More Education News...

...than I can write about. So I'm not going to try - just going to let those who already did it show off their work.

As with many, many districts around the state, my old district is handing out pink slips. (By the way, teachers, if any of you feel like sending me a copy (electronically or otherwise) of your pink slip/March 15 letter, I'd love to see them. My former district sent really mean ones and I'd like to see if that is the norm.

The district hasn't really known how much money it has had for some time now. This started about 6 years ago maybe, when they switched financial software and all of a sudden couldn't find tens of millions of dollars.

There are a few good schools in this district and everyone wants their kids enrolled.

A very interesting blog post about NCLB and the Corridor of Shame.

Adult illiteracy.

Phasing out schools - often the same schools the district spent a ton of money on starting, when they were on their "new small schools" kick. Seriously, some of these schools haven't been in existance 5 years yet and they're already being phased out?

I would give these lunches much less than a C+. I've tried them.

Not that history classes ever get to the Vietnam War (at least none of mine ever did), but if they did it would be good to teach this.

Comments

Anonymous said…

I was just thinking about functional illiteracy today when I was ranting to a friend about how very few people seem to be capable of writing professional-level communications like business letters and email. And then, I thought about the fact that alarming levels of people actually just straight up cannot read/write, let alone punctuate a professional communication, and I felt cold and kind of sick inside.

5:54 PM

Anonymous said…

Also, the comments on that adult illiteracy article caused my head to explode. I realize that there are people who think like that in America, but MY GOD.

5:58 PM

Stuffed Animals

There are several much more serious stories I was going to share, but I'm not in the mood to be made sad tonight, so I'll tell you all about the stuffed animals. This is a post that needs images so someday when I have or borrow a working scanner, I will add the photos. A few years into teaching, I joined Freecyle. For those of you who don't know Freecycle, it's a group of people in any given community who are on an email list to get rid of their old stuff and get stuff from other people. It's a fabulous form of recycling. Somebody posted that they had a huge bag of stuffed animals in good condition to give away and I decided to grab it for my class. I thought that some of the kids would like the stuffed animals, but I certainly didn't think they'd all be into them. Kids grow up really fast in that neighborhood, and when you have six-year olds talking about how they walk to school alone because their parents say they're "grown," and how

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

Second very long part of the prison visit report. After we got all the paperwork filled out and went through the metal detector, we got visitation slips with the name of the inmate, and made our way over to the other building for visitation. This is not maximum security so thankfully you can just sit next to the inmates, and not be separated by glass or have to use a telephone to talk. First, you get a gate unlocked and go into a holding pen that is of course in direct sunlight (or rain if it's that season) and surrounded by fences topped with razor wire. You wait there until the gate at the other end is unlocked. This holding pen was a little bigger and less claustrophobic than the other prison (I do not have any claustrophobia and I came very close to a panic attack once at the other place) and they opened the other gate more quickly. Then you walk, again in blazing sunlight (or rain) to the visitation building. This one was less of a walk than the other prison but I still

Bronwyn Harris, Author

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