Teacher fired for using broom to stop student fight wants her job back
Two students started fighting violently in a Detroit high school classroom, knocking over desks, and a teacher grabbed a broom to try to break it up. She struck one of the fighting boys and was fired for her action. Now she wants her job back — and she’s getting a lot of unexpected support. According […]
8th grade assignment: Write essay about whether Holocaust was real or made up
This is a story about some school district leaders who need some education — fast. In an effort to have students meet Common Core standards relating to critical thinking, a group of eighth grade teachers in the Rialto Unified School District designed an assignment (see document below) that asked students to write an essay arguing […]
You have no clue what school nurses really do
School nurses matter enormously, though you couldn’t tell by the amount of attention they get from policy-makers (and even parents when it comes time to distribute end-of-year gifts). School districts that cut their budgets have no problem eliminating school nurses or forcing a single nurse to cover a number of schools, and increasingly teachers and […]
A rather unusual ‘thank you’ to teachers
Here’s a rather unusual appreciation of teachers for Teacher Appreciation Week, an annual event started back in 1984 by the Parent Teachers Association. The PTA offers a number of suggestions about how to appreciate teachers, including writing letters of thanks to them and tweeting at #ThankATeacher, though a number of teachers I know would feel more […]
U.S. judge: It’s ridiculous to judge teachers by test scores of students they don’t have, but it’s legal in Florida
“Justice? You get justice in the next world, in this world you have the law.” ― William Gaddis, A Frolic of His Own A federal judge in Florida said that it is wildly unfair that the state evaluates many teachers on the standardized test scores of students they don’t have or subjects they don’t […]
5-6-14 The Answer Sheet
The Answer Sheet: What ‘setting high expectations’ for all students really meansHow many times have you heard that schools need to create “a culture of high expectations” for all students? What exactly is that? Esther Quintero, a research associate at the nonprofit Albert Shanker Institute, explains in this post, which first appeared on the institute’s blog. By Esther Quintero What exactly is “