kicksandgiggles:

girlwithalessonplan:

stfuhypocrisy:

This week, after being mocked in the press with an attack piece by the Daily Mail columnist Richard Littlejohn, schoolteacher Lucy Meadows committed suicide.

Lucy was raised male, but recently underwent a transition to live as female — which for Littlejohn was reason enough to attack her in his column. Leading with themocking headline “He’s not only in the wrong body… he’s in the wrong job”, Littlejohn belittled and harassed Meadows, referring to her decision as her “personal problems” and playing on the outdated scare tactic that LGBT people are a threat to children.

The vile article led to a witch hunt targeting Meadows. Newspapers offered to pay parents for a picture of her, and she complained of having to leave home by the back door and arrive early to school to avoid the packs of journalists.

Sign our petition to the Daily Mail: sack Richard Littlejohn, issue an apology, and institute an editorial review to ensure that this never happens again.

Richard Littlejohn has a long history of using his perch at the the Daily Mail to mock and harass others, from laughing at cerebral palsy to snide insinuation that ethnic minorities got their jobs through discrimination to incessant attacks on the LGBT community, Littlejohn has been a national disgrace.

Throughout the article, Littlejohn repeatedly referred to Lucy as “he”, and claimed that getting gender reassignment surgery showed that she didn’t care for the children she taught.

Littlejohn claimed that children don’t have the capacity to handle a gender transition — but kids are smart and don’t carry the bias that adults have absorbed over the years. Just take the experience our campaign manager Kaytee’s partner Max had when he came out to his little cousin as a transgender man. The cousin said “Oh, that makes sense. I always thought you were a boy. Now can we go play Legos?” Gender transition is only an issue for kids when the adults in their lives — many egged on by these sorts of offensive opinion pieces — make it out to be a problem.

The Daily Mail may thrive on controversy to sell its tabloid papers, but even it knows it went too far this time. In the wake of backlash, the Daily Mail removed the article from its website, but the damage has already been done.

Everyone has the right to say what they think, but mainstream publications like the Daily Mail shouldn’t support and promote this sort of hate. The Daily Mail needs to ensure that this never happens again — by not only yanking Littlejohn’s column and apologizing for the paper’s decision to run the hateful opinion piece, but alsoinstituting an editorial review policy that prevents discriminatory writing from ending up in its paper again.

Tell the Daily Mail that newspaper columns cannot be used for bullying and hate, and that Richard Littlejohn has no place in the papers.

This is sick.

Sometimes I just can’t people…

This is what the previous post was about.  I was going to write something on it myself too, but I just…can’t.  My heart can’t handle this one; I feel it way too much to try.

(Source: stfueverything)

hisnamewasbeanni:

misshasnotes:

Mental health and social justice resources for teachers.

There’s also an online professional development section; could be useful (and a way of getting up hours now that we’re not allowed to undertake PD in class time).

Well this is awesome.

fornoesis:

adventuresinlearning:

reluctantmidwesterner:

positivelypersistentteach:

novelnovice:

positivelypersistentteach:

justteach:

ernestmedia:

It was my fifth grade year.

It was a lousy classroom. Kids throwing books across the desk. Paper on the floor, pencils broken. This became routine for the rest of the year and I hardly recall learning anything. What I did remember was a young, insecure teacher that…

I had considered TFA when I was considering my employment options. However, I read in their recruitment packages that they didn’t accept many education majors. I was quite shocked. How could a program that insists its goal is to help educate students of lower socio-economic classes, turn away individuals that have spent their entire college career learning about learning? I knew something was up.
I think the main reason many people go into TFA is for the loan forgiveness option they offer, NOT for the sake of the children.

I know a lot of people who went the TFA route.  My college is one of the biggest TFA recruitment places in the country.  For all that I can say about the program itself, I CAN tell you that each person I know that went into this program had a heart for kids.  Most would tell you that they were fed misinformation which led to their application.  All of them would tell you that they did not understand the factors in the achievement gap at the time or most major issues America faces in education today.  As frustrated with TFA as I am, my frustrations are with the organization not the corps members who I believe don’t always have the correct information going in and just don’t know what questions to be asking.

I have seen the denying of Education majors many times though.

I was denied, even after having presented at international research conferences, winning awards for my research, and practically running a campus organization. My friend applied, and, she too, was turned down. She was the most philanthropic, service-oriented, 4.0 GPA person I knew. We both got turned down by TfA during our student teaching semesters. 

Though I’m very thankful that I wasn’t offered the opportunity to be a corps member, I would love to have some of the perks my district offers, in addition to the ones the organization itself offers. One of the TfAs at my school took a leave of absence last semester in October, came back in January, and had is homerooom dissolved—-given to non-TfA teachers (me!)—because they were too high-maintenance for him.

We have A/B scheduling (kids take eight classes divided over two days) and one one of those days, he teaches two classes, has two planning periods (one more than every other teacher on campus) and no duty or homeroom. Recently, he has been buddying up to our department chair so he won’t have to teach freshman English next year, of which he has three sections this year, and two of senior Law Studies. He has no more than fifteen students in his class at any given period. 

Teach for America sucks as an education organization because it is a government-funded anti-union union. Its members can’t join the teacher’s union and they receive, in my district at least, a higher salary than other beginning teachers. At my school, all of the TfAs who have completed their two years are leaving at the end of the semester, and will probably be replaced by more TfAs. I have friends who’ll finish student teaching May 3, and will have to enter a Battle Royale to find any position. 

I also find it laughable that Teach for America can not produce an exact number, hell, I’ll take a percentage, of how many of its members remain teachers after their two years of service are up.  They can also not give you an exact number of students whose teachers were corps members went on to complete high school and graduate from college. Those are two simple statistics to track, and that’s all I want TfA to show me in black and white. Then, I’ll accept its pillaging. 

Just reblogging for the commentary.

I tried twice. They rejected me twice even though my degree was in education and I had experience in the school system. I have mixed feelings about the org overall, but it especially irks me that they only seem to really want people that they can easily mold into their idea of what a teacher should be.

Just so please know. TFA is not a government program and is a for-profit organization ruled and funded by Corporations and a corporate minded board. Don’t let the America full you! This is not the came as Americorp or Peace Corp. Michelle Rhee was a TFA member, enough said!

WHAT?! Now my head is spinning.  Of course TFA is a non profit organization!  Not only that, but it is actually an Americorps program and is structured almost exactly like the Peace Corps—Like, hello, this is EXACTLY what I am talking about.  The misinformation about TFA is absurd.  Not to say that non profits can’t be evil too, but let’s not be ridiculous.

Agreed to the second bolded piece, addressing the first.  Tossing my hat in on this as an alum of two different AmeriCorps programs with a background on the way nonprofits work:

• TfA is absolutely a non-profit organization. It has 501(c)3 status.
• TfA is an AmeriCorps program in that it receives funding through the AmeriCorps National core program. 
• In order to receive grant funding from AmeriCorps State and National you are required to match that funding with cash and in-kind sources AND to demonstrate some level of financial sustainability outside of the AmeriCorps funding.
• Many non-profit organizations form partnerships with corporations in order to maintain funding.  That doesn’t mean that it makes them “corporate-minded” — a non-profit doesn’t function solely on good will, which requires money. In most cases, the funding even from corporations has NO effect on the operation of the organization beyond the parameters within which they received the funding to begin with — that the organization is committed to specific causes or carries out specific activities for which they request the funds they receive, and that they state publicly that they received the funds from the granting corporation.
• AmeriCorps programs are part of the Corporation for National and Community Service, which, while it is a federal program, does have to think like a corporation in terms of making sure its products — that is, is programs and investments in other service organizations — return an investment — in this case, the improvements for communities and populations — that is worth the money and time they put into it.  Programs and initiatives that receive funding and resources through the CNCS are all evaluated to assure that they’re effective.  While it has a much better goal, it’s not exactly a far cry in terms of the strictest sort of thinking that also leads a food company to check the sales of a cereal in order to keep making it or pull it from the shelves.  This is a reality for non-profit organizations if you want them to stick around and keep offering amazing services — don’t villainize those organizations for it.
• THAT BEING SAID, Teach For America DOES receive a great amount of money from organizations or funding sources associated with corporations, and those funding sources happen to have agendas.  For example, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation pumps huge amounts of money and resources into Teach For America — and has some seriously flawed ideas about how to fix education.  Does TfA share some of those flawed ideas and thus receive support, or does it work on the basis of those ideas because those are the ideas that it’s receiving funding to continue functioning on?  It’s a little bit of both.

Basically, as others have been saying, there may be plenty of reasons to dislike TfA — I for one dislike it intensely for misleading its corps members and specifically recruiting those it believes will further its own agendas in regard to educational policy later.  But if you’re going to talk about TfA,

1. make sure you also listen to those who have gone through the program,
2. consider the source of everything you hear, including the bias of that source, whether it’s pro- or anti-TfA, and
3. do your RESEARCH, people, if someone is an educator or any way involved with the education system I feel like one ought to know better.