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Sunday, November 27, 2011

Schools Matter: A Look at Finnish Schools and Teacher Preparation

Schools Matter: A Look at Finnish Schools and Teacher Preparation:

A Look at Finnish Schools and Teacher Preparation

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel has an excellent piece on the Finnish system, including the video that you see below. As you watch the short video, listen for how the special education teacher in the poor Finnish school talks about the basic skills that all their children get--it's a very different conception of what is "basic" when compared to endless test-prep worksheets that non-privileged American children get:



Below is a chunk of the article by Erin Richards. Do go the Journal-Sentinel and have a look at the charts and searchable database:
. . . .Wisconsin's government and demographics differ from Finland in some important respects, but there are still lessons to be learned from the steps this northern European nation has taken to better serve all students and educators, including:

Improving teacher recruitment and training at colleges of education.
Offering a high-quality curriculum with pathways to high-quality vocational training at younger

Oklahoma Gazette News: Shaping social studies group that includes an influential nonacademic religious adviser

Oklahoma Gazette News: Shaping social studies:

Shaping social studies


Curriculum for an interdisciplinary field gets revised by a group that includes an influential nonacademic religious adviser.

Clifton AdcockNovember 16th, 2011

The state Department of Education is beginning the process of formulating new curriculum for public social studies classes.

Sixty-five individuals are tasked with reviewing and rewriting the curriculum. At least one name on the list has drawn fire in the past for controversial statements: David Barton, the founder of WallBuilders, a group that bills itself as “an organization dedicated to presenting America’s forgotten history and heroes, with an emphasis on the moral, religious and constitutional foundation on which America was built — a foundation which, in recent years, has been seriously attacked and undermined.”

Most of those comprising the curriculum review committee are school teachers and principals

INTERACTIVE: The Privatization of Education | The Nation

INTERACTIVE: The Privatization of Education | The Nation:

INTERACTIVE: The Privatization of Education

Legislative changes to:
Online coursework Charter schools Online schools
Both charter schools and online schools Online coursework, charter schools and online schools

For years, privatizing education has been a hobby horse for conservatives of all stripes. But they met with little success until very recently. What accounts for the sudden change in fortune? As Lee Fang reports in this week's issue, under the banner of high-tech innovations and cost-cutting efficiency, privatization warriors have scored a number of significant victories in the past year, pushing over a dozen reforms through state legislatures. In the interactive map above, click on the highlighted states to see which bills reforming online coursework, charter schools and online schools made it into law in 2010 and 2011.

Coordinated West Coast Port Shutdown « occupy california #ows

Coordinated West Coast Port Shutdown « occupy california:

Coordinated West Coast Port Shutdown

CALIFORNIA, OREGON, WASHINGTON – A Coordinated US West Coast port shutdown for Monday, December 12th has been called for by the occupation movement in solidarity with longshoreman, particularly in Longview, WA. RSVP here.

A Call from Occupy Oakland:

Greetings and Solidarity from Occupy Oakland!

We present this call to you because we believe it is time the occupation movement begins to work together to carry through coordinated, pinpointed actions. We want to disrupt the profits of the 1% and show solidarity with those in the 99% who are under direct attack by corporate tyranny.

Occupations throughout the US have been evicted through nationally coordinated police raids. It is time for us to respond with our own coordinated actions. Our aim is to shutdown the West Coast ports:

  • On December 12, the occupy movements in different cities will stage mass mobilizations to march on the ports, create community pickets, and effectively shutdown the hubs of commerce, in the same fashion that Occupy Oakland shut down the Port of Oakland on November 2nd, the day of our general strike. The Oakland Port Shutdown was a historic and effective action, and the memory of that night on the port lives in the hearts of people across Oakland and around the country.
  • The message to you from Occupy Oakland in the face of police raids and continued disruptions of workers lives by the 1% is the following: The Occupy movement will strike back and rise again! We will blockade all of the West Coast Ports on December 12th in solidarity with longshoremen, port workers and truckers in their struggle against the 1%! Together we are unstoppable! Strike while the iron is hot!

The following is the call for a coordinated West Coast Port Blockade to be carried out by the Occupy movement. It is this call which we wish for other Occupies to endorse and carry out. West Coast Occupations will have full political and material support for each other in whatever ways are necessary before, during, and after the port blockades. This call was passed unanimously at our Occupy Oakland General Assembly on Friday, November 18th.

Proposal for a Coordinated West Coast Port Blockade Passed Unanimously at the Occupy Oakland General Assembly 11/18/2011:

In response to coordinated attacks on the occupations and attacks on workers across the nation:

Occupy Oakland calls for the blockade and disruption of the economic apparatus of the 1% with a coordinated shutdown of ports on the entire West Coast on December 12th. The 1% has disrupted the lives of longshoremen and port truckers and the workers who create their wealth, just as coordinated nationwide police attacks have turned our cities into battlegrounds in an effort to disrupt our Occupy movement.

We call on each West Coast occupation to organize a mass mobilization to shut down its local port. Our eyes are on the continued union-busting and attacks on organized labor, in particular the rupture of Longshoremen jurisdiction in Longview Washington by the EGT. Already, Occupy Los Angeles has passed a resolution to carry out a port action on the Port Of Los Angeles on December 12th, to shut down SSA terminals, which are owned by Goldman Sachs.

Occupy Oakland expands this call to the entire West Coast, and calls for continuing solidarity with the Longshoremen in Longview Washington in their ongoing struggle against the EGT. The EGT is an international grain exporter led by Bunge LTD, a company constituted of 1% bankers whose practices have ruined the lives of the working class all over the world, from Argentina to the West Coast of the US. During the November 2nd General Strike, tens of thousands shutdown the Port Of Oakland as a warning shot to EGT to stop its attacks on Longview. Since the EGT has disregarded this message, and continues to attack the Longshoremen at Longview, we will now shut down ports along the entire West Coast.

  • Participating occupations are asked to ensure that during the port shutdowns the local arbitrator rules in favor of longshoremen not crossing community picket lines in order to avoid recriminations against them.
  • Should there be any retaliation against any workers as a result of their honoring pickets or supporting our port actions, additional solidarity actions should be prepared.
  • In the event of police repression of any of the mobilizations, shutdown actions may be extended to multiple days.

We ask that you bring our proposal to your next General Assembly, as it is urgent that each Occupy begins to organize and mobilize for this major offensive ASAP. Please let us know if you have questions or need help. Most importantly, please copy us on your support resolutions passed at your GA’s.

In Solidarity and Struggle,
Occupy Oakland

Modern School: The Not So Shocking Truth About the Crackdown on Occupy Wall Street #ows

Modern School: The Not So Shocking Truth About the Crackdown on Occupy Wall Street:

The Not So Shocking Truth About the Crackdown on Occupy Wall Street


Image from Flickr, Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com
Naomi Wolf’s expose on the federal role in the crackdown on the Occupy Wall Street movement, The shocking truth about the crackdown on Occupy,” has been making the rounds in the liberal blogosphere, getting replayed here and here, for example. In her piece, Wolf calls the violent crackdown on OWS protesters a “civil war” by the U.S. government against its own constituents. She believes that Congress is colluding with Obama to suppress the people they are “supposed to represent” and they are doing it because they have “started entering the system as members of the middle class (or upper middle class) – but they are leaving DC privy

URGENT: Occupy LA Prepares for Eviction | OccupyWallSt.org #ows

URGENT: Occupy LA Prepares for Eviction | OccupyWallSt.org:

URGENT: Occupy LA Prepares for Eviction

Popout

The mayor of Los Angeles, Antonio Villaraigosa, has ordered Occupy LA to pack up and leave Solidarity Park (formerly City Hall Park) by 12:01AM tonight or face arrest. Villaraigosa – who initially claimed to support the Occupation and has lauded OWS for "awakening the country's conscience" – is now citing "public health and safety" as justification to evict the encampment, even as LA police chief Charlie Beck refused to reject the use of tear gas and rubber bullets against nonviolent protestors.

As Villaraigosa held a press conference announcing the park would be closed indefinitely after eviction, Occupy

Education Petition: Open Letter: Defend CA Public Education | Change.org #ows #edreform

Education Petition: Open Letter: Defend CA Public Education | Change.org:

Open Letter: Defend CA Public Education

Open Letter: Defend CA Public Education
Why This Is Important

This Open Letter is an indispensable tool to reverse the attacks on public education in California. It gives the authorities an ultimatum: either cede to our demands or we will begin a massive wave of actions beginning on February 1, 2012.

Please help us gather hundreds of thousands of signatures, including from all major labor, student, and community organizations, by forwarding this out widely. Moreover, please begin organizing on the ground to make February 1, 2012 the start of the largest, most united, and most powerful wave of actions California has yet seen.

(This Open Letter was first adopted by the Nov. 15 General Assembly of Occupy Cal, the largest GA in the history of the U.S. Occupy movement, with more than 5,000 students, faculty, and campus workers. For more information, contact caloccupation@gmail.com )

Why People Are Signing

Schools need to have a voice | EdNewsColorado

Schools need to have a voice | EdNewsColorado:

Schools need to have a voice

Editor’s note: This article was submitted by teacher Mark Thorsen from Ponderosa High School in Douglas County.

Our school now enters a critical period, and a recent conversation with a well-respected colleague helped to keep some of my angst in perspective. He mentioned that he felt like we were in a period of mourning; we were dealing with a loss. It is a process, and we enter stages of sadness, anger and a sundry of other emotions, emerging with a sense of purpose and duty, knowing that our students show up every day hoping for the best from us.

I am in a precarious position, balancing this notion of service and obligation as a public school teacher with the

“Breaking the Cycle of Violence” at the University of California « Student Activism

“Breaking the Cycle of Violence” at the University of California « Student Activism:

“Breaking the Cycle of Violence” at the University of California

Yesterday Catherine Cole, a Berkeley theater professor, published an essay on the current “cycle of violence” at UC Berkeley that I consider an important and valuable contribution to current discussion.

In it, Cole properly declares that the perpetrators (and she uses that word) of the first acts of violence in connection with the current wave of student activism at Berkeley were not students, but police — “heavily armed police who assaulted unarmed bystanders located in a zone of free speech.” That violence, she notes, was the direct result of the Berkeley administration’s dereliction in “fulfilling its foundational duty of ensuring a safe campus,” a dereliction of duty whose consequences the administration “must accept full responsibility for.”

Instead of doing so, Cole writes, the administration has continued to resort to violence on campus, most recently eighteen days ago when “the Berkeley Administration” — not the UCPD, the administration, who directed the police’s actions — “lit in to unarmed student protestors … whacking them full force with truncheons, cracking

Looking for a few good mentors | Ideas and Thoughts

Looking for a few good mentors | Ideas and Thoughts:

Looking for a few good mentors

From January to April I'll be teaching a course called ECMP 455. It's an advanced course on using technology in education. Whatever that means.

Actually what it means is I want my students to dig deep into what teaching and learning looks like in 2012 as great teachers and great ideas come together to make learning better and richer and even transformative. I've taught this particular course 4-5 times now and am really looking forward to this term. I've got some interesting and new ideas planned and I'll share on that later.

The class is made up of pre-service teachers who are usually in their 3rd or 4th year of teaching and have had some classroom experience. This course is totally optional so they take it because they have an interest in technology and usually have some skill set above the average pre-service teacher. That doesn't mean they are

Fact Sheet: Multiple Measures: A Definition and Examples from the U.S. and Other Nations | FairTest

Fact Sheet: Multiple Measures: A Definition and Examples from the U.S. and Other Nations | FairTest:

Fact Sheet: Multiple Measures: A Definition and Examples from the U.S. and Other Nations

Multiple Measures: A Definition and Examples from the U.S. and Other Nations

Summary

Definition. Multiple measures: the use of multiple indicators and sources of evidence of student learning, of varying kinds, gathered at multiple points in time, within and across subject areas.

Examples of multiple measures systems used successfully in the U.S.

  • Learning Record: Developed for use with multi-lingual, multi-cultural populations, to assess progress in reading, writing, speaking and listening. Using a structured format, the teacher regularly observes and describes the student and her work, and attaches samples, to provide multiples sources of evidence. Student progress is summarized in writing and placed numerically on a developmental scale. LRs have been re-scored with high inter-rater agreement, and studies have supported its validity.
  • Work Sampling System (WSS): The WSS, designed for students aged 3-8, facilitates the collection and evaluation of observations and examples of student work. Learning is summarized in writing and numerically. It was

SOUTH BRONX SCHOOL: Little Evan Stone And Princess Sydney Morris Are Do-Gooders (Thank God!)

SOUTH BRONX SCHOOL: Little Evan Stone And Princess Sydney Morris Are Do-Gooders (Thank God!):

Little Evan Stone And Princess Sydney Morris Are Do-Gooders (Thank God!)

Let's try this. Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat (sound of teletype)rat-tat-tat-tat....From the newsroom of Educators4Excllence, breaking news!!!!

E4E, Little Evan Stone, and Princess Sydney Morris have been featured onthedogooder.com as a couple of gosh diddly darn do gooders! Yes, in an article entitled, "Educators 4 Excellence: An Independent Voice for Teachers" (notice the major typo when you see the article)written and attributed to no one, this puff piece shows just how how wonderful and

Schooling in the Ownership Society: For-profit teacher certification is booming

Schooling in the Ownership Society: For-profit teacher certification is booming:

For-profit teacher certification is booming

This, according to a Nov. 26 New York Times report.

As you might expect, Texas leads the way in for-profit teacher certifications. More than 110 alternative certification programs — including iteachTexas, and nonprofits like Teach for America — produce 40 percent of all new teachers in Texas, according to an analysis of Texas Education Agency data by Ed Fuller, a Penn State University education professor and former University of Texas researcher.

For-profit programs dominate that market: in each year since 2007, the two largest

Many Lenses, But Little Focus. « My Island View

Many Lenses, But Little Focus. « My Island View:

Many Lenses, But Little Focus.

To understand why certain decisions are made, we need to understand the decision maker and the pressures under which certain decisions are made. This is sometimes referred to as looking through the lens of the decision maker. It takes into view many of the factors pushing and pulling on an individual responsible for making a decision. Sometimes decisions of some magnitude may require a number of individuals on a number of levels to make separate decisions. Each of those decisions is made looking through a different lens.

Certainly the leader of any School district, the Superintendent, has the most politically influenced job. Most often the position is held by an educator who has exhibited great business management skills as a primary focus. Of course it is not expected that Superintendents need professional development at this stage of their career. They must be able to effectively deal with huge budget considerations with every decision. Matters of money,

Truth Values: One Girl’s Romp Through M.I.T.’s Male Math Maze will be at the University of Washington | Seattle Education

Truth Values: One Girl’s Romp Through M.I.T.’s Male Math Maze will be at the University of Washington | Seattle Education:

Truth Values: One Girl’s Romp Through M.I.T.’s Male Math Maze will be at the University of Washington

From the Truth Values website:

Created as a response to former Harvard President Lawrence Summers’ now infamous suggestion that women are less represented than men in the sciences because of innate gender differences,Truth Values: One Girl’s Romp Through M.I.T.’s Male Math Maze is a true-life tale that offers a humorous, scathing, insightful and ultimately uplifting look at the challenges of being a professional woman in a male-dominated field. Performed barefoot on a bare stage with only a chair and small

Occupy Philly Facing Eviction TODAY | OccupyWallSt.org #ows

Occupy Philly Facing Eviction TODAY | OccupyWallSt.org:

Occupy Philly Facing Eviction TODAY

support Occupy Philly

Occupy Philadelphia has announced they are facing imminent eviction:

[Mayor] Nutter has joined the chorus of Mayors nationwide to silence and render invisible this movement against Wall Street greed. The City told us to leave City Hall with all of our belongings by 5pm today. At 5pm let's show them how much support this movement has. Come to City Hall and stand with the 99%! Chances are police will not move in at that time. The City will probably

NYT: Policy-Making Billionaires – Their policy is to make billions off our kids. Shut the school house gates on Gates. « Continuing Change

NYT: Policy-Making Billionaires – Their policy is to make billions off our kids. Shut the school house gates on Gates. « Continuing Change:

NYT: Policy-Making Billionaires – Their policy is to make billions off our kids. Shut the school house gates on Gates.

image

Policy Making Billionaires Boys Club making education their pet project.

Wanna bet their policy is to make sure they make billions…

Is the Job of a Teacher 24/7 | Connected Principals

Is the Job of a Teacher 24/7 | Connected Principals:

Is the Job of a Teacher 24/7



Picture from: nysut.org

I haven’t blogged for a while and have been thinking about what to blog about. I am jealous of all of those in my PLN that blog daily and sometimes more than once a day. After thinking about this for a while I decided to put my thoughts down on “paper”.

Today we talk about child centered learning and the teacher as a facilitator to learning and allowing students to drive the learning with their questions. They are right and this is a major part of the role of the teacher in the 21st Century and it must change from the Sage on the Stage model.

However I believe that this is only part of the role of a teacher. A teacher needs to be a leader and a change

Library group denounces book destruction at Occupy Wall Street - The Answer Sheet - The Washington Post #ows

Library group denounces book destruction at Occupy Wall Street - The Answer Sheet - The Washington Post:

Library group denounces book destruction at Occupy Wall Street

The American Library Association has denounced the destruction of books at a library set up by Occupy Wall Street when New York police raided a park where protesters were staying earlier this month.

The ALA, the oldest and largest library association in the world, issued a release that said some of its members who had visited the site before the Nov. 15 raid in Zuccotti Park had praised the People’s Library for having a balanced, catalogued collection of materials that included works of different views.

Read full article >>

Boys joining girls’ swim teams in high school

A growing number of boys are joining girls’ high school swim teams in Massachusetts and authorities that regulate athletics aren’t quite sure what to make of it.

The Boston Globe reports that the issue became more problematic recently when a boy broke a meet record for girls’ 50-yard freestyle. With more boys on girls’ swim teams this fall than ever, the state’s Interscholastic Athletic Association is expected in January to try to figure out how to handle the new record and the overall policy.

Read full article >>

Lady Gaga sends anti-bullying video to student

Lady Gaga sent a personalized video (see below) to a high school student council president who had sought help with an anti-bullying assembly he was hosting.

Jacques St. Pierre, 17, a senior at Etobicoke School of the Arts in Toronto, who had been a victim of bullying when he was younger, received an e-mail with a subject line that said, “To Jacques from Lady Gaga,” theCanadian Broadcasting Corporation reported.

Read full article >>