On the train to the June 27th Chicago Board of Education meeting I felt as prepared as possible. I’ve attended and participated in a fairly long list of Board meetings in my native Rochester, New York, as well as numerous other locations. I felt both confident and motivated that I would be ready for whatever experience awaited as I approached downtown Chicago. Read More→
Actions & Organizations
- ASCD's Whole Child Education
- Caucus of Rank-and-File Educators (CORE – Chicago)
- Coalition of Essential Schools
- Community Education Task Force (Rochester)
- Grassroots Education Movement
- Institute for Democratic Education in America
- Kennewick School District Citizens
- Parents Across America
- Parents United for Responsible Education (PURE)
- Save Our Schools
- Students 4 Our Schools
- The Forum for Democracy & Education
- Use Your Teacher Voice
Good Reads
- Accountable Talk
- All Things Education
- An Urban Teacher's Education
- Bridging Differences
- Cooperative Catalyst
- Dear Mr. President
- Does Experience Count?
- Ecology of Education
- EdVoices
- EdVox
- Edwize
- Elementary Rat
- Good Magazine – Education
- GothamSchools
- InterACT
- Living in Dialogue
- Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog
- Modern School
- Mr. D's Neighborhood
- NYC Educator
- NYC Public School Parents
- NYC Public School Parents
- Occupy Education
- Rethinking Schools
- RheeFirst
- School Tech Connect
- Seattle Education
- Susan Ohanian
- Teacher in a Strange Land
- Teacher Sol
- The Answer Sheet
- The Frustrated Teacher
- The Washington Teacher
- Transparent Christina
- Walt Gardner's Reality Check
Resources
Humor/Satire
For some time, folks have said “Enough is enough”. Change.org, a progressive online webpage for various activist petitions has been used as a platform to promote Michelle Rhee’s organization Students First and Stand for Children up until just yesterday. Both organizations are well-known for promoting corporate/business-driven policy agendas in public education through pressure for privatization and union-busting.
My 1st "summer off" included several weeks of professional development, plus self-driven planning of enriching learning experiences. Not satisfied with the institutional whitish-grey of the walls, I also painted my classroom a more inviting shade of blue.
Here’s another reality well-known to educators and their families, but invisible to those hopped up on Fox Noise News: Teachers work well beyond school hours, including during the summer.
Yesterday, a Washington Post article discussed how teachers spend the oft-envied summer vacation: by working other jobs and preparing for students and the coming school year.
But for many teachers, the vaunted “summer off” is a shrinking season. Although all the teachers interviewed at Patriot had some kind of getaway planned, they were booking around work-related obligations, such as workshops and second jobs, that fill in whole blocks in their planners.
“People always say, ‘Wow, you get the whole summer,’ ” said Theresa Carson, who teaches business at the school. “But there are literally just three weeks when I don’t have something to do related to school.”
(Note to anyone who wants to begrudge Ms. Carson her three weeks: working with youth is a rewarding, but physically draining, occupation. Having worked in both “grown-up” centered environments and kid-centered ones, I can attest to the fact that I definitely burned more calories in the latter situations! Eight hours with dozens of kids is just. plain. more. tiring. Don’t believe me? Give it a try…)
But, as with many other realities educators face in this day and age, we can’t assume that the public will just know we go through, or that we can depend on the media to fact-check each other when myths like “teaching is a part-time job” take root. We have to educate the public in order to create change.
So, in the spirit of the grade-ins and other actions designed to show the public how much work teachers do beyond school hours, I think it would be a good idea to photograph, blog, tweet and otherwise share the work you’re doing this summer.
Any ideas for a hashtag? #SchoolsStillIn? #SummerWork?
I’m currently deep into Education and Capitalism: Struggles for Learning and Liberation, 
a highly recommended read for those committed to learning about struggles for social justice in public education. An excerpt captured from the book’s introduction serves as a catalyst for thought and questioning. In the foreword teacher activist Adam Sanchez interviews Bill Bigelow, the curriculum editor of Rethinking Schools.
We put out a call for Troubled Terms a while back, and have gotten some excellent submissions. (Click here to read some of the others, and share one of your own!) Thanks so much for sharing your thoughts– hopefully, we’ll be able to start sharing these weekly. (Even more hopefully: We’ll start having honest policy discussions, where policymakers and influencers actually mean what they say… A girl can dream, can’t she?)
–Sabrina Read More→
Learning how to become our best selves, & demonstrating that learning, was an explicit part of the culture in my classroom.
Standardized testing– especially the high-stakes variety– has earned a serious and growing backlash, and for good reason. The weight of the research evidence shows that it has not improved education, and that it undermines the kind of academic behaviors that support critical and divergent thinking. High-stakes testing has distorted the teaching and learning process, resulting in time taken away from actual instruction, cheating scandals, and more. Testing is also expensive, representing yet another way in which scarce education funds have been diverted away from student learning toward powerful private interests. And while they’re inelegant at best in performing their intended function– measuring student knowledge– they’re now being inappropriately used to close schools, evaluate (and shame) individual teachers, and more.
Clearly, this system is fraught with issues. Yet policymakers and some members of the public still argue that, despite their flaws, it’s good to have an “objective” measure of student, teacher and school performance– an argument I find completely maddening. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: standardized tests are not objective.
Just because a process somehow results in a number, does not necessarily mean that anything about that process is objective (unless you’re prepared to argue that men standing on a street corner rating passing women on a scale of one to perfect 10 are engaging in an “innovative form of female evaluation,” instead of borderline sexual harassment). Read More→
President of the Rochester Teachers Association Adam Urbanski wrote a commentary on how “Teachers need more support” recently. A collaborative call to action then came from Community Education Task Force member, parent, retired teacher, and community organizer Howard Eagle. In my view, the response featured below was worthy of and relevant to the spirit of our mission here at Reclaiming Reform: Read More→
I have participated in a fairly large quantity of relational meetings over the last several years as both 
a grassroots community organizer and an urban school district teacher. A phrase that frequently comes up during many meetings and conversations about education is “best practices”. However, being precise in our language is paramount. Recognizing where terminology originated is equally important if we expect to intelligently address issues in education. The phrase “best practices” has an interesting history as it allegedly originated in industry and business circles and then drifted into a host of other fields, notably education. Consequently, education is overflowing with questionable actions and dubious initiatives, often promoted by elites as “best practices” using flowery PowerPoint presentations. Read More→
Today, in the context of a conversation about some school turnarounds I heard this very question. “Aren’t charter schools better?” The question came from a person, a parent of public school children, who was called in for temporary work at my school. It was stated innocently and without malice. I answered the question in the negative, providing a brief overview of my reason for disagreeing, stating that charter schools don’t perform better than traditional schools, statistically (high-stakes test) speaking, and in some cases they perform worse. Since then, I have been considering other parts of that “no” that I didn’t go into. Such as the following:
On the ethics of selling slingshots
I was very happy when I learned of Change.org’s decision to end their relationships with two astroturf organizations operating against the common good in education. It’s always heartening to see how people faced with tough decisions can listen to (often heated) input and weigh sometimes competing concerns. Having spoken to some of their staff, I know they take our concerns very seriously, and I applaud them for having the courage to publicly take this important first step towards ensuring that their business commitments fully align with their stated values.
For those unfamiliar with why this became such a contentious issue, let’s return to the David and Goliath metaphor some of Change.org’s staff and many commentators use to describe the site’s impact.
How would you feel about King Saul if, just after sending a slingshot-armed David into battle, he turned and sold upgraded slingshots to Goliath and the rest of the Philistine army? That’s how many public education advocates had begun to feel about Change.org. Read More→
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