Blogboard
Teacher’s read on news, developments, and blogs. This blog is no longer being updated.
Education
Whither Libraries?
Doug Johnson says "library people" need to be able to answer the question of why schools even need libraries in the age of the Internet. And he gets a ton of responses.
Education
Secret, Underground Library
Group blog boingboing recently featured a story about a decidedly atypical high-school rebel. A teenager in a private school is using the unoccupied locker next to her own to run a lending library of banned books. The list includes: The Canterbury Tales, Candide, The Divine Comedy, Paradise Lost, The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, Animal Farm, the Holy Qu'ran, and more. The library’s popularity grew—as did her peers’ interest in reading—through word of mouth and the library now contains 62 banned books. The story surfaced when the girl posted a question about the ethics of her underground library on Yahoo! Answers. She asked:
Education
Spanish as a Second Language─for Teachers
More than 50 percent of the students speak Spanish in the district where The Daily Grind’s Mr. McNamar teaches. In light of that, he thinks it would make perfect sense for the district to provide Spanish-language classes to all teachers as a form of professional development. Mr. McNamar himself can speak elementary-level Spanish thanks to years of working in a restaurant where all the line cooks spoke it, and he has decided to use those basic skills to try and communicate with his Spanish-speaking students in their native language. He thinks it’ll help the students be more comfortable with him and, from the looks of it, he might be right.
Education
Losing Focus
Mrs. Bluebird and her colleagues have discovered that, with the school year winding down, a number of students with ADHD have gone off their meds. There's a logical explanation, it seems:
Education
Questioning "No Excuses"
Could "No Excuses" schools—schools for low-income children that "create a disciplined, orderly and demanding counterculture to inculcate middle-class values,"—be the solution to the achievement gap, as New York Times columnist David Brooks recently suggested? Teachers Nancy Flanagan and Doug Noon have some serious qualms:
Education
Sign of the Times ...
One of Hobo Teacher's students seems not to understand how it would be earthly possible for a teacher to communicate with an absent student without the help of texting.
Education
Union Protection: Charm or Curse?
A D.C. teacher-blogger, who calls himself Harry Potter because he bears a "shocking resemblance" to the wizard, recounts a conversation he had with his wife (pseudonym: Ginny) about Chancellor Rhee’s teacher-improvement plans.
Education
All It Takes Is One ...
Robert Pondiscio comments on the significance of a new study providing evidence that a single disruptive student can decrease the achievement levels of an entire class:
Education
Up for Discussion
Angela Powell of the Cornerstone posts her recommendations for the best teacher discussion boards. A helpful roundup—but try ours, too.
Education
The Dangers of Student Accusations
One of NYC Educator’s students recently announced to the whole class that his science teacher is racist. NYC Educator admonished the student telling him not to talk about other teachers in the classroom and offered to talk to the student privately. The student continued, saying that his science teacher was racist because he yells at everyone. NYC Educator explained that that doesn’t make the teacher racist and got him to sit down and do his work. But it left NYC Educator with some concerns about the implications of students making unfounded claims.
Education
Gourmet Edubloggers
Scott McLeod's blogtweetcook.org—an unlikely digital cookbook for edubloggers and tweeters—now has 22 recipes, including one for Roasted Halibut with Banana-Orange Relish. Well, well, well ...
Education
Unintended Consequence
Renee Moore: a research project at a Mississippi community college finds that implementation of the state's high school exit exam in English seems to correlate with poorer student writing skills.
Education
Community Organizer
Eight grade teacher Ariel Sacks fears that she has failed, due partly to the day-to-day pressures of teaching, to cultivate a genuinely responsive learning community in her classroom:
Reading & Literacy
Social Reading
Will Richardson explains that, in the not too distant future, reading will no longer be considered a solitary pursuit. It's a shift in literacy, he suggests, that teachers need to be attuned to--and can perhaps take advantage of.