Mindful Kids, Peaceful Schools. At Toluca Lake Elementary School in Los Angeles, a cyclone fence encloses the asphalt blacktop, which is teeming with kids. It’s recess time and the kids, who are mostly Latino, are playing tag, yelling, throwing balls, and jumping rope. When the bell rings, they reluctantly stop and head back to their classrooms—except for Daniel Murphy’s second grade class. Murphy’s students file into the school auditorium, each carrying a round blue pillow deco-rated with white stars. They enter giggling and chatting, but soon they are seated in a circle on their cushions, eyes closed, quiet and concentrating. Two teachers give the children instructions on how to pay attention to their breathing, telling them to notice the rise and fall of their bellies and chests, the passage of air in and out of their noses. Though the room is chilly—the heating system broke down earlier that day—the children appear comfortable, many with Mona Lisa smiles on their faces.
Redesigning Education: Rethinking the School Corridor. "I am entirely certain that twenty years from now we will look back at education as it is practiced in most schools today and wonder how we could have tolerated anything so primitive. "-John W. Gardner, Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, "No Easy Victories" (1968) Education reform is in the air and taking root in thousands of classrooms across the country. From overhauling No Child Left Behind to closing poorly performing schools and raising student expectations, the push for change is powerful. Even before students set foot in a classroom, most schools still are built like factories: long hallways, lined with metal lockers, transport students to identical, self-contained classrooms. School designers have used the double loaded corridor for easy circulation. Photo courtesy of the American Architecture Foundation Let's design hallways with human beings in mind.
Photo by Nigel Young/Foster+Partners Photo by Dan Forer Trung Le is a principal education designer at Cannon Design. Where No Child Left Behind Went Wrong - Adam Richardson. By Adam Richardson | 8:27 AM October 17, 2011 Recently President Obama started talking about the first substantive changes to the No Child Left Behind Act in its 10-year history. He argued that while the goal of closing the achievement gap between students of different ethnicities and income levels is a laudatory one, the levers and incentives that the program has in place are not working. I couldn’t agree more, but I still have a fundamental disagreement with the narrow focus of No Child Left Behind. It has a retrograde emphasis on teaching children “the basics” (followed by annual testing on the same) using subjects and methods more relevant to the past mass-production era, rather than the creative, global, innovation- and information-driven economy that we are in.
Less of the Three R’s, More of the Four C’s Creativity If you lack the ability to be creative, inventive, and resourceful, and look at problems from a fresh perspective, you’re not much use to many employers these days. Born to Learn ~ You are Born to Learn. Sixteen Qualities Of A Good Teacher | SlingingtheBull.com. Good teachers are rare, and few people, including school administrators who hire teachers, know what it takes to be one. Although some of the qualities of good teachers are subtle, many of them are identifiable.
Here is a list of sixteen traits that excellent teachers have in common: 1. Knowledge of the subject matter You can’t teach what you don’t know. 2. No teacher should be expected to have much patience with individuals whose lack of discipline, immaturity, or indolence interrupts the work of other students. 3. All good teachers are intellectually curious and naturally driven by their interests in keeping abreast of changes in their fields. 4. Good teachers are confident in their abilities to sense where students are in the learning process and in their students’ abilities to learn material that is presented in a logical and graduated fashion. 5. Talented teachers are able to work with students with varying levels of maturity and knowledge. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. English Teaching 101 | Living, Learning, and Teaching in Taipei. Ok, so you’ve landed a job and were given your class schedule and syllabus. Now what the heck are you supposed to do?
You, your employer and your students will all likely have somewhat different expectations about your role in the classroom. While it is important to both please your employer and your students, I personally think your relationship with the students trumps all. Here are some tips to help build rapport with your students and ensure that they make perceivable, tangible progress in English. English Teaching DOs and DON’Ts Whether you are new to teaching completely, or just teaching a particular student or group for the first time, here are some tips to help make the experience as smooth and painless as possible. Introduce Yourself and Have Students do the Same. You will of course want to introduce yourself and get to know your students. Dress Sharp. Don’t Be Late. Being late, especially on the first day, is a great way to make a horrible first impression. Set Expectations At Work. Holocaust Activities. Why the United States Is Destroying Its Education System - Chris Hedges' Columns.
Why the United States Is Destroying Its Education System Posted on Apr 11, 2011 By Chris Hedges (Page 2) The demonizing of teachers is another public relations feint, a way for corporations to deflect attention from the theft of some $17 billion in wages, savings and earnings among American workers and a landscape where one in six workers is without employment.
The speculators on Wall Street looted the U.S. “Not only have the reformers removed poverty as a factor, they’ve removed students’ aptitude and motivation as factors,” said this teacher, who is in a teachers union. “If the Bloomberg administration can be said to have succeeded in anything,” he said, “they have succeeded in turning schools into stress factories where teachers are running around wondering if it’s possible to please their principals and if their school will be open a year from now, if their union will still be there to offer some kind of protection, if they will still have jobs next year. New and Improved Comments. American teachers: A noble profession - latimes.com. At a time when teachers and their unions are under fire across the nation, my eldest daughter just had a much-anticipated interview with Teach for America.
She will graduate from college in May and hopes to be a teacher in the fall. She was worried that I'd be disappointed she didn't feel a desire for graduate school. But I was thrilled. Since graduating from college in 1984, I've taught GED courses, English as a second language, composition at a city college and now writing and literature at a public university. I have loved every year, and I don't think there's a more important profession. Think about it: We aren't legally mandated to spend as much time with any other kind of person as we are with teachers.
An American who graduates from high school has been taught by more than 20 teachers and has spent more than 10,000 hours in their company. The growing scorn for public school teachers is at every level of education. I believe it. The Disadvantages of an Elite Education: an article by William Deresiewicz about how universities should exist to make minds, not careers | The American Scholar. Exhortation - Summer 2008 Print Our best universities have forgotten that the reason they exist is to make minds, not careers By William Deresiewicz It didn’t dawn on me that there might be a few holes in my education until I was about 35.
I’d just bought a house, the pipes needed fixing, and the plumber was standing in my kitchen. There he was, a short, beefy guy with a goatee and a Red Sox cap and a thick Boston accent, and I suddenly learned that I didn’t have the slightest idea what to say to someone like him. It’s not surprising that it took me so long to discover the extent of my miseducation, because the last thing an elite education will teach you is its own inadequacy. I’m not talking about curricula or the culture wars, the closing or opening of the American mind, political correctness, canon formation, or what have you. The first disadvantage of an elite education, as I learned in my kitchen that day, is that it makes you incapable of talking to people who aren’t like you. The Shadow Scholar - The Chronicle Review.
A Little Shame Goes a Long Way - Commentary. By Jonathan Zimmerman Shame on us! The cat is finally out of the bag about what our students are learning, and it isn't pretty. It's more like a dog, or maybe a pig. A warthog, even. I'm talking about the much-discussed Academically Adrift by my New York University colleague Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa of the University of Virginia, which demonstrates that nearly half of college undergraduates don't significantly improve their reasoning or writing skills over the first two years of college. And yes, we should all be ashamed about that. The authors based their conclusions on the Collegiate Learning Assessment, an essay-only test designed to measure higher-level thinking and expression. Arum and Roksa tracked more than 2,300 students at 24 different institutions, including selective liberal-arts colleges and big land-grant universities, as well as historically black and Hispanic institutions.
The reason isn't hard to find: Most students don't read and write very much. And the others?