February 2012
35 posts
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Building a Better Teacher- New York Times. →
No professional feels completely prepared on her first day of work, but while a new lawyer might work under the tutelage of a seasoned partner, a first-year teacher usually takes charge of her classroom from the very first day. One survivor of this trial by fire is Amy Treadwell, a teacher for 10 years who received her master’s degree in education from DePaul University, one of the largest...
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This conversation just happened in an office of...
Coworker 1: So what do you think?
Coworker 2: ...I don't know about the word 'procure,' I don't know if that's the right word choice.
Coworker 1: Of course it is. Procure.
Coworker 2: I don't know, it seems awkward.
Coworker 1: *reads definition of the word*
Coworker 2: No, I know what it means, but...
Coworker 1: I'll make you a deal. You find a different word, and we'll see.
Coworker 2: How about (tosses suggestions back and forth around other words with other people in the office).
Coworker 1: I've got an idea, how about....procure.
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A seemingly random and anticipated update:
I got a different position.
I was just informed that I got a job working at a Boys and Girls Club just under an hour away from here.
It’s part-time. It’s an assistant position, not a manager position. It will pay less than what I am making now — which is carefully calculated to be at 110% of the poverty line.
But I have never, ever been so happy to hear that I got a job...
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“GWALP adds: Warning for harsh language.
On a somewhat serious note today...”
– You Didn’t Thank Me For Punching You in the Face « Views from the Couch (via unbornghost)
GWALP asks: How do you elementary teachers did with this?
(via girlwithalessonplan)
First of all, let me say that I’ve fallen a little in love with the OP of the commentary here.
Secondly, I...
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Uhh... why is there a model in the education tag?
girlwithalessonplan:
GWALP has no idea.
Maybe they’re pushing their fashion week stuff in every tag? Shapefutures is just guessing.
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Why We Need The Oxford Comma →
poeticwasteland:
I’m currently student teaching 7th grade Language Arts. Back while I was still observing, my cooperating teacher put a sentence on the board trying to instruct the students about the placement of commas when writing a series. Fine, great, wonderful. But she neglected to add in the oxford comma, and it bothered me so much that I was compelled to get up and fix it. An action to...
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What makes you love to read? I love to chat with...
So by all means, tell me what your favorite book is! No matter what it is, whether it’s academic or pure pleasure — nothing literary is embarrassing. Own your favorite stories!
Gooey romance? Dystopian scifi? Sword-swinging fantasy? A really good history book? One of the classics? Something surreal and absurd?
If it makes you love to read, it’s a good thing. And if...
theskinny-blog asked: haha the second and third book and the series :))
theskinny-blog asked: the hunger games is sooo good!
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I finally started The Hunger Games
Originally I was reading this bestseller espionage thing to tide me over until my first of the le Carre novels come in to the library for me, but it turned out to be absolutely terrible.
So my housemate shoved The Hunger Games at me and told me I wouldn’t want to put it down.
Well, the last line of the first chapter actually made me wail so loud that said housemate asked if I was okay...
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From the Personal side of things, a Project →
Okay. So. Here we go.
I usually keep anything personal to a minimum on the education/LGBTQ Issues/etc. blog here, but I’ve been told by a few people that I should go ahead and leave this here for you to peruse.
In my personal time, some of you may know but many of you may not, I’m a writer, artist, and comicker. For newcomers, one of my earlier educational jobs was after school...
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Another Grant Roundup:
This time, instead of listing all the grants available (because there are quite a few), I’m going to link you to the grant databases I’m browsing today — meant specifically for teachers and/or schools
GrantWrangler is an excellent resource targeted at teachers specifically, and I would definitely suggest keeping it in your toolbar and checking back every now and again to see...
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Apparently the themes at Cathedral Building this week are “gender,” “suggestions that will lose followers,” and “things I never thought I’d be looking up for the education blog” (i.e., heterosexual fashion designers and pink machismo). Strange week.
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Pink Boys and Puppy Dog Tails →
Usually Psychology Today makes me cringe, I admit it. They’re a popular magazine as opposed to a scientific one and often have articles that seem more suited to Cosmo than a supposedly science-based publication. Then, of course, there’s the fact that they don’t always make the best choices (for example, ever publishing fringe evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa’s...
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I'm getting some very interesting...
I am not telling everyone to go out and eliminate gender from their classrooms. Many people still believe that at early ages, gender divisions are a good and necessary thing to instill in their students/kids. What I will say is that, if one is going to do so, they should also be careful of instilling gender stereotypes that can hold kids back.
Gender is fluid. It isn’t sex. Sex is our...
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Ending Cissexism in the Classroom: Addressing and...
A post is going around with a list of five ways to end cissexism, among other great lists. The first suggestion on that list is not to refer to strangers as “sir” or “ma’am.”
And yet a lot of us do this in our classrooms. We call the students “boys and girls,” some of us have students line up boy-girl or have the genders compete to see which half of the...
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Y'all, let's send PPT some love and warm wishes...
girlwithalessonplan:
thinkbrit:
lessonsfroma4thgrader:
kicksandgiggles:
GOOD LUCK, DEAREST! You will OWN that Marzano framework. Big smiles and deep breaths.
No matter what, you will always be “innovating” in my books :)
Go, PPT! We are all rooting for you!
Good, good luck! You will do amazingly, and you know we’re all here behind you! <3
I don’t know anyone more invested in her...
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emilsymk asked: What makes you want to work with children so much, what is your driving reason?
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“Many saw the answer in a melting pot concept, but their tastes favored a stew...”
– - The Norton Anthology of African American Literature
Best description of the “melting pot” ever.
(via belldam)
Agreed.
I was taught to favor a tossed salad metaphor — everything part of the whole dish but still a unique ingredient with its own taste. Thoughts?
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My brothers and I chat via Facebook, and we're a...
Me: BOO
Brother: RADLEY
Me: ...I love you.
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This makes me happy. →
positivelypersistentteach:
teachintraining:
I discussed this with my classes during student teaching. Because I was in a small (conservative too) town, a lot of kids had never heard anyone tell them not to use “gay” in this context. Most kids did not care what I had to say and in a period of Government (one that I did not teach on a regular basis but observed most of the time), students...
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Unexpected Teachable Moment
I was out at the monthly Gallery Walk in Brattleboro tonight, on a whim. The sidewalks were teeming with youth — not college students either, but young teens and tweens who’d probably been cooped up by the weather and thus took the relatively mild evening by storm. (One girl complained to her friends, who were contemplating popping into a record store, “I want air! I wanna be...
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Brief absence: Hello, This is what's up!
Some recurring medical problems pulled the rug out from under me for a little bit there, partly my fault for not having taken care of it properly. I haven’t even been able to work with my tutoring students for almost two weeks now and I’m going a little stir crazy. Most of my tumblr activity on the personal blog has been reblogging ridiculous or beautiful things that are helping me...
January 2012
25 posts
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Tennessee Tea Party Demands Slavery and Other... →
misterjmasters:
lesbo-a-gogo:
ilyasafrika:
dontbearuiner:
“so as not to besmirch the reputation and standing of the Founding Fathers.”
WHAT THE ACTUAL ——.
I have no words…I can’t even articulate my thoughts properly right now I’m so mad.
“No portrayal of minority experience in the history which actually occurred shall obscure the experience or contributions of the Founding...
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Gates Foundation Grant Funds Development of MMOG... →
With the science field already relying on gamers to help them unlock some of the many puzzles of the universe, could video and computer games be the key to unlocking STEM for students?
According to Klopfer, the game to be developed under this grant will be designed as a Massively Multiplayer Online Game (MMOG), a genre of online games in which many players’ avatars can interact and cooperate ...
“….other researchers have talked to teen moms who believed they couldn’t get...”
– Many Teen Moms Say They Didn’t Think They Could Get Pregnant
(via girlwithalessonplan)
There are a lot of reblogs and comments shaming these girls for what people perceive as stupidity, which bothers me. We as animals can figure out how to reproduce — but birth control methods have to be...
“The nature of academic and research librarianship changed today. Today, all...”
– So this just happened. (Twitter channel.)
Seriously?
(via positivelypersistentteach)
Keep your eyes on this, and if you don’t think there’s a need for librarians, read the post linked above. The essential work that these people do is too often underrated or forgotten.
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Mexican American Studies: Bad Ban or Bad Class? →
I’m a bit disappointed that, titled the way it is, this is only an interview with a proponent of the ban. That being said, host Michael Martin doesn’t back down from pointing out so many illogical arguments, weaknesses, inconsistencies, and points of possible bias that come out of state superintendent John Huppenthal’s mouth.
What I find even more disappointing though, on a...
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I'm trying to take this interview seriously, but...
HUPPENTHAL: This thing all went into court and the judge said absolutely you can teach about historical injustice and we have an obligation to do that. When I read about a slave ship coming across the ocean and throwing all their slaves into the ocean, I'm like - the impact that that has on me - exactly. But that doesn't mean that that wasn't an historical fact well documented.
MARTIN: But what about slavery, for example? I mean, slavery became racialized in this country - I'll just use racialized because that's a word I understand. I mean, how can you teach slavery without talking about race? I mean, it's true that servitude in this country was not racial, initially, but it became racial. It became directed in the law at people of African descent.
So how can you teach that without talking about race?
HUPPENTHAL: I think you have to talk about race in that regard, but again, being very careful about it. To tell young kids that the whole deck - that they can't get ahead, that they're victims in, you know, a country in which Barack Obama is president, it defies what we know.
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“Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states....”
– Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail
An idea that needs to be remembered among all people, in all struggles against injustice. Whatever your movement, whatever your identity, be aware of those who are also struggling. Respect them. Invite them. Work with, and not...
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Today was the first day back from break and my...
girlwithalessonplan:
none4gretchenweiners:
Before we could start though, she gave us a warning. She didn’t want to see Harry Potter because “it is for purely entertainment purposes only in getting younger children to enjoy reading and has no social impact or value.”
And she kept going. She was like, “I give it a lot of credit, but it really holds no true value like so many other books.”
...
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I'm Not a Journalist: I’ve been seeing a lot of... →
girlwithalessonplan:
notajournalist:
I’ve been seeing a lot of questions from student teachers floating around lately. These questions have been getting great answers, but they’ve also been getting an added line of ‘your host teacher should know’ or ‘you could ask your host teacher’. I have to throw my two cents in, though, and say…
GWALP: And yeah, that sucks you had a not-great-host...
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“DJ_Wat_Wat: Wikipedia is gonna shut down for 24 hours from Tues til wed #FMC I...”
– A student on Twitter who is both missing the point and slowly chipping away at my faith in the fate of the world with all his/her/their similarly-tweeting classmates.
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Let's try an add-on pass-around: Ways to honor MLK...
teachplaysing:
shapefutures:
When planning your literature curriculum, include authors and characters from diverse backgrounds — instead of waiting for special events or history months, use the whole year to represent people of various races and ethnicities, cultures, belief systems, genders and sexual orientations, etc.
Your turn. Go!
I like this idea! I think it’s also great to remember...
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Let's try an add-on pass-around: Ways to honor MLK...
When planning your literature curriculum, include authors and characters from diverse backgrounds — instead of waiting for special events or history months, use the whole year to represent people of various races and ethnicities, cultures, belief systems, genders and sexual orientations, etc.
Your turn. Go!