Tonight I was over on Tom Vander Ark’s blog. TVA, you might remember, was formerly of Bill Gates’ ed foundation and one of the short-listed candidates in the last LAUSD Superintendent search–the one that yielded. . . da-da-da-dah. . . Admiral Brewer. He’s posted a bit from Fareed Zakaria’s interview of Eric Schmidt, the CEO [...]
Posts under ‘Creativity in Teaching’
Resegregation: What I Worry About
Anthony Cody, a National Board-certified teacher in the Bay Area, has launched a project to get teachers to write to President Obama. He’s planning on gathering the letters and mailing them to the White House on November 23rd. Here’s mine:
Dear President Obama,
I’m not a worrywart by nature. I teach 5th grade in a high-poverty school [...]
Teacher Misconduct?
A few weeks ago the LA Times did an expose on a teachers being kept out of the classroom at full pay because of misconduct or allegations of misconduct. Here’s a new movie coming out on the NY equivalent. While the cases in the LA Times story seemed to show misconduct, there is also the [...]
Buy-bye Brewer II
In today’s LA Times, Steve Lopez, who’s awesome at pitbulling (aka tattling out) public officials to make them accountable, wrote a great column describing eating with Brewer at–where else?!–the Pacific Dining Car.
$16.95 crab cake appetizers and $28.95 salads later, he requested the Superintendent’s expense accounts. Here’s what happened:
When the documents arrived, much of the information [...]
Buy-bye Brewer?
All week LA’s newsmedia have been buzzing excitedly about the possibility that flailing David Brewer might be forced out or bought out or somehow thrown overboard the leaky ship that is LAUSD. The LA Times (which, not so by the way, has rolled its education blog, The Homeroom, into a new blog that covers not [...]
Thanksgiving Tales
The #1 most emailed article at the LA Times today concerns a controversy over kindergarteners from one Claremont elementary school dressing up as Native Americans and trekking over to visit kids at another Claremont elementary who would dress as Pilgrims. Apparently, a mom/Seneca/professor of Native American literature, along with some friends and colleagues who also [...]
Thank God We’re Not Washington, D.C.
I just discovered an amazing, horrific series done last year by The Washington Post investigating D.C.’s school district. Bureaucratic red tape, mismanagement, fraud, outright thievery! Granted, educating in D.C. is tougher than in LA because the US Congress, not any particular state, controls funding for the District, and so they get buffeted by all sorts [...]
And Now for Something Less Fun
A Safe Classroom
Today’s LA Times featured a heartbreaking story about a 14 year-old, learning diabled boy named Jeremiah Lasater who shot himself in the boys’ bathroom of his Acton high school on Monday. He was 6′ 5, awkward, and nerdy, according to kids quoted in the article. He’d been bullied for quite some time, though [...]
Aniboom & Scratch
IF YOU CAN’T BEAT THEM…
There’s no avoiding it. Chances are, if you have a kid older than 5, they’re going to want to be on the computer. And they’re going to want to play games. Often, rather violent games. Boys, especially.
I tried keeping guns out of the house for years, but [...]
Let’s Start With Some Fun
Glogster
My 6th grader came home the first week of school desperate not to bend a 24” x 12” sheet of green construction paper. He guarded it like a secret service agent on a presidential candidate.
“What’s that for?” I asked.
“My ‘All About Me’ project,” he replied glumly. “I’ve got to cut and paste all about me.”
The [...]
