The sheer JOY of talking about something you love described by Donald Hall (and called “teaching”) in the essay “Coffee with Robert Graves.” (And I’ll admit that this is what has drawn me to the…
Browsing Category Teaching
Writing Instruction Grounding Social Control
Those of us who have been teachers and/or wannabe authors before everyone was an author (see the note yesterday re: artists)–I know I’m treading on my commoner sensibility here, always a tension in me–remember there…
To Dissect a Polemic: First, Examine the Polemicist
Dissecting The Atlantic’s Reform Manifesto: Part IV Go to Part I; Part II; Part III “Why Kids Should Grade Their Teachers,” by Amanda Ripley I had an instructive moment in my education well after I left the educational institutions…
Discipline and Punish
Maybe you’re not 44 and so are not conversant with the movie Reality Bites (its genesis and presentation 20 years past), but I am. The down-and-out 20-something “losers” (heed my punctuation, please) in that film…
Instructed to Ignorance
I started out thinking I could assert that the school curriculum (the “what” of instruction) is irrelevant but that is of course not what I would mean to say. Rather, curriculum is ALL possible responses…
Free Writing in a 6th Grade Class
In class today, in a free-writing period I offered this to the gods: If my throat were a cave would my words hang like bats? If my eyes were eclipses would pinholes reveal me? If…
Common Core Is Authority On Steroids
Peg with Pen wrote yesterday about a product offered by the designer of Common Core, David Coleman (more from me on that here, “Occupy Common Core Standards“). I recently had the unfortunate opportunity to examine…
From Foreign Policy to School Systems
Recently I started working in our school system as a “preventionist.” This is basically an aide position and paid that way. The job posting required no degree and simply a GED as education level. Preference…
The Plunder Years
It was as though a veil had been rent. I saw on that ivory face the expression of sombre pride, of ruthless power, of craven terror — of an intense and hopeless despair. Did he…
Shorter, On Tenure
A teacher in any institution ONLY needs tenure if he/she plans to teach an antagonistic stance to the institution administered nitrate, if necessary, it Is essential to be able toOverall, efficacy data (main and supportive…