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Maria Mahon

N.B.A. Players Return to Where They Once Hastened to Leave - College - NYTimes.com - 1 views

  • “I have a younger brother, and it sets an example for him and how important it is,” said Westbrook, who declared for the N.B.A. after his sophomore season at U.C.L.A.
  • People who criticize me for that have something to think about, I think, because that’s an important time in anybody’s life,” Carter said at the time. “There’s not one person who could sit there and say that they would miss their graduation for nothing.”
    • Maria Mahon
       
      Role models who pursue education should be made available to the students, I think. Rather than not wanting to discuss sports stars or entertainers, I think it would be great to hold up the ones who do prize education.
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    This article caught my attention because my practicum placement cooperating teacher has a bulletin board and he encourages students to bring in newspaper articles that catch their attention. However, he has said that he hopes that they will not all be about sports stars and entertainers. Yet, the students are constantly talking about entertainers (especially Lil Wayne - he's all the rage in middle schools apparently!) and sports starts. I feel like a story like this could be used to help inspire the students to stay in school - seeing people they admire commit to their education could be very valuable.
Richard Kirschner

Separation of church and state in the United States - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 0 views

  • The separation of church and state is a legal and political principle derived from various documents of several of the Founders of the United States. The First Amendment to the United States Constitution reads "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof . . ." The modern concept is often credited to the writings of English philosopher John Locke, but the phrase "separation of church and state" is generally traced to an 1802 letter by Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptists, where Jefferson spoke of the combined effect of the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment. His purpose in this letter was to assuage the fears of the Danbury, Connecticut Baptists, and so he told them that this wall had been erected to protect them. The metaphor was intended, as The U.S. Supreme Court has currently interpreted it since 1947, to mean that religion and government must stay separate for the benefit of both, including the idea that the government must not impose religion on Americans nor create any law requiring it. It has since been in several opinions handed down by the United States Supreme Court,[1] though the Court has not always fully embraced the principle.[2][3][4][5][6]
  • The Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution (Amendment XIV) is one of the post-Civil War amendments, intended to secure rights for former slaves. It includes the due process and equal protection clauses among others. The amendment introduces the concept of incorporation of all relevant federal rights against the states. While it has not been fully implemented, the doctrine of incorporation has been used to ensure, through the Due Process Clause and Privileges and Immunities Clause, the application of most of the rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights to the states. The incorporation of the First Amendment establishment clause in the landmark case of Everson v. Board of Education has impacted the subsequent interpretation of the separation of church and state in regard to the state governments.[37] Although upholding the state law in that case, which provided for public busing to private religious schools, the Supreme Court held that the First Amendment establishment clause was fully applicable to the state governments. A more recent case involving the application of this principle against the states was Board of Education of Kiryas Joel Village School District v. Grumet (1994).
    • Richard Kirschner
       
      An excellent recitation of the historical background of the First Amendment with references to the influence of the Church of England and patriots such as Patrick Henry & Thomas Paine. Excellent list of references. Important resource to keep for future reference.
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    This is one of the very best websites I have ever found addressing the First Amendment and religion in the public schools. It deals with student prayers, official participation, teaching about religion, student dress, etc.
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    How is this site different from candst.tripod.com/...jnt-sta.htm? How might teachers use this site?
Laura Wood

What Kids Can Do - 4 views

  • stay informed
    • Laura Wood
       
      From the website: "Based in Providence, R.I., What Kids Can Do (WKCD) is a national nonprofit founded in January 2001 by an educator and journalist . . . they felt an urgent need to promote perceptions of young people as valued resources, not problems, and to advocate for learning that engages students as knowledge creators and not simply test takers. Just as urgent, they believed, was the need to bring youth voices to policy debates about school, society, and world affairs. Using the Internet, print, and broadcast media, WKCD presses before the broadest audience possible a dual message: the power of what young people can accomplish when given the opportunities and supports they need and what they can contribute when we take their voices and ideas seriously. The youth who concern WKCD most are those marginalized by poverty, race, and language. On this website, WKCD presents young people's lives, learning, and work, and their partnerships with adults both in and out of school. Our community of readers stretches from youth organizers in some of this country's toughest urban areas to policy makers at the national level. We believe that a good story well told crosses geographies, generations, class and race, and position. Our publishing arm, Next Generation Press, honors the power of youth as social documenters, knowledge creators, and advisors to educators, peers, and parents. WKCD is a grant maker, too, collaborating with youth on multimedia, curricula, and research that expand current views of what constitutes challenging learning and achievement. Starting in 2006, WKCD began working with youth worldwide. WKCD has become an international leader in bringing the promise of young people to the attention of the adults whose encouragement can make all the difference."
  • Youth in Policy: Civics2
    • Laura Wood
       
      Here they have collected various articles about how youth around the country and around the globe have been actively involved in policy making and shaping. This may be great to get teachers and students started thinking about project ideas or to inspire students (and teachers!) that students really can make a difference.
  • Want to bring public attentionto your work? WKCD invitessubmissions from youth andeducators worldwide.
    • Laura Wood
       
      ARG! My diigo isn't working at all. Very frustrating. I have to highlight stuff four times and then add the comments in on this page. Technology is not my friend this week.
    • Laura Wood
       
      So if you do a rad civics project with your students, students can then write an article about what they did and send it in to WKCD. They will then put it up on this cite and your students will have something to be uber proud of. This is another reason to make sure you photo document rad projects.
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    • Laura Wood
       
      Similarly, one of the links on this page is to news articles from around the country where kids are making a difference. A teacher might assign students to check out some of the ways that students are getting things done and getting noticed in order to inspire kids, get their creative juices flowing, etc.
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    Articles on what kids in the US have done politically, with pictures! Collected by a journalist and an educator.
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    This is the organization run by the author of "Fires in the High School Bathroom." As the only permanent staff are journalists and web designers (and the staff is tiny!). I believe they just collect and make available student stories (as well as apparently offering grants!) rather than actually participating or spearheading any projects themselves. They do publish works every so often - I believe collections of the things students have done.
Lindsay Andreas

Comedian urges Hispanic students to stay in school - washingtonpost.com - 0 views

  • One in five Hispanic teens drops out of high school, according to U.S. Education Department statistics. That's about twice the rate for black students and more than three times the rate among white students.
    • Lindsay Andreas
       
      I found this statistic about hispanic drop-out rates really alarming. Considering that the Hispanic population is quickly growing, education policy makers should be moving this to the forefront of their concerns.
  • . "A lot of Latino students look at the sticker price and think, if my family makes $18-20,000 a year, I can't afford it," said Deborah Santiago, vice president of policy and research for Excelencia in Education, a Washington-based advocacy organization.
    • Lindsay Andreas
       
      This was something that I personally ran into in my practicum. Better information needs to be distributed regarding college financing. There is a stigma in lower-income areas about taking out college loans and a lot of misinformation. When I taught a lesson on saving and investment for an Economics class, I spent the majority of the lesson answering questions regarding this and reminding students that college is an investment and that it will pay-off in the end. An example that worked really well was the game of Life, since many students have played it. In the board game if you go to college in the beginning, you will end up in the better retirement home in the end.
  • He told Wheaton students about a guidance counselor who encouraged him to go to college, and about his time at Loyola Marymount in Los Angeles, where he became disillusioned, started partying and stopped studying. "I went from being the first in my family to go to college to becoming another Latino statistic: a dropout," he said.
    • Lindsay Andreas
       
      Both parts struck me. Encouragement is so important, because if your teacher doesn't encourage you, who will after all? Second, a problem we have at McKinley is that students that go to college get distracted and overwhelmed by college and dropout the first year. This is important on two fronts, we need better college prep programs in high school and also the colleges and universities need better support systems for first generation college students.
James Leslie

Ideas about becoming a social studies teacher - 0 views

  • Sadly, much too often, social studies courses are regarded as relatively unimportant subject matter, whether in elementary school, middle school, or high school. This perception leads to diminished attention paid to social studies as a serious subject area, yet in the overall development of the intellect of students, no other subject matter content holds as much promise.
    • James Leslie
       
      Social studies is more importan than many people think.
  • "I think we include social studies in the curriculum for the wrong reasons. It doesn't help us avoid the mistakes of the past, and if voting turnout is an indicator of good citizenship, it doesn't have much to do with that either. Social studies is probably best understood as an organized way of helping students develop understandings and appreciations that have long-term staying power, and that will influence them in positive ways to do the right thing when doing the right thing is hard to do."
    • James Leslie
       
      Can we find ways to enhance the use of what we may teach to students.
  • First, you must understand the content of the social studies at a level appropriate to that which you intend to teach. To understand content means more than mere memorization of facts. To understand content for a teacher means that you can explain it in more than one way to others, whether the content concerns facts, generalizations, principles, themes, and so on.
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  • Second, you must be able to translate the content you so understand to make it learnable, interesting, and challenging for students at the age and grade level you are teaching. It requires rearranging what you know. This applies to social studies more than any other content area simply because social studies as a discipline lacks any widely agreed-upon structure.
    • James Leslie
       
      Interesting to note that teaching the same subject at different levels can look different.
  • Third, you must consider pedagogy. This means that you not only understand the content in more than one way, can translate it into a form understandable, learnable, challenging, and interesting to your students, but that you also have the skills to actually teach the content. Pedagogy without subject matter content isn't worth very much. Simply "knowing about" teaching methods won't do.
  • There is probably no more important skill required in teaching social studies than the ability to explain events, ideas, principles, and social interrelationships. In some ways, good social studies teaching rests on the ability to tell stories well. For social studies, this story telling ability is grounded in the depth and awareness of the connective possibilities of the content. Helping students make new connections, to find challenge and meaning in social studies content is what excellent social studies teachers do every day.
    • James Leslie
       
      There is a great need to make teaching history reletive to students today.
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    This is an interesting site that shares reasons why social studies is important and how a person can effectively teach it. It also has a link to the role of values that should be expressed in social studies.
Lindsay Andreas

Some Schools Will Block or Delay Obama's Live Pep Talk for Students - washingtonpost.com - 0 views

  • The speech, which will be broadcast live from Wakefield High School in Arlington County, was planned as an inspirational message "entirely about encouraging kids to work hard and stay in school," said White House spokesman Tommy Vietor. Education Secretary Arne Duncan sent a letter to principals nationwide encouraging them to show it.
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