Bad Threats
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| I'll get you my pretty and your little dog too! |
It's a lesson from Teacher Basics 101. Don't make a threat if you can't live with the consequences.
Do not tell your students that if they don't hand in the homework, you'll fail them for the year. Don't tell your students that everybody runs a four-minute mile or everybody's off the team. And never, ever tell an unruly class that if you hear "one more peep," everybody gets a detention.
The Masters of Reforming Our Nation's Schools have no teaching experience to their collective names, and so they've been breaking the Bad Threat rule with abandon, and children are paying the price.
There are two parts to a bad threat.
Part I is the expectation.
We've heard plenty about the "soft bigotry of low expectations." And Michael Gerson wasn't entirely wrong-- we have a history of all too often writing off students because of poverty or race or chaotic home life or not-so-brightness. Too often we really have held our most challenged students to no expectation at all.
But for the soft bigotry of low expectations, we have substituted the hard tyranny of ridiculous
Essay-Grading Software & Peripatetic Penguins
When Is Your Last Teaching Day of School?
Do not tell your students that if they don't hand in the homework, you'll fail them for the year. Don't tell your students that everybody runs a four-minute mile or everybody's off the team. And never, ever tell an unruly class that if you hear "one more peep," everybody gets a detention.
The Masters of Reforming Our Nation's Schools have no teaching experience to their collective names, and so they've been breaking the Bad Threat rule with abandon, and children are paying the price.
There are two parts to a bad threat.
Part I is the expectation.
We've heard plenty about the "soft bigotry of low expectations." And Michael Gerson wasn't entirely wrong-- we have a history of all too often writing off students because of poverty or race or chaotic home life or not-so-brightness. Too often we really have held our most challenged students to no expectation at all.
But for the soft bigotry of low expectations, we have substituted the hard tyranny of ridiculous
Essay-Grading Software & Peripatetic Penguins
Education Week has just run an article by Caralee J. Adams announcing (again) the rise of essay-grading software. There are so many things wrong with this that I literally do not know where to begin, so I will use the device of subheadings to create the illusion of order and organization even though I promise none. But before I begin, I just want to mention the image of a plethora of peripatetic p
When Is Your Last Teaching Day of School?
Years ago, the Tax Foundation hit upon a great tool for illustrating how large our individual tax load is-- Tax Freedom Day. Starting from January 1, how many days would Americans (or residents of your state, if you break it down that way) have to work just to pay off taxes.In a small piece of PR serendipity, Tax Freedom Day falls in April in most states. By some mid-April day, all Americans have