Teacher Tom: What We Can Learn About Democracy From Children

Teacher Tom: What We Can Learn About Democracy From Children

What We Can Learn About Democracy From Children

Every year, right after Easter, one of the children always raises their hand to tell us about the exciting thing that happened at their house over the weekend. "The Easter Bunny came to my house and laid eggs!"

Then, after a moment's pause, someone always replies, "The Easter Bunny doesn't lay eggs. Chickens lay eggs. The Easter Bunny paints them and brings them to your house."

At this point, the conversation shifts into a debate, complete with raised voices. Factions emerge, sides are chosen, tempers might even flair. You see, the Easter Bunny is an article of faith and as we know, public disagreements about faith can often be quite heated. As their teacher, I have no interest in quickly wrapping up these debates because, after all, this is part of how a self-governing society works, and a self-governing classroom is the gold standard for a play-based educator. We have to be able to discuss everything of importance, together, even if it sometimes gets loud. Even if it isn't always polite. Even if it means that we have to set aside our plans in order for us to have the important discussions we need to have. And my job is simply to make sure everyone was heard and to, if necessary, prevent violence.

Some years, these Easter Bunny debates really rage, often CONTINUE READING: Teacher Tom: What We Can Learn About Democracy From Children

How Do You Spell Education Justice? G-O-T-V | Schott Foundation for Public Education

How Do You Spell Education Justice? G-O-T-V | Schott Foundation for Public Education

How Do You Spell Education Justice? 

G-O-T-V

Education justice is on the ballot this election. Over the past several months, Schott’s grantee partners have been working closely with their communities to mobilize and get out the vote—early and on November 3.

Schott grantee partner Girls for Gender Equity (GGE) hosted a webinar, Black Girls Be Voting: A Conversation on the Future of Black Girls, which focused on centering black girls and women of color in our national policies. It was a partnership with A National Agenda for Black Girls (NABG), a collaborative project bringing the needs of Black girls to the national stage and amplifying the voices of Black girls in the 2020 elections. You can watch the full webinar here.

Grassroots Arkansas hosted Local School Board Candidate Forums. These conversations discussed issues with local candidates in each school zone in Arkansas and helped mobilize their constituents to vote in local elections.

You can watch each conversation in the series on their Facebook page.

Californians for Justice and their local allies have been mobilizing their members to vote, vote early, and vote yes on ballot Proposition 15. Prop 15, also known as “Schools and Communities First,” is a key chance to prioritize funding for schools, community programs and work towards a more racially just future. The state's economic recovery and the health of California’s communities depends on their ability to tap into new funding streams in the coming years. Prop15 offers the kind of revenue source public schools and communities desperately need as they rebuild in a post-COVID world.

Californians for Justice also published “3 Things to Keep in Mind These Final Weeks of Election 2020.” This blogpost included a preparedness checklist in the weeks leading up to election day. 
Read it here. 

Learn more and see how you can get involved in the fight for prop 15 here.

Step Up! Louisiana has been hosting local canvassing sessions with their volunteers in New Orleans as part of their in-person and online 2020 GOTV campaign.

Education Justice is on the ballot this year. Make sure you and your community are ready. If you haven't voted yet, click here to find out how!

How Do You Spell Education Justice? G-O-T-V | Schott Foundation for Public Education

We Got the School Reopening Story Wrong (Nat Malkus) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

We Got the School Reopening Story Wrong (Nat Malkus) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

We Got the School Reopening Story Wrong (Nat Malkus)

Nat Malkus is a resident scholar and deputy director for Education Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute. The article appeared in The Hill October 20, 2020.

“It’s the politics, stupid” may be the aphorism for our times. In the age of Trump, the seductive narrative that uber-polarized identity politics can explain everything, including reopening plans for schools, appears obvious. After all, the president repeatedly proclaimed that schools must reopen, and for months, polls have shown pronounced partisan divides on whether students should return in-person or not. While we still don’t have a full accounting, early analyses indicate that schools in Trump country are more likely to be back in-person this fall, often despite high COVID rates.

Partisan politics is a familiar and intuitive, but ultimately inadequate explanation for school reopening patterns.

A close examination of emergency remote learning in spring 2020 reveals large differences between Red, Blue, and Purple states, with Red states often coming up short. Those gaps are due in part to challenges which still exist this fall. National political theater undoubtedly affects local reopening decisions, but it is a poor explanation for why more Red states’ schools are returning in-person — not only because it ignores the differences in remote learning Red states provided last spring, but also because it cannot explain them.

After spring closures, about a third of schools in Red states offered students synchronous learning platforms, like Zoom, compared to about half in Purple and Blue states. Assistance with devices and internet access were also much lower in Red states. Thus our common mental picture of remote schooling — students connecting to teachers through online video instruction — was less CONTINUE READING: We Got the School Reopening Story Wrong (Nat Malkus) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

NANCY BAILEY: PDK Gallup Polls and The Election: The Nation Needs Great Teachers!

PDK Gallup Polls and The Election: The Nation Needs Great Teachers!

PDK Gallup Polls and The Election: The Nation Needs Great Teachers!

If V.P. Joe Biden is elected, there will be a chance for public education to survive and teachers to get the support they need to serve America’s children. Reelect President Trump, and chances are public schools may end. Teachers who have been prepared to teach may leave the field for good.

Gallup Polls show how American’s attitudes have changed and remained the same when it comes to public schools over the years. Saving education in America depends on creating a professional teaching workforce.

The pandemic has made it clear that the country relies on its teachers to help students learn. Even before Covid-19 parents from both parties realized this. Teachers have risen to the occasion during the pandemic with little help from Education Secretary Betsy DeVos or President Trump.

President Trump and his followers are hostile towards public schooling, teachers, and the teacher’s union. I cannot remember President Trump ever visiting a public school. He has been to a private religious school. 

They call public schools “government schools,” but the public owns their schools, or CONTINUE READING: PDK Gallup Polls and The Election: The Nation Needs Great Teachers!

Diversity Hiring and the White Lie of “Most Qualified Candidate” – radical eyes for equity

Diversity Hiring and the White Lie of “Most Qualified Candidate” – radical eyes for equity

Diversity Hiring and the White Lie of “Most Qualified Candidate”

As the news has spread about my university being the latest case of white faculty claiming false diverse identities, I have seen on social media one of the negative consequences I anticipated from this situation—people criticizing diversity hiring.

I expected this sort of backlash because every time the issue of needing to hire a more diverse faculty has been raised among faculty, one of the first responses is, “We should always hire the most qualified candidate.”

The person voicing that position is always a white man.

And each time a new hire turns out to be a white man (again) even though the final 2 or 3 candidates include diverse people, the response is, “We hired the best candidate.”

The problem with this claim and even commitment is that white men constitute only about a third of the population, but are the majority in many fields—and almost always the majority in positions of power.

If mostly white men are making hiring decisions, there is a significant CONTINUE READING: Diversity Hiring and the White Lie of “Most Qualified Candidate” – radical eyes for equity

MUCH ADO ABOUT SOMETHING – Dad Gone Wild

MUCH ADO ABOUT SOMETHING – Dad Gone Wild

MUCH ADO ABOUT SOMETHING

“The dream begins, most of the time,with a teacher who believes in you, who tugs and pushes and leads you on to the next plateau sometimes poking you with a sharp stick called truth”
― Dan Rathert  

In the wake of last week’s Dodger’s World Series win, I’ve read a lot of analysis about Game 6. The joy of is baseball lies in its ability to emulate life. In this case, unfortunately, it imitated some of the worst tendencies of the education world.

In the 6th inning of the pivotal game 6, the Ray’s were up 1-0. Their pitcher Blake Snell was cruising. He’d faced 18 hitter s and only 3 balls had left the infield, while he’d struck out 9 with no walks. Needing only 73 pitches to get this far meant there was plenty of juice left in his arm.

After getting the first out of the 6th, the Dodger’s Austin Barnes hit a floater to center field for a single. With a man on first Snell was set to face the heart of the Dodger lineup in Mookie Betts, Corey Seager, and Justin Turner. Reason for concern, but collectively they’d struck out 6 times today already. No one was expecting what happened next.

Tampa Bay manager Kevin Cash, called time out and made the trek to the mound for what most thought would be a pep talk. Instead, he took the ball from Snell and made a call to the bullpen. Inexplicably, he was removing his ace pitcher, who was cruising, prematurely, and calling for a reliever. The results of the move proved disastrous.

With Barnes on first, Betts — helpless against Snell — ripped a ball down the third baseline, a double to put runners on second and third. When the reliever,  Nick Anderson, uncorked a wild pitch, Barnes scampered home. Tie game. The Dodgers went on to score twice more, winning the game and the World Series.

What happened was that baseball, like education, has become a world dominated by data at the expense of human intuition. While Cash’s pitcher may have claimed he was good, the cyber CONTINUE READING: MUCH ADO ABOUT SOMETHING – Dad Gone Wild

CURMUDGUCATION: Survey: Pandemic Effects on Early Childhood Education

CURMUDGUCATION: Survey: Pandemic Effects on Early Childhood Education

Survey: Pandemic Effects on Early Childhood Education

Defending the Early Years is an organization whose stated mission “is to work for a just, equitable, and quality early childhood education for every young child, by informing educators, administrators, and parents about how children develop and learn best and advocating for the active, playful, experiential approaches to learning informed by child development theory and evidence-based research.” 

DEY has done some valuable advocacy work around the issues of too-early academic instruction and the introduction of on-line pre-school (yes, that’s really a thing). This summer they conducted a survey looking at the effects of pandemic education, and they’ve just released the results.

Links to the survey were sent out through the organization’s social media accounts, so there is some self-selected tilt to the respondents, but since that tilt is likely to be toward people who care about early childhood education (and who have an internet connection), these results are still worth looking at.

The respondents are pretty evenly split between parents and teachers of children between 0 and 8 years. with a smaller group who are both.

A third of both parents and teachers were not working, with more than a third working full time CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: Survey: Pandemic Effects on Early Childhood Education

Can Biden v Trump Become Bush v Gore? | Ed In The Apple

Can Biden v Trump Become Bush v Gore? | Ed In The Apple

Can Biden v Trump Become Bush v Gore?

The election of our lifetimes is only a few hours away, oddly, everyone I know has already voted.

Up early, as usual, check my phone, 42 degrees and that squiggly line – gusty winds. Pull on my cold weather clothing, balaclava, and compression pants and off on my morning bike ride. Eddies of leaves swirling across the roads, a howling wind, part of the sky blue with billowing clouds, the other part with low swirling gray clouds; God (he/she) has a wry sense of humor.

I pedal along deserted roads; the Biden-Harris signs greatly outnumber the Trump signs: does signage predict election outcomes?  A few drops of rain splash across my face, I pedal harder, no pain, no gain, sort of a motto of life, I’m philosophical as I race along, carefully, on shoulder of the road.

The General Store is empty; I pull up my face mask, a steaming cup of black coffee and a banana, my standard breakfast. I sit outside, sip my coffee and nibble the banana, scroll through my phone, and, read Nate Silver’s Upbeat in the New York Times. 

Four years ago Silver’s column, closely following the polls and predicting the CONTINUE READING: Can Biden v Trump Become Bush v Gore? | Ed In The Apple

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

A VERY BUSY DAY
Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day...
The latest news and resources in education since 2007

Big Education Ape: THIS WEEK IN EDUCATION Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day... The latest news and resources in education since 2007 - http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2020/10/this-week-in-education-larry-ferlazzos_31.html

Tuesday’s Must-Read Articles & Must-Watch Videos About School Reopening

by Larry Ferlazzo / 12h

kalhh / Pixabay Here are new additions to THE BEST POSTS PREDICTING WHAT SCHOOLS WILL LOOK LIKE IN THE FALL : School Official On A Pennsylvania District’s Decision To Revert To Online Learning is from NPR. Parents in N.Y.C. Public Schools Now Face This Agonizing Choice is from The NY Times. Ds and Fs surge, attendance slips among L.A.’s poorest students amid distance learning is from The L.A Time

“Don’t Make Assumptions About Your ELL Students”

by Larry Ferlazzo / 13h

Don’t Make Assumptions About Your ELL Students is the headline of my latest Education Week Teacher column. Seven educators offer their nominations for the most common mistakes made by teachers of ELLs, including making background-knowledge assumptions and not providing enough scaffolding. Here are some excerpts:

November Is Native American Heritage Month – Here Are Related Teaching & Learning Resources

by Larry Ferlazzo / 13h

November is Native American Heritage Month in the United States. I don’t have a specific “Best” list for the month. However, I have many related resources at: The Best Sites For International Day Of The World’s Indigenous People The Best Online Resources About Christopher Columbus (& ‘Indigenous Peoples’ Day’) The Best Resources For Teaching & Learning About The Standing Rock Protests A Beginning

Everything You Wanted To Learn About Social Studies But Were Afraid To Ask

by Larry Ferlazzo / 13h

OpenClipart-Vectors / Pixabay I have over 2,100 frequently revised and updated “Best” lists on just about every subject imaginable, and you can find them listed three different ways in three different places (see Three Accessible Ways To Search For & Find My “Best” Lists ). I’m starting to publish a series where each day I will highlight the “Best” lists in a separate category. Today, it’s on Soc

Ideas & Resources About What & How To Teach The Day After The Election – Please Share Your Own Advice & Plans

by Larry Ferlazzo / 17h

Maklay62 / Pixabay I, like many of us, am feeling stressed by tomorrow’s election – I just can’t fathom how our country would re-elect Donald Trump. Of course, I couldn’t fathom how he could be elected the first time, either. But, in terms of my classes, the reality is that it’s not about me. It’s about them. And I have to have a plan about what to do on Wednesday. I’m not too concerned about wha

New Resources For Teaching About The Tuesday Election

by Larry Ferlazzo / 1d

18371568 / Pixabay Here are new additions to THE BEST RESOURCES FOR TEACHING ABOUT THE 2020 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION : How Can Teachers and Students Discuss the 2020 Election? is from The Teaching Channel. Is Voting Too Hard in the U.S.? is from KQED. Lesson of the Da

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