teamteachers:

satisfactori:

I recently decided to be a teacher, but I also identify as agender. I was wondering if you could help me out by answering a few questions. These include:

How do you identify yourself?

ex. genderqueer, femme, avid reader, left handed, tall, tough, sparkly, gender creative, gay, fun,…

Click through for the rest.

Boosting.

These are some great questions.  If folks like me follow folks like me, go on and give it a click through.  And if you aren’t in this category, click through and read anyway, to get an idea of all the extras we have to think about on the daily.

And in general…let’s be there for each other.  Because for some people this might be a non-issue, while for others it might make the experience more difficult.

jbizzle329:

novicephoenix:

You don’t need to ask me twice! Anything for my Tumblr friend! Please, donate to PPT. She is a fantastic teacher, and an amazing Tumblr support and resource. She’s the glue to this wonderful community, so help a lady out!

PS Briarpatch Goodnight Moon 123 Counting Game is coming your way.

positivelypersistentteach:

Hey everyone, as you may have heard the recent sequester will impact many government programs and their funding.  My program is getting a cut, but it looks like no positions will be cut from instructional staff at this point. However, other parts of our staff may be.

Each year Pre-K teachers get a modest classroom supply fund.  This is not much different than the grade level funds that are often used to purchase take home folders, construction paper, notebooks, etc. except that we each individually decide what to spend it on.  This year, I spent mine on art supplies, stuff needed for science and math activities (not reusable), and some books.  I am guessing that our classroom funds will be very small next year, as they have gotten smaller every year.

As you know, Pre-K kids play hard and at the beginning of the year are still learning a lot of social skills and rules.  So books get ripped and toys break.  And, I am sometimes able to replace them through classroom funds or my own, and sometimes I am not.

This year’s class has loved every minute, but there’s things from free choice centers that need to be replaced.  Also, this year, I put a lot more focus into using rotating centers for all academic centers.   While I do have a number of books that need to be replaced or that are still on my dream classroom wish list. I want to focus on stacking up on materials for literacy, science, math, and social studies.  

If you have the funds this month or are a billionaire  I’d appreciate it if you could take a look at my wish list (linked above).  I partner with another teacher to plan a lot of things and we share materials so you would be helping out two classes.

I totally understand that money is tight for many, but all the reblogs in the world are appreciated.

Holla at my girl. She’s amazing. Got an extra dollar? Maybe pass it onto her.

I’ve been on some radio silence, but I’m popping back up because this is a chance to do something meaningful for someone awesome and all of their kidlets.

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.

danettemarieeducation:

Adding this as a resource for shapefutures’s post about the cultural history of Harlem.

This is only an introduction to the exhibit Rhapsodies in Black: Art of the Harlem Renaissance but I believe that it’s a good start.

Excellent, thank you!  This is what community is for!  The message that came with the link for this:

I posted a link to a website about art and the Harlem Renaissance in my ed blog. It’s not much but it’s a start and I’m thinking of looking for more stuff related to visual arts.

I was trying to find dance and music-specific resources, but there’s a whole wealth of visual art resources out there.  If you look for “picture books” or “art history” it might give you a good place to start from, depending on your age range, at least as a springboard.

(Source: arteandeducacion)

youottercomeagain:

shapefutures:

Maybe it’s because I’m a New Yorker, or because I grew up with a deep love of the arts of the Harlem Renaissance, or because watching the video of Harlem residents reacting to the now-infamous Harlem Shake videos just tore my heart out and infuriated me all at once.

But people ought to know the…

Oh wow…….where to begin. Yanno, I’m not from Harlem or anywhere in New York so I’ll just leave this here.

For the record (because I can’t read the tone in this one at all), I’m not from Harlem either, just NY.  But this is something we studied when I was in K-12, and then something I was very passionate about on my own.  I just thought some of the information should be out there.

Again, if anyone has more information that can be shared, please please do.  My opinion in general is that if we find something students are caught by in the moment, we should try to connect it to other information and make it a teachable moment.