Excellent lessons for teachers including their Manifesto found here at Kid’s at Switch.
Look for the helpers.
•December 15, 2012 • Leave a Comment
“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’ To this day, especially in times of ‘disaster,’ I remember my mother’s words, and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers – so many caring people in this world.” – Mister Rogers
End of Innocence
•December 14, 2012 • Leave a Comment“People will see such days that the killer will not know why he kills,
nor the innocent know why he is slain.”
~ The Prophet Muhammad
Trading Tenure for Better Teaching
•December 14, 2012 • Leave a CommentA great post on the importance of having teachers who are passionate about education, reflective of their teaching practice, and willing to make the changes necessary to truly facilitate and promote learning.
The report, “Great Expectations: Teachers’ Views on Elevating the Teaching Profession,” highlights data from Teach Plus’ recent national survey of teachers, showing that 42% of earlier-career teachers (called the “new majority” in the report) support more performance-based tenure and compensation systems, compared to just 15% of my fellow veterans.
As a teacher who has just crossed the line from new majority to veteran status, I understand how experienced teachers feel about the protections afforded them by the tenure system.
I understand because I’ve put in the time and effort necessary to establish myself in the school system. I understand because I, too, value my job security. Sometimes I even understand that it’s easy to get comfortable and fall into doing the same old thing.
But the current lack of accountability is bringing our profession down.
While I value the tenure I’ve been granted, I would be willing to give up that protection to move our profession toward one that emphasizes performance.
Find the full post here on School of Thought.
Cultivating Creativity
•December 13, 2012 • Leave a Comment“Creativity now is as important in education as literacy,
and we should treat it with the same status.”
Sir Ken Robinson, Creativity Expert
From this 2006 Ted Talk, Schools Kill Creativity
This is how the Jibbers interpreted, “Please put your shoes on the shoe rack.”
A Dash of Vanilla
•December 13, 2012 • Leave a CommentLove the scent of a well-worn book. It’s like coming home to visit an old friend.
Image source can be found here.
The Neuroscience of Literature
•December 13, 2012 • Leave a CommentThere is something to be said of great literary classics and what they mean for children. With the upcoming release of the Hobbit, I am reminded of many novels I found fascinating and thought-provoking, others that were fun to read, and still others that were downright boring. That said, I firmly believe that the classics hold a very important key in child development, and the learning of empathy and all things that make us human. When I first read the Hobbit in the ninth grade, a door was opened to a completely different world of imagination and fantasy. I love reading classics because of the beauty in their language, and the nobility of their characters, something that is often times lost in our day-to-day interactions.
At home we follow the Kinza Academy curriculum that places a strong emphasis on classics from a very early age. I wondered about the impact of this on the Jibbers and was pleasantly surprised when at bedtime one night, he asked for the book, “where beds are boats” a line of poetry found in Robert Louis Stevenson’s A Garden of Verses.
So when I came across this very interesting article on the impact of reading classical fiction on the brain, I was obviously intrigued.
It is an exercise that hones our real-life social skills, another body of research suggests. Dr. Oatley and Dr. Mar, in collaboration with several other scientists, reported in two studies, published in 2006 and 2009, that individuals who frequently read fiction seem to be better able to understand other people, empathize with them and see the world from their perspective. This relationship persisted even after the researchers accounted for the possibility that more empathetic individuals might prefer reading novels. A 2010 study by Dr. Mar found a similar result in preschool-age children: the more stories they had read to them, the keener their theory of mind — an effect that was also produced by watching movies but, curiously, not by watching television. (Dr. Mar has conjectured that because children often watch TV alone, but go to the movies with their parents, they may experience more “parent-children conversations about mental states” when it comes to films.)
Fiction, Dr. Oatley notes, “is a particularly useful simulation because negotiating the social world effectively is extremely tricky, requiring us to weigh up myriad interacting instances of cause and effect. Just as computer simulations can help us get to grips with complex problems such as flying a plane or forecasting the weather, so novels, stories and dramas can help us understand the complexities of social life.”
What are your thoughts on reading the classics to children?
Moratorium on Standardized Testing
•December 12, 2012 • Leave a Comment“Asked what he would do if he had the power to make one change to improve teaching, he said he would find more time for teachers to collaborate with each other. And he said that all of the emphasis on innovation in the classroom is well and good, but it doesn’t address the fact that 22 percent of the country’s children live in poverty and that the effects of that affect student achievement.”
When I first heard the term moratorium I was in a ninth grade geography class. We were discussing fishing and drilling and oil. This article on putting a moratorium on standardized testing is interesting. I agree with one point for sure: stop standardized testing. Another point that I also feel strongly about is using standardized test scores as a means of evaluating teacher performance, especially as a teacher of students with special needs. It doesn’t make sense.
I don’t know where this moratorium will lead, but it seems that it may be towards another form of standardized testing. I don’t think that’s the best way to go. There are some other points I sort of agree with, but I’m going to remain cautious. What do you think?
The Revolution will not be Standardized.
•December 12, 2012 • Leave a CommentIf you don’t believe the education pundits, the reformers, the innovators, then how about the students who are products of the school system.
“Noa Gutow-Ellis presents her thoughts on the current state of pedagogy,her hopes for the future of education, and the importance of engendering a love for learning in the classroom.”
Thank you Dangerously Irrelevant for the original post.
A Recycled Orchestra
•December 12, 2012 • 2 CommentsTruly inspirational and a recognition that true learning does not need a classroom.
“Landfill Harmonic is an upcoming feature-length documentary about a remarkable musical orchestra in Paraguay, where young musicians play instruments made from trash. For more information about the film, please visit here.”
black board, white chalk 