Latest News and Comment from Education

Tuesday, April 28, 2020

Teachers union: 'Scream bloody murder' if schools reopen against medical advice - POLITICO

Teachers union: 'Scream bloody murder' if schools reopen against medical advice - POLITICO

Teachers union: 'Scream bloody murder' if schools reopen against medical advice
Schools in most states have been ordered to stay closed the rest of the year or strongly urged to do so.


The nation's two biggest teachers unions say they would consider strikes or major protests if schools reopen without the proper safety measures in place or against the advice of medical experts — raising the possibility of yet more school disruptions.
American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten, previewing a reopening plan first with POLITICO, said funding is needed for a host of public health measures for schools, including personal protective equipment. Collective bargaining, strong enforcement of safety standards and protections from retaliation will be important for teachers and staff so they feel safe to speak up as schools try new approaches, she said.
If schools are reopened without proper safety measures, “you scream bloody murder,” Weingarten said. “And you do everything you can to ... use your public megaphones.”
Teachers are united after more than two years of strikes for more state funding and they have “tremendous power” as advocates for children's safety, said Lily Eskelsen GarcĂ­a, president of the National Education Association. She didn’t rule out strikes if state leaders move prematurely on a reopening of schools, and she said she believes parents would protest too.
“You put all things on the table when it comes to student safety,” Eskelsen GarcĂ­a said. "And ... I don't think we'll be alone."
Teachers are preparing for the possibility of staggered class times, temperature taking, physical distancing and other measures that will create an unrecognizable K-12 classroom experience for students when schools eventually reopen.
Governors in some states have already lifted some restrictions on small businesses like hair salons and elective surgeries. But the eventual reopening of schools will represent a major step, driving a return to normal life — or at least a new normal — perhaps unlike anything else. President Donald Trump said CONTINUE READING: Teachers union: 'Scream bloody murder' if schools reopen against medical advice - POLITICO

Shawgi Tell: Charter Schools Continue Seizing Enormous Sums of Public Funds During Pandemic | Dissident Voice

Charter Schools Continue Seizing Enormous Sums of Public Funds During Pandemic | Dissident Voice

Charter Schools Continue Seizing Enormous Sums of Public Funds During Pandemic

While private businesses like non-profit and for-profit charter schools have been seizing enormous sums of public money for decades,1 they continue to seize hundreds of millions of public dollars during the “COVID Pandemic”—a move that further undermines the nation’s public education system and economy.
The latest example of this massive transfer of public funds to segregated charter schools involves $200 million set aside a few weeks ago for large corporate charter school chains by billionaire Betsy DeVos, U.S. Secretary of Education. This pay-the-rich scheme is taking place in the context of more brutal cuts to public school budgets around the country.
On top of this, in the current crisis, which is worse than the 2008 economic collapse engineered by Wall Street, charter school advocates are also taking virtue-signaling to new heights, casually and repeatedly lauding themselves as saviors and as “tried-and-true online experts,” even though many have ironically(?) turned away from notoriously poor-performing cyber charter schools in this disruptive transition to inefficient digital “communication” at all levels of education. Most people have simply not turned to online charter schools during this crisis. They recognize that online charter schools are subpar and not the way forward. Even well-funded organizations that support charter schools, like the neoliberal Center for Research on Education and Outcomes (CREDO) at Stanford University, bemoan the persistently abysmal performance of cyber charter schools.
The conceited charter school sector believes, however, that this virtue-signaling will suddenly cause people to forget that charter schools are notorious for all sorts of corruption, fraud, and scandal. While the “COVID Pandemic” has overwhelmed many, people have not spontaneously forgotten the poor track record of cyber charter schools or brick-and-mortar charter schools.
The necessity today is for governments at all levels to cease funneling much-needed public funds to private business like charter schools and to direct these funds to public schools that serve 90% of the nation’s students. Public funds CONTINUE READING: Charter Schools Continue Seizing Enormous Sums of Public Funds During Pandemic | Dissident Voice

U.S. congressman: 3 whistleblowers allege political interference in charter school grant - The Washington Post

U.S. congressman: 3 whistleblowers allege political interference in charter school grant - The Washington Post

IDEA charter school network landed grants with political help from Education Department, congressman says




A U.S. congressman is demanding answers from the U.S. Education Department, alleging department employees complained to his office about political interference in the awarding of a multimillion-dollar federal grant to the controversial IDEA charter school network.
Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) sent a letter to the department Monday asking for details and records related to the awarding of the grant. In an interview, Pocan said “three whistleblowers” told his office that professional staff evaluating applications for 2020 grants from the federal Charter School Program had rejected IDEA for new funding, deeming the network “high risk” because of how IDEA leaders previously spent federal funds.


But according to these whistleblowers, Pocan said, professional staff was overruled by political appointees who ordered the funding be awarded to IDEA. The identities of the whistleblowers were not revealed to The Post, nor were the names of the political appointees.
The Education Department did not respond to a request for comment.
IDEA, a Texas-based charter school network with nearly 100 campuses in Texas and Louisiana serving nearly 53,000 students, said in a statement:
"Peer reviewers from education and other fields evaluate grant applications independently from Department of Education staff. In three of the last four Charter Schools Program competitions, spanning two administrations and including the most recent round of grants, the independent reviewers who evaluated applications gave IDEA Public Schools the highest scores of any applicant in the country. (In 2017, IDEA received the second-highest score.) All of the outside reviewers’ scores and comments are public on the Department’s website, and we encourage anyone doubting the strength of IDEA’s applications and our 20-year track record with students to read those reviews.” CONTINUE READING: U.S. congressman: 3 whistleblowers allege political interference in charter school grant - The Washington Post

The Writing Models Dilemma: On Authentic Writing and Avoiding the Tyranny of Rubrics – radical eyes for equity

The Writing Models Dilemma: On Authentic Writing and Avoiding the Tyranny of Rubrics – radical eyes for equity

The Writing Models Dilemma: On Authentic Writing and Avoiding the Tyranny of Rubrics


While my journey to the fields of English and teaching started with science fiction and comic books, a love of reading that was steered to so-called “literature” by my high school English teacher, Lynn Harrill, I walked into my first high school classroom as a teacher of English primarily committed to teaching young people to write.
My goal was not simply to have my students write well, but to write authentically, to write in ways that existed outside traditional classroom essay writing.
Teacher preparation for teaching high school English was for me (and remains mostly so) grounded significantly in teaching literature. As a result, I spent the first 5-10 years as a teacher teaching myself how to be a writing instructor.
Far too many of my practices were quite bad, even harmful. However, one thing kept my writing curriculum afloat—volume. I somehow recognized very early that people learn to write by writing (see LaBrant, 1953).
But I also began my career as a teacher of writing by embracing two contradictory commitments: (1) I was always anti-five-paragraph essay; however, (2) I tended to remain grounded in a (ridiculous) commitment to using an authentic-template approach.
It took me several years to recognize that teaching writing wasn’t about CONTINUE READING: The Writing Models Dilemma: On Authentic Writing and Avoiding the Tyranny of Rubrics – radical eyes for equity

A School Experiment to Remember | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

A School Experiment to Remember | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

A School Experiment to Remember



Between 1933-1941, thirty high schools in the country and over 300 universities and colleges joined an experiment sponsored by the Progressive Education Association.
Called “The Eight Year Study,” each high school decided for itself what curricula, schedules, and class sizes would be. There were no college admission requirements or must-take tests. Old lesson plans were scrapped. One school sent classes into the West Virginia coal region to study unions. Science, history, art, and math were often combined in projects that students and teachers planned together.
Needless to say, there were stumbles also. A few principals blocked the experiment. Some school faculties divided into warring factions.
While there was much variation among the schools, there were also common elements. Many of the large public high schools (of the 30, fifteen were private) created small schools within the larger one. Principals increased the authority of teachers to design and steer the program; teachers crossed departmental boundaries and created a core curriculum (math/science and English/social studies), set aside three hours a day for teams to work with groups of students, and planned weekly units with students.
What happened to these students when they attended college? To find an answer, evaluators established 1,475 pairs of college students, each consisting of a graduate from an experimental school and one graduate of another high school matched as closely as possible as to age, sex, race, social class, and academic performance. They then compared their performance in college.
Evaluators found that graduates of the thirty schools earned a slightly higher CONTINUE READING: A School Experiment to Remember | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Eleven Warning Signs that Privatizers Are Invading Your School District During the Pandemic | Diane Ravitch's blog

Eleven Warning Signs that Privatizers Are Invading Your School District During the Pandemic | Diane Ravitch's blog

Eleven Warning Signs that Privatizers Are Invading Your School District During the Pandemic


“In The Public Interest,” a nonpartisan organization that supports a healthy public sector, has identified eleven warning signs that privatizers are targeting your school district.
Read them and be prepared to defend your public schools from privatizers and profiteers!
Here are the first six. Open the link and learn about the other five:
As students, parents, educators, and school districts struggle to adjust to the Covid-19 pandemic, others see the crisis as an opportunity to escalate their efforts to further privatize public education. For years, “education reformers,” private companies that want to profit from public education dollars, and others have worked to undermine public education by privatizing all aspects of it—from charter schools, to contracted out bus services and cafeterias, to private testing companies, to software and hardware providers touting the benefits of virtual/online education.
With the current need for districts to rapidly switch to distance learning, many of these same privatization CONTINUE READING: Eleven Warning Signs that Privatizers Are Invading Your School District During the Pandemic | Diane Ravitch's blog

Pearson and COVID-19: At Least We Have Connections Academy | deutsch29

Pearson and COVID-19: At Least We Have Connections Academy | deutsch29

Pearson and COVID-19: At Least We Have Connections Academy


The widespread cancellation of standardized testing across America during this COVID-19 pandemic had me wondering about Pearson Learning (PSO as it is known in the stock market), a mammoth education corporation located in the United Kingdom and with offices in the United States.
I have written about Pearson a number of times over the years (see here and here, also). Pearson planned to profit handsomely from the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). That didn’t go as planned. In January 2016, Pearson cut 4,000 jobs.
Pearson’s “restructuring” has continued over the years, and, as one might expect during the coronavirus crisis, appears slated to continue. From TheLayoff.com/pearson-plc:


Sigh…..


“We are, however, announcing today that over the next few months, we will start to move ahead with further plans to simplify the company and make it more efficient.”
  • CEO 4/24/20
(TheLayoff.com advertises itself as “a simple discussion board for all of us who would like to learn more about the rumors or possibility of job cuts in our company.”)
On January 17, 2017, it had its worst loss in a single day since 1986, closing at $7.23 per share.
On April 27, 2020, Pearson ended the day at $5.69 a share, making January 17, 2017 look like, “I wish.”
Time to once again “simplify the company.” However, according to Pearson’s 2020 CONTINUE READING: Pearson and COVID-19: At Least We Have Connections Academy | deutsch29

School in the time of Coronavirus #3 – Some Questions | Live Long and Prosper

School in the time of Coronavirus #3 – Some Questions | Live Long and Prosper

School in the time of Coronavirus #3 – Some Questions


Sadly, this post consists mostly of questions.
What is the impact that the pandemic-induced closure of America’s public schools has had and will have on our children? How are families coping with teaching and learning at home? How are teachers coping with learning the new skills needed to reach their students?
How will public education cope with the economic loss that is sure to come from the coronavirus pandemic? Where does the education of children rank as a priority for state and federal policymakers? Whose voice will be raised in support of public schools?
What will public education look like post-pandemic? Will public education continue to exist? Will states have enough money to fully fund public schools.
Indiana funds three different school systems — public schools, privately run charter schools, and private/parochial schools. How will we have enough money to pay for even one of these three publicly funded school systems? Who will be shortchanged?
ADJUSTMENTS
Teachers, parents, and students have had to adjust to a new model of school. For those with internet access online school has become the norm with daily lessons, group video chats, and independent study. Parents are learning what it means to be a first-year teacher. Young children are losing out on important CONTINUE READING: School in the time of Coronavirus #3 – Some Questions | Live Long and Prosper

How will the decision to re-open schools be made? What will re-opened schools look like? | Ed In The Apple

How will the decision to re-open schools be made? What will re-opened schools look like? | Ed In The Apple

How will the decision to re-open schools be made? What will re-opened schools look like?


“You can’t bring back a life; you can start a new business”
 “There’s no on/off switch”
Sunday morning Mayor de Blasio outlined his “Restart” proposals (See here  on Twitter) and a few hours later Governor Cuomo outlined his “Reimagine” Plan (Read here).
Perhaos, just perhaps, de Blasio and Cuomo could shake hands, virtujally of course, and work together.
Both plans are light on education,
De Blasio appointed a task force that will report out a draft proposal by June 1st, Cuomo spoke in general terms about a phased re-opening based on two weeks of positive data, aka, the curves continuing to decline.
Cuomo mused about the whether schools should open in the summer. Summer schools to make up for remote learning losses, and, acknowledged that we were unprepared for the instantaneous switch from classroom instruction to remote CONTINUE READING: How will the decision to re-open schools be made? What will re-opened schools look like? | Ed In The Apple

Headlines: LAUSD Earns High Marks For “Grab And Go”, Rough Financial Times Coming and More on Elections. – Los Angeles Education Examiner

Headlines: LAUSD Earns High Marks For “Grab And Go”, Rough Financial Times Coming and More on Elections. – Los Angeles Education Examiner

Headlines: LAUSD Earns High Marks For “Grab And Go”, Rough Financial Times Coming and More on Elections.




In addition to providing educational opportunities for students during the shutdown, LAUSD has also been distributing meals though its “Grab and Go” program at schools throughout the district. The program is earning mostly high marks, and was profiled in the LA Times last week as an example of a COVID response program that’s working. There’s also a video version of the story.
If you are in need, visit this link to see where the closest Grab and Go can be found.
Also, a hat tip for the fun #GrabnDough hashtag that features recipes to make better meals out of Grab and Go food bags.

And as we start to look forward to schools re-opening, hopefully in the fall, the question circles around what schools will look like on Back to School Day. NPR has some thoughts based on what is happening at re-opened schools throughout the world.
But all is not well with our public school system. EdSource reports that enrollment is continuing to drop throughout the district and that the crisis is already throwing the district’s budget into chaos.
At LAist, Kyle Stokes looks at the issues facing families with students who CONTINUE READING: Headlines: LAUSD Earns High Marks For “Grab And Go”, Rough Financial Times Coming and More on Elections. – Los Angeles Education Examiner

NYC Public School Parents: Parents, teachers, students, advocates and elected officials urge the Mayor, "Cut the Contracts, Save Our Schools"

NYC Public School Parents: Parents, teachers, students, advocates and elected officials urge the Mayor, "Cut the Contracts, Save Our Schools"

Parents, teachers, students, advocates and elected officials urge the Mayor, "Cut the Contracts, Save Our Schools"


Cut the Contracts Save Our Schools Press Conference April 27, 2020 from Community Education Council, D3 on Vimeo.
Here is a recording of the press conference. An article about this is already posted in Bklyner

Please sign up to speak against these wasteful contracts at the Panel for Educational Policy meeting that will begin at 6 PM on Wed. April 29 clicking here ; speakers will be allowed to sign on until 6:15 PM. 

For immediate release: April 27, 2020


Contact: Leonie Haimson: leoniehaimson@gmail.com; 917-435-9329
Kim Watkins: kwatkins@cec3.org; (917) 689-3065


Parents, teachers, students, advocates and elected officials urge the Mayor, "Cut the Contracts, Save Our Schools"
They urge the DOE to save millions on unnecessary contracts and bureaucracy
rather than essential school staffing and services 


On Monday afternoon, in an emergency press conference broadcast on Zoom, parent leaders, teachers, students, elected officials and education advocates denounced the Mayor’s proposed education budget cuts of over $800 million, and proposed that cuts be made instead to unnecessary  contracts, consultants, the bureaucracy and a freeze on staffing at the NYC Police Department. Among the speakers emphasizing the need to protect students and schools from these unethical cuts were Tom Sheppard of CEC 11, Maria Abacar, a student member of The Brotherhood/Sister Sol, Council Member Helen Rosenthal, Tanesha Grant of Parents Supporting Parents and CEJ, Tajh Sutton of CEC14, as well as those quoted below. 
“Our students were short-changed before the pandemic, with large class sizes, too few social workers and guidance counselors, and too few permanent school nurses. Our students will never get back the instructional time they have missed during the pandemic. They will never get back the missed milestones, like graduations, field trips, and proms. They will never get back lost family members, friends, principals, educators, paraprofessionals, counselors, cafeteria workers, and other loved ones. We cannot impose more pain and loss on them by cutting direct services, unless we have turned over every stone to find other areas to cut," said Council Member Mark Treyger, Chair of the Committee on Education
Leonie Haimson, Executive Director of Class Size Matters, said: “The Mayor wants to make egregious cuts to schools instead of eliminating wasteful contracts of over $700 million for busing we’re not using, professional development that’s not happening, and consultants who are doing who knows what. The proposed DOE budget would spend $300 million on the mid-level bureaucracy, CONTINUE READING: NYC Public School Parents: Parents, teachers, students, advocates and elected officials urge the Mayor, "Cut the Contracts, Save Our Schools"

Indianapolis: Home of America’s Second Most Privatized School System | tultican

Indianapolis: Home of America’s Second Most Privatized School System | tultican

Indianapolis: Home of America’s Second Most Privatized School System


By Thomas Ultican 4/27/2020
With the introduction of Innovation schools in 2015, Indianapolis Public Schools quickly became the second most privatized taxpayer supported schools system in America. It has zoomed past Detroit and Washington DC in the privatization sweepstakes to only trail the poster child for disaster capitalism, New Orleans. The right wing billionaire funded organization, The Mind Trust, has played a major role in this outcome.
Brown and Money
The Mind Trust CEO Brandon Brown Enjoys Flood of Billionaire Dollars

Nations 2nd Most Privatized

How terms and principles are defined is crucial. For example, Stephanie Wang of Chalkbeat paraphrases The Mind Trust CEO, Brandon Brown as saying, “There has never been a civil rights movement that hasn’t been led by the people most directly affected by the work.” Brown often couches his work in terms of fighting for civil rights, but is stripping minority communities of their democratic right to a voice in the operation of neighborhood schools really fighting for civil rights?
Professor Noliwe Rooks labels the business of profiting from high levels of racial CONTINUE READING: Indianapolis: Home of America’s Second Most Privatized School System | tultican

NEA Educator Voice Academy Addresses COVID-19 Equity Gap

NEA Educator Voice Academy Addresses COVID-19 Equity Gap

NEA Educator Voice Academy Addresses COVID-19 Equity Gap


With distance learning, the digital divide has widened into a chasm, swallowing whole populations of students who are now off the educational grid. They’re unreachable because they have no Internet access, or not enough home devices, or nobody at home to help them with learning packets. The equity gap, exacerbated by COVID-19, will continue to grow as vulnerable students fall even further behind.
“We, as educators, as humans, have to step up,” said NEA Vice President Becky Pringle during the Educator Voice Academy, a three-hour virtual meeting of 100 educators, including teachers, education support professionals, organizers and NEA state affiliate staff held April 18, 2020. “A bright light is shining on the vast and deep inequities in this country and the work of the Educator Voice Academy is absolutely essential.”
Like dominoes, schools closed one after another, giving educators little time to prepare for how they’d continue instruction. For those in more resourced districts, distance learning was relatively easy to implement. Most students had their own devices and easy access to the internet at home. But in low-income communities and rural communities across the country, access is harder to come by and many students have had to rely on schools or libraries to get online and now have no options.
“As we converted to digital instruction other problems popped out right away,” said Pringle. “Some of our districts seemed to move away from their commitment to students with special needs, so we need to figure out how to work with our partners and demand that students with disabilities have what they need even as we CONTINUE READING: NEA Educator Voice Academy Addresses COVID-19 Equity Gap

Teacher Tom: The Secret to Being a Parent

Teacher Tom: The Secret to Being a Parent

The Secret to Being a Parent


There is scant evidence that the little things we do as parents, be it co-sleeping or tiger mommy-ing, have much of a predictable impact on how our children turn out. I have my opinions about parenting trends and can't help but feel that some of them have the potential to do damage, while others have the potential to do good, but the truth is that the world is so large and complex and our children are so human and complex that we can simply never know. Most, I expect, have no impact one way or another.


When our daughter was around three months old, my wife and I had come to our wit's ends over her sleep, or lack thereof. She seemed to doze all day and wake all night. We tried every sleep technique we could find, including having her in bed with us, beside us, rocking her to sleep, nursing her to sleep, we even tried putting her bassinet on top of the running clothes dryer for a few days (which worked until the end of the cycle). We finally tried a version of "cry it out." I've never admitted this in public before because the technique has such a bad reputation amongst readers here, but for us, after about 15 minutes of fussing, she slept through the night on the first attempt. I'll never forget my wife and me lurching awake the following morning, panicked that we hadn't heard a peep from in her several hours, only to find her in her bed, eyes open, gurgling happily.

From that moment, she was a solid, even an eager sleeper. She never fought bedtime or nap time. In fact, she would often tell us, "It's time to go night night." Most mornings she would lie in bed singing for twenty minutes or so before she called us in to her room with a cheery, "I wanna wake up now!" It was a daily concert played over the baby monitor CONTINUE READING: 
Teacher Tom: The Secret to Being a Parent

SPECIAL CORONAVIRUS UPDATE Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day... The latest news and resources in education since 2007

Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day... | The latest news and resources in education since 2007



SPECIAL CORONAVIRUS UPDATE
Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day... 
The latest news and resources in education since 2007

TODAY

This Week’s Resources To Support Teachers Coping With School Closures

Wokandapix / Pixabay I have a number of regular weekly features (see HERE IS A LIST (WITH LINKS) OF ALL MY REGULAR WEEKLY FEATURES ). This is a relatively new addition to that list. Some of these resources will be added to The Best Advice On Teaching K-12 Online (If We Have To Because Of The Coronavirus) – Please Make More Suggestions ! and the best will go to The “Best Of The Best” Resources To
Video Trailer On New Michelle Obama Film: Really, Who ISN’T Going To Watch It?

janeb13 / Pixabay “Becoming” is a Netflix film coming on May 6th: Becoming is an intimate look into the life of former First Lady Michelle Obama during a moment of profound change, not only for her personally but for the country she and her husband served over eight impactful years in the White House. The film offers a rare and up-close look at her life, taking viewers behind the scenes as she em
“Four Ways to Support African American Students Through the COVID-19 Emergency”

Four Ways to Support African American Students Through the COVID-19 Emergency is the headline of my latest Education Week Teacher column. Educator Adeyemi Stembridge, Ph.D., shares strategies to bolster African American students during our present emergency, such as inviting them to share their stories and their art. Here’s an excerpt:
Four New Online Learning Games

The Webby Awards just announced their nominees for this year. It always takes awhile to look through them to distinguish the wheat from chaff, and it’s not helped by its cumbersome navigation process, but here are some online learning games that I discovered there: Passport To Mars is from Scholastic, and puts you in the position of being an astronaut traveling to….Mars. Stax is a game designed t

YESTERDAY

New TED-Ed Video & Lesson: “The dark history of IQ tests”

geralt / Pixabay Here’s the latest TED-Ed lesson and video:
Excellent Series Of Short Videos About Historical Pandemics

Alexas_Fotos / Pixabay FRANCE 24 English has just unveiled a series of excellent and very accessible short videos about famous pandemics in history. You can see the entire playlist here . I’ve embedded an example below. I’m adding it to A BEGINNING LIST OF THE BEST RESOURCES FOR LEARNING ABOUT THE CORONAVIRUS.
Highlighting Scientists Who Succeeded More Through Effort Than Brilliance Enhances Student Motivation In Science

A new study, which actually describes three separate ones reinforcing the same conclusion, finds that students become more motivated to learn science if they are told about famous scientists who supposedly succeeded more from their effort than from their natural talents. You can read about it at Not All Scientists Are Equal: Role Aspirants Influence Role Modeling Outcomes in STEM , and it is NOT
Ed Tech Digest

Eight years ago, in another somewhat futile attempt to reduce the backlog of resources I want to share, I began this occasional “” post where I share three or four links I think are particularly useful and related to…ed tech, including some Web 2.0 apps. You might also be interested in THE BEST ED TECH RESOURCES OF 2019 – PART TWO , as well as checking out all my edtech resources . Here are this

APR 26

“Visualization of ‘Tips for Remote Teaching With ELL Students'”

Visualization of ‘Tips for Remote Teaching With ELL Students’ is the headline of my latest Education Week Teacher column. Teacher Wendi Pillars shares a visual illustration of the points I made in my video, “Tips for Remote Teaching With ELL Students.”
Free Resources From All My Books

Every two months, I reprint this post so that new subscribers learn about these resources. I have many free resources, including excerpts and student hand-outs, available from all my books. Clicking on the covers will lead you to them. Look for a fourth book in my student motivation series (out in 2022) and a second edition of The ESL/ELL Teachers Survival Guide (out in 2021), along with three bo
Guest Post: Pros & Cons Of Online Learning For ELLs

Editor’s Note: I’ve been publishing a series of posts – both here and at Education Week – sharing teacher’s experiences dealing with the school closure crisis. The first post appearing here was headlined Guest Post: My School Was Closed Because Of COVID-19 & Here Is A Report About Our Online Teaching. Eva Buyuksimkesyan shares her experience in the second, Guest Post: Teaching An Istanbul English
Video: “Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman offers words of hope amid pandemic”

ShonEjai / Pixabay Here’s a new video from CBS News:
Video: “Distance Learning and English Language Learners”

mohamed_hassan / Pixabay Jeffrey Garrett and Manuel Rustin host a great series called All Of The Above . I was honored to appear on their latest episode:


My Most Popular Tweets Of The Month

PhotoMIX-Company / Pixabay I used to post weekly collections of my best tweets, and used Storify to bring them together. Unfortunately, Storify went under. Fortunately, however, Wakelet was a new tool that was able to import 
Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day... | The latest news and resources in education since 2007