Better Call Saul: On the High Art of Centering Whiteness – radical eyes for equity

Better Call Saul: On the High Art of Centering Whiteness – radical eyes for equity

Better Call Saul: On the High Art of Centering Whiteness

Among the pantheon of white-man art, including the Coen brothers and David Lynch for me, the creators of Better Call Saul offer a finely crafted and deeply flawed series that is really hard not to look at and enjoy.

This prequel to Breaking Bad shares many of the strengths (beautifully and finely filmed, nuanced and morally ambiguous characters) and most of the flaws (centering whiteness, ignoring or running roughshod over brown and black characters) with its source. As I am nearing the end of the series on Netflix (with the newest season on AMC), I often find Saul better than the original, in part because I think it unpacks extremely well being a lawyer against the moral ambiguity of many compelling characters (even as I have no real expertise in whether or not the series captures the law in any sort of valid way).

Saul fits into my fascination with moral ambiguity, notably Andy Sipowicz in NYPD Blue as one example. But I have to admit that I am primarily drawn to how well made the series is; as TV, it is just damned compelling to look at. (I often find myself seeing comic book panels, still camera shots that do as much as the acting or dialogue.)

As I noted above, I have this affection for Lynch and the Coen brothers, although I would put the creators of Saul closer to the latter.

Well into my 20s and my young teaching and writing career, I was an uncritical CONTINUE READING: Better Call Saul: On the High Art of Centering Whiteness – radical eyes for equity

Jersey Jazzman: Can NJ Afford To Continue Subsidizing Private Schools?

Jersey Jazzman: Can NJ Afford To Continue Subsidizing Private Schools?

Can NJ Afford To Continue Subsidizing Private Schools?

Regardless of what happens next with Covid-19, it's clear that the budgets of states like New Jersey are in for a very, very tough time over the next few years. Governors and legislatures are going to have to make some hard choices about what states can and cannot afford in the days ahead.

Given this reality, New Jersey has to ask itself: Can we afford to continue to give large sums of money to private K-12 schools?

"Wait," some of you are saying: "I thought New Jersey didn't have a school voucher program." You're correct, we don't -- but the state still gives a lot of money to private schools.

According to New Jersey law, nonpublic schools are eligible for all kinds of services that must be paid for by resident public school districts. In 2017-18, the payments to New Jersey's nonpublic schools for these services, excluding transportation, added up to more than $115 million. 

New Jersey is actually the nation's historical leader in subsidizing nonpublic schools. Everson v. Board of Education of the Township of Ewing is the landmark 1947 CONTINUE READING: Jersey Jazzman: Can NJ Afford To Continue Subsidizing Private Schools?

School at home is the coronavirus reality. What's next? - Los Angeles Times

School at home is the coronavirus reality. What's next? - Los Angeles Times

School from home is the new coronavirus reality. What will the next three months look like?

A senior at John C. Fremont High School in South L.A., Emilio Hernandez’s class load is about as rigorous as it gets: AP calculus, physics, design, English, engineering and government. He loves talking to his peers in English class, who make all the readings thought-provoking. He often turns to his math teacher, who has a way of drawing the graphs and walking him through derivatives and complex formulas.

Now, with a borrowed laptop from school and family crowded in the living room, he’s struggling to make school feel like, well, school. He has trouble falling asleep and finds himself going to bed later and later — sometimes as late as 3 a.m.

“Assignments that would normally take me two hours or thirty minutes are now taking me days to complete. I just … can’t focus,” he said. “I don’t have anyone giving me direction. It’s just me reading and having to give myself the incentive to do the work.”

It’s been three weeks since school districts across the state have closed their campuses as coronavirus continues to sweep its way across California — sending more than 6 million students home to navigate online or distance learning. What started as an emergency scramble to provide laptops and meals for a few weeks has dramatically shifted to a longer-haul transformation of public education.

“The kids are not going back to their classrooms” this academic year, said Gov. Gavin Newsom, who acknowledged the burden on households with the entire state under his stay-at-home order.

For those who look to school for learning and social structure, the new reality is sinking in: There will be no school as we know it after spring break. No prom. No year-end field trips. No projects to present inside a familiar classroom. Navigating the next three months left in the school year, leaders said, calls for patience and dedication from educators, self-motivation from already stressed-out students and swift actions from school districts typically mired in bureaucratic obstacles.

“These aren’t normal circumstances. It’s the most uncharted territory that we’ve been in,” said State Supt. of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond. “We’re stronger together and we can help all of our kids as we work together.”

Many are already rising to the challenge. Yet each step forward means moving past CONTINUE READING: School at home is the coronavirus reality. What's next? - Los Angeles Times

Jeanette Deutermann: A Message to Parents and Teachers: EMPATHY! | Diane Ravitch's blog

Jeanette Deutermann: A Message to Parents and Teachers: EMPATHY! | Diane Ravitch's blog

Jeanette Deutermann: A Message to Parents and Teachers: EMPATHY!

Jeanette Deutermann is the parent on Long Island in New York who launched “Long Island Opt Out.” It is now part of NYSAPE, New York State Parents and Educators, which has led the successful opt out movement. She read some angry posts on Facebook, with blame as the common factor. And she wrote this plea on her Facebook page, which has been widely shared:

All of our Facebook feeds are filled with posts of parents furious with teachers giving too much work, too little work, teachers furious about kids not logging on, kids sleeping in, and kids not completing the work. I want to implore everyone to keep one word in the front of their brains right now: EMPATHY. We all like to think we have empathy for others, but now is the time to prove it.

For parents: if you think a teacher is assigning too much work, just realize – some teachers are untenured with chairpeople scrutinizing each and every assignment. Some are getting nasty emails from parents demanding more work. Some just are unaware of how long it is taking students to complete their work. Communicate with them. Most teachers will respond “no problem! Just CONTINUE READING: Jeanette Deutermann: A Message to Parents and Teachers: EMPATHY! | Diane Ravitch's blog

Marie Corfield: Strange Days Indeed Pt. 1

Marie Corfield: Strange Days Indeed Pt. 1

Strange Days Indeed Pt. 1

Some reflections on life in these strange new times from someone who's lived through a few of her own

Note: These are my thoughts and feelings; this is my experience. Take what you like and leave the rest. I mean no judgment on you or your religious or spiritual beliefs. This is just what works for me.

Everything old is new again.

In 1929, my grandmother was a 25-year-old single mother of a two-year-old boy. She already had eleven years experience under her belt working for what was then Bell Telephone, having graduated 8th grade and lied about her age to get the job. She was also the sole breadwinner in a house that included both her parents, her sister and brother-in-law.

Welcome to the Great Depression.

Between that and the two World Wars, life took a devastating toll on people physically, mentally and spiritually. But, through sheer grit, determination and belief that things would get better, they survived and thrived. But not without tremendous loss.

"Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without" was the mantra of the era. Although my family fared better than most (relatively speaking), like all Baby Boomers, I was raised on their stories, practices and stoicism: patch clothes and hand them down, darn socks, CONTINUE READING: Marie Corfield: Strange Days Indeed Pt. 1

With A Brooklyn Accent: My 10 Strategies for Getting Through This Pandemic

With A Brooklyn Accent: My 10 Strategies for Getting Through This Pandemic

My 10 Strategies for Getting Through This Pandemic

1. Get plenty of sleep every night and nap during the day

2. Take vitamins and supplements every morning to build up my immune system

3. Exercise every day, but never to the point of exhaustion

4. Never leave the house except to sit on the stoop or go for a walk in the park, and wear a mask whenever I am outside

5. Respond to every request for help from students and friends in a timely manner

6. Eat lots of comfort food as well as food that builds up my immune system

7 Since there are no sports to provide escape, read great mystery authors on Kindle and watch episodes of compelling series on TV with Liz every evening.

8. Wash my hands 20-40 times a day.

9. Enjoy bourbon, scotch, rum, vodka and wine whenever the spirit moves me

10 Put my heart and soul into providing my students with the best possible on line classes, and do so in a manner that reduces rather than adds to their stress

With A Brooklyn Accent: My 10 Strategies for Getting Through This Pandemic

CURMUDGUCATION: Privilege and the Pandemic

CURMUDGUCATION: Privilege and the Pandemic
Privilege and the Pandemic

The pandemic-powered slide into crisis schooling is highlighting many aspects of how our public education system works (or doesn't). In particular, the push for some version of distance learning is underlining the huge gap between haves and have-nots.

We see the gap on the district level, between districts that can quickly muster the hardware and resources to maintain "continuity of instruction" (which sounds so much fancier than just "keep doing the work") and districts that have to really struggle for solutions. Various businesses are hoping to "help meet the needs" of districts and make some bucks doing it, presumably focusing on those districts that offer the best promise of long-term ROI.

In homes, the gap is even more severe. It seems particularly stark when one looks at all the perky advice about organizing your home school experience, laying out ideas that I'm sure are super-great if you are in a household where parents aren't trying to work from home, or aren't suddenly unemployed and uninsured, or aren't single parents trying to meet all the schooling obligations just laid on your multiple kids, aren't spending most of your days wracked with fear and uncertainty about how you're going to make it through all of this, or aren't still going out to work every day so that everyone else can have health care or food or some other essential service while you wonder how to get someone to watch your kids during the day as you also wonder if this is the day someone sneezes on you and kills you.

Social media is loaded with parent shaming, often parent on parent, about how "COVID is not a vacation from education" and you should be getting those kids logged on and distance learning away. Does that prospect strike you as somewhere between "stressful" and "nearly impossible" (imagine one parent and three students who all have to work from home on one computer with a lousy wifi CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: Privilege and the Pandemic

Russ on Reading: Hula Dancing, Singing and a Teacher's Impact

Russ on Reading: Hula Dancing, Singing and a Teacher's Impact

Hula Dancing, Singing and a Teacher's Impact

Recently, I had a former student reach out to me recently on Facebook Messenger. Back in the early 1980s, all middle school students were required to take a developmental reading course. This former student had been wracking his brain to come up with the title of a book he had read in my class 40 years ago.  He described the basic plot, mentioned that it contained some “bad language” and I recalled a book entitled. Headman, by Kin Platt that was on my choice bookshelf back in those days. That was the one, he said.

This incident reminded me of the influence we have as teacher in ways that we may not even know or realize. I had not heard from this student in nearly 40 years and yet this book had resonated with him in a memorable way. I gave him a socially distanced fist bump and smiled a little to myself.

Over the years I have great memories of teachers who have influenced me. There was Mrs. Stout, in sixth grade, who taught me to believe in myself. There were Mr. Laidacker, Mr. Kautz, Mr. Turner and Mr. DiSangro, who fostered my love of history, which caused me to be a history major as an undergraduate.. The was Mr. Blough, the passionate music appreciation teacher, who fostered an eclectic love of music from Bach to Benny CONTINUE READING: Russ on Reading: Hula Dancing, Singing and a Teacher's Impact

NYC Educator: De Blasio Kills Multiple Birds With One Stone, Sabotaging Teachers, Students, and Organized Religion

NYC Educator: De Blasio Kills Multiple Birds With One Stone, Sabotaging Teachers, Students, and Organized Religion

De Blasio Kills Multiple Birds With One Stone, Sabotaging Teachers, Students, and Organized Religion

Let's be clear. Though we may have been a little rough on the mayor this week, the epidemic is not his fault. All he did was neglect it and allow it to spread like wildfire. And it's not his fault there are issues with Zoom. All he did was withdraw it with no notice whatsoever, leaving tens of thousands of teachers up the creek without even a virtual paddle.

Now you might think that the DOE just sat around and envisioned ways to exacerbate an already horrible situation. I was LAB-BESIS coordinator at my school for one very long year, and that was precisely the impression I got whenever I had to deal with DOE. I quit that job first chance I got.

This week it's like we're all playing a board game and Bill de Blasio not only sends us all back to square one, but also announces from now on we're all playing a new game altogether. You damn well better be able to start tomorrow AM. Also, the rules lay out only what you CANNOT do, which is use the tool most of us have depended on since this all began.

I shouldn't be surprised at acts of outright spite or gross incompetence anymore. I should simply sit in a lotus position, chant a mantra, and expect it to happen. After all, I work for the DOE, which was molded into a largely malignant force under Michael Bloomberg.

When de Blasio came in, I thought things would turn around. I expected a sea change, but he simply left the Bloomberg machine in place. If you're a chapter leader, you know that Bloomberg's "legal" department still advises principals to break the contract whenever they goshdarn feel like it. When the current chancellor took the baby step of firing a few people, he was accused of racism. Yet he should've fired a few hundred people, fumigated Tweed, and started over.

I've been doing online lessons for about two weeks, scrambling to keep up with myself, with little idea what, if anything, my students were getting from this. I still lack the confidence to give an assessment of any kind, be it a test, a project or a writing piece. I will get over that. Call me cynical, but I will not trust the results. I've long ago decided I could not stop cheating in homework, but with in-class assessments I could really see what was going on. No more of that.

Now that's not the fault of Bill de Blasio. As I said earlier, all he did was drag his feet and make a deadly epidemic much worse than it needed to be. Sure, thousands of people will die as a result of his gross negligence and ineptitude, but had he closed the schools when he should have, students would still be able to cheat when using remote learning. So CONTINUE READING: NYC Educator: De Blasio Kills Multiple Birds With One Stone, Sabotaging Teachers, Students, and Organized Religion

Parents and Teachers Are Asking: Should We Be Grading Students? Regents Examinations? Graduation Requirements? | Ed In The Apple

Parents and Teachers Are Asking: Should We Be Grading Students? Regents Examinations? Graduation Requirements? | Ed In The Apple

Parents and Teachers Are Asking: Should We Be Grading Students? Regents Examinations? Graduation Requirements?

School leaders and teachers in New York City and across the state have been struggling to set up routines for remote learning; finding schedules that can be replicated and bring continuity to lessons, coordinating with teachers on their grade, conferencing with the school leader; it s been challenging and schools are slowly working out the kinks, until the decision to cancel the Spring recess and in New York City to cancel closing schools on Holy Thursday and Good Friday and move from Zoom to Microsoft Teams, a totally different platform  (See Chalkbeat article here  with the Department explanation).  The teacher union, the UFT sharply disagreed   with the decision to cancel the spring recess, to no avail, the Department did agree to add four days to each teachers’ cumulative absence reserve (“sick days”) and allow the days to be used for religious observance.

What exactly is supposed to happen instructionally next week is unclear. Principals and teachers are angry and frustrated, and, for good reason. Next week could have been used to clarify the many complexx questions as well as contunie upgrading teacher remote learning challenges.

UFT President Mulgrew’s letter,

 Dear XXXX

 The schools chancellor has informed me that Mayor Bill de Blasio has decided to keep New York City public schools open on Thursday, April 9, and Friday, April 10, even though those days are major religious holidays.

I told him flat out that I disagreed with that decision, but the city is going ahead with it anyway. Under the state of emergency he declared in New York City, the CONTINUE READING: Parents and Teachers Are Asking: Should We Be Grading Students? Regents Examinations? Graduation Requirements? | Ed In The Apple

TODAY’S UPDATE On New Resources To Help Educators Figuring Out How To Support Students During School Closures | Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day...

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

TODAY’S UPDATE On New Resources To Help Educators Figuring Out How To Support Students During School Closures 

Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day...

Expansion Of “Smart Compose” To Google Docs Is Great Learning Tool For ELLs, But Not Available To School Users

by Larry Ferlazzo / 1h

377053 / Pixabay Most people are probably familiar with the “smart compose” feature in Gmail, where Artificial Intelligence is used to extrapolate the words you might be typing next. It’s much, much better than autocorrect and predictive text on the iPhone. Google recently expanded this feature to some users of Google, primarily businesses. However, they are not planning to do so for schools who

Sunday’s Resources To Help Teachers Cope With The School Closure Crisis

by Larry Ferlazzo / 2h

geralt / Pixabay Here are new additions to either The Best Advice On Teaching K-12 Online (If We Have To Because Of The Coronavirus) – Please Make More Suggestions ! or The “Best Of The Best” Resources To Support Teachers Dealing With School Closures: NYC forbids schools from using Zoom for remote learning due to privacy and security concerns is from Chalkbeat. School districts, including New Yor

The Best Resources For Learning How Black Girls Are Treated Unfairly & What To Do About It

by Larry Ferlazzo / 2h

I’ve shared a number of posts over the years about how black girls can be unfairly targeted in schools and, with the new release of a PBS documentary on the topic (see below), I thought it would be useful to bring them together on a “Best” list: How Black Girls Get Pushed Out of School is a NY Times article about this new documentary. Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools is that

This Week’s “Round-Up” Of Useful Posts & Articles On Ed Policy Issues

by Larry Ferlazzo / 2h

Here are some recent useful posts and articles on educational policy issues (You might also be interested in THE BEST ARTICLES, VIDEOS & POSTS ON EDUCATION POLICY IN 2019 – PART TWO ): Schools, the Coronavirus, and the Near Future (Part 1) and Schools, the Coronavirus, and the Near Future (Part 2) are both from Larry Cuban. DeVos Weighs Waivers for Special Education. Parents Are Worried. is from

Easter & Passover Are Coming Up – Here Are Teaching & Learning Resources

by Larry Ferlazzo / 3h

annca / Pixabay Easter and Passover are coming up over the next few days. You might be interested in The Best Sites For Learning About Easter & Passover .

YESTERDAY

Around The Web In ESL/EFL/ELL

by Larry Ferlazzo / 10h

BiljaST / Pixabay Six years ago I began this regular feature where I share a few posts and resources from around the Web related to ESL/EFL or to language in general that have caught my attention. You might also be interested in THE BEST RESOURCES, ARTICLES & BLOG POSTS FOR TEACHERS OF ELLS IN 2019 – PART ONE and THE BEST RESOURCES, ARTICLES & BLOG POSTS FOR TEACHERS OF ELLS IN 2019 – PART TWO. A

My Latest BAM! Radio Show Is On “Teaching ELLs Online: What’s Working?”

by Larry Ferlazzo / 18h

Teaching ELLs Online: What’s Working? is the topic of my latest ten-minute BAM! Radio show. I’m joined by Sam Olbes, Helen Vassiliou, Sarah Said, and Nicholas Fotopoulis, who have also all contributed written commentaries to my Education Week Teacher column. I’m adding this show to All My BAM Radio Shows – Linked With Descriptions . By the way, the show is now available on iHeartRadio .

I’ve Sent This Video About Making Face Masks To All My Students

by Larry Ferlazzo / 1d

coyot / Pixabay As you probably know, the Centers For Disease Control yesterday recommended that people in the U.S. start wearing face masks in certain situations where we are near other people, like in a grocery story. It’s not easy to find them to purchase now, and The Surgeon General just put out a forty-five second video showing how anyone can make one quickly and simply. I’ve sent it out to

These Are Great! Six Free Tools Teachers & Students Can Use To Learn English, Spanish & Other Languages During The Coronavirus Crisis

by Larry Ferlazzo / 1d

thisisprabha / Pixabay I’ve previously shared the tools I’m having my English Language Learners use to develop their language skills (see Here’s The Revised Online Teaching Plan I Hope To Implement Next Week and HERE’S 

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