Posted in Policy, Practice on Mar 20th, 2009 15 Comments »
I am absolutely convinced that teachers developing solid relationships with students, and encouraging students to develop similar caring relationships with their peers, is a key to a successful classroom.
During my career as a community organizer, we used to say that successful organizing was just another word for relationship-building.
I believe President Obama, a former community organizer, [...]
Read Full Post »
Posted in Practice on Mar 15th, 2009 3 Comments »
(crossposted at Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites Of The Day)
A few days ago I wrote about Jim Burke’s great blog post on Metaphors We Teach By. In it, he wrote:
We are the metaphors we choose. If you want to change your world, change your metaphor. Don Graves, master writing teacher and mentor to so many, said [...]
Read Full Post »
Dangerously Irrelevant: Beware outside consultants? – Part 2, Ruby Payne started a whole slew of arguments about poverty. Can education “fix” poverty? Can eduction be effective without addressing the underlying poverty of the poor? There were a lot of assumptions, especially among those with a deficit view, that I’ll sum up as “poor folks, have [...]
Read Full Post »
Larry Ferlazzo shares this “winner” from David Duebelbeiss Sixth Edition of the ELL/ESL/EFL Blog Carnival. It discusses the misguided efforts of Florida legislators to eliminate specific training for teachers of English Language Learners. It shares some quotes from a teacher name Holly, who feels she doesn’t need special training for her job, teaching [...]
Read Full Post »
I was having a brief discussion on Skype today with Scott McLeod where I shared some things that are going down at my school site, and he ended up asking me a hard, but good questions about it. Here is the background…
Next year, my school site will be getting “help” from outsiders. There is displeasure [...]
Read Full Post »
