A rose by another name…
Dr. Dorn challenged me to think of a new term, so I’ve decided that for folks who are clearly sucking at the teat of public and private philanthropic dollars (I’m looking at you Michelle Rhee and Wendy Kopp) deserve the term edu-kleptocrats. For those spreading their largess and influence (Bill Gates, Rep. George Miller, New Venture Funds, the Walton Family — the ones in Arkansas) the term edu-oligarchs fits, since they have undo influence and are in no way creating a “free” or “open” market for ideas, students, or anyone but themselves and their favored kleptocratic allies. I think this fits well with the political zeitgeist of the time with the when folks will cry victim at the same time they impose Soviet-style strong-arm tactics (I’ll leave it to you to decide if that refers to Eva Moskowitz or Putin in the Ukraine).
Obviously these terms are too strong a term for folks who are just in love
Human Rights lesson done right…
So way back, in the dim mist of time (before winter break), I finished a unit on human rights loosely based on an idea from a really poorly executed unit that I first heard about here. The unit had students reading the novel Esperanza Rising, while looking at her life through the lens of a legal document, the UN Declaration of the Rights of the Child. On the whole, the unit worked very well, and t
Week 20-24: Where did the hours go?
So between a week up at Sly Park in the Sierra, parent conferences, and the craziness brought on my an early spring in California, I have become a very poor correspondent about goings on in my classroom. This is the time (before spring break) when it can become a grind, for the kids, and for me. Time goes both fast (look at how these posts have gotten away from me) and s-l-o-w, stretching everyon