In no particular order other than when I remembered them: 1. “Competency-Based Education in Iowa, Down the Pike it Comes” by Shawn Cornally at ThinkThankThunk. Lest you believe that education reform means endless standardized testing to determine teacher pay, here’s an actual idea for education reform that is mind-blowing. I read this in the morning…
read more »I’ve been following the Supreme Court case of Abigail Fisher v. University of Texas with a lot of interest the past month. The case involves a now-22-year-old now-Louisiana State University alum named Abigail Fisher who charges the University of Texas at Austin of denying her admission based on her racial background as a white applicant.…
read more »I lost two students today…two of my favorites. C was a GT phenom. He was. by definition, the perfect student: well-behaved, quiet (but particpiated in everything), super smart, polite. I couldn’t have asked for anything else from this boy. He had missed a few days three weeks ago, but when he didn’t show up this…
read more »October 2011 was a gigantic improvement upon October 2010, and now it’s October 2012 and I live in a world completely unrecognizable from either. First year teachers, this is for you.
read more »It’s almost the end of the 1st 9 weeks. I am counting the days toward Thanksgiving break already. I have taken 1 1/2 days off as mental health days. Normally, I don’t take days off until February, but this year is different. While I’m enjoying some aspects of teachig 5th grade, I’m not where I…
read more »Dearest Texas high school teachers, I just had the chance to go with a couple of collegaues and 16 students to the UIL Student Activities Conference at UT-Austin. It was incredibly rad(1) and we all learned a lot about the different academic and speech events. This year as academic coordinator, I finally have coaches for…
read more »I was making copies a couple of weeks ago and one of the social studies teachers asked me: “So how does it feel to be teaching this year?” I thought this was an odd question. “Uh, same as the last two years I’ve been teaching, I guess,” I replied. “I just mean that now you…
read more »was that he changed his mind, completely, slowly, every time he was confronted with the knowledge that what he thought was the truth wasn’t.
read more »I’ve been a little blog-blocked lately, in part because I’m afraid of producing the exact same kind of entry I’m tired of reading. I’m tired of reading blather from bloggers who pretend to be rational and neutral but refuse to look at the whole story. Why didn’t I see any feminist posts praising Mitt Romney…
read more »Tomorrow, I begin my third year in the classroom and my first year teaching in a testing grade: the ever-challenging 5th grade. I feel as if I am starting all over again. My room is done (the computers are not hooked up yet, but I’m not in a hurry to do that). My plans are…
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