Public schools deserve your support. I know. I attend one. - cleveland com

Public schools deserve your support. I know. I attend one. - cleveland.com

Public schools deserve your support. I know. I attend one

By Other Voices

As a student at a reputedly failing school, I will say emphatically that our public schools deserve support. As we look to determine the future of education, we must take a step back and decide what we want out of the system. There is more to education than an ill-conceived system of state testing. Public education exists to instill republican virtues in our people. We need this now more than ever.

Public schools have been branded as failing and stripped of funding by bizarre school-choice schemes. If a man has a broken leg, you don’t get him walking again by breaking the other leg. EdChoice, under the pretense of rescuing students from failing schools, has instead defunded those same schools rather than supporting vouchers directly. Our lawmakers must consider: If we focused instead on making meaningful improvements to the public education system which has served our state so well, would there be a need for EdChoice?

Visit Cleveland Heights High School. It is not failing. Nor is it perfect, for the vouchers have made sure of that. It is time that America rediscovers its republican virtues, the source of our strength, and the schools which gave them to us.

Kenji Sakaie,

Public schools deserve your support. I know. I attend one. - cleveland.com

NYC Educator: A Portrait of My Student

NYC Educator: A Portrait of My Student

A Portrait of My Student

This is one of my students. She's lovely, isn't she? Or he? Or them? I don't have the proper pronouns. All I have is this avatar. 

What do I know about this student? Well, I know he, she or they likes cute kittens. Or perhaps Pokemon monsters, or whatever this thing is. I know that this student is likely a fan of bubble tea, which is what appears to be in the cup. 

That's enough for any teacher to build a productive relationship, I guess. Or I'm supposed to guess. I'm told I'm not allowed to demand that students show their faces online. It's a privacy issue. 

That's hard for me to understand. I do understand I ought not to be able to see my students' homes if they choose to keep them private. However, there's an easy fix for that. On Zoom, you can be in PeeWee's Playhouse, or the Batcave, or on the moon, or anywhere. If I can set up a background, every student can set up a better one. 

In fact, I have a bunch of students who only show their foreheads. Maybe they're shy. I don't give them a hard CONTINUE READING: NYC Educator: A Portrait of My Student

Moving from Performing as a Student to Performing as a Scholar: More on Writing and Citation – radical eyes for equity

Moving from Performing as a Student to Performing as a Scholar: More on Writing and Citation – radical eyes for equity

Moving from Performing as a Student to Performing as a Scholar: More on Writing and Citation

The first time I recall being viewed as “good at writing” was in high school when I submitted a parody of my friends and teachers for a short story assignment; this was probably my junior year of high school during Mr. Harrill’s American literature class, and I am quite certain that I would be mortified by the story if I could read it now.

A couple years later, however, my “writer epiphany” came the spring of my first year of college. I very clearly mark the beginning of my life as a writer with a poem I wrote from my dorm room, inspired by being introduced to e.e. cummings in my speech course with Mr. Brannon.

To be blunt, I likely didn’t really write anything of consequence until my mid-30s—specifically my doctoral dissertation. And then, my life as a published academic really didn’t occur until I was in my early 40s (my 20s and 30s had a smattering of published poems, stories, and scholarship).

These realizations about writing quality over decades of formal schooling and so-called serious writing help inform my work as a teacher of writing. My undergraduates are unlikely to write anything of real consequence while in college so I see my job as helping them develop behaviors the support the possibility of CONTINUE READING: Moving from Performing as a Student to Performing as a Scholar: More on Writing and Citation – radical eyes for equity

CURMUDGUCATION: An Evaluation That Teachers Can Use

CURMUDGUCATION: An Evaluation That Teachers Can Use

An Evaluation That Teachers Can Use

A post from Jay Wamsted at Education Post (yes, that Education Post--I've said it before and I'll say it again--it's important to read from all over the edu-web) got me thinking about the sources of feedback that teachers can tap. He tells a story about a missed moment in which someone offered him feedback on his teaching that he didn't want to hear, and how he regrets that missed opportunity.

Which I get. I suspect most teachers who have been doing the work more than five years get it. Because the system so rarely gives us feedback we can use, teachers hunker down into a cycle of reflection and self-evaluation, and that is a great and beautiful thing, but it has its drawbacks. Teachers can fall into a despair spiral ("I should have handled that differently today and I also didn't get that student what they needed and I'm a week behind on papers and oh my god did I just choose the wrong profession??")

Teachers can also get into a place where outside feedback hits like a bucket of cold water and our back goes up and our claws come out. That's what happened to Wamsted. It happened to me, a bit differently. It was very early in my career. I was teaching ninth graders, and at the beginning of a unit doing a preliminary check what knowledge they had to bring to the table. And at some point, students said, "Mr. Greene, we don't know any of that stuff. They never taught us that in middle school."

Except, here's the thing--I had just switched teaching positions that year. I had been one of their middle school teachers. I knew damn well what I had taught them, and it had included the stuff CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: An Evaluation That Teachers Can Use

How My Theory Of Knowledge Students Evaluated Our Class – And Me! | Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day...

How My Theory Of Knowledge Students Evaluated Our Class – And Me! | Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day...

HOW MY THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE STUDENTS EVALUATED OUR CLASS – AND ME!

As regular readers know, I usually have students in my class do anonymous class evaluations three or so times each year (I don’t just wait until the end because then it’s too late to make any adjustments, at least for that class).

You can find many related previous posts at Best Posts On Students Evaluating Classes (And Teachers), and you can see how my ELL History students evaluated me at a post published a couple of days ago (HOW MY ELL HISTORY STUDENTS HAVE EVALUATED OUR CLASS – AND ME!).

I haven’t done them as often this year because I’ve been meeting regularly with Leadership Teams in all my classes and inviting – and receiving – a lot of candid feedback that has helped me make a number of changes as this year of full-time distance learning has progressed.  One of the best changes that has come out of those discussions is making sure that there is enough in-class time to complete assignments so that students don’t have homework to do (except, of course, if they are absent from the class).

One student did give me an F, though she said it was for “Fantastic.”  That’s better than the year The Washington Post picked up on one of my blog posts and published an article with this headline: NEWS BREAK (not breaking news): Teacher asks students to grade him. One wrote: ‘I give Mr. Ferlazzo an A at being annoying.’

Here are the results of last week’s student evaluation (I think the answers to the last question are the most CONTINUE READING: How My Theory Of Knowledge Students Evaluated Our Class – And Me! | Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day...

Student: “I Appreciate You Disciplining Me.” | deutsch29: Mercedes Schneider's Blog

Student: “I Appreciate You Disciplining Me.” | deutsch29: Mercedes Schneider's Blog

Student: “I Appreciate You Disciplining Me.”

I expect my students to wear a school uniform shirt and an ID. It is my habit to check for these, and my students know so.

Of course, that doesn’t mean they always comply.

Last week, in one of my classes, I hit on a noncompliance bonanza of sorts. One had no school shirt. A second had no ID. A third had neither school shirt nor ID.

So, out come the detentions.

During the course of handling these incidents, I had an unusual response from one of these unfortunate three:

He thanked me for disciplining him:

His exact words: “Ms. Schneider, I appreciate you taking the time to discipline me.”

Now, my first thought was that he was being sarcastic, but he was not. He was serious.

As I was writing his detention, I congratulated him on his maturity and told him that the willingness to subject oneself to authority and to own one’s self-induced negative consequences are indispensable for living a peaceful, private life and for becoming a productive member of our greater society.

Then, I told him this story:

In my second year of teaching, 1992-93, I had a student (I named him in my telling but will CONTINUE READING: Student: “I Appreciate You Disciplining Me.” | deutsch29: Mercedes Schneider's Blog