How do we help each student succeed? One promising way is to personalize learning and put each student at the center of her learning experience. Broader than individualized or differentiated instruction, personalized learning is driven by the learner. Ensuring personalized learning for all students requires a shift in thinking about long-standing education practices, systems and policies, as well
Thursday, January 30, 2014, 3:00 p.m. eastern time Register now!
Every school has its challenging students. In this webinar you'll learn how to focus on individual students and build on those efforts to enrich your team's capacity to hang in with many students. Benson will also be presenting on this topic at the 69th ASCD Annual Conference and Exhibit Show in Los Angeles, Calif., on Monday, March 17. Learn more and register at www.ascd.org/annualconference.
Jeffrey Benson has worked in almost every school context in his 35 years of experience in education: as a teacher in elementary, middle, and high schools; as an instructor in undergraduate and graduate programs; as an administrator in day and residential schools. He has studied and worked side by side with national leaders in the fields of special education, learning theory, trauma and addiction, school reform, adult development, and conflict resolution. He has been a consultant to public and private schools, mentored teachers and principals in varied school settings, and has written on many school-based issues. The core of his work is in understanding how people learn, the starting point for everything that schools should do.
Early Education Takes Center Stage — Whole Child Education: Early Education Takes Center StageWith so much attention being paid to college and career readiness, the importance of early childhood education should not be overlooked. In the new issue of Policy Priorities, ASCD explores the significance of early childhood education and details the challenges of expanding access and ensuring equitable
Yesterday, the US Department of Education posted a video with Secretary of Education Arne Duncan that supposedly answers questions about the role of corporate funds and interests in education. Though we’d like to take what Secretary Duncan says at face value, our experiences over the course of his years in office demonstrate that we can’t.
Instead of offering a change from the top-down, test-and-punish policies of the Bush Administration, Secretary Duncan and his team have continued and extended them. So while he may ‘listen to everyone’ as he says in his video, his policy choices suggest that he only acts on what he hears from certain people.
When he insults teachers one day, then meets with Pearson executives the next, who should we believe holds more influence with him, the teachers or the testing company?
When he dismisses concerned community activists as “armchair pundits” who “manufacture drama”, and writes off parents because he believes they’re just “White suburban moms who’ve discovered their kids aren’t as brilliant as they thought,” why would we believe that he is seriously considering our concerns? Especially when many of those concerns are about the very corporate interest groups who are so well-represented among the Department’s leadership?
We have seen time and again that there is a huge gap between the Department’s rhetoric and our reality. We’ve heard the talking points before, and they ring increasingly hollow as the years pass.
That’s why we look forward to examining the communications we’ve asked for in our FOIA request. We know better than to take Secretary Duncan’s words at face value. We’d rather see what’s been going on for
Educating, Engaging and Mobilizing Parents: A Conversation with Parents for Public Schools Executive Director Anne Foster is a good interview from Learning First. Here’s how it begins: Public School Insights (PSI): What is Parents for Public Schools? Foster: Parents for Public Schools (PPS) is a national organization of community-based chapters working to strengthen public schools by engaging, edu
Truancy down when teens eat with parents, says OECD is the headline of an article in the BBC. I think it’s just a different summary of the PISA report I recently posted about — see Two Somewhat Interesting Results From PISA Parent Survey. My post highlights what I think are more useful results from their survey. I’m not too sure anyone will be surprised by the lead in the BBC article: Young peopl
I have been, and continue to be, skeptical of anything connected to NBC’s Education Nation — including their “Parent Toolkit” (see NBC “Education Nation” Unveils “Parent Toolkit” — Time To Be Skeptical). However, they have just published a Spanish version of that Parent Toolkit and, given the dearth of good multilingual parent resources, I’m very reluctantly adding it to The Best Multilingual Reso
7 Crippling Parenting Behaviors That Keep Children From Growing Into Leaders is an article from Forbes that offers some decent advice to both parents and to teachers. I might be useful as a hand-out at a parents meeting to quickly review and discuss…
Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day… | …For Teaching ELL, ESL, & EFL: From The Archives: “Five key strategies to get/keep kids engaged at school”I’ve recently re-started an effort I’ve tried to do previously by regularly highlighting previous posts and articles I’ve shared in previous years that I think might be worth a second look. Today, I’m highlighting an excerpt from one of my books that
People think respect has declined among teachers, administrators, students, and parents since they were in school.
Paramount Pictures
“Anyone? Anyone?” a high-school teacher asks at the front of a classroom inFerris Bueller’s Day Off. His dazed students, popping bubble gum and falling asleep, gaze toward the front of the room, unaware a question has been posed. After a moment’s pause, the teacher answers his own question and drones on with his lecture while his students fight to stay awake.
This scene, set in 1986, doesn’t show much esteem for the teaching profession.(The movie doesn't have much regard for administrators, either. Ferris continually outsmarts the cartoonishly spiteful Principal Rooney.) And yet, a recent poll found that adults believe that people respect teachers and administrators even less now than then did in the past. While 79 percent of Americans said students respected teachers when they were in school, only 31 percent believe students respect teachers today, according to a Harris Poll of 2,250 American adults.
When they were in school, 91 percent of respondents said that parents and teachers respected each other, but when asked about today, only 49 percent said parents respect teachers and 64 percent said teachers respect parents.
Respondents continued to report a decline in trust between teachers and students: When they were in school, 86 percent said teachers respected students, but only 61 percent say that is true today. Eighty-eight percent said the administration respected teachers when they were in school, while 58 percent say that continues to be true in today’s schools.
Parents of school-aged children, who might be in the best position to judge the environment of today’s
Below is the text of my article entitled, A Challenge: Teach Eighth Grade Common Core Before Endorsing It, published in the Washington Post on January 23, 2014. _______________________________________________________________________________________________ On January 21, 2014, Valerie Strauss’ Washington Post education blog, The Answer Sheet, ran a supposed “reaction to” education historian Diane
@ THE CHALK FACE: On Public Schools and Common Core: Graff’s Critique of RavitchOn Public Schools and Common Core: Graff\’s Critique of Ravitch. via On Public Schools and Common Core: Graff’s Critique of Ravitch.Filed under: PAUL THOMAS: Becoming Radical2 by plthomasedd / 2h 1-22-14 @ The Chalk Face@ THE CHALK FACE: Vergara V. California Would Turn Teachers into Second Class CitizensDavid Cohen’s
“Dragon Stout?” Sean looks up from his worn copy of Etienne de La Boรฉtie’s Discours de la servitude volontaire. “Cold or room temperature?” sighed Sean as if I were asking him, a bartender, to actually serve me a beer. “Cold,” I responded with a certain puppy-dog look, as if he were doing me a great favor. “Sometimes I just hate my job,” Sean said. “Get another one,” chimed in Tony. “No, no. I me
Catalyst: A Relay representative said that Chicago is an “obvious” place for Relay to expand because of the demand for teachers and the support for new programs within the city’s education community. Relay plans to work exclusively with Noble Street Charter School for its first several years in operation here. If approved by the state, the school would begin by preparing a small number of teachers
A pay raise for JPMorgan Chase’s Jamie Dimon. Priceless. Fred, Where do you think the money to pay for these very generous pension plans should come from? Do you think taxes should be raised to pay for these pension plans? Should the spending on everything else be curtailed to pay for the pension plans? We hear all these complaints but never any suggestions for alternatives. - Bob Kastigar IBEW
After the Illinois General Assembly passed Senate Bill 1, which cut public employee pensions – including the pensions of current retirees – the Democratic legislators who voted yes were flooded with angry phone calls, emails and snail mail letters. In classic cover-their-ass mode, almost all these Democrats responded by saying something along the lines of, “Well. I don’t know. We just want the
Fred Klonsky | Daily posts from a retired public school teacher who is just looking at the data.: Chicago Teachers Union on the CPS charter vote.CHICAGO – Today, Chicago Teachers Union President (CTU) Karen Lewis said the decision by the Chicago Board of Education to approve seven new charter schools is hypocritical in the face of recent school closings and only further illustrates the predatory c
My Article in the Washington Post on January 23, 2014
January 24, 2014
Below is the text of my article entitled, A Challenge: Teach Eighth Grade Common Core Before Endorsing It, published in the Washington Post on January 23, 2014.
On January 21, 2014, Valerie Strauss’ Washington Post education blog, The Answer Sheet, ran a supposed “reaction to” education historian Diane Ravitch’s January 11, 2014, speech at the Modern Language Association (MLA) annual meeting in Chicago. This “reaction” was written by former MLA president and career English professor, Gerald Graff.
Graff’s words beg response, which I will offer in this writing.
Allow me to ask readers to indulge my perspective, for I am a seasoned, traditional public school teacher, and I have just spent the last seven hours teaching my approximately 125, mostly-15-year-old students of varied socioeconomic status, homelife stability, intellectual curiosity, life experience, and aptitude how to write.
Thus, I have fresh in my mind both my public school world and my goal to teach students to write.
Now, to Graff’s “reaction.”
First, if one considers Strauss’ introduction of Graff’s article, one expects Graff’s writing to connect to Ravitch’s MLA speech. However, nothing about Graff’s writing is clearly and directly connected to Ravitch’s speech. In fact, Graff could have written this “reaction” without ever having heard or read Ravitch’s speech.
If responding to Ravitch’s speech had been a writing assignment in my class, Graff’s response would have earned an “F” for its complete lack of connection to the topic.
Second, in his “reaction” that really isn’t one, Graff quotes a few lines from Ravitch’s book, Reign of Error. However, he does not explore the book, fully half of which
Researchers say that as children age, they spend less time using TV and electronic devices for educational activities.J Pat Carter/Associated Press
With children spendingmore time in front of screens than ever, parents sometimes try to convince themselves that playing Angry Birds teaches physics, or that assembling outfits on a shopping app likePolyvorefires creativity.
According to a study scheduled for release on Friday, however, less than half the time that children age 2 to 10 spend watching or interacting with electronic screens is with what parents consider “educational” material. Most of that time is from watching television, with mobile devices contributing relatively little educational value.
What is more, the study, by the Joan Ganz Cooney Center, a nonprofit research institute affiliated with the Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit producer of “Sesame Street,” shows that as children spend more time with screens as they get older, they spend less time doing educational activities, with 8- to 10-year-olds spending about half the time with educational content that 2- to 4-year-olds do.
Athena Devlin, a professor of women’s and American studies at St. Francis College in Brooklyn and the mother of two children, said that her son, Elias, a kindergartner, still watched quite a bit of public television, including shows like “Wild Kratts” and “Dino Dan,” and that she has been impressed by the detailed facts he learns.
But her daughter, Laura, a fourth grader, prefers shows like “Jessie” on the
Common Core Sets Unrealistic and Unscientific Expectations
Important Notice: Watch for my poll on Common Core to be accessed on this blog starting Tuesday January 28. Please tell all your colleagues and parent friends to take the poll also.
The whole theory behind the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) is that if we set the academic bar higher, our students will achieve at a higher level. I guess the developers think that if you just put the material out there using great teachers that all students will learn it . . . automatically! This is the same theory that was used for the “No Child Left Behind Act”. That federal law said that by the year 2014 (ten years from the start date of 2004), all students nationwide would attain proficiency in English language arts and math. That's this year folks! Did that effort at raising the bar work?
Both No Child Left Behind and CCSS are based on a pseudo science theory many of us call The Lake Wobegon Effect. The Lake Wobegon effect is based on a mythical town in Minnesota called Lake Wobegon. This town was created by Garrison Keillor, for his PBS radio show called A Prairie Home Companion.
In his introduction to his stories about Lake Wobegon each week, Kiellor starts off by describing Lake Wobegon as the town where “All the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average.” …... It's a joke! All three of those characterizations are impossible because they defy the laws of mathematical statistical distribution.
The same principle applies to the No Child Left Behind requirement that all children must be proficient in ELA and math by 2014. That's because as Diane Ravitch, an expert in standards (she served on the Board of the NAPE) explains in her new book
I have worked as a teacher of English and a Reading Specialist for the past 14 years. In recent months, I have been confronted with the following question: Are we raising a society of potentially reluctant readers as a result of our current educational system and its constant focus on testing and its new panacea, the Common Core Curriculum?
Just yesterday, within the span of three hours, I had multiple conversations with parents who are at a loss for how their elementary school children are reacting to school and school work. Ironically, these parents are the ones who eagerly welcomed the Common Core with its focus on "rigor" at the start of the school year. This "rigor" is now being deemed as another failed attempt in education by these parents, who see their children stifled by another educational mandate.
Currently, the student nearest to my heart is my talented niece, who is a bright, intelligent nine-year-old. She loves gardening, coloring, exploring, and ice-skating; she loves to climb trees, create fairy gardens, explore museums, and entertain her little cousins, my young children. She has her own sense of style and is finding her own unique voice as the youngest of three intelligent, thoughtful children. Gabriella actively
Join Jeffrey Benson, author of the ASCD book Hanging In: Strategies for Teaching the Students Who Challenge Us Most, for an exciting, free webinar on what you can do now for a challenging student in your school.
Yesterday, the US Department of Education posted a video with Secretary of Education Arne Duncan that supposedly answers questions about the role of corporate funds and interests in education. Though we’d like to take what Secretary Duncan says at face value, our experiences over the course of his years in office demonstrate that we can’t.
Yesterday, the US Department of Education posted a video with Secretary of Education Arne Duncan that supposedly answers questions about the role of corporate funds and interests in education. Though we’d like to take what Secretary Duncan says at face value, our experiences over the course of his years in office demonstrate that we can’t.
