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Thursday, August 2, 2012

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When Talking and Listening Are Not Enough

A reader responds to another post:
I agree we need to do all of what you say, god knows I do, but I’m worried that we may exchange the support we give to each other and ourselves for a quiet waiting, a further hunkering down. Make no mistake, teaching is a gender issue for all of us as well as anything else. We are in a classic abusive relationship with ed deform. Most of us are women, and we are being treated in a traditionally determined way because of it. We are being treated like children: told what to do, how to think, our professional lives run from the top, told to “shut up and teach.”
This year, the state I teach in underwent the most devastating pension theft in the country. There were groups that escaped unscathed:judges, correctional officers, and state police. The word was that the legislature couldn’t 


Should You Game the System?

in response to a post about the meaning of fiction in our lives today, a reader sent this advice:
To my dear teachers of America,
I ask you to game the system. Yes, you must teach how to tackle the test, you must teach how to use elimination to solve multiple choice questions. But you can ALSO teach the real thing. Who is stopping you? Take extra classes. Use the normal classes to teach according to the system but take extra ones to really teach.
We are accustomed to a system that works and is now broken. But despair not. Those of us who were product of broken systems did not wait for system 



Campaign Contributions Matter

A reader reports on the campaign contributions of a major charter school owner in Ohio.
Okay, here’s some more numbers that will astound you:
David Brennan founded White Hat Management Company in 1998. The company is a charter school management group with approximately 30 schools, mostly in Ohio, including an online charter and numerous “dropout recovery” schools (http://www.whitehatmgmt.com).
David Brennan’s campaign donations over



Teachers: Keep Talking, Keep Listening

In response to the discussion about why teachers are silent, this reader writes:
The climate of fear and distrust can undermine a teacher’s self confidence – can make a person begin to doubt his/her own competence and perceptions about what students need to succeed.  With the teachers around us trying to keep their jobs and staying silent in the face of harmful policies, we lose our sense of trust in ourselves and our process of learning and working together to bring our students along.  The undermining of the professionalism of teachers, the quieting of teachers’ voices is a fact of life today.  For whatever reason the public is continuing to scapegoat us perhaps because they do not want to look at the realities of poverty and the price tag of really saving our country’s children.  We have to talk to one another.  We have to reach out and 



Time for Roland Fryer to Give Back His Pay

Today, Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post has an editorial simultaneously praising the New Teacher Project report called “The Irreplaceables” (those fabulous young teachers who know how to raise test scores [in one year] but are leaving the classroom) and the Roland Fryer study on loss aversion. The Post says that if New York City took Fryer’s recommendation, paid $4,000 upfront to teachers, and then took it away if the scores don’t go up, that would be a huge improvement in holding onto the “irreplaceables” while raising test scores.
Whew. The city has been cutting schools’ budgets, yet now it is going to come up with millions to try the latest


Investigating The E-Scam in Ohio

Ohio is utopia for sham reform. In that state, two major charter operators have given generously to politicians, and their campaign contributions have been ilke yeast in an oven. A small amount goes a long, long way in returns to them.
The good news is that the word is getting out. This article in a Cincinnati journal sets out the indisputable facts about the e-schools: Big profits for the owners, poor education for the kids.
Eventually the public will understand that they are being bamboozled, and some politicians might stand up and 



Teachers, Be Silent No More

This reader says–in response to an earlier post– there is a way for teachers to get involved in fighting for public education without risking their jobs.
Perhaps it would be easier to contact their publicists, agents, or managers:
1. Dave Grohl – Foo Fighters – Agent: Don Muller – WME 1325 Avenue Of The Americas, New York, NY 10019 T.212.586.5100 F.212.246.3583
2. Adam Levine – Maroon 5 singer – Manger: Career Artist Management – 1100 Glendon Avenue, Suite 1100 | Los Angeles, CA 90024 |310.776.7640 (p) | 310.776.7659 (f)
3. Jack Black – Agent: WME 1325 Avenue Of The Americas, New York, NY 10019 T.212.586.5100 F.212.246.3583
4. Meryl Streep – Publicist: Leslee Dart. Dart Group. 90 Park Avenue. 19th Floor. New York, NY 10016. Phone: 212-277-7555.
5. Viola Davis – Agent: Agency for the Performing Arts (APA) 45 West 45th St. 4th floor, New York, NY 10036 T. 212.687.0092 F. 212.245.5062
6. Morgan Freeman – Publicist: Stan Rosenfield & Associates, Inc., 2029 Century Park E., Suite 1190, Los Angeles, CA 90067, USA. Phone: (310) 286-7474, Fax: (310) 286-2255.
7. Josh Groban
8. Maggie Gyllenhaal (last, but not least)
I’m not sure if these are correct.  I pieced the information together from various sources found on the Internet.  I also noticed that some of these celebs have official website forums and facebook pages.  Maybe if enough teachers started posting the truth, it would get noticed.