mathdittos2.com
...dedicated to...hmmm, we're still figuring that one out... |
|
STS-119 On Its Way
English Language Learners Ginger Thompson had an excellent article in the New York Times on Saturday, Where Education and Assimilation Collide. She writes about the advantages and disadvantages of tracking for English Language Learners. Stability Balls for Chairs Can you imagine a classroom where the students all sit on stability balls instead of chairs? Stability balls let kids get rid of the wiggles by Kristen Wyatt tells of just such a practice and its plusses and minuses. Rhee Letter to Washington Teachers School administrators work around a delicate line during teacher contract negotiations. They need to be able to communicate with their employees, but generally are supposed to negotiate through the employees selected bargaining agent. Going directly to the teachers en mass about contract negotiations is considered a no-no in most states' bargaining statutes. Michele Rhee, Chancellor of the Washington, D.C., schools, appears to have blown right through that line last Friday with a letter (558K PDF document) to the D.C. teachers. Rhee framed her letter as an "update" to the long-running contract negotiations that have become acrimonious in no small part due to Rhee's inflammatory rhetoric about teachers. The Washington Post's Bill Turque covers the dustup in Rhee Says Fixes Likely Too Much Too Soon. Maine Expanding 1:1 Laptop Program
Having once been fortunate enough to be on the receiving end of a large grant that enabled a 1:1 laptop program with my special education students, I can only say "hurray" for the folks in Maine. Since my wife, Annie, and I were already giving refurbished desktop computers to each of our students, our laptops stayed at school. But having a laptop for each child was an incredible teaching opportunity. Below are links to a few columns I wrote around that time that apply to our computer program.
Send feedback to |
The state of Maine is expanding its 1:1 laptop program from grades 7-8 to grades 7-12. eSchool News reports in 
|
On Stimulus Funds and Special Education Christina A. Samuels has an interesting article in Education Week about how schools may use special education stimulus funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. In Special Education Stimulus Money Raising Cautions, Samuels notes that the money runs out in two years. Coupled with limitations on how the funds may be used, this could "leave school administrators in the position of buying equipment with one pot of money, while laying off teachers at the same time." FMA Live! NASA and Honeywell have begun the Spring 2009 tour of their "innovative, traveling hip-hop science concert" series, FMA LIVE! NASA press release: NASA and Honeywell Launch 2009 FMA Live! Spring Tour Indiana's new Superintendent of Public Instruction, Tony Bennett, is causing some major headaches for Indiana schools with some rule changes to the required 180 day school calendar. No waivers for fewer than 180 full days of class, state tells Indiana schools and Vigo School’s Tanoos not pleased with state changes tell the story. Bennett this week decided schools could no longer count half student days where the staff had inservice the remainder of the day as full school days. At least two full days of inservice are required of Indiana schools each year. The problem lies in the fact that schools have already established their calendars for next year and negotiated them with local teacher associations. This one smells like another attempt by an Indiana Republican to undermine the teacher associations and unions in Indiana. There's nothing wrong with deciding to no longer count inservice time as instructional time. Bennett's problem is that he chose not to give schools and teacher associations the proper time to make the necessary contractual changes needed.
Positive Research on VAKT A posting on ScienceDaily, Touch Helps Make The Connection Between Sight And Hearing, confirms what all of us who've used VAKT (visual, auditory, kinesthetic, tactile) instructional methods already knew. Teachers have been using traceable yarn letters, sand trays, and all manner of other tactiles to teach sounds for years. Teacher Training Marc Bernstein, superintendent of the Valley Stream (NY) Central High School District, has a thought provoking editorial in Newsday, To improve education, improve teacher training. I sometimes get a little defensive with all the press about improving teaching and the need for teacher training. I thought I was a pretty good teacher. But when I look back at how I got to where I am now in teaching, I can see that it was a career of teaching training that made me a good teacher. I was fortunate to attend a school (Milligan College) that had an excellent teacher training program. Even though I was a secondary education major, I got lots of experience in elementary and middle school during my undergraduate program. I was also lucky that my first principal and his assistant believed in shepherding new teachers, especially secondary to elementary retreads such as myself. I got lots of extra help the first few years. Possibly the best training I received was some in-house training in Washington Township in Indianapolis when I switched programs and schools from teaching intermediate grades to a class for third graders with developmental delays. (And yes, we often jokingly called it "3-D!") I was required to spend the whole summer before making the switch in corporation inservices including handwriting, Project Read (a VAKT variant of the Orton Gillingham method of teaching reading), and a lot of small group sessions with our school psychologist, learning disabilities teacher, and the other teachers of our developmentally delayed classes. When school started the latter group also came into my room for days of co-teaching. It was an incredible learning experience. I later went back and took traditional graduate courses to certify for learning disabilities and mildly mentally handicapped licenses. Even that training took a fortuitous twist when our "student teaching" for MiMH turned out to be an internship in some local intermediate care facilities. We worked not only with individuals with mild mental handicaps, but with moderate and severely mentally handicapped and emotionally handicapped individuals. Looking back, I just sorta lucked into some excellent training. I'm not sure everyone has such good fortune, so it's probably a good thing that we're now looking nationally at improving teacher training. Busy Week - Slow News Week I've been in the classroom all this week, so there hasn't been much time for updates to Educators' News. Since this was a slow news week in education, I guess that works out well. Have a great weekend!
Ads shown on this site do not represent an endorsement or warranty of any kind of products or companies shown. Ads shown on archive pages may not represent the ads displayed in the original posting on Educators' News. |
©2009 Steven L. Wood