Quote from Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island)
to think that first-graders fluently reading would “cure poverty” is not only indefensible, it trivializes the great economic inequities that are the root cause of our nation’s greatest challenge.
I have witnessed schools move from progressive practices such as inclusion, to the grouping of special education students with ELLs and other struggling learners into “double period” classes where they are drilled to pass the test.
There is now minimal support from the research community for the use of annual test scores in teacher evaluations, often referred to as VAM.
When teachers begin losing their jobs based on test scores, how easy will it be to attract excellent teachers to schools with high degrees of student mobility and/or truancy? Who will want to teach English language learners with interrupted education, or students with emotional disabilities that make their performance on tests unpredictable?
Gates told the Times article’s author, Andrew Ross Sorkin, that after he watched it: “I just loved it. It was very clarifying for me. I thought, ‘God, everybody should watch this thing!’”
And there you have it. Bill Gates likes something; Bill Gates pays to get it into schools. It may be a good idea. It may be a bad idea. It doesn’t matter, because Gates has the money and clout to inject it into wherever he wants to inject it.
Don't dismiss Big History Project! The article, given another angle, could have illuminated the team behind the project, the teachers in the project, and the quality of the resources. Do give it a look.
As soaring tuition scares off many families, a growing number of private colleges have embraced a marketing tactic associated more with selling airline tickets or flat-screen televisions than higher education: a price cut.
St. John's College slashed tuition from $52,734 in this school year to $35,000 in the next.
"To cognitive neuroscientists, Handscombe's experience is the subject of great fascination and growing alarm. Humans, they warn, seem to be developing digital brains with new circuits for skimming through the torrent of information online. This alternative way of reading is competing with traditional deep reading circuitry developed over several millennia."
NOTE - happy - happy is good. Happy kids want to learn or are more likely to learn.
Nobody should ever be penalized or put at a disadvantage for the supplies they don’t have,” Dillingham thought to herself. “But everyone’s got laundry!”
NOTE - a little digital citizenship too mixed in with online fund raising.
She couldn’t be sure whether her kids were uninterested or whether they lacked the necessary pens, paper and crayons at home.
He decided he would take his students on socially distanced bike rides across the city. “It was a leap of faith. I got extremely nervous. I was trying to find a way to connect with kids,” Clark said.
her young students are musical detectives, in search of learning. She teaches most grade levels and the school chorus.
t he’s found other ways to keep his students engaged and cycling the city. He invited students to a weekly entrepreneurship class for which they rode their bikes uptown from Dunbar to the gym where Clark works, Sweat DC. The students met with the owner of the gym and the owners of a nearby bar, Hook Hall, and the bagel shop Call Your Mother Deli to learn what it takes to run a business.
She wanted them to create their own composition, their own snowy-day song.
NOTE - different locals - maybe something with changing backgrounds.
So as one class studied architecture this fall, Daney, 54, encouraged them to walk in their neighborhood to take photos of houses of different styles: ranch, colonial, Victorian.
nd he stuck with his usual method of helping students learn about the design process, asking them to prepare a meal. They started with ideas and research, made a plan, carried it out and evaluated it. The result: soups and pastas and pastries.
Kids need connection, he said. “I think they’re starving for conversation,” including with adults.
In fifth grade, students are expected to learn how to add, subtract, multiply and divide with whole numbers, decimals and fractions. Through a computer application the students have, they can program the robot to move a certain distance, stop, maybe even turn.
NOTE - use a robot or technology to achieve the same result.
With learning all-virtual, he packs a big Ziploc bag — for each student, each quarter — with things like fishing line, foam board, pipecleaners, magnets, Popsicle sticks and rubber bands. Whatever they will need for their projects.
And a lot of the math is a little sneaky. They think they are trying to get the robot to move, when they are actually measuring the angles to get it to move.”
Others complete their math problems directly on the computer, which can lead to some troubles as they try to show their work.
When Kristin Gavaza interviewed for the music teacher position at Dorothy I. Height Elementary in the summer, she told the principal she had some ideas for how to create a festive concert while students were scattered and learning from home.
NOTE - picture references a complete teacher set up of a large screen and standing desk. Sure, she's video editing yet the concept carries to teaching class too.
biggest challenge of the pandemic was not that I was depressed but just, every day became the same thing. It kind of became, like, boring and saddening because this isn’t what I’m used to.