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“Hit a Jew” Day. Um, er…

heather — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 22:41:05 +0000

I’m not sure what one can say about this latest story. AP reports that a number of students at a St Louis middle school are facing suspension for a spirit day gone awry. But how “Hug a Friend Day” de-evolved into “Hit a Jew Day” is beyond me. (...)
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Post tags: character, Character Education, critical thinking, diversity, Ed Tech, integration, life long learners, new teachers, reform, school accountability, student safe, technology, Title I, tolerence, writing

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Comment on Dangerously Irrelevant’s “Ed Tech Quarantine?”

heather — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 13:01:19 +0000

Sometimes I get a mental check at how new to edublogging I am. I just discovered Dangerously Irrelevant, can you believe it? Anyway, I like the guy’s style. So he just posted an interesting article titled, “Ed Tech Quarantine,” that wonders “whether we technology early adopters need a self-imposed moratorium on talking about new technology tools…”

I’ve been saying something like this for a while. It is very important for those of us who have discovered the value of technology in education to be very careful in how we pitch our programs and in how we attempt adoption. We’ve all seen eyes glaze over as we talk Twitter. We’ve all seen teachers check their watches as we preach about interactive whiteboards.

I have found, however, that there are ways to speak the language of these more traditional educators. Keep talking in metaphor. As I have said before, “Ed Tech is the new Home Ec and Shop,” and NOT teaching technology is preparing students only for OUR future, not THEIRS.

Technology awareness and literacy are not just elite, honors-bound classes anymore. These are the blue-collar skills of our students’ generation. So, while I agree with Dangerously Irrelevant’s musings of respect, I still know that we can’t drop the standard entirely. (And by standard I mean the whole banner-flapping- astride-a-horse-in-an-Errol-Flynn-movie kind of thing.)

I commented on the post as follows:(...)
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Post tags: 2008, achievement gap, data, Ed Tech, education policy, ELA, integration, Language Arts, middle school, student safe, teaching, technology, Title I

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Don’t Knock the Less Experienced Teacher

heather — Fri, 23 May 2008 17:41:59 +0000

Look, we all know the statistics. Many of the hardest-to-teach classes are being taught by the least experienced teachers. According to Education Week, a study was recently conducted in Philadeliphia evaluating 9th graders, “the make-or-break year for many students on the path to dropping out of school” which found that “students are more likely than their upper-grade peers to be taught by inexperienced, uncertified teachers.”

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. (...)
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