THE BECOMING RADICAL
EMPATHYEDUCATES!
the becoming radical
A Place for a Pedagogy of Kindness
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The Big Topic on Campus: Racial ‘Microaggressions’
A student performed a monologue in March in which he describes how he was misidentified as the help at a cocktail party he attended in the play, “I, Too, Am Harvard,” in Cambridge, Mass. Credit; Gretchen Ertl for The New York Times By Tanzina Vega | Originally […]
The Science of ‘Paying It Forward’
Graphic; Olimpia Zagnoli By Milena Tsvetkova and Michael Macy | Originally Published at Gray Matter. The New York times. March 14, 2014 ONE morning in December of 2012, at the drive-through window of a Tim Hortons coffee shop in Winnipeg, Manitoba, a customer paid for her order […]
MAR 19
Liberals and Tea Party Find Common Ground with Common Core
By Karen Wolfe | Originally Published at LA Progressive. March 19, 2014 Few if any political issues have brought together liberals and the tea party to the extent that the Common Core State Standards have. How can something be equally objectionable to political opposites? Tea partiers ideologically […]
New Extremists In The Education Debate
By Jeff Bryant | Education Opportunity Network. March 19, 2014 For people who like to think of themselves as being “exceptional,” Americans can sometimes abandon the very principles their exceptionality is founded on. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the current debate of education policy. A […]
NPR Whitewashes “Grit” Narrative
By Paul L. Thomas, Ed.D. | Originally Published at The Becoming Radical. March 17, 2014 Albeit from different ideologies, NPR and Fox News have something really disturbing in common: Bias masked as, to use the Fox slogan, “fair and balanced.” In fact, the breezy tone of NPR […]
MAR 18
Were Charter Teachers and Students Pressured to Rally for Charter Schools in Albany?
Photograph; Eva Moskowitz, CEO and Founder of the Success Academy (photo courtesy of House Committee on Education and the Workforce Democrats, CC 2.0) By Zoe Carpenter | Originally Published at The Nation. March 14, 2014 On the first Tuesday in March, thousands of students, parents and teachers […]
MAR 17
Zero-Tolerance Strikes Again: Holding Up Three Fingers in a Photo Got this 15-Year-Old Suspended
By Sarah Fuss | Originally Published at TakePart. March 12, 2014 Dontadrian Bruce is the kind of kid the U.S. Departments of Education and Justice might have had in mind when they released the new school disciplinary guidelines in January. The new federal approach urges schools to […]
The Consciousness Gap in Education – An Equity Imperative
By Dorinda Carter Andrews | Originally Published at AcademiaEdu. March 10, 2014 In this talk, Dorinda Carter Andrews challenges us to consider how gaps in critical consciousness and mindsets for adults and students in schools prevent us from providing equitable schooling experiences for all students. Specifically, Carter […]
MAR 16
A Letter From a Parent; Why My Children Will Opt Out
Graphic; Opt-Out Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System/AngertAesthetics Originally Published by Ricardo Rosa | March 16, 2014 | Download Flyer Opt-Out Massachusetts I often hear that parental voices are needed in our educational system. Your response to this letter will determine whether or not you truly mean to include […]
Kansas Illegally Underfunds Poorer School Districts, Court Rules
Kindergarten students in Kansas City, Kan., run during a physical education class at Frank Rushton Elementary School, which has a high percentage of poor and at-risk children. (John Hanna / Associated Press / January 9, 2014) By Alana Semuels | Los Angeles Times. March 7, 2014, 10:43 […]
MAR 15
Kansas School Funding Is Unconstitutional
\Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback listens to kindergarten students during a class on Jan. 23 at Roesland Elementary School in Roeland Park, Ks.John Milburn/AP Originally Published at Education Justice. March 14, 2014 After a 16-day trial in Gannon v. State of Kansas, a three-judge panel found that the […]
Status Quo at Elite New York Schools: Few Blacks and Hispanics
Photograph; Hill Street Studios/Getty By Al Baker | Originally Published at The New York Times. March 11, 2014 Seven black students have been offered a chance to start classes at Stuyvesant High School in September, two fewer than received offers last year. For Hispanics, the number has […]
Talk about the Passion
The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. “The Second Coming,” William Butler Yeats All across the upstate of South Carolina recently, yard signs have been appearing: Stop Common Core (see the one held in the photo below): Stop Common Core from Stop Common Core in South Carolina For those of us who have rejected the Common Core movement from the beginning, h
MAR 20
What’s Wrong with Teacher Education?
I belong to two communities that are central to my life—educators and cyclists. So when a cyclist and friend sent me an article on the importance of how cyclists conduct themselves as groups on the roads, I was struck by the opening quote included by the writer, Richard Fries: “We have met the enemy and he is us.” –Walt Kelly, Pogo Immediately, the spirit of the article—many times motorist antag
From Baldwin to Coates: Denying Racism, Ignoring Evidence
I have offered two posts confronting a pattern in the U.S. of denying racism (usually arguing class instead) despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary: Denying Racism Has an Evidence Problem The Mistrial of Jordan Davis: More Evidence Problems for Denying Racism As a third post, I invite you to read and view James Baldwin and Ta-Nehisi Coates*: Is James Baldwin America’s Greatest Essayist?,
James Baldwin: Challenging Authors (final cover)
James Baldwin: Challenging Authors A. Scott Henderson and P. L. Thomas, editors Furman University Sense Publishers Critical Literacy Teaching Series: Challenging Authors and Genres Original Art by Roy Thinnes
MAR 19
Reading Out of Context: “But there was something missing,” Walter Dean Myers
ac·a·dem·ic: adjective \a-kə-ˈde-mik\ having no practical importance; not involving or relating to anything real or practical. ### Currently, I have three seniors on track to certify as secondary English teachers doing extended field experiences in local schools—one is placed in an eighth-grade ELA class and another is teaching college-bound students in a high school. While observing at the middle
MAR 18
MAR 17
Shiny Happy People: NPR, “Grit,” and “Myths that Deform” pt. 2
hagiography (n.) ha·gi·og·ra·phy \-gē-ˈä-grə-fē, -jē-\ (1) a book about someone’s life that makes it seem better than it really is or was, (2) a biography that praises someone too much [A]s we put into practice an education that critically provokes the learner’s consciousness, we are necessarily working against myths that deform us. As we confront such myths, we also face the dominant power becaus
NPR Whitewashes “Grit” Narrative
Albeit from different ideologies, NPR and Fox News have something really disturbing in common: Bias masked as, to use the Fox slogan, “fair and balanced.” In fact, the breezy tone of NPR makes its masked bias even more sinister than Fox’s essentially cartoonish balance. And thus, when NPR discovers “grit,” we get this: Does Teaching Kids To Get ‘Gritty’ Help Them Get Ahead? While the story does ac
MAR 16
The Self-Defeating South, Words Not Spoken: Racism as a Scar and Cancer
Born and raised in a very small rural town in upstate South Carolina, I have lived my entire 53 years in the South. Most of that life has been spent teaching, and a large span of that career was in the high school I attended, among children mostly just like me, where we explored literature. A key text for me each year was William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily,” and if you are not from the South, an
MAR 14
AlterNet: Now That the SAT’s Writing Section is Gone, It’s Time to Rethink How We Teach Composition
Now That the SAT’s Writing Section is Gone, It’s Time to Rethink How We Teach Composition