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Sighted sub selected same

September 19, 2012 by

Darren’s district had required hiring substitutes from the “laid off teacher list,” even if meant a laid-off third-grade teacher would be assigned to “cover” his math class instead of a retired math teacher. New policy: Go back to the old policy on requesting substitutes.

Today we got the following information from our school secretary:  ”As of today HR has removed the restriction of not being able to request and confirm subs of your choice. Hurray!”

Did too many teachers complain? Or did all the laid-off teachers find jobs?

Filed Under: Education Tagged With: , , ,

High school coach in trouble for sex book

September 4, 2012 by

A self-published book of sex advice and opinions has meant trouble for a high school girls basketball coach in suburban Chicago.  Bryan Craig,  also a counselor at Rich Central High School, resigned as the varsity coach and is on administrative leave while the district reviews the issue.

In the forward to the book, titled “It’s Her Fault,” Craig says his intention is to give women a guide to gaining the “upper hand in a relationship” because he is tired of hearing them complain. The book contains graphic details on his observations of the female anatomy, including what he describes as physical differences between ethnicities that lead him to conclude that “Latin women have more children.”

Among the assertions in the book is that all men and women should be promiscuous before getting married.

He also writes, “The easiest kill for a man is through the young lady with low self-esteem. Of course some will feel this is taking advantage, and yes it is.

Can he be fired for expressing his opinions? Should he be?

No, writes Darre.  Firing a teacher for something like this is a “heckler’s veto” on employment. 

Filed Under: Education, Free Speech Tagged With: , , , ,

Why cheat? Kids were ‘dumb as hell’

August 29, 2012 by

Atlanta math teacher Shayla Smith gave students test answers because they were “dumb as hell,” according to a former colleague who testified at her hearing. The former fifth-grade teacher denied cheating, but the tribunal recommended her firing, reports the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

The teacher, Schajuan Jones, taught 4th grade across the hall from Smith, and said she overheared Smith talking in the hallway with a teacher whose students she had overseen during testing.

“The words were, ‘I had to give your kids, or your students, the answers because they’re dumb as hell,’” Jones said.

The tribunal was considering testimony of cheating in 2010. The year before a state analysis found what was described as a practically impossible frequency of changes from wrong to right in tests proctored by Smith.

A student also testified Smith had pointed to the right answers.

Of nearly 180 Atlanta Public School educators accused of cheating in a state investigation, the district has reported outcomes for 164: 110 have resigned or retired, reports the newspaper. Seventeen were fired after going before the tribunal, 16 were reinstated and 21 tribunals are pending.

Filed Under: Education, Testing Tagged With: , ,

Making classroom rules

August 19, 2012 by

Who Makes the Rules in a Classroom? asks Nancy Flanagan on Teacher in a Strange Land. According to the latest dogma,  good teachers get students to collectively write their own classroom rules.

It seems democratic and encourages “buy-in,” teachers believe, even if students are just as likely to break their own rules as ones set by teachers.

When Flanagan tried it in her own music classroom, students came up with a list of “don’ts” — as in don’t empty your spit valve on someone else’s chair — but “it never felt as if we were wrestling with the really important issues: Building a functioning community. Safety. Personal dignity. Kindness. Order. Academic integrity. Democracy.”

She offers ideas about creating classroom rules, such as:

 •You’re shooting for influence, not control. Fact is, teachers never have absolute control over kids, even using techniques like fear, punishment, isolation and intimidation. (In edu-speak, “consequences.”) You want kids to behave appropriately because they understand that there are rewards for everyone in a civil classroom.

•No matter what rules you put on paper, your most important job is role-modeling those practices, not enforcing them. Behave the way you want kids to behave: Ignore minor, brainless bids for attention. Make eye contact with speakers. Don’t be an attention hog–your stories aren’t more important than theirs. Don’t be rude to kids. Apologize publicly when you’re wrong. Remember that you’re the adult in the room. It’s your calm presence that institutes order, not rules.

Don’t restate the obvious or load up on “don’ts,” she advises. But do give clear instructions when needed.  ”Stress: order facilitates learning, makes the class a pleasant place to be.”

 •Integrity helps build community. The most important directives in democratic classrooms are around ethical practices: A clear definition of cheating, understood by all students, in the digital age. Why trust and personal best are more important than winning. Why substandard work isn’t ever OK. How true leadership–kids want to be leaders, too– is a function of respect.

“Carrots and sticks” can be counter-productive, Flanagan writes. Students’ good behavior is its own reward: They get to attend a “civil, well-managed” school.

Filed Under: Education Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

New reading fight on ‘just right’ books

August 17, 2012 by

Common Core standards have opened a second front in the Reading Wars, writes Fordham’s Kathleen Porter-Magee. Unlike most state standards, which were “vague and virtually meaningless,” the new standards ask that “all students be exposed to and asked to analyze grade-appropriate texts, with scaffolding as necessary.”

No one likes war, but this is an important fight that’s worth having. And it’s one that has been put off for too long.

. . . There have long been two very different schools of thought about the best way to organize curriculum and instruction in literature. On one side are those who believe that reading comprehension will improve if teachers assess students’ individual reading levels and give them a bevy of “just right” books that will challenge them just enough to nudge them to read slightly more challenging texts. Yes, teachers do provide some guidance and instruction, but that instruction is limited. In essence, the book choice is leveled to meet the student where he or she is; the “heavy lifting” of reading is placed squarely on the students’ shoulders.

On the other side are those who believe that reading comprehension improves as domain-specific content knowledge deepens and students are exposed to increasingly complex literature and nonfiction texts. Here the role of the teacher is more pronounced, and instruction more explicit. The instruction, not the text, is scaffolded to meet the students where they are.

Common Core’s call for teaching challenging texts to all readers is “a sweeping change that holds enormous promise for improving the quality of ELA curriculum in America’s classrooms, she writes. However, “just right’ advocates are trying to co-opt the new standards to keep their “existing — and poorly aligned — materials” in the classroom.

Filed Under: Education Tagged With: , , , ,

With 25 minutes and a whiteboard …

July 8, 2012 by

Gregory Euclide whiteboard artwork

© Gregory Euclide

 

Teacher Gregory Euclide started drawing on his whiteboard to relieve stress during his 25-minute lunch break at a Minneapolis-area high school.

Euclide’s paintings are made from things lying around the classroom, such as whiteboard erasers, paper towels, brushes, spray bottles and Japanese Sumi ink, which is made from soot, water and glue.

Students were distressed when he wiped out the artwork, so he decided to release a series called “Laid Down & Wiped Away” chronicling his classroom whiteboard experiments. Here’s Euclide’s Flat Works 2012.

Filed Under: Education Tagged With: , , ,

Poor schools try ‘flipping’ too

June 19, 2012 by

“Flipping the classroom” works for low-income students — if their teachers can come up with the technology, writes Sarah Butrymowicz on the Hechinger Report.

Sacha Luria, a Portland, Oregon elementary teacher, realized her students didn’t have computers at home. She had only one in her classroom. But she was determined to “flip.”

So she used her own money to buy a second computer and begged everyone she knew for donations, finally bringing the total to six for her 23 fourth-graders at Rigler School. In her classroom, students now alternate between working on the computers and working with her.

So far, the strategy is showing signs of success. She uses class time to tailor instruction to students who started the school year behind their classmates in reading and math, and she has seen rapid improvement. By the end of the school year, she said, her students have averaged two years’ worth of progress in math, for example.

Luria’s colleagues are interested — but they don’t have the computers or her begging skills.

At Westside High School in Macon, Georgia, a high-poverty, high-minority school, a federal grant has paid for netbooks for all students. Some teachers are flipping their classes and reporting good results.

Social studies teacher Sydney Elkin said her students’ scores on the Georgia state end-of-course exams increased, particularly for her special-education students. The semester before she flipped her classroom, about 30 percent of all students passed. In her first semester with a flipped class, she said, nearly three-quarters passed, including nine out of 10 special-education students.

Flipping does not solve all problems, though, Elkin said. Some students must still be constantly needled to do their work. And despite second and third chances on tests that act as gateways to the next level, some students still fall behind.

Flipped classrooms are “the low hanging gruit of innovation,” said Michael Horn, executive director of education at the Innosight Institute in Mountain View, Calif., which works to introduce innovation into education.

 

Filed Under: Education, technology Tagged With: , , , ,

When the teacher is wrong — and a bully

May 20, 2012 by

It’s illegal to disrespect the president, a North Carolina high school teacher told a student in an audiotape that turned up on YouTube. The social studies teacher raised the Washington Post story charging Romney bullied a high school classmate with long hair, reports the Salisbury Post.  A student responded that Obama has admitted bullying a girl in school.  (In Dreams From My Father, Obama writes that he pushed down an unpopular black girl in — I think it was sixth grade — after he was teased about her being his “girlfriend.”)

“Stop, no, because there is no comparison,” (the teacher) says. Romney, she says, is “running for president. Obama is the president.”

When the student says they’re both “just men,” the teacher continues to argue that Romney, as a candidate for president, is not to be afforded the same respect as the president.

The teacher tells the class Obama is “due the respect that every other president is due.”

“Listen, let me tell you something, you will not disrespect the president of the United States in this classroom,” she says.

. . . Later in the conversation, the teacher tells the class it’s criminal to slander a president.

“Do you realize that people were arrested for saying things bad about Bush?” she says of former President Bush. “Do you realize you are not supposed to slander the president?”

The student responds by saying being arrested for talking badly about the president would violate the right to free speech.

“You would have to say some pretty f’d up crap about him to be arrested,” he says. “They cannot take away your right to have your opinion. … They can’t take that away unless you threaten the president.”

The student is correct, of course. The teacher is . . . Sadly misinformed and a bit of a bully.

Filed Under: Bullying, Education, Free Speech Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Science teacher: My class is a game

April 27, 2012 by

Paul Anderson explains how he designed a game to teach biology in a TEDx talk. Montana’s 2011 Teacher of the Year, Anderson teaches at Bozeman High. His science lessons can be found on YouTube.

Filed Under: Education, Online Learning Tagged With: , , ,

Learning from Mrs. G

April 24, 2012 by

As a night student at Howard University, Thomas Sowell was inspired by Marie Gladsden, his English professor, and kept in touch over the years. Years later, when he returned to Howard to teach economics for a year, he was still learning from Mrs. G.

A young African woman who’d studied under Mrs. Gadsden in Guinea failed the first two weekly econ tests. It seemed hopeless he told his mentor.

“So you think she’s going to fail the course?” Mrs. G asked.

“Well, she’s not going to learn the material. Whether I can bring myself to give her an F is something else. That’s really hitting somebody who’s down.”

“You’re thinking of passing her, even if she does not do passing work?” Mrs. G said sharply. She reminded me that I had long criticized paternalistic white teachers who passed black students who should have been failed — and she let me have it. “I’m ashamed of you, Tom. You know better!”

He met with the student  for an hour before every class. Eventually, she caught on and began doing B work.  Averaging in her early F’s, she earned a C for the course.

She was overjoyed, Mrs. Gadsden told him. “She was proud because she knew she earned every bit of it.”

Dr. Marie D. Gladsden died recently at the age of 92.

 

Filed Under: College, Education Tagged With: , , , ,
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