Teacher Tom: We Can't Teach Mindfulness to the Experts

Teacher Tom: We Can't Teach Mindfulness to the Experts

We Can't Teach Mindfulness to the Experts

I was recently asked in a public forum if I've ever taught mindfulness to children. The question threw me. Yes, no, maybe, I don't know, can you repeat the question? 

Mindfulness is a radical Buddhist practice in which one focuses one's full attention on the present moment. This is something toward which I strive, even as I find it exceedingly difficult to achieve for more than a few minutes at a time. Recently, ironically, I was reading a novel in which one of the characters said something about mindfulness that sparked a train of thought that took my brain so far away from the present moment that I had to re-read several paragraphs. I find it a slippery thing to accomplish, requiring discipline, concentration, and practice. A quiet mind is a healthy thing, something valued by medical and spiritual practices from east to west.

Mindfulness as a concept has broken through into our popular culture, really taking off as a phenomenon in recent years. There are more than 100,000 books being sold on Amazon with some version of the word in the title, not to mention the proliferation of mindfulness workshops and seminars and CONTINUE READING: Teacher Tom: We Can't Teach Mindfulness to the Experts

Laura Chapman: McKinsey’s Education “Expert” | Diane Ravitch's blog

Laura Chapman: McKinsey’s Education “Expert” | Diane Ravitch's blog

Laura Chapman: McKinsey’s Education “Expert”

A few days ago, I posted Nancy Bailey’s critique of McKinsey & Company’s report claiming that it’s time for schools to get tough on students. As Bailey points out, when I worked in the Department of Education, the White House was crawling with McKinsey consultants, smart young things who knew everything about education but were seldom old enough to have been in the classroom for long.

Our faithful reader and meticulous researcher Laura Chapman (a retired arts educator) responded to Nancy’s post as follows, describing the mastermind of the McKinsey report:

Nancy Bailey probably knows that the author of the McKinsey report, Jimmy Sarakatsannis jumped straight to McKinsey as an expert in everything about K-12 and teacher education from his job as a science teacher for CONTINUE READING: Laura Chapman: McKinsey’s Education “Expert” | Diane Ravitch's blog

Dr.Leana S. Wen | Most schools should close and stay closed through winter - The Washington Post

Opinion | Most schools should close and stay closed through winter - The Washington Post

Most schools should close and stay closed through winter

In recent weeks, prominent economists, public health experts and commentators have argued that schools shouldn’t be closing because they aren’t major contributors to the surge in covid-19 cases.

I disagree. With much of the United States engulfed in exponential virus spread and many hospitals already overwhelmed, most schools should close and stay closed through the winter.

Those who say schools should remain open point out that bars and restaurants have led to far more documented infections than schools. They point out, rightly, that we as a society set the wrong priorities in the summer. If we had kept high-risk settings closed and followed mitigation measures such as universal mask-wearing, the infection rate could be low enough for schools to safely open.

That didn’t happen. As a result, about 1.5 percent of Americans are currently infected with coronavirus. In some areas, in a room of 20 people, there is a nearly 1-in-4 chance that someone has covid-19. The high rates of community spread impact children as well; the American Academy of Pediatrics reported on Tuesday that nearly 1.2 million children have been diagnosed with covid-19, constituting nearly 12 percent of total infections. During the last week for which data are available, the week ending Nov. 19, there were more than 144,000 new cases of covid-19 in children, by far the highest weekly increase since the pandemic began.

Imagine you’re a teacher who works in a poorly ventilated classroom for multiple hours a day. It’s challenging to keep physical distancing, and there’s a high likelihood that one of your students has the coronavirus and could transmit it to you. Being told that school transmission isn’t the main driver of community spread is hardly reassuring when you’re the one shouldering the individual risk. One in 4 teachers are older or have chronic health conditions that predispose them to serious illness if they contract covid-19. Others might have household members for whom exposure is more likely to result in hospitalization or death.

It’s important to note that many proponents of keeping schools open cite studies that show low risk of transmission when effective mitigation methods are put in place. Some well-resourced schools have implemented measures including decreased classroom capacity, improved ventilation and strictly enforced mask-wearing. Some have even moved entire classes outdoors. With all these measures, students, teachers and staff have a much-reduced risk of acquiring covid-19. But most schools lack the resources to implement such changes.

Why haven’t there been more cases in schools if many schools haven’t implemented all those safety measures? A few things are possible. Maybe there have been more infections than we know about. Children with covid-19 tend to be asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic. Testing is limited, and it’s hard for parents to find testing sites for younger children. Parents wishing to keep their kids in school might not want to know the result; some mothers are reportedly forming pacts to not test their kids.

CONTINUE READING: Opinion | Most schools should close and stay closed through winter - The Washington Post

Teacher Tom: Where They are the World's Leading Experts

Teacher Tom: Where They are the World's Leading Experts

Where They are the World's Leading Experts

A couple weeks ago I wrote a piece about what is popularly referred to as "loose parts," or what I prefer to call "junk and debris." One reader referring to a body of research that consistently finds that children engaged in loose parts play use more math language and more elaborate vocabulary than children playing with traditional toys or during structured play and wondered why that would be.

I don't know for sure, of course, but I expect that it has to do with the fact that open-ended, unscripted playthings cause children to engage in more cooperative play, which requires communication, not with adults, but with other kids who are likewise learning math and vocabulary. Whereas "toys" and adult-lead activities tend to be more predictable, with many of their answers built into them, children interacting with loose parts are more likely to run across new concepts and unexpected challenges, situations that require children to CONTINUE READING: Teacher Tom: Where They are the World's Leading Experts