How things look to a returning Chicago teacher
With the Chicago teachers strike continuing for a fourth day, it makes sense to hear how things look in the Windy City to an actual Chicago teacher. So here’s a piece by Gregory Michie, a new public school teacher in Chicago and senior research sssociate at the Center for Policy Studies and Social Justice at Concordia University Chicago. His new book, “We Don’t Need Another Hero: Struggle, Hope, and Possibilty in the Age of High-Stakes Schooling,” will be published in November by Teachers College Press.
By Gregory Michie
So Mayor Rahm Emanuel says the Chicago Teachers Union is engaging in a “strike of choice.” I’d say it’s more like a strike of choices.
After all, it’s rare that anything is chosen in a vacuum. Choices are made within a context, a climate, and often in response to other choices made at an earlier time.
(Sitthixay Ditthavong/AP)To call what’s happening in Chicago a “strike of choice” is to deny how we got to this point, to conveniently ignore the prelude of choices that came before.
Last year, when E
Is technology sapping children’s creativity?
The technology revolution has sparked a new debate about just how much parents should allow their young children to play with iPads, iPhones and other devices. Here’s a smart look at the issue by early childhood development expert Nancy Carlsson-Paige, a professor emerita of education at Lesley University in Cambridge, Ma., when she won the Embracing the Legacy Award from the Robert F. Kennedy Children’s Action Corps for work over several decades on behalf of children and families. Carlsson-Paige is author of “ Taking Back Childhood” and the mother of two artist sons, Matt and Kyle Damon.
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