Head-scratching time on another “teacher sex scandal” news story
I know that newspapers sometimes dig for stories, but the story today in the St. Pete Times, Does the rise in alternatively trained teachers spell trouble?, is just bewildering. The reporter is asking if the fact that two of the six came through alternative-certification programs is an indication that alternative certification programs are magnets for […]
Sketching a course 6
Habits and experienceToday I’m trying desperately to finish a paper that is far too late. Part of the delay is the craziness that is my professional and union life, but another part is that I am delving into two subjects that I have not been diligent in keeping up with. I am keenly interested in […]
Silence on AT&T Aspire an “Ed in ’08” parallel?
Is it my imagination, or has there been a deafening silence in both news outlets and the blogosphere after the AT&T Foundation’s announcement Wednesday of a $100 Million Dropout Prevention Program? I wrote about the initiative Thursday, but given the lead-in publicity (the America’s Promise report with Ed Week about low graduation rates?), I expected […]
Sketching a course 5
Framing questions as stuff, habits, and experienceProbably the most powerful intellectual experience I had as an undergraduate… or rather the most powerful explicit design of a course I took in my major (history) … was a course on late medieval/early modern Europe taught by Susan Stuard. She structured the entire course around a single question: […]
Sketching a course 4
Stuff to expose students to Street-level bureaucracy/loosely-coupled systems Arguments over what the links between education and democracy are Habits etc. Grasping POV within nonfiction Experiences Staying with a the development of a complex idea through its nuances Multiple-resolution understanding: Seeing the flowers (details) and the landscape (10,000-foot view) at the same time