Tag: education

It has been my custom to post the essay portion of Teacher’s Lounge here at Docudharma an hour or so after posting Teacher’s Lounge at Daily Kos.  That’s about when the conversation slows down a bit.

I’m modifying this one a bit because it really is specifically about Daily Kos in many ways.  Or maybe it’s not.

I’ll let you decide…

If anything defines the thrust of my postings here, it is a repeated exhortation both to myself and to others to think about things differently.  To me, this is of upmost importance.  Far too often, we are limited in our thinking by predefined boundaries or conceptions.  This has the result of limiting our answer set to the various questions we ask ourselves, often without our even knowing it.

This is not an original thought on my part: what is more a cliché of our times than to “think outside the box”?  Yet, we do not think outside the box very often at all, and no place less than in the political arena.  Take, for example, the issue of public education in American politics.  What are the major political issues relating to this subject?  Vouchers, class size, teachers’ unions, merit pay, increased spending per student, standardized testing, and charter schools.  These issues have been the major political issues regarding public education for at least the last decade, the period of time that I have been a voting citizen in the US.  And the sides in the debate are fairly static; Democrats are good for reducing class size, higher spending per student, and supporting teachers’ unions, Republicans are good for vouchers, charter schools, and supporters of merit pay and standardized testing.  We are left with both a supposed “crisis” in public education which is persistent (and in many ways mythical) as well as with a static debate, with political impasse allowing for these issues to remain dominant and no theoretical reforms ever fully implemented.  Ideas outside of this spectrum, such as the expansion of either the school day or school year, tend to lack partisan support from either side and languish, undebated and unimplemented.
 

Crossposted at Daily Kos as part of Teacher’s Lounge.

School stopped.

For me it was at 8pm last night, except for a visit to campus to pick up a midterm project…which didn’t actually happen because the student had an error she needed to fix.  Yesterday I learned that there was a silver lining in the 4 bomb threats we have had in the past 17 days.  Evacuating the campus wrought havoc on midterm exams being given, so they cut us slack on turning in the midterm grades.  I’m taking advantage of that and passing on some of that beneficence on to my student. 

She’s doing the class the hard way, by individualized instruction.  And I’m taking a constructivist approach.  She says she’s having fun.  Cool.

Anyway, school does not exist except as a place full of people for the next 60 hours or so.  Neither will the web, except for brief moments.  The world is stopping for a little all-about-me time.  Or maybe all about us.  And the Us will certainly vary depending on one’s point of view.

Debbie and I have our ceremony on campus tomorrow.  The college’s chaplain is going to officiate in his best Presbyterian mode.  Always best, I figured, to let an artists work in their own medium.  We each will have family present.  Debbie’s twin brother and his wife and her cousin came from Southern California.  My sister frosti has come from Oregon.  And we have friends who are coming.  I expect to cry at some point.

———————-

Numbers.

They serve as the ultimate descriptive methodology. They can be misleading, but if used responsibly they also are vital to understanding the way the world works.

To me, they serve as a starting point for discussion.

I believe health care and education are the twin pillars of an equitable society. They should be the two most important areas of government involvement. The two numbers in the title of this essay – 5.5 and 1.12 – are linked to health care and education in a big way.

Any guesses as to their meaning? Details below the fold.

(Updated with permalink)Many of you here at Docudharma really helped to get the early word out about this project when Lynxgirl posted this diary, so you might enjoy this little follow-up. You may even agree that this is cooler than Greenland, although that’s not saying much these days.

Click on the link below and first there’s a great Myles O’Brien piece about Gore and climate change. But stay tuned because right after, you’ll see a lovely piece about Blanket the Globe. First Gore. Then my daughter, Casey. Then a bit about the Solar Decathlon and the battle over water with Bill Richardson. Great company!

Click here for the CNN Student News newscast.

The newscast and accompanying photo album are terrific.

Have you, your kids, your students, your grandkids, your neighbors, your friends, made squares?  If so, be sure to find their art work in the BTG slide show.  If not, Why?  Everything you need is right on the website.

(proud mama over at T&P)

Bhudydharma suggested ways that we could make things better and undo the mess of the Bush administration. Herewith mine — abolish No Child Left Behind. Bob Herbert provides reasons why this travesty of a law should be abolished.

Tuesday night I had a quiz scheduled for my Java I class.  At least I call them quizzes.  Everyone knows they are exams, but calling it a quiz is an attemtpt to lessen the pressure.  I count the overall grade on the quizzes as 25% of the total grade and count their best 5 out of 6, so each quiz is really 5% of the total grade, with one mulligan. 

Projects (aka homework: programs they have to create) counts 50% of the grade.  The final projects, which are individually created to be different for each student, counts 20% and the catch-all “classroom participation” is the other 5%.

Anyway, after letting them ask any question they wanted for the first 15 minutes, we started the quiz at 6:15pm.  At around 6:35 one of my students finished (she’s good!), asked when she should return and went to her car “to chill.”

At 6:40pm the alarms went off.

On the one hand I have never been someone who celebrates “special occurences” since I have always believed that each event is special in its own way.  On the other hand my past bouts with my OCD have imbued a certain Monk-like behavior as regards to numbers.

Today is the 100^th consecutive week with a Teacher’s Lounge.  The special meaning that holds for me right now is that it means in 4 more editions, TL will reach having existed for two years and on the following Saturday will be it’s 2^nd birthday.  If the calendar went metric, maybe I wouldn’t have to quibble about this. 🙂

But I’ll start planning (famous procrastinator words) something bigger for next month.

Meanwhile there is today.  What I would like to generate is some feedback.

It’s my plan every Saturday to post the essay portion of Teacher’s Lounge as a diary here.  So sometimes I’m going to mention Docudharma as if it is some other place.

Having no time…or a topic…this morning, I took the fall back position…

I’ve been a teacher for 31 years.

Never in any of that time was it not the case that students wanted me to teach to the test.  “Is this going to be on the test?” is the single most asked question I have received.  If I were to tell the students the material was not on the test, the majority would have tuned out immediately.

There have been the few…a very thin layer indeed…who have actually wanted to learn the material deeply, who asked, “Why?” and weren’t content with “Because.” as an answer.  I have cherished each of those students.  They are the reason I have been able to come back to teach every year.  It is for them that I refuse to give up.