy through my Amazon link or at your local book store. Less faithful readers, here’s your chance to be in with the in crowd.
When I see the book in an actual book store, I’m going to freak out. Then I’m going to move it to a more prominent location.
For those of you in the San Jose area, please come to the book launch on Dec. 14 at 7 pm at Downtown College Prep’s new campus at 1460 The Alameda, San Jose. Contact Irma Trejo (itrejo@downtowncollegeprep.org or 408-271-1730 ext. 240) to say you’re coming. More details are here on the ourschoolbook.com web site.
In my day, parents had to provide pencils, crayons, paper and blunt scissors. Now parents in Fullerton, California are being asked to buy a $1,500 laptop for each of their elementary and middle school children enrolled at four schools in the 20-school district. From the LA Times:
An evaluation by UC Irvine education professors lauded the Fullerton program for engaging students, helping them become computer literate and improving writing skills.But other researchers say there is no evidence that equipping students with laptops improves grades or test scores.
“If the reason to roll out this . . . program is that laptops in the hands of every single student will improve teaching and learning, it is silly,” said Stanford University education professor emeritus Larry Cuban, author of “Teachers and Machines: Classroom Use of Technology Since 1920.” “No body of evidence supports that.”
Parents can ask for financial aid or a free laptop, but some parents aren’t poor enough to qualify or don’t want to seek aid. Their laptopless children have to transfer to another school that doesn’t have the pilot program.
At the Robert C. Fisler School, laptops are used 60% of the day: eighth-graders use them to draw atom structures, second-graders craft story outlines about a turkey trying to avoid being eaten on Thanksgiving, and fourth-graders create charts from a playground survey that included asking classmates their favorite animal. (Dogs were the clear winner.)
Since time immemorial, second graders have been writing stories about a turkey that doesn’t want to be eaten on Thanksgiving. It doesn’t require a $1,500 computer. Graphing a survey also can be done with low-tech equipment. I suppose the atomic structures look better with the aid of computer graphics. But I drew atoms back in time immemorial too. I used a pencil and paper. (I don’t think colored, fine-point, felt-tip pens had been invented.)
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