All about the Mask | Teacher in a strange land

All about the Mask | Teacher in a strange land

All about the Mask

Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.

Arundhati Roy
When I read this quote by Arundhati Roy, it felt like she was speaking directly to educators, as they contemplate the return to school: our data banks and dead ideas vs. a completely new conception of how to equitably and even joyfully–a word that is nearly verboten in these discussions—educate our young.

What’s worth fighting for? What do we keep, and what are we willing to leave behind, passing through this portal?

Because it is a gateway to a new world. Consider this headline: Coronavirus may never go away, even with a vaccine:

Embracing that reality is crucial to the next phase of America’s pandemic response, experts say. A future with an enduring coronavirus means that normal no longer exists.

The struggle to get people to think long-term, of course, is not new to public health. We know that smoking can kill us. Yet, it is still responsible for 1 of every 5 deaths in the CONTINUE READING: All about the Mask | Teacher in a strange land

How Dutch schools reopened with no pupil distancing (Linda van Druijten) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

How Dutch schools reopened with no pupil distancing (Linda van Druijten) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

How Dutch schools reopened with no pupil distancing (Linda van Druijten)

Linda van Druijten leads De Boomhut and OBS De Klaproos, a primary school and special educational needs school in Arnhem, Netherlands. This article appeared May 22, 2020 in TES, a British digital education company serving teachers and schools

On the first day, we had bubbles. Delicate, transparent bubbles floating across the playground.

Before we had opened, our 432 primary school pupils, our 152 pupils with special educational needs, our parents and all our staff had fears. But we spoke openly about these fears. We spoke as a community about how we would tackle these fears. And as a staff, we came up with creative ideas. Like bubbles.

School would be a very different place when the children returned – for a start, all pupils had to be dropped at the school gate. So, on day one, we brought out a bubble machine. Rather than being upset, or concentrating on the unusual nature of the school, the children looked up, were captivated, and wandered into school without an issue.

If I have one tip from the opening of Dutch schools for my English colleagues, it is: get yourself a bubble machine!

Dutch school reopening

Schools have been “open” here in the Netherlands since 11 May. We are allowed half groups – our classes have between 28 and 32 pupils, so on a given day we can have groups of 15 children in each class.

Unlike in the UK, the Dutch government told us that the children do not have to CONTINUE READING: How Dutch schools reopened with no pupil distancing (Linda van Druijten) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Reopening schools requires more testing, tracing, funding - Los Angeles Times

Reopening schools requires more testing, tracing, funding - Los Angeles Times

Schools issue warning: Coronavirus testing and tracing are needed before campuses reopen

Raising the possibility that campuses won’t reopen in the fall, leaders of the state’s two largest K-12 school systems on Friday demanded that public health authorities, not school districts, take the lead on setting up coronavirus testing and contact tracing of students and employees.

Los Angeles Supt. Austin Beutner and San Diego Supt. Cindy Marten — whose combined districts represent 915,000 children and workers — issued a public warning: Either their school districts get more funding and assertive health department intervention or they can’t consider reopening campuses in the fall.

“Opening our schools will not be as easy as separating desks or placing pieces of tape on the floor,” Beutner and Marten said in their statement. “A robust system of COVID-19 testing and contact tracing will need to be in place before we can consider reopening schools. Local health authorities, not school districts, have to lead the way on testing, contact tracing and a clear set of protocols on how to respond to any occurrence of the virus.”

Beutner and Martens also said it will be difficult enough to craft effective education programs and carry out reopening plans, without having to devise and pay for public health safety measures.

“Facilities will need to be reconfigured and supplies purchased to sanitize schools on a regular basis. Personal protective equipment will need to be provided to students and staff,” they said in the statement. “More teachers and staff will be needed to do this extra work. ... And state authorities have to provide the funding.”

The statement comes after the Los Angeles County Office of Education released guidelines Wednesday outlining measures seen as advisable or necessary to reopening schools.

Based on these guidelines, school districts will have to consider staggered schedules that would allow for no more than 12 to 16 in a classroom, where students also would take their meals. Everyone would wear masks all day, and recess or physical CONTINUE READING: Reopening schools requires more testing, tracing, funding - Los Angeles Times

NYC Educator: Idiots at Tweed Expect Us to Concurrently Teach and Take PD

NYC Educator: Idiots at Tweed Expect Us to Concurrently Teach and Take PD

Idiots at Tweed Expect Us to Concurrently Teach and Take PD

Evidently Mayor de Blasio and Chancellor Carranza have determined that teachers now have plenty of time even as we offer remote learning. That's why, just yesterday, after schools like mine had already begun planning for next Thursday, they decided that we could somehow teach even as we were taking whatever PD they'd placed on their website.

My students expect me to give them classes, and I'll be there doing so. Let them put a letter in my frigging file. I'll frame it and hang it near awards I've received.

I'm a language teacher, and verbal and aural interaction, for me, is non-negotiable. I have students who've studied English for years in China, passed, and arrived here unable to speak. It's my job to help these kids with what they need. Who knows better what that is--me, or the people in air-conditioned Tweed offices?

I won't set my kids up with busy work, which would be what not showing up would entail for me. Even if I could figure out how to make that click, the assumption that any teacher can somehow offer something of value that involves neither time nor work is insulting, demeaning, and astonishingly ignorant.

My students expect me to check the work they send in, and I'll be doing that too. The chancellor, evidently, thinks after doing whatever work he wants me to set up, I have time to read his PowerPoints, or whatever crap they have posted up at DOE. I'm sure it will be as useful as the sexual harassment seminar we all wasted our time with after having spent months trying to even get in.

Other teachers may not be offering live classes, but are nonetheless providing assignments, communicating with students, and checking and correcting their work. I suppose this is what the chancellor expects of us. For me, that model doesn't work. However, if it did, I'd still be expected to do not only my regular work, but also attend whatever crap the DOE has posted. Unacceptable, unacceptable, unacceptable. Despite what the chancellor may think, any worthwhile activity entails time and work from teachers.

It's ironic, because we could've taken the day off from teaching, given our students a much-needed break, and done something worthwhile. I'd been negotiating for some of my CONTINUE READING: NYC Educator: Idiots at Tweed Expect Us to Concurrently Teach and Take PD

FOR DISCUSSION The Schools We Want/the Schools We Deserve A New Deal for Public Education | Bill Ayers

FOR DISCUSSION | Bill Ayers

FOR DISCUSSION

The Schools We Want/the Schools We Deserve

A New Deal for Public Education

The Schools We Want/the Schools We Deserve

A New Deal for Public Education

(DRAFT: 10-Point Program)

PREAMBLE
Education is a fundamental human right and a basic community responsibility.
Every child, simply by being born, has the right to a free, accessible, high-quality public education. That means that a decent, generously-staffed school facility must be in easy reach for every family. This is not at all difficult to envision: what the most privileged parents have for their children right now—small class sizes, fully-trained and well-compensated teachers, physics and chemistry labs, sports teams, physical education, and athletic fields and gymnasiums, after-school and summer programs, generous arts programs that include music, theater, and fine arts—is the base-line for what we want for all the children of our communities. Anything less weakens and then destroys democracy.

The curriculum must be forward-looking, recognizing the dignity of each person, and strengthening tolerance, understanding, peace and friendship among all people, and respect for fundamental freedoms and human rights. Schools must be geared toward the full development of the human mind and the human personality, and that includes encouraging intellectual freedom and the ongoing consideration of fundamental questions: Who are we? Where do we come from? What does this time require of us now? Where do we want to go?
Given the harsh, unresolved history of white supremacy, and the adaptable and slippery nature of racial capitalism, it’s no surprise that the descendants of enslaved workers, African-ancestored youth, the children of First-Nations people and the laboring classes and immigrants from formerly colonized nations, too-often experience schooling as oppressive and colonizing rather than liberating. This must change. The public schools can and must become sites of resistance, vigorously combatting institutional racism, racial discrimination, segregation, and all forms of oppression.

A New Deal for Public Education will be shaped from the grass roots—fire from below. As organizers, educators, student, parents, and community members, we call for popular assemblies to mobilize in every town and county, every city, every neighborhood and community in order to build a bold, creative, and spirited mass movement—a red-hot fire from below—to demand the schools we need and the schools we deserve. These assemblies should “be realistic” and demand the impossible! We begin with a focus on first questions: In your dream of dreams, what should a good school look like in a free and democratic society? What do schools need to do in order to fulfill the needs of free people with minds of their own? What could schools be, and what should they become, as fundamental pillars of a free society? Dare the schools build a free social order?

TEN(tative) POINTS (for discussion)

1) Education is a basic human right and a fundamental freedom—it cannot be reduced to a product to be sold at the market place. We demand generous, full and equitable funding for public schools, and not CONTINUE READING: FOR DISCUSSION | Bill Ayers

Persistent Billionaire Financed Attack on Oakland Public Schools Continues | tultican

Persistent Billionaire Financed Attack on Oakland Public Schools Continues | tultican

Persistent Billionaire Financed Attack on Oakland Public Schools Continues

By Thomas Ultican 5/29/2020

This month, a survey was launched in Oakland, California with the claim “This survey is a primary partnership between OUSD and GO Public Schools Oakland.” Apparently some Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) board members were stunned by the news and were not happy about raising the stature of a billionaire financed organization dedicated to privatizing public schools. It seems the survey resulted from a secret negotiation between OUSD administrators, GO and possibly some OUSD board members.

On May 13, when OUSD Director Shanti Gonzalez learned about the Survey, she wrote to Superintendent Kyla Johnson-Trammell,

“Hi Kyla. Can you tell me more about the robocall that went out today that referred parents to GO’s website/survey and why it was decided to send this to parents? We don’t typically use our infrastructure to refer people to groups that engage in political activities, so I am curious.”

Two days later Gonzalez wrote again,

“I understand the desire to collaborate and avoid duplication of efforts, but please remember that GO plays two roles in the Oakland education arena. In this case, their intent was to support our efforts to understand families’ needs. Their other role is to shape the composition of the board of OUSD and ACOE [Alameda County Office of Education], and to support the growth of charter schools, at least historically.”

OUSD Director Roseann Torres was characterized as being hopping mad when CONTINUE READING: Persistent Billionaire Financed Attack on Oakland Public Schools Continues | tultican

Robert Kuttner: Say It Ain’t So, Joe | Diane Ravitch's blog

Robert Kuttner: Say It Ain’t So, Joe | Diane Ravitch's blog

Robert Kuttner: Say It Ain’t So, Joe

Robert Kuttner is editor of The American Prospect. Here he writes that Biden has asked Rahm Emanuel to advise him. What Kuttner fails to mention is Rahm’s disastrous control of the Chicago public schools. He should be forever stigmatized by his decision to close 50 public schools in a single day. He was continually at war with the Chicago Teachers Union. To know him, if you value public schools, is to loathe him.

Kuttner writes:

MAY 29, 2020   Kuttner on TAP

Say It Ain’t So, Joe: Rahm Emanuel?? Just when you thought that Team Biden couldn’t get any worse than Larry Summers, we now learn courtesy of the Chicago Tribune that Clinton and Obama alum Rahm Emanuel is a Biden adviser.

A quick refresher (or maybe emetic) on Emanuel. He began as a staffer in the Clinton White House where he helped push through NAFTA, then went to Wall Street to make his fortune (he made $16 million in less than three years). From there, he got elected to Congress where he epitomized everything bad about the revolving door.

As head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, he arranged to load up the House Financial Services Committee with Wall Street Democrats who sought the prized seat to raise lots of Wall Street money and protect Wall Street’s financial interests. This made the job of Chairman Barney Frank much harder when CONTINUE READING: Robert Kuttner: Say It Ain’t So, Joe | Diane Ravitch's blog

REFLECTIONS AND ANOTHER LOOK AT HB 2229 – Dad Gone Wild

REFLECTIONS AND ANOTHER LOOK AT HB 2229 – Dad Gone Wild

REFLECTIONS AND ANOTHER LOOK AT HB 2229

“If all my possessions were taken from me with one exception, I would choose to keep the power of communication, for by it I would soon regain all the rest”
― Daniel Webster

“Like so many other pathological personalities in positions of power a million years ago, he might do almost anything on impulse, feeling nothing much. The logical explanations for his actions, invented at leisure, always came afterwards”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Galápagos

Back in 2001, I was running the Exit-In. For those of you who don’t know, it’s a rock and roll club, that holds about 500 people with live shows nightly. This was my second go-around as manager, The first was in the late ’90s, and overall constitutes a colossal flameout. I was kinda distracted during that time because I was also engaged in pursuing the discovery of how many chemicals one could ingest before one ends up in the ER. An answer I, unfortunately, discovered on more than one occasion.

I toss around the depiction of this time period a little cavalierly, using humor as a shield. The truth is, I bare a great deal of shame over it. Some very good people placed a great deal of faith in me and I squandered their trust, belief, and investment through my selfish pursuits. Did I feel a sense of entitlement at that time? I did, I was young and full of hubris. But it wasn’t only hubris, but fear that drove me. Fear that I was just ordinary – that was an awful description to me at the time but a welcome one these days – and the world would never see me.

You see I was an adopted child. Luckily I was one of those blessed with a family that loved me and cared for me deeply. My parents were exceptional people and I was fortunate to have them choose me. But the fact remained, I was rejected at birth and as a result, fear was instilled in me – fear that if I would be left again if I didn’t put forth the perfect face. I don’t offer this a, “woe-is-me offering” CONTINUE READING: REFLECTIONS AND ANOTHER LOOK AT HB 2229 – Dad Gone Wild

FOXES, HEDGEHOGS, MEDIA, AND PARTISANSHIP | DCGEducator: Doing The Right Thing

FOXES, HEDGEHOGS, MEDIA, AND PARTISANSHIP | DCGEducator: Doing The Right Thing

FOXES, HEDGEHOGS, MEDIA, AND PARTISANSHIP

There hasn’t been much good to come out of the Coronavirus Pandemic. But it has led me to catch up on a lot of reading. Two books I read, David Epstein’s RANGE, and Ezra Klein’s WHY WE’RE PARTISAN, hit me like a ton of bricks. Together, they explained to me… and I hope now to you… the connection between how we think, and how we are manipulated by media, into the extreme partisanship faced by modern America. The problem is, I am not sure we can get out of it. As Klein says, “Absent an external unifying force [Covid?] like a war, the divisions – or worse- that we see today will prove to be the norm, while the depolarized politics of mid 20th century America will prove the exception. And if we can’t reverse polarization… then the path forward is clear: we need to reform the political system so it can function amid polarization. I’ll leave it to younger folk to figure that out.

James Flynn, a New Zealand professor of political studies showed successful adaptors drew on outside experiences and analogies to INTERRUPT their inclinations to follow the same old patterns, the skill is TO AVOID those patterns. Detailed prior knowledge is less important than a way of thinking. A little training in broad thinking strategies can go a long way in calling BS.

 

Learning what is both durable and flexible is neither easy, nor fast. Strategies CONTINUE READING: FOXES, HEDGEHOGS, MEDIA, AND PARTISANSHIP | DCGEducator: Doing The Right Thing