Black History Month Series: A Challenge!SF Public School Mom

Black History Month Series: A Challenge!SF Public School Mom:

Black History Month (BHM) Series #1: A Challenge!

In honor of Black History Month, I’m reposting this previous blog. A few years ago, (2015 to be exact!) I challenged myself to write 28 posts highlighting African-American History. I made a dent in my original goal, but one year later I still had a way to go. This year I finally reached my goal!!! Check out my original post which appeared on February 2, 2015 below, and please, if you have any suggestions, post them in the comments below!

It’s Black History Month!!! Yay!

This hilarious and to the point SNL skit inspired me to write 28 posts highlighting African-American culture and heritage (roughly one for each day of the month)… Watch the video (below) and then read about why it inspired me to write this series. (You can also view the video directly on YouTube.)

28 Reasons… (reasons 2-28 are all the same)

I mentioned in a previous post that I became an educator because it took me until college to really appreciate school, due to the fact that anything “academic” lacked relevance to what I felt was important. Social studies, for example, was a bore because my teachers focused only on memorization of dates and events. More important, our textbooks looked flat in comparison to the rich cultural tapestry that was my neighborhood. As a child of the 70/80’s growing up in Los Angeles Black History Month Series: A Challenge!SF Public School Mom:

Making things complicated or difficult for the sake of making things complicated or difficult, well, that’s just stupid writes NYC Educator. | Fred Klonsky

Making things complicated or difficult for the sake of making things complicated or difficult, well, that’s just stupid writes NYC Educator. | Fred Klonsky:

Making things complicated or difficult for the sake of making things complicated or difficult, well, that’s just stupid writes NYC Educator.

-I stole this post from NYC Educator and I don’t he would mind.

I’ve heard from various and sundry administrators that there must be an aim for each and every lesson. I do write one, as supervisors are always fiitting in, out, and about, but I’ve never agreed that it was necessary. For one thing, I don’t like to brag, but I’m a high school graduate. The fact is I never saw a single one when I was in school. When I taught college, where such things are not mandated, I never gave a second thought to bothering with one.

I’ve written before that an aim, if I didn’t know what I was doing, would not clear it up for me. And if I do know what I’m doing, reducing it to an aim is unlikely to make it any clearer. I now have a co-teacher, and we have dueling approaches to what constitutes an aim. I’d say that neither of us is wrong, but of course, being me, I tend to favor my approach. I suppose I wouldn’t have been using it otherwise.

I actually have multiple goals when I design a lesson. One goal, to be quite honest, is to trick the students into achieving said goal without having them realize what they’re doing. That sounds a little complicated, but it really isn’t. I’m a language teacher, and if you observe the best language learners, they happen to be babies and small children. They don’t have any aim written on any board. They just soak up language like sponges, and they do it automatically without any prodding whatsoever.

I can’t mirror that exactly, of course, and my students are teenagers. They haven’t got the language learning capacity of small children, but they’re still a lot closer to it than we plodding, miserable adults. I can speak Spanish fluently, having spent a few summers in Mexico, among other things, but I learned almost nothing in high school Making things complicated or difficult for the sake of making things complicated or difficult, well, that’s just stupid writes NYC Educator. | Fred Klonsky:

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Why are Democrats smearing peaceful anti-Trump protests?

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Why are Democrats smearing peaceful anti-Trump protests?:

Why are Democrats smearing peaceful anti-Trump protests?

DeVos protest in D.C.

“Nothing about a firm commitment to free expression obliges us open our doors to (much less to provide platforms for) those who incite hatred and violence against refugees, immigrants, and minorities—that is, against our students, teachers, co-workers and neighbors.” -- Letter from coalition to IOP Director David Axelrod.

This morning's Sun-Times has columnist Mark Brown imploring Univ. of Chicago students to "Let Loathsome Lewandowski Speak", as if they had any official say in the matter.

A coalition of organizations, which includes groups such as UofC Resists and Graduate Students United, protesting former Trump campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski’s scheduled visit tomorrow, asked the school’s Institute of Politics, run by Democratic Party operative David Axelrod, to withdraw its invitation to Lewandowski and to “stop providing a platform to surrogates of the Trump administration” -- a reference in part to last month’s visit by Trump press secretary Sean Spicer. 

Axelrod claims he welcomes "peaceful protest" but refuses to "shut down" Lewandowski, Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Why are Democrats smearing peaceful anti-Trump protests?:

CURMUDGUCATION: Guest Post: Open Letter To Pat Toomey

CURMUDGUCATION: Guest Post: Open Letter To Pat Toomey:
Guest Post: Open Letter To Pat Toomey

Barbara Ferman is a professor at the College of Liberal Arts, Temple University. She's also the Director of the University Community Collaborative. She passed along this letter to share. If you want to make sure Senator Toomey sees it, feel free to help direct it to him.

February 13, 2017

An Open Letter to Senator Toomey, Pennsylvania


Dear Senator Toomey:

I grew up in a working class family and neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York. I was the first in my family to get a college degree, made possible by the then free City University of New York system, an institution that enabled many working and lower middle class kids to achieve the American Dream. I have been an educator for 32 years, 25 of those at a public institution in Philadelphia (Temple University). During that time, I have enabled other kids, like the one I was, to reach, dream, and land higher than the place from where they came. But, now, that dream is in jeopardy. 

I am extremely fearful of what the new Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, will do to public education (K-16) in this country. In the confirmation hearings, she demonstrated her total lack of knowledge about public education and the federal laws that govern it (e.g IDEA), and, even worse, a lack of desire to learn about public education. The unregulated system of charter schools that she financially supported in Michigan has been an unmitigated disaster. The danger she poses to public education has been articulated by some very conservative stakeholders. Eli Broad, a major investor in charter schools, called her “unqualified” and “unprepared,” and cited her support for unregulated charters and vouchers as particularly problematic in his letter to Senators McConnell and Schumer. The Massachusetts Charter Public School Association, an organization representing seventy charter schools in that state, sent a letter to Senator Elizabeth Warren expressing concern that “efforts to grow school choice without a rigorous accountability system will reduce the quality of charter schools across the country.” Two of your Republican colleagues, Senators Murkowski and Collins, voted against her in the full Senate. I am totally perplexed as to the reasons why you voted to confirm her.
Can you please tell me how you think Ms. DeVos will improve public education in this county given her rather poor record in Michigan and her total lack of understanding of our most cherished institution. 

Thank you for taking the time to read and respond to this letter. I am genuinely interested in your response.

Sincerely,

Barbara Ferman 

 CURMUDGUCATION: Guest Post: Open Letter To Pat Toomey:

Gifted Education, Part One - Seattle Schools Community Forum

Seattle Schools Community Forum: Gifted Education, Part One:

Gifted Education, Part One

(You didn't think I'd be able to say everything in one post, did you?  Part Two will have me talking about what I hear and saw at various events and what direction I think the district will take.)

As I gather up my thoughts from the Work Session on Advanced Learning,the two-day Equity and Gifted Education Summit at UW and more reading/research, I come away with three main thoughts.

1.  Is there such a thing as a child who is gifted academically?  

I ask this question because it felt to me at the Equity and Gifted Education summit that there were clearly some people in the room that didn't believe that.  Not a large group but there were enough to make me notice.

Or, they may believe it but think that under no circumstances should any child go to any kind of self-contained classroom including AP classes.

I ask this question because of the huge pushback that Advanced Learning - and in particular, HCC - gets at this blog. Is that the case for some readers?  

Of course, it then begs the question of gifted versus bright?

From Education.com:

All gifted children are considered bright, but not the other way around – a concept parents of bright children have a hard time understanding, explains Andrea Mishler, who’s been a Gifted and Talented (GT) teacher for nine years. The fact that their child gets straight A’s, but does not qualify for the GT program leaves them frustrated and scratching their heads. Mishler’s district doesn’t look at grades when deciding who is eligible for the GT program. “Sometimes gifted children are such perfectionists, they won’t Seattle Schools Community Forum: Gifted Education, Part One: