Common Sense Vs. Common Core: How to Minimize the Damages of the Common Core. The wonder drug has been invented, manufactured, packaged, and shipped.
Doctors and nurses are being trained to administer the drug properly. Companies and consultants are offering products and services to help with the proper administering of this wonder drug. A national effort is underway to develop tools to monitor the improvement of the patients. The media are flooded with enthusiastic endorsement and euphoric predictions. This cure-all wonder drug is the Common Core, short for the Common Core State Standards Initiative. The Common Core State Standards provide a consistent, clear understanding of what students are expected to learn, so teachers and parents know what they need to do to help them. Specifically, the Common Core claims to cure the ills that have long plagued America’s education: inequality and inefficiency. So how wonderful is this wonder drug? If it is too good to be true… Anne Beninghof's Page. How Can Education Be Changed? (with John Holt)
John Holt on How Children Learn 1.mov John Holt on How Children Fail Iwcenglish1.typepad.com/Documents/Holt_How_Children_Fail.pdf. Education reform’s central myths. The “Overton Window” is not a new kind of low-glare, high-insulation windowpane.
Nor is it the title of a paperback thriller like “The Eiger Sanction” or “The Bourne Supremacy.” Identified by Joseph P. Overton of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, the Overton Window refers to the boundaries of the limited range of ideas and policies that are acceptable for consideration in politics at any one time. In other words, the Overton Window is the “box” that we are constantly exhorted to think outside of, only to be ignored or punished if we succeed. The debate about K-12 educational reform in the U.S. is an example of the Overton Window at work. Such is the power of the “framing” produced by Overton’s Window that these propositions command broad assent among thoughtful and well-informed Americans, even though the facts do not support them. To begin with, the U.S. public school system is hardly the abysmal failure portrayed in the conventional wisdom. As the Smithsonian magazine observes: Is Algebra Necessary? Habits of Mind.
In the last three posts I've been mapping some of the core ideas that are guiding my current thinking about thinking.
When I work with my students, or when I'm trying to be more disciplined or purposeful in my own thinking, I often return to some of the strategies I've listed, and I try to test the work being done against at least the standards I've listed. Neither of the lists is complete. Both of the lists have evolved over time, and my sense of which strategies or standards are most useful or relevant often shifts from year to year, class to class, task to task. I believe that is as it should be. But what I am trying to do, in my teaching life, in this blog, and, to the extent that it is possible—although this is always the hard part—in the conduct of my life, is to be thoughtful, and flexible, and competent, and attentive, and compassionate. What are the habits of mind that would define this "certain kind of person"? Evidence: How do we know what's true and false? New Teacher Academy: Building Relationships. Welcome to the fifth and final week of Edutopia's New Teacher Academy blog series!
I'm excited to be here with you sharing my passion to support and mentor new teachers. It's been great to have had the opportunity to provide resources for new teachers in five key areas. As we wrap up our series, we will continue to collaborate on these five topics in more detail on New Teacher chat, my weekly chat on Twitter, and also at my blog Teaching with Soul. Please view this video as I share a few words on our focus for this last week. Joan Young (@flourishingkids on Twitter) is an elementary teacher, academic coach and author. A wordle of the answers I received when I asked students about the importance of the relationship between students and teachers. When I first began teaching, I encountered many complex situations with no easy answers.
Below are a few tips to get you started working on building relationships... 1) Put Your Own Oxygen Mask on First!