February 2012
37 posts
The Trouble With New York's Teacher Data Dump →
Following a court challenge last year by several media outlets, the New York City Department of Education — which operates the nation’s largest school district — agreed to release individual evaluation rankings for 18,000 of its teachers. The New York Times is publishing its analysis of the data, including the teachers’ names and their school assignments. GothamSchools,...
Students shot at Ohio high school
Read the whole article (with updates as they become available) here
[Updated 9:21 a.m. ET] At least three students were injured when an armed individual entered the cafeteria of a high school near Cleveland and opened fire just as the school day was beginning Monday, police and the school superintendent said.
School officials said they did not know how badly the injured students had been...
Problems in the Bible Belt (and probably other...
I read online news articles because they’re free and easy to access. My local paper has a variety of articles online every day, and sometimes when I’m done reading an article, I scroll down to look at the comments.
When I get to the education articles, I see a few things in the comments:
1. An overt air of bigotry. Whether the article is about a school board member who believes that...
2 tags
Conversation between my backwoods cousin and my...
Cousin: So, when my son is outside, I tell him to just use the bathroom outside if he has to go. His younger sister has been trying to do it too lately. I catch her tryin' to pull her diaper down, and I have to stop her.
My mother: Wait, isn't your son going to be in preschool next year?
Cousin: Yeah. I figure I'll be gettin' a few phone calls about it from some teachers. I'm just going to act like I don't know what they're talkin' about and hand the phone to my son's father.
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Tonight's dinner
I LOVE chicken nuggets. Did you know how easy it is to make chicken nuggets at home? As long as you aren’t like my mom (she hates cutting raw chicken), you cut the chicken into pieces, roll it around in cheese and breadcrumbs, and pop it in the oven. Here’s a recipe I used as a guide. (+ There are tons of leftovers for lunch tomorrow!)
Sometimes it definitely helps to tell kids about your interests.
Like today when one of my middle school lacrosse girls ran up to me and said, “I bought my Hunger Games midnight premier tickets!”
Because this 12-year old girl just reminded me to buy my tickets. (Done, although all the midnight showings were sold out.)
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Things I've learned recently
Moreso is not a word. It’s two words. Why have none of my teachers commented on this?
Downton Abbey is actually spelled DownTON Abbey, not Downtown. Sounds much more Brittish to me as Downton (say it out loud; I won’t judge).
I can still cradle a ball in a lacrosse stick. Score.
re: coaching
While I did post (somewhat sassily) about non-constructive criticism, I haven’t had a chance to say thank you to everyone who left wonderful comments!
School was out on Monday (woohoo Presidents’ Day), and I go back to practice tomorrow. I’ll let y’all know how things progress throughout the season. I think the girls’ first game is in about 2 or 3 weeks.
In the...
Teacher Discounts →
missingstreet:
DID YOU ALL KNOW THAT TEACHER’S GET A DISCOUNT TO STARBUCKS!? Check out this list of teacher discounts :) Enjoy!!
Wow! This is awesome! My favorites:
Container Store (our city just got one last fall…HOLY COW it is an organizer’s dream!!)
Borders (25% off? yes please!)
Ann Taylor LOFT, duh.
Banana Republic
JCrew
Billy Ray Cyrus and the Lunch Bunch →
Settling in and starting to eat their lunches, they noticed writing on the “SMART Cookies” they had for dessert. Each cookie has a president’s portrait stamped on it along with his name and which number president he was. The kids were reading about the different presidents and asking each other questions about their cookies. Thus ensued the following discussion:
Kid 1: Why...
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Cursing Teachers Risk Getting the Axe →
Arizona state Senator Lori Klein recently introduced a bill that would punish K-12 teachers for their use of profanity in the classroom. According to Fox News, Klein introduced the measure after a parent informed her that a teacher in their district had gone unpunished for using the F-word in his daughter’s class.
If the bill passes, a teacher who violates the obscenity and profanity...
Positively Persistent Teach: Coke or Pepsi... →
librarianpirate:
notimefortime:
In one of my college courses years ago we did an experiment to see if anyone could tell the difference between Coke and Pepsi while blindfolded.
No one could.
So there.
Pfft - I did that same experiment in middle school. People who say they like…
I read that usually people choose Pepsi in blind taste tests as the better tasting drink because it is...
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Oh, hi. You must be new here. Your response to my post was not too kind. You see, in this community, we encourage each other. We offer words of kindness and sincerity, not negativity. I’ll give you a second try, but if you insist on being negative, please take that attitude elsewhere where it may be more appreciated.
xoxo, lhuddles
3 tags
Coaching
So, I’ve recently taken up coaching (assistant coaching, really) for a middle school girls’ lacrosse team.
I played lax for 2 years in high school (varsity…and JV…because we only had one team), so I understand the basics of throwing and catching and cradling and rules and positions.
I’m still trying to get used to this whole “coaching” thing though....
grownup question
So, my AC/heat system is switched over to heat. Only…the air that’s coming out isn’t really warm. It’s actually kind of chilly. It’s warming my apartment though (like, when I bump the heat up from 65 to 70 my apartment gets warmer…through cold air).
This is normal, right? Or not normal?
'My Teacher Is a Lesbian': Coming Out at School →
A month into my first year of teaching seventh graders in Oakland, Calif., we were in the school library, using the big tables there to spread out as we outlined Africa on poster paper and added geographical features. My students chatted as they worked.
“Are you married, Ms. Sokolower?” one of them asked me. My stomach instantly tied in a knot. I was a brand-new teacher in what...
Teacher suspended for discussing racial epithet in... →
askingtherightquestions:
I believe he was wrongfully suspended. He was taking the moment to educate his students about something meaningful. It was a teachable moment. Thoughts?
I agree—wrong to suspend him.
Last year my high school student teacher mentor was a young black woman (well I suppose she still is young and black; she’s just not my mentor anymore). The school was about...
Teacher has students write to convict →
A fifth-grade English teacher in New York is accused of assigning students in her class the task of making greeting cards for a friend of hers — a friend who just so happens to be behind bars.
John Coccarelli is currently serving time for violating a protection order and possessing a loaded firearm, according to HLN affiliate WNBC. He was also charged with (but never convicted of) a...
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The guy who taught next to me last year (when I was student teaching for my high school placement) was suspended Thursday for inappropriate texting with a student.
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Food is just not working for me today
Made these meatballs in the slow cooker today. Verdit: bland bland bland. (Maybe they’ll work for you? They didn’t for me. First thing I’d change: use ground beef and not ground turkey.) I paired them with some whole wheat spaghetti noodles, and the spaghetti tasted better than the meatballs.
Hello backup quick and easy dinner: pancakes.
“To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong.”
– Joseph Chilton Pearce (via nickguerra)
Lunch fail today
Left my travel cup of water on my kitchen counter. No drinks for lunch because I also left my wallet at home…no buying anything out of the snack machine or running somewhere for a drink. No cups lying around at work.
I thought that using a measuring spoon in place of plastic spoon would work well because I was out of plastic spoons…not so much. It’s surprisingly challenging to...
Sometimes, like when it’s late at night, I wonder what would happen if all the #education friends and Tumblr Teachers got together one night over drinks.
I try to imagine everyone mingling around a room, wine glass in hand, talking loudly with laughter and using lots of arm/hand gestures.
What do you picture?
“If our country cared about education the way we care about football, we...”
– Pedro Noguera
Pedro Noguera
The administration must realize that America’s schools need more than just money to address the many problems they face and to promote the kind of education that will be needed to support our economy and democracy in the 21st century.
More funds are needed, especially in communities where the schools have been sorely neglected, but increased funding alone will not produce better...
“The deluge of criticism Komen faced on Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr came two...”
– Outcry Grows Fiercer After Funding Cut by Cancer Group — NYTimes.com (via discoverynews)
Do you ever wonder what would have been different if the internet was around for the Civil Rights Movement? Or the Women’s Suffrage Movement? I do.
“At best, this decision is spineless. At worst, it’s cruel. Rescinding the...”
– If you’re frustrated that the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation dropped its support for Planned Parenthood, GOOD’s Nona Willis Aronowitz put together a handy list of where else to send your money.
(via TheHairpin)
Second Hunger Games trailer!!!
Click here to watch it!
Is it March yet?!
January 2012
61 posts
1 tag
Don't you ever apologize for being who you are
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Books currently taught in the 6th grade classroom that will be mine come next school year:
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
Anne Frank
The Giver
A Wrinkle in Time
The Outsiders
Books I’m considering adding/swapping:
The Hunger Games
Percy Jackson and the Lightening Thief
4 tags
iPad Apps for Teachers
The other night I was looking around the App store on my iPad, and I decided to check out the teacher apps to see how many were actually useful. (Useful, to me, means I’d use it fairly regularly and it would be low cost/free.)
I found two!
The first is PowerTeacher Mobile (and it works on iPad, iPod Touch, and iPhone).
I know a lot of schools still use the PowerSchool system—how...
russellhammond asked: I just tried to leave a comment on your post about a horrible professor and I think it cut me off! I was sharing about a professor who I had in my last semester of undergrad who was the most condescending and rude person I have met. Once I tried to speak to him about an upcoming project and he was rude that I ended up crying in a hallway... later found out that he had made other girls in the class...
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The worst professor I've ever had
Junior year of college, I was trying to finish all my English major requirements so that I could be free of other class obligations during senior year and student teaching.
One of the English requirements was a Shakespeare class. Reasonable.
Fall semester of junior year I took a class on ELL students that covered how to effectively teach students who are learning English as a non-native...
“A great teacher can offer an escape from poverty to the child who dreams beyond...”
– President Obama (via apsies)
Wait…someone in DC actually knows a real teacher? Spot on, Mr. President.
1 tag
Tumblr professors/grad students/teachers, I need...
girlwithalessonplan:
thedisgruntledgradstudent:
orangutanne:
I’ve been asked to devise a way to teach/grade my students on how to take notes in class, because apparently this is not something many upper-level undergraduates know how to do anymore. I have no idea how to teach or do this - I just have always taken notes in a way that makes sense to me but not necessarily to anyone else.
Does...
Tonight in one of my grad school classes, my teacher asked us to make a list of things we wouldn’t be able to write a poem about (When really, I think you can write a poem about pretty much anything. Scissors? Sure! A toilet? Why not!). I was put on the spot and so I said the only thing that could come to my mind—“I don’t think I’d be able to write a poem from a...