Um, Who's Teaching Our Teachers?

A friend who works in my district recently had an interesting situation at a workshop/seminar type thing (maybe part of a lecture series?) The talk was entitled, "What Do Struggling Readers Need from All of Us." Apparently the woman delivering the talk worked a number of interesting comments into the talk including:

Kids running around like "Indians and banshees."
Women (in general, all women) not wanting to make left hand turns, but preferring to make four right hand turns. Think about that one. Draw a diagram if you need to.
Make sure you don't work your kids like a slave driver.
Some sort of homage to September 11 and good old Uncle Sam.

I kind of wish I had been there! That's quality professional development time.

Comments

meloukhia said…

Well, at least the kids aren't...running around like hooligans? There's nothing worse than a classroom full of hooligans, I tell ya.

9:22 AM

A Loss

(I have been putting off finishing this blog post for months. You'll see why) Today, I was cleaning a bookshelf and I found the journal from one of my third-grade students, who I call Fred in my book , in 2001. I still had it because he didn't come to the last day of school to get his stuff this year and I guess it got put in a pile and somehow I've kept it with me. He didn't come to the last day of school, probably because his family was a mess: dad in prison, mom in an abusive relationship, all the kids (understandably) acting out violently. Fred was expelled from our school in second grade for hitting a teacher. Then he was expelled from the other school, I don't know why, at the end of second grade. He came back on the condition from the administration that he be in my class because I had him as a student in first grade and he listened to me and worked well with me. We had a really good relationship, although Fred was definitely not easy to have in class.

A New Prison, Part Two

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A New Prison, Part 1

My former student, friend, and co-author was moved to a new prison during COVID. We (myself, Mitali, and his Abuela) have visited a couple of times via the video visit functionality they set up, but we've also been trying to visit in person, ever since in-person visits were allowed again. After four of them being canceled (sometimes we were told why, sometimes not), we finally got a visit. I was super nervous about this visit. (I felt better when Mitali mentioned that she was also, because she is an inherently positive and optimistic person!) I am not proud of this, but there was a large part of me that was hoping that the visit would be canceled, just like the previous four were. I felt a little better when someone I know messaged me privately to tell me that they had had very good experiences visiting a family member in that prison. But I still didn't sleep well at all that night, worrying about the guards, the many things that could go wrong, and the projected 111-degree hea

Bronwyn Harris, Author

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