Another Saturday morning - I am still learning about myself
It is Saturday morning.
I am back in a classroom.
It is my normal practice to offer a reflection.
It will as usual be a combination of personal reflection and observation on a larger scale.
I invite you to continue reading.
This was my 2nd complete week, my 3rd overall, in my new school/classroom. By now I know all of my students by name even when they are not in the classroom. I am starting to get a very good sense of their strengths and weaknesses, their personalities. I am even learning about some of their fears, their life situations.
I have also gotten to know more about my fellow faculty and staff. I am finding connections I did not know existed. I have mentioned about those with whom I had prior connections. To this I add an administrator who as a high school student interned with a former Congressman who is a friend, a principal doing his doctoral work in the same program I participated in at Howard, and a special ed teacher who was a student while I was in my first 3 years at Roosevelt (I did not teach or know her, because she was a 10th grader when I arrived, and Government was then a 9th grade course). I am finding a number of people who came to the school deliberately to make a difference - the administrator had taught at two very prestigious elite private schools before coming to us as an English teacher a number of years ago and the math teacher on my team is a graduate of Penn, just to offer two examples.
There were good days and bad days this week. One day this week in one class all of my students were on time, all were still there at the end of the period, and all completed all of their work. That was the first time in any of my classes - usually there are not only absences, there are tardies, and often I have to have a disruptive student removed (far too many of our students lack self control, something that we need to help them with as much as we do their academics). The next morning the principal suggested I compliment them before the entire school when we started the day. I did. Big mistake. That day they were the worst behaved any of my classes has been since I arrived.
Please keep reading.
I am back in a classroom.
It is my normal practice to offer a reflection.
It will as usual be a combination of personal reflection and observation on a larger scale.
I invite you to continue reading.
This was my 2nd complete week, my 3rd overall, in my new school/classroom. By now I know all of my students by name even when they are not in the classroom. I am starting to get a very good sense of their strengths and weaknesses, their personalities. I am even learning about some of their fears, their life situations.
I have also gotten to know more about my fellow faculty and staff. I am finding connections I did not know existed. I have mentioned about those with whom I had prior connections. To this I add an administrator who as a high school student interned with a former Congressman who is a friend, a principal doing his doctoral work in the same program I participated in at Howard, and a special ed teacher who was a student while I was in my first 3 years at Roosevelt (I did not teach or know her, because she was a 10th grader when I arrived, and Government was then a 9th grade course). I am finding a number of people who came to the school deliberately to make a difference - the administrator had taught at two very prestigious elite private schools before coming to us as an English teacher a number of years ago and the math teacher on my team is a graduate of Penn, just to offer two examples.
There were good days and bad days this week. One day this week in one class all of my students were on time, all were still there at the end of the period, and all completed all of their work. That was the first time in any of my classes - usually there are not only absences, there are tardies, and often I have to have a disruptive student removed (far too many of our students lack self control, something that we need to help them with as much as we do their academics). The next morning the principal suggested I compliment them before the entire school when we started the day. I did. Big mistake. That day they were the worst behaved any of my classes has been since I arrived.
Please keep reading.
I am going to disagree slightly with Charles M. Blow
It is not that I think his Saturday New York Times columumn, Dinosaurs and Denial is not well written or lacks substantial good information. It shines on both and I strongly recommend it. He begins by taking Marco Rubio to task, not so much for his original mess of a response on the age of the earth but for his flawed attempt to walk it back by acknowledging that the science is clear - the earth is at least 4.5 billions years old,
But then he hedged: “I just think in America we should have the freedom to teach our children whatever it is we believe. And that means teaching them science. They have to know the science, but also parents have the right to teach them the theology and to reconcile those two things.”Blow acknowledges the problem that Rubio and other Republicans face in their base, citing data that shows "believed that God created humans in their present form within the last 10,000 years." (you can go to the article