One of the things I’ve found to be really helpful is offering to the WHOLE class things that may only help one or two students.
I tell my students that if they want to stand during class [they’re tired of sitting, or like some of my sweet students they can’t focus without moving] they can, as…
ME! I use fuzzy pipe cleaners.
Any public school teachers need black dry-erase markers and board cleaner?
My aunt gave me two packs of markers and two bottles of cleaner yesterday, even though I told her that I honestly don’t need them since I teach at a school with a well-stocked supply room.
So anyone need them? I’ll ship them to you for free! :)
I personally don’t need them (just bought some), but if nobody asks, I can take them and give them to another teacher in my building.
I am thinking pablophonic could use them.
(via windycitylibrarian)
Dear America,
It feels strange to hear your voice praising teachers for their selflessness, dedication, and love for their students. We’re listening to what you’re saying, but we must admit that we are listening with tilted head and quizzical eye. Why? Because we’ve become accustomed to hearing a very different voice from you.
For the past few years, you’ve been certain that most of society’s problems stem from our schools, more specifically the teachers in those schools. We are lazy and useless, we are only in it for the money, we only teach for the vacation time, we don’t possess the intelligence to teach anyone much of anything, our demands for a respectable wage are selfish, we don’t teach students respect, we are leeches sucking the blood from State coffers, we don’t even work a full day like everyone else, and the most hurtful one of all - we don’t care about our students. Concerned citizens have even documented these ills in grossly successful movies that take the worst of us and use it to convince the public that teachers are deserving of nothing but disdain.
Yet, in one weekend, with one horrific tragedy, your voice has changed. The general indictment that has been assigned to us has seemingly been lifted. All of the sudden, America is looking to us with respect, admiration, trust, and something that looks a bit like… awe. It’s puzzling, really. We are the same people we were last Friday morning, doing the same job we’ve diligently done since choosing our career.
Of course, we do realize what has happened. Something horrific occurred last Friday, and as a result, America saw the uncensored soul that resides in the vast majority of teachers. There were no special interest groups telling you what teachers are really like, no businessmen or women proffering data-driven solutions that will fix every instructional problem, no politicians pontificating about the grading of teachers based on the value they add to students. No, what you saw was the real thing, teachers who love America’s children so much that they dedicate their all to their welfare.
No, for most of us, our all does not include a sacrificial death, but it does include a sacrificial life. It means working a full day at school then continuing that work at home well into the evening as we grade papers and prepare materials that will lead to authentic learning in the classroom. That’s our surface work. At a deeper level, however, we also do the following:
"—
To America from a Teacher « lisamyers.org
(Click the link to read the entire post). This rings oh so very true, and I have to wonder just how soon the public’s mindset will swing back to where it was.
Bribery is not the answer :) Try these strategies instead: http://bit.ly/classroom-tips.
This comic could have been created based on my classroom teacher’s approach!
Did you ever consider a “token-economy” is widely encouraged in some circles and in districts using CTEM here in Florida if you use it you can score higher on an observation? I’m not promoting it necessarily, although I do use rewards in my classroom. I’m just saying did you even talk to your CT about why she chose to use rewards or “bribes”?
With the 2012-2013 American school year still in its infancy, it’s worthwhile to note that the people doing the actual educating are down in the dumps. Many feel more beaten down this year than last. Some are walking into their classrooms unsure if this is still the job for them. Their hearts ache with a quiet anguish that’s peculiarly theirs. They’ve accumulated invisible scars from years of trying to educate the increasingly hobbled American child effectively enough that his international test scores will rival those of children flourishing in wealthy, socially-advanced Scandinavian nations and even wealthier Asian city-states where tiger moms value education like American parents value fast food and reality TV.
The American child has changed, and not necessarily for the better. Many shrill voices argue that teachers must change, too, by simply working harder. The favored lever for achieving this prescribed augmentation of the American schoolteacher’s work ethic is fear, driven by a progressively more precarious employment situation.
But teachers by and large aren’t afraid; they’re just tired.
Source: The Educator’s Room
I can’t begin to explain my feelings on this. So, I’ll just leave it here.
The New York Times has some options to allow students to participate and learn from the US Presidential debates. If you’re teaching and you are wanting to use this as a topic, this is a great lesson plan.
— New Girl or my exact words when I lost my teaching position a few years ago. Happy that everything worked out.
I strongly believe that we need to invest more funds in early childhood education. I do think it makes a huge difference for the students who attend and I think it is one of the main keys to closing the achievement gap.
From the Huffington Post Series - State of CPS
I think that it’s important that I share a bit about what’s happening in Chicago right now. For the past two days, Chicago teachers have gone on strike for a variety of issues. Unfortunately, media reporting on the lead-up to the strike itself was terribly ignorant of the major issues —especially considering negotiations have been happening for nine months — and was in large part biased against the Chicago Teacher’s Union. Read about this issue in the news media with a careful eye: this is a strike about the future of public education in the United States.
Here are some of the reasons we are striking in no particular order:
1. COMPENSATION
No one wants to hear about teacher compensation. However, Chicago teachers were mandated to work a longer school day and year — for high schools: about 20 minutes longer than the typical L.A. school, and about 10 more days a year. This longer day and year came one year after the school board decided not to pay teachers a four percent raise that they were contractually obligated to pay, and then literally the next month turned around and started offering raises to individual teachers and schools that “volunteered” to work a longer day. Importantly, while teachers are extraordinarily upset about the way the longer day and year played out, the Union and District are coming closer to an agreement over teacher compensation. If you’ve read about it in the news, it has been reported as a 16 percent raise over the course of four years. However, the actual raise they are offering is 2.25 percent a year for four years. If you do the math that adds up to nine percent. Where are they getting the other seven percent? No one knows, but the mayor said it to reporters, so now that’s what’s getting reported. However, I want to emphasize that compensation will be worked out.
2. TEACHER EVALUATION
Illinois passed a state law requiring Chicago to implement a new evaluation system. It required that the union and district work together to create it, but that if they could not come to an agreement— the district could just implement its own final offer. This has led to an evaluation system that has some good aspects: it does a much better job of creating an objective criteria for “good” teaching. But it also has some terrible aspects. For example, the current rubrics would rate teachers on a 1 - 4 scale (with four being the highest). Teachers would then be rated 1 - 4 on four different components and those scores would be averaged together to create an overall evaluation score. Teachers that receive the lowest rating two years in a row not only can be fired, but they will lose their teaching license. While teachers want an effective, multi-faceted evaluation system, the current rubrics state that if you score a two (considered basic) on all four components, then you are actually rated a one. As a comparison, imagine that I graded an essay on four components and scored each component as a “C,” but then made the overall essay grade a “D.” Doesn’t make sense, right?
Another problem with the system is that the criteria for category 4 (distinguished) teaching describe good teaching, but they are so stringent that they are almost impossible to achieve. For example, in the component on classroom management, if you have a student that disrupts class, and you deal with the disruption to get the student back on track, you are rated as a three. You can only be rated as a four if you never have any students that are disruptive. This assumes that teachers have total control over all students at all times. To me, effectively dealing with disruptive students is distinguished teaching, especially when working with students that are not intrinsically motivated. There are myriad other issues with the current proposals, but [the primary issue is that] teachers see a future where the state/district will demand that teacher pay be tied to evaluations. If we allow the district to create an evaluation system that is rigged to rate all teachers as mediocre, it will allow them to justify freezing or cutting our salaries, or even firing teachers whenever they like.
In addition, the district wants to tie teacher evaluation to student standardized testing. To do this, in my school, of the 10 additional days in the school year, seven of them will be used to give students standardized tests. For 11th graders, this test is the practice and real ACT, so it is significant. For students in other grades, they are all practice tests. So, teachers will be evaluated on student test scores that will mean nothing to the majority of students. Also, the district asked teachers to create what they call “Performance Tasks,” which are standardized tests to be given in an individual classroom. While teachers helped to develop these tasks, the district method of grading the tasks is designed to rate all teachers as mediocre. The grading system ranks students on a 0 - 3 scale (with three being the highest). Teachers will be evaluated based on whether or not students move up in the 0-3 scale. The U.S. history task (which is similar to a DBQ) is graded out of 30 points such that a 28-30 counts as a three, an 18-27 counts as a two, a 8-17 counts as a one, and below that is a zero. In this case, a student could score an 18 the first time he takes the test, and a 26 the next time he takes it (improving from a 60 percent to an 87 percent) but for the purposes of evaluating his teacher that student will not be considered “improved.”
Teachers believe in a multi-faceted evaluation system, but the way this evaluation system would be implemented is not fair to teachers. In addition, while state law requires that part of teacher evaluation be based on student test scores, teachers reject the notion that student test scores are an effective means of evaluating teacher performance. Using student test scores to evaluate teachers is not reliable. Teacher scores vary from year to year, even though the teacher is following the same principles. Not only is it unreliable, there is no evidence that is a valid measurement of teacher performance.
3. TEACHER RECALL
The school district plans to close 100 “underperforming” schools over the next several years and replace them with new schools and charters. This is nothing new in Chicago. For the past eight years, CPS has closed over 100 schools, fired all the teachers, and re-opened them as new schools and charters. To the surprise of no one, the vast majority of the new schools and charters that were opened scored the same as the previous schools. Then why close neighborhood schools and force kids to travel to different areas of the city to go to school…? To fire experienced teachers that earn a higher salary, and replace them with inexperienced teachers that make less money. Since this is the goal of these new schools, is it any surprise that they are not outperforming the old schools? The Union wants a system in place so that if the district decides to close schools, the teachers that get fired (through no fault of their own) have the first opportunity to get the new jobs that open.
The Union does not support the closing of neighborhood schools. This creates disruption in communities and in the lives of students. Further, it will remove experienced teachers from the classrooms that need them most.
4. CLASS SIZE
CPS wants to avoid putting concrete language in a contract that limits the amount of students in a class. Instead, they want to have the right to raise class sizes if they need to. The Union wants language in the contract that limits class sizes to 28 kids per class.
5. WORKING CONDITIONS
Lots of schools in Chicago are ill-equipped for the 21st century. They lack libraries, computer labs and even air conditioning. For example, last week it was 94 degrees in my classroom. This was not an anomaly [and yes, teachers buy and bring in fans]! This happens regularly when it is close to summer time. The Union wants the district to fix these problems.
These are only a few of the issues that we’re fighting for; my goal here was to try and provide some detail about those issues because I feel that most news reporting has not done that. We are on strike because we refuse to accept a system where the mayor and his appointed school board can systematically lower scores on teacher evaluations in order to justify the privatization of education.
The article can be found here
.
As someone going into teaching, I would want to be slapped if I ever put myself before my students. These people have no accountability and no sense of decency. Why be a teacher if you’re going to be greedy and drop your responsibility every time you don’t get what you want? Didn’t you know going in you weren’t going to make immaculate amounts of money?
Why is it that whenever someone wants to say something negative about the Chicago strike, that person always seems to forget that THIS ISN’T REALLY ABOUT THE PAY. Of course we’re not getting paid “immaculate” amounts of money (I don’t think that word means what you think it means). We’re striking for better evaluation systems so that we get evaluated on our teaching and not on how well the kids can take a test. We’re striking for better learning conditions (smaller class sizes, air-conditioning). We’re striking for full-time nurses, counselors, librarians, art/music/PE teachers.
The decision to strike was not made lightly. Just within these past few years, a law was passed requiring at least 75% of the union members to vote for a strike in order for one to be possible. NINETY PERCENT of the CTU members voted last year. If this strike was just about the money, there is no way that 90% of the CTU would have agreed.
This morning, I woke up at 1AM, stressed out and anxious. I had to throw up because of the anxiety. Yeah, I’m feeling twisted up inside because of money.
Maybe you’ll end up in a wonderful school district that has all the money and parental support it will ever need and more. Maybe you’ll end up with kids who come from wonderful, happy families and need no counseling. Maybe you’ll end up in a school where the class sizes never exceed 20. Maybe you’ll end up in a school with a fantastic arts and music program with a full-time librarian and daily gym.
Realistically, that’s probably not going to happen, so I hope for your sake, you’ll never find yourself in the position that 26,000 CTU members did this past year.
Guys, I told you that annaslibrary is awesome.
(Source: queenoftheashes, via windycitylibrarian)
As someone going into teaching, I would want to be slapped if I ever put myself before my students. These people have no accountability and no sense of decency. Why be a teacher if you’re going to be greedy and drop your responsibility every time you don’t get what you want? Didn’t you know going in you weren’t going to make immaculate amounts of money?
As someone going into teaching, you should do your research first.
(Source: queenoftheashes)
Why, they’ll wonder, would the citizens of a country that had become the richest and most powerful in the world, a country that had accumulated patents, Pulitzers, Nobels, and other national and international awards out of all proportion to the size of its population - why would it hand over its system of education to corporations, politicians and a wealthy guy who went to private schools? That wealthy guy, of course, is Bill Gates. To sell a particular theory, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has funneled millions of dollars to a broad range of parent, professional and political groups , including the Parent Teacher Association, the ASCD (formerly known as the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development), the National Writers Project, the American Federation of Teachers, The National Council of La Raza, many universities, the Aspen Institute, the National Governors Association, the Council of Chief State School Officers, and, very importantly, to the manufacturers of standardized tests. The Gates theory? America’s schools were “soft”; they needed to be “hard” - rigorous. The “soft” part of the theory wasn’t based on research, didn’t emerge from public dialogue, wasn’t a conclusion reached by knowledgeable observers, and certainly wasn’t a view held by those actually doing the work - classroom teachers. The “hard,” or rigor, part of the theory has now been in place long enough to demonstrate that it doesn’t work. A report from the National Academy of Sciences says what even longtime fans of the test-and-punish school of reform now admit: it’s been a fiasco. Specifically, the National Academy of Sciences finds, “The tests that are typically used to increase performance in education fall short in providing a complete measure of desired educational outcomes.” Never mind all that. The sales pitch for the need for tough love has been phenomenally successful. The idea that greater rigor will breathe new life into American education has become the conventional wisdom, promoted by liberals and conservatives, the leaders of both political parties, the US Department of Education, the US Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the Center for American Progress, Democrats for Education Reform, the Gates, Broad and Walton Family foundations, and by the producers of educational materials. They quote each other and the media echo chamber amplifies it.
Click the link to read the entire article.
A little venting feels and camaraderie feels good on a Friday night that I am too tired to do much else.
(Photo) MELBOURNE, Australia: The public school system was shut down today (8/4/12) by the biggest teachers’ strike in Victoria’s history.
The Education Union, representing some 50,000 teachers, held a mass stop work meeting at the Rod Laver Arena. 15,000 attended and later marched on Parliament House in the city.
Public school teachers were joined by education support staff. Teachers from the Catholic school system also took illegal strike action to join the protest.
IMPRESSED.
My Students: When it comes to teaching about “old stuff”, like ancient Egyptian myths, sometimes it takes an excellent book to engage today’s students.
My students are gifted and honors students with a genuine love of reading. For middle schoolers, this attitude is generally unheard of. They are the sweetest and most voracious group I have ever had the pleasure of teaching. For them, this experience of reading The Red Pyramid would provide entertainment and enrichment.
My Project: With a class set of The Red Pyramid, I will be able to engage my students with an entire unit. We will be able to support Social Studies curriculum, as well as tackling Language Arts standards in an engaging and fun way.
If we read this book, I will have the students choose from a variety of projects to present to their peers. We will also take part in Socratic Seminars, and tie in primary source material and non-fiction texts for an in-depth look at the impact of Egyptian culture on modern day culture.
By donating to this project, you will play a part in lighting the fires of my students. Together, we can give these students a unique reading experience that will inspire them for years to come.
Signal boost!
