Category: News

Presented in collaboration with the Association for Middle Level Education.

Jokes You Can Use:

Two philosophers were sitting at a restaurant, discussing whether or not there was a difference between misfortune and disaster.

“There is most certainly a difference,” said one. “If the cook suddenly died and we couldn’t have our dinner that would be a misfortune __ but certainly not a disaster. On the other hand, if a cruise ship carrying the Congress was to sink in the middle of the ocean, that would be a disaster __ but by no stretch of the imagination would it be a misfortune.

Socrates came upon an acquaintance that ran up to him excitedly and said, “Do you know what I just heard about one of your students?” “Just a minute,” Socrates replied. “Before you tell me I’d like you to pass a little test. It’s called the Test of Three. “The first test is Truth. Are you sure that what you will say is true? “Oh no,” the man said, “Actually I just heard about it.” “So you don’t really know if it’s true, Socrates said. Now let’s try the second test, the test of Goodness. Is what you are about to tell me about my student something good?” “No, on the contrary..” “So,” Socrates interrupted, “you want to tell me something bad about him even though you’re not certain it’s true?” The man shrugged, rather embarrassed. Socrates continued. “You may still pass though, because there is a third test, the filter of Usefulness. Is what you want to tell me about my student going to be useful to me at all?” “Well it ..no, not really..” “Well, concluded Socates, “If what you want to tell me is neither True nor good nor ever Useful, why tell it to me at all?” The man was defeated and ashamed. This is the reason Socrates was held in such high esteem. It also explains why he never found out what Plato was up to.

A teacher wanted his students to improve their spelling skills. So, he decided to have each of them come up to the front of the class and tell the class about their fathers’ profession or trade and to spell such profession or trade.

The teacher called up Johnny as the first student, and Johnny said, “My father is a baker, and you spell it B-A-K-E-R. If my father was here today, he would give everyone a cookie.”

“Very well,” the teacher said, and called Jim to the front. Jim said, “My father is a banker and you spell it: B-A-N-K-E-R. If he was here today, he would give everyone a quarter.

“Great,” said the teacher and called Tim to the front. Tim said: “My father is an electrician, and you spell it: E –E- L -K… E- L- E-K….”

Tim was having a hard time spelling, so the teacher said, “Tim, why don’t you sit and think about the spelling for a few minutes. In the meantime, we’ll have Peter come up and tell us about his father.”

Peter said, “My father is a bookie: B-O–O-K-I-E. And if my father was here today he would bet, 9 out of 10 that Tim would not spell ELECTRICIAN.”

In the doctors office two patients are talking “You know, I had an appendectomy last month and the doctor left a sponge in me by mistake” “A sponge!” exclaims the other “And do you feel much pain” “No pain at all”, says the first, “but do I get thirsty!”

Eileen Award:

• Twitter: Brian Brushwood, Joy Kirr, Amber Gress

Advisory:

Point of View

Turn the sound off. Watch the first 8 seconds. Ask the class to describe what is going on. Watch the next 7 seconds. Ask the class if their view is different. Now have them describe again. Then watch the rest. Discuss with them about point of view and seeing the whole versus snippets.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=E3h-T3KQNxU

Middle School Science Minute

by Dave Bydlowski (k12science or davidbydlowski@mac.com)

I was recently reading “The NSTA Ready-Reference Guide to Safer Science, Volume 2,” written by Ken Roy.  This book is available in the National Science Teachers Association’s online store at:

http://nsta.org/store

In this podcast, I share Ken’s response to the following question:

What is the requirement for keeping Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS) or Safety Data Sheets (SDS) available for employees in the laboratory?

From the Twitterverse:

* Larry Ferlazzo ‏@Larryferlazzo RT @BarnettCTQ: John Merrow raises big ??? re Michelle Rhee w/ Chris Hayes http://ow.ly/k1YQ0  – beginning of end for Rhee-form agenda?

* Will Richardson ‏@willrich45 Why your 8-year-old should be coding | VentureBeat http://buff.ly/ZeKCQG

* Scott McLeod ‏@mcleod Principal warns parents: ‘Don’t buy the bunk’ about new Common Core tests http://wapo.st/15akbQ4  #edreform #iaedfuture

* Karen Bosch ‏@karlyb MI educators, don’t miss the Connected Educator conference next Saturday in Jackson!

* Distance Education ‏@onlinecourse How to Transition Your Traditional Classroom to the Web – http://dedu.org/bAiORu

* Jeff Herb ‏@InstTechTalk Teach Current Events Using Apps http://inst.tc/TR3Moz  #edtech #edchat

* Elizabeth Bushey ‏@inklesstales 7h How to Teach the Six Word Memoir in History Class – kbkonnected: Great writing activity! #literacy #sschat… http://tmblr.co/ZyNMzxiZnQ0x

* Bill Ivey ‏@bivey 57m @SchlFinance101 @fredbartels I once said it’s as if we’re searching for the one best teacher in the country who can remotely teach all kids.

* Glen Westbroek ‏@gardenglen Cutting-edge camera discovers new images of snowflakes in free fall http://ksl.fm/14k2qyz  #scichat #STEM

* Will Richardson ‏@willrich45 Plan your digital afterlife with Inactive Account Manager http://buff.ly/16PLXPW  E-state planning. #edchat #parenting

* Monte Tatom ‏@drmmtatom “How NOT to Teach Online: A Story in Two Parts” | Online Learning | HYBRID PEDAGOGY • #fhuedu642 #eLearning http://www.hybridpedagogy.com/Journal/files/How_Not_to_Teach_Online.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+HybridPed+%28Hybrid+Pedagogy%3A+A+Digital+Journal+of+Teaching+%26+Technology%29#unique-entry-id-118 …

* Todd Bloch ‏@blocht574 RT @barbarawmadden: #rechat You want to pick up on some cool metaphors…Watch ONE episode of Duck Dynasty. 🙂 #rechat

#mschat every Thursday at 8:00 pm Eastern Standard Time.

Resources:

Mural.ly

Visually organize documents.

https://beta.mural.ly/

Calculators

Use can use the site or install it on your blog/website. Available:

• Scientific

• Graphing

• Programming

• Equation Solver

http://web2.0calc.com/

Web Spotlight:

11 kinds of people I’ve noticed and how to decide who you want to be

Posted by Vicki Davis

1. The poo-poo-ers

2. The look-through-ers

3. The get-round-to-ers

4. The froo-froo-ers

5. The pontificators

6. The never-follow-through-ers

7. The preener seeners

8. The jump-in-to-ers

9. The I-know-everything-because-I’m-rich-er

10. The slackers

11. The do-ers

http://coolcatteacher.blogspot.com/2013/04/11-kinds-of-people-ive-noticed-and-how.html

WOW Math

Need help with Algebra 1 & 2 or AP Calculus AB? This website can help you. Why the name WOWmath? Well, I have found that many students, parents, and teachers say “WOW!” when they see all the resources I offer on this website. So, I hope that this site will make you say “WOW” as it helps you in your math class.

http://wowmath.org/

10 Apps For More Organized Project-Based Learning

There are a variety of ways to support students in project-based learning, including organized digital learning spaces that support creative thinking, collaboration, and ultimately project management. Below are 10 apps for more organized project-based learning.

http://www.teachthought.com/apps-2/10-apps-for-more-organized-project-based-learning/

News:

Today, School is a Little Less Interesting

There is a growing percentage of America’s teachers, who have never taught in classrooms without the intimidation of high-stakes testing.

Every year, there are fewer teachers who have known the experience of confidently entering their classrooms with creativity, passion and the freedom to replace their textbooks with learning experiences that are unique, personal, powerful and authentic.

We must kill high-stakes testing before we do not have anyone left, who remembers how to be a teacher-philosopher.

http://davidwarlick.com/2cents/?p=4123

Common Core: friend or foe?

Common Core – a unifying force or another educational policy hoop to jump through?

I, for one, will continue to champion the Common Core. Here’s why.

As I work to implement the Common Core this year, I have had many opportunities to collaborate. I have worked with my peers, both in-building and across the country through virtual networks, such as the Center for Teaching Quality’s Collaboratory.

I wonder, have we been underestimating our students’ abilities all along?

But the standards have become a catalyst for discussions that need to happen in all corners of education.

It doesn’t matter who created the Common Core; it matters who is implementing the standards in the classroom every day. That would be teachers like me.

http://www.ednewscolorado.org/voices/voices-common-core-friend-or-foe

iPad App/idea:

Free today:

Focus on Plant:  It covers four basic areas of plant areas, including plant parts.  the plant cell, the plant physiology, and the life cycle of plants.  Just tap on terms to get detailed breakdowns and close-up images.  The app also includes a searchable and audible plant science glossary.

Presented in collaboration with the Association for Middle Level Education.

Jokes You Can Use:

While Mark was shopping for pet supplies, one of the sales people came running up to him. “Mark! Mark! I just saw someone driving off with your BMW!”
“Dear God! Did your try to stop him?” “No,” said the clerk, “but don’t worry. I got the license plate number!”

A man goes to the doctors and asks why he’s been feeling ill. The doctor examines him and replies “I’m sorry to tell you, you’ve got the disease known as Yellow 24.” “What’s that?” the man asks. “It means your internal organs have started turning yellow – you’ve got 24 hours to live”.
The man goes home and tells his wife the bad news. His wife says “Well, will you come to bingo with me tonight then? Otherwise you’ll never be able to.” The man agrees so he and his wife go to the bingo. He finds that he’s won the one-line and £10. He begins to think this isn’t such a bad day after all. Twenty minutes later, he’s won the full house and £150. He enters the lucky draw, worth £500, and wins that too. The bingo caller calls him up on stage.
He says “I don’t believe it, mate. You’ve won three competitions in a total of £660 in one night. You must be the luckiest man on the earth!”
The man says “Well, no, I’m not. I’ve got Yellow 24.”
The bingo caller looks down at the piece of paper he’s holding and starts clapping. “I don’t believe it; he’s won the raffle as well!”

Nurse: Good morning Mr. Smith, you seem to be coughing much more easily this morning.
Mr. Smith: That’s because I’ve been practicing all night.

Eileen Award:

• Twitter: Robert McGarry, Ashley Blankenship, Michelle Corbat, Jonathan Swegels, Sally Baldridge, Andy Zimmer, Emil Ahangarzadeh
• Facebook: Karen Decker, C. Joan Seager, Linda Perukel
• Google+: Jason Neiffer
• Diigo: Keith Schoch, Ron King

Advisory:

Brain Food

Lateral Thinking Puzzles
http://www.rinkworks.com/brainfood/p/latreal1.shtml

Good Will Hunting

http://twentytwowords.com/2013/03/04/the-math-on-the-chalkboard-in-good-will-hunting-was-relatively-simple/

Restaurant run by Owner with Down’s Syndrome

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=y6He0FWoFj0

Oreo Separating Machine

http://twentytwowords.com/2013/03/02/physicist-builds-ultra-important-machine-an-oreo-separating-robot/

Middle School Science Minute

by Dave Bydlowski (k12science or davidbydlowski@mac.com)

Fire Blanket

I was recently reading the NSTA Ready Reference Guide for Safer Science, Volume 2, written by Ken Roy, director of environmental health and safety for Glastonbury Public Schools in Glastonbury, CT. Within the book are topics dealing with “Safer Science” and questions that teachers have sent him regarding “Safer Science.”

From the Twitterverse:

* Daniel Hodge ‏@hodgedvcves Cool app to create posters “Phoster” #4thchat #5thchat pic.twitter.com/C4eCIpSBra

* Terie Engelbrecht ‏@mrsebiology RT @Ron_Peck: Dan Pink: How Teachers Can Sell Love of Learning to Students http://goo.gl/eTsLE  via @zite

* Chad Lehman ‏@imcguy 31 Top Apps for Education from FETC 2013 — THE Journal http://thejournal.com/articles/2013/02/26/31-top-apps-for-education-from-fetc-2013.aspx?=FETCLN …

* Jennifer Loetzerich ‏@J_Loetzerich Algebra I Livebinder http://www.livebinders.com/play/play?id=330272 …

* russeltarr ‏@russeltarr http://Free-Loops.com  provides free loops and audio clip downloads #topaudio http://tinyurl.com/ckg8bwt

* Parentella ‏@Parentella Seems Like This Canadian “Parent Academy” Has Some Good Ideas #education

* Eye On Education ‏@eyeoneducation 3 Strategies for Helping Students Motivate Themselves http://ow.ly/ib8dr  @LarryFerlazzo #edchat #teachchat #ntchat

* Philippa Isom ‏@PhilippaIsom For us new Edmodo users http://blog.edmodo.com/category/teacher-stories/ …

* Scott McLeod ‏@mcleod The Nerdy Teacher: Professionals Make Time for Learning #edchat

* Will Richardson ‏@willrich45 Twelve Things You Were Not Taught in School About Creative Thinking http://buff.ly/vOHItu  #edchat

* Monte Tatom ‏@drmmtatom Free World Digital Library for Teachers & Students http://flip.it/shSB2  #fhuedu642 #fhuedu320 ~ for @MSMatters followers

#mschat every Thursday at 8:00 pm Eastern Standard Time.

Resources:

Twitter Is Perfect for Socially Awkward People

By Peter DeWitt on February 26, 2013 6:14 PM
Socially awkward sounds so much better than workaholic.
Twitter has one more benefit that happens naturally, and that is the relationship it can build between different stakeholders in the system.
http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/finding_common_ground/2013/02/twitter_is_perfect_for_socially_awkward_people.html?cmp=SOC-SHR-TW

Use Celly to Setup a Free Text Messaging Group Chat

Text messaging is one of the best ways to communicate with groups today. For teachers wanting to setup text messaging systems with students, Remind101 is one of the best, free options available. Our OM parent group used Cel.ly to set our group up because it’s easy, straightforward, free, and even has free iOS app. If you’re wanting to setup Cel.ly for a school group, see this celly @ school page.
http://www.speedofcreativity.org/2013/03/03/use-celly-to-setup-a-free-text-messaging-group-chat/

Web Spotlight:

Students Share Characteristics Of Their Favorite Teachers

http://edudemic.com/2013/02/characteristics-favorite-teachers/

Homework Why’s and Homework-Wise

If we are relying on homework as the main way to teach responsibility, we are in trouble.
http://chriswejr.com/2010/10/13/homework-whys-and-homework-wise/

Words Matter: What Values Do Your Words Convey?

I encourage people to choose their words wisely, because the words we choose have a powerful effect on other people. As this post showed, the words we choose matter not only for teachers, but for anyone else who plays an important role in someone’s life.
http://www.angelamaiers.com/2013/03/words-matter-what-values-do-your-words-convey.html

Primary Source Analysis Guides for Students and Teachers

http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2013/03/primary-source-analysis-guides-for.html

Why we have our best ideas in the shower: The science of creativityPosted on Thursday, February 28th, 2013

Written by Leo Widrich

Another ingredient, that’s very important for us to be creative is dopamine: The more dopamine that is released, the more creative we are…
Dopamine alone, which gets triggered in hundreds of events, where we aren’t very creative, can’t be the only reason. Another crucial factor is a distraction, says Harvard researcher Carson…
Lastly, after you have received an influx in dopamine, can be easily distracted by an extremely habitual task like showering or cooking, a relaxed state of mind is absolutely important to be creative, says Jonah Lehrer…
http://blog.bufferapp.com/why-we-have-our-best-ideas-in-the-shower-the-science-of-creativity

News:

Amplify Tablet comes to the Education Market

With the Amplify Tablet, students gain a mobile learning device that is organized around their in-school courses and out-of-school interests. The tablet becomes their digital backpack, filled with all of the content, assignments and activities of their classes, as well as tools to individualize their learning and explore their interests.
http://www.amplify.com/tablet/

iPad App:

Too Noisy for iPhone, iPad, and iPod

This app measures the volume of the classroom in a graphic that can be displayed.  Not that they wonder how loud they are.  Ever.  But now you can show them!

Presented in collaboration with the Association for Middle Level Education.

Jokes You Can Use:

http://rack.3.mshcdn.com/media/ZgkyMDEzLzAyLzAxLzZiL1FUZTVoZ2cuMTczNWYuanBn/b9ee4fce/fb8/QTe5hgg.jpg

Which side of the chicken has more feathers?
What do you call a man who shaves 20 times a day?
Why should you never trust an atom?
What do you call Santa’s little helpers?
What did the hat say to the hat rack?

Eileen Award:

• Facebook:  Karen Decker

Advisory:

Money Tips for Parents & Teens

http://dailyinfographic.com/money-101-for-parents-teens-infographic

The Radio Show

http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/01/29/radio-an-illustrated-guide-ira-glass-jessica-abel/
The $2 ebook is available here: https://store.thisamericanlife.org/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=RADIO%3AANILLUSTRATEDGUIDE

Water Changes Everything

http://www.coolinfographics.com/blog/2012/12/31/water-changes-everything.html

Magic Trick

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=tlQiuCeezUA

Politeness

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=nhekhBKkDXw

Middle School Science Minute

by Dave Bydlowski (k12science or davidbydlowski@mac.com)

I was recently reading the NSTA Ready Reference Guide for Safer Science, Volume 2, written by Ken Roy, director of environmental health and safety for Glastonbury Public Schools in Glastonbury, CT. Within the book are topics dealing with “Safer Science” and questions that teachers have sent him regarding “Safer Science.”  The focus of this podcast is on a question from a teacher regarding the teaching of science in a mathematics classroom.

By the way, I added a Twitterverse to my bi-monthly Michigan Science Matters Network eBlast.  Check it out at:
http://www.msta-mich.org/educator-support/84-science-matters/256-science-matters-e-blast-january-24-2013

From the Twitterverse:

* ConnectEDU ‏@ConnectEDUInc “Change happens at the speed of trust” #learnlaunch13

* Larry Ferlazzo ‏@Larryferlazzo The Best Ways To Deal With Rudeness In Class http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2013/02/02/the-best-ways-to-deal-with-rudeness-in-class/#.UQ0oJY43ax4.twitter …

* Richard Byrne ‏@rmbyrne Blubbr – Create Interactive Quizzes Using YouTube Clips http://ow.ly/hlOGY

* Karen Horne ‏@mrskhorne @syded06 Now I have discovered google docs (and free!) I rarely use Microsoft office, the purchase of a chromebook was the icing on the cake

* Will Richardson ‏@willrich45 “The Coming KIPP Bubble” http://buff.ly/11sEGkH  Long, but interesting. #edchat #education

* Will Richardson ‏@willrich45 Posted: The Missing Layer http://buff.ly/11u35pY  Sincerely interested in your comments/thoughts. #education #edreform #edchat

* Scott McLeod ‏@mcleod DI: Learning no longer has to stop #edtech

* Mark Barnes ‏@markbarnes19 Quizpoo Is An Easy & Unique Tool For Making Online Tests – Quizpoo lets you create, without requiring registration, … http://ow.ly/2uD2tN

* Sheri Edwards ‏@grammasheri CCSS: Teaching Argument vs. Evidence | MiddleWeb #midleved http://www.middleweb.com/5719/ccss-teaching-argument-vs-evidence/ …

* Scott McLeod ‏@mcleod Rigor v. Vigor. Let’s change the conversation here in Iowa! #iaedfuture #plaea

#mschat every Thursday at 8:00 pm Eastern Standard Time.

Resources:

Reading Rockets

Reading, and a love for reading, begins at home. The Reading Tip of the Day widget offers easy ways for parents to help kids become successful readers
http://www.readingrockets.org/sharing/widgets/tipoftheday/

iCivics

iCivics prepares young Americans to become knowledgeable, engaged 21st century citizens by creating free and innovative educational materials.
In 2009, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor founded iCivics to reverse Americans’ declining civic knowledge and participation. Securing our democracy, she realized, requires teaching the next generation to understand and respect our system of governance. Today iCivics comprises not just our board and staff, but also a national leadership team of state supreme court justices, secretaries of state, and educational leaders and a network of committed volunteers. Together, we are committed to passing along our legacy of democracy to the next generation.
In just two years, iCivics has produced 16 educational video games as well as vibrant teaching materials that have been used in classrooms in all 50 states. Today we offer the nation’s most comprehensive, standards-aligned civics curriculum that is available freely on the Web.
http://www.icivics.org/

Web Spotlight:

The One Math Skill You Need to Succeed at Work

• The key to improving today’s workforce could lie in the elementary school math class, new research shows.
• lack of a specific math skill in first grade correlated to lower scores on a seventh-grade math test
• United States Center for Educational Statistics revealed that one in five adults lacks the math competency expected of an eighth-grader
• specific numerical skill as a target, we can focus education efforts on helping deficient students as early as kindergarten and thereby give them a better chance at career success in adulthood
• identified was “number system knowledge,” which is the ability to conceptualize a numeral as a symbol for a quantity and understand systematic relationships between numbers.
• The study found that having this knowledge at the beginning of first grade predicted better functional mathematical ability in adolescence.
• “Poor understanding of mathematical concepts can make a person easy prey for predatory lenders,” he said. “Numerical literacy, or numeracy, also helps with saving for big purchases and managing mortgages and credit-card debt.”
• 180 13-year-olds who had been assessed every year since kindergarten for intelligence, memory, mathematical cognition, attention span and achievement.

http://www.businessnewsdaily.com/3856-how-elementary-math-class-can-improve-today-s-worker.html?

Where the iPhone 5 Kicks the Mars Rover’s Butt

“You’re carrying more processing power in your pocket thanCuriosity,” Ben Cichy, chief flight software engineer, told an audience at this year’s MacWorld. Specifically:

• Processors: Curiosity’s is 132MHz; the iPhone 5’s is 1.3 GHz.

• Memory: Curiosity’s has 128 MB; the iPhone 5 has 1 GB.

• Storage: Curiosity holds 4 GB; iPhone 5 holds 64 GB.

• OS: Curiosity runs Wind River VxWorks 6.7 Real-time OS; the iPhone runs iOS 6.

One of the team’s biggest challenges is having to script instructions for Curiosity within a 12 to 16 hour window. Each day, after the lander downloads the latest batch of data to the 100 scientists watching her movements, the team determines what they want her do next and make sure that their goals align with Curiosity’s capabilities. Then the software team writes the necessary script and sends it off via uplink. Because of the roughly 14 minutes it takes for the instructions to reach Mars, all of this has to be done within the window, when Curiosity is sleeping.
http://slashdot.org/topic/bi/mars-rover-curiosity-less-brainpower-than-apples-iphone-5/

Teach This! Teaching with lesson plans and ideas that rock 01/29/2013

Posted by Vicki Davis

http://coolcatteacher.blogspot.com/2013/01/teach-this-teaching-with-lesson-plans_29.html

The Google Science Fair is an online science competition open to students ages 13-18 from around the globe. We’re looking for ideas that will change the world. To get started, all you’ll need is a Google account.

http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2013/01/google-wants-to-hear-from-teenage.html

News:

Data: No deus ex machina

• Data-based decision-making is all the rage. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan (2009) has emphatically declared, “I am a deep believer in the power of data to drive our decisions. Data gives us the roadmap to reform. It tells us where we are, where we need to go, and who is most at risk.”
• Data expose inequities, create transparency, and help drive organizational improvement.
• But something is amiss – push to narrow schooling to test scores and graduation rates
• the data—which are relatively crude, consisting mostly of reading and math scores—are unequal to the heavy weight they’re asked to bear.
• Data can be a powerful tool. But we must recognize that collecting data is not using data; that data are an input into judgment rather than a replacement for it; that data can inform but not resolve difficult questions of politics and values; and that we need better ways to measure what matters, rather than valuing those things we can measure
• Ellwood Cubberley (1919), cheered such assessments, insisting, “We can now measure an unknown class and say, rather definitely, that, for example, the class not only spells poorly but is 12 percent below standard” (p. 694)
• Standardized tests have meant nothing less than the ultimate changing of school administration from guesswork to scientific accuracy. The mere personal opinions of school board members and the lay public … have been in large part eliminated.
• In the 1960s and 1970s, proponents of data and accountability again insisted that they had it right.
• Lessinger was hardly alone; more than 4,000 books and articles on data and education accountability were published in the late 1960s and early 1970s
• Yet in 2001, No Child Left Behind’s architects started from the bipartisan conviction that U.S. schooling was nearly bereft of good data.

http://www.aei.org/article/education/k-12/leadership/data-no-dues-ex-machina/

CA Gov. Jerry Brown: “I would prefer to trust our teachers”

California Jerry Brown just gave his State of the State address.

• We seem to think that education is a thing—like a vaccine—that can be designed from afar and simply injected into our children.
• I would prefer to trust our teachers who are in the classroom each day, doing the real work – lighting fires in young minds.

http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2013/01/24/ca-gov-jerry-brown-i-would-prefer-to-trust-our-teachers/

Why You Truly Never Leave High School

• There are some people who simply put in their four years, graduate, and that’s that. But for most of us adults, the adolescent years occupy a privileged place in our memories, which to some degree is even quantifiable: Give a grown adult a series of random prompts and cues, and odds are he or she will recall a disproportionate number of memories from adolescence
• Yet there’s one class of professionals who seem, rather oddly, to have underrated the significance of those years, and it just happens to be the group that studies how we change over the course of our lives: developmental neuroscientists and psychologists.
• For years, we had almost a religious belief that all systems developed in the same way, which meant that what happened from zero to 3 really mattered, but whatever happened thereafter was merely tweaking.”

• “If you put adults in a similar situation”—meaning airlifted into a giant building full of strangers with few common bonds—“you’d find similar behaviors.” Like reality television, for instance, in which people literally divide into tribes, form alliances, and vote one another off the island. “And I think you see it in nursing homes,” says Faris. “In small villages. And sometimes in book clubs.” And then I realized, having covered politics for many years: Congress, too. “It’s not adolescence that’s the problem,” insists Faris. “It’s the giant box of strangers.”
• As adults, we spend a lot of time in boxes of strangers. “I have always referred to life as ‘perpetual high school,’
• Today, we also live in an age when our reputation is at the mercy of people we barely know, just as it was back in high school, for the simple reason that we lead much more public, interconnected lives. The prospect of sudden humiliation once again trails us, now in the form of unflattering photographs of ourselves or unwanted gossip, virally reproduced. The whole world has become a box of interacting strangers.
• Maybe, perversely, we should be grateful that high school prepares us for this life. The isolation, the shame, the aggression from those years—all of it readies us to cope. But one also has to wonder whether high school is to blame; whether the worst of adult America looks like high school because it’s populated by people who went to high school in America. We’re recapitulating the ugly folkways of this institution, and reacting with the same reflexes, because that’s where we were trapped, and shaped, and misshaped, during some of our most vulnerable years.
• one datum was interesting: At 24, the princesses had lower self-esteem than the brainy girls, which certainly wasn’t true when they were 16.
• Until Facebook, the people from my high-school years had undeniably occupied a place in my unconscious, but they were ghost players, gauzy and green at the edges. Now here they were, repeatedly appearing in my news feed, describing their plans to attend our reunion. And so I went, curious about whom they’d become. There were the former football players, still acting like they owned the joint, but as much more generous proprietors. There were the beautiful girls, still beautiful, but looking less certain about themselves. There was my former best pal, who’d blown past me on her way to cheerleaderhood, but nervous in a way I probably hadn’t recognized back then. I was happy to see her. And to see a lot of them, truth be told. We’d all grown more gracious; many of us had bloomed; and it was strangely moving to be among people who all shared this shameful, grim, and wild common bond. I found myself imagining how much nicer it’d have been to see all those faces if we hadn’t spent our time together in that redbrick, linoleum-­tiled perdition. Then again, if we hadn’t—if we’d been somewhere more benign—I probably wouldn’t have cared.

Tony private schools aren’t paying their teachers based on test scores

My child should not be responsible for anyone’s pay based on one test on one day. . . . I keep checking the tony private schools to see when they are going to pay their teachers based on test scores and I have yet to find one that thinks this is credible nor do any believe in this data-driven model of high stakes testing for their students.
http://dangerouslyirrelevant.org/2013/01/tony-private-schools-arent-paying-their-teachers-based-on-test-scores.html