I’m the new English Department Chair for my middle school, and I’ve been set to lead a group of teachers who are very gifted, very diverse in their teaching styles, and very outspoken. (...)
Read the rest of Advice for a Future Department Head (992 words)

© heather for tweenteacher.com, 2009. | Permalink | 7 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: budget, Curriculum, department head, ELA, funding, middle school, Title I

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One the one hand, we are to help our students function and advance in their use of technology. On the other hand, our budget to do so is constantly cut and slashed in a bloody display of shortsightedness.

I have blogged before that if you have any involvement in technology in the school, or even if you just see the writing on the wall, that using technology as a tool is the future for our students, then we all find ourselves in a special interest group.

Members of our group cross political boundaries. The use of technology and providing the tools to learn it are of the utmost importance to our country’s future. But once again, the funding to teach these vital skills is being threatened.

As a member of the national Ed Tech Action Network, I receive emails when key bills are about to be passed so that my voice can be heard. I hope that you too will lend your voice to this battle.

ETAN says,

Last week, the House of Representatives’ Appropriations subcommittee approved a 63 percent cut in the Enhancing Education Through Technology (EETT) Program. If this cut becomes law, it will leave many school districts without funding for hardware, software and technology professional development, placing our students at a distinct skills and knowledge disadvantage when they enter the 21st century job market.

In order to get your opinion out there, please click on the link below (or cut and past the URL into your address bar). ETAN makes it all easy to get your stance out there. You can sign and send the existing letter or change it up in your own words. The representatives rarely read the letters, but they do count the number that they receive. And that determines their vote. So if we send enough letters, they will represent us.

http://capwiz.com/edtech/issues/alert/?alertid=13735446

Help education and technology’s role in it. Help our students to achieve in the 21st Century. Write your representative today.

ETAN’s made it easy.

Thanks,

Tweenteacher

© heather for tweenteacher.com, 2009. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: budget, Ed Tech, education, EETT, ETAN, funding

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Education Weekly is reporting that there can be negative consequences from some merit pay programs.  It cites evidence from the private sector, claiming that offerring extra compensation pay hasn’t worked in the past.  Yet ASCD Smartbrief is also reporting that “Obama Wants Teaching Shaken Up” by supporting a merit pay initiative.

What they are failing to mention, however, is that merit pay is a symptomatic attempt to solve the problem of disproportionate base salaries.  If teachers were paid as they should be, there wouldn’t be a need for the nickle-and-diming that is the possibility of merit pay.

For merit pay is little more than a green card of hours for recognition.  If a teacher works twice as hard as another teacher, shouldn’t that teacher earn more than their colleague?  Period.

Merit pay will not be the difference in allowing a teacher the chance at homeownership.  Hell, with the amount that we hear bantered about, we’re only talking about the equivalent to a trip to the grocery store once a quarter.

It this really what we are fighting for and what we are going to accept as enough?

If we’re talking about equity here, why not charge by the hour?  I don’t need the hourly of a lawyer to know that I should be paid for the time I put in.  At a teacher’s hourly rate (not a substitute’s rate, mind you – they get paid more per hour than I do), if I charged for every hour I did to just produce the minimum that it took to do my job, I would be paid 30 more hours a week.  That would bring in approximately $30,000 more per year.

If it’s our only choice, I won’t refuse some monetary recognition, but don’t think for a second that with the passing of merit pay I won’t still be yelling for fair pay.

© heather for tweenteacher.com, 2009. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: budget, merit pay, performance pay

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OK, guys.  So I got it from the horse’s mouth at CUE.  According to the ISTE Director of Governmental Affairs, No Child Left Behind is not going away.  

In the weeks leading up to the election, the Obama administration talked the talk, proving that Educational Technology was on their radar, but if you’ve been listening, the silence on Ed Tech has since become deafening.  (...)
Read the rest of How to be an Ed Tech Advocate (515 words)

© heather for tweenteacher.com, 2009. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: achievement gap, blog, budget, CUE, Ed Tech, education policy, EETT, equity, ETAN, fundraising, internet literacy, k-12, k12, learning, lobbyist, middle school, NCLB, obama, online, school accountability, school funding, technology, Title I, tween, UCI, writing

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(...)
Read the rest of How To Get a Job in Education That You Love (1,455 words)

© heather for tweenteacher.com, 2008. | Permalink | 11 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: 2008, achievement gap, blog, btsa, budget, Careers, Character Education, competition, computers, credential, curriculum design, curriculum development, differentiation, Ed Tech, education, employment, firing, interviewing, jobs, teaching

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© heather for tweenteacher.com, 2008. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: assessments, audit, budget, collaboration, credential, Curriculum, Dave Saba, Ed Tech, education, education policy, ELA, embezzlement, employment, induction, jobs, k-12, k12, Language Arts, merit pay, middle school, school accountability, school funding, teaching, technology, test, Title I

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© heather for tweenteacher.com, 2008. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: budget, character, critical thinking, education, education policy, ELA, employment, equity, firing, honors, jobs, k-12, k12, learning, life long learners, performance pay, teaching

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While I understand the argument, I also know that these young teachers have an advantage that I will not have years down the line: energy.  

When I was in my early years of teaching in my mid-twenties, I was hired to teach at an inner city school.  It was, in fact, the under-funded alternative school for those students kicked out of the other schools.  We had broken glass in the halls, police tape from the weekend still strewn over the kindergarten yard come Monday, and no textbooks.  A classic Michelle Pfieffer/Hilary Swank/Morgan Freeman movie in the making.  

I actually jumped into the deep end of the pool, and there wasn’t any filter, so there was moss on the top and calcium deposits coming from the cracks in the bottom, but it was there that I learned to swim.  (...)
Read the rest of Don’t Knock the Less Experienced Teacher (952 words)

© heather for tweenteacher.com, 2008. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: 100% accountability, 2008, achievement gap, ASCD Brief, ascd community, btsa, budget, Careers, character, collaboration, credential, curriculum development, education, employment, failing, firing, free, induction, integration, jobs, k-12, k12, Language Arts, learning, life long learners, merit pay, middle school, NCLB, new teachers, peer teaching, performance pay, PI, Proficiency, reform, school accountability, school funding, student safe, Title I

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