Tuesday, September 13, 2011
Cups and Coffee
This story may be better for tweeting, but I don't tweet, so here I go on the old school blog: Yesterday, I bring a travel coffee cup to school. I'm very proud of this. I go to the Starbucks-on-Campus counter in the lobby and ask for a small, handing the nice lady my cup. She takes it, goes over to the coffee pot, and.....OK, you know what's going to happen. She takes a paper cup, fills it with coffee, pours said coffee into my travel mug, and throws away the coffee cup. Just what I wanted!
Monday, September 12, 2011
Lemonade for the Library
Helen had a lemonade stand yesterday, I helped! We sold lemonade, of course, and chocolate chip cookies and we raised $85.00 for the library, which was terrific. There's more to say because it was September 11th, but now's not the time. (Since I'm watching Dead House,a Goosebumps movie, with Elliot, and it's creepy even with very low production values.)
Oh! And the best small world New York thing? Someone who works for the library happened by and now we're on the New York Public Library's blog, too!
Friday, September 9, 2011
Orangina on the Map
OK, so I usually don't go in for posts about cute things my kids say, but I haven't been writing enough and my sense of humor has disappeared down the rabbit hole dug by Rick Perry, Eric Cantor and the five classes I'm taking, so here goes:
Helen: "Is there such a place as Orangina?"
Me: "No, why? Where you reading My Father's Dragon?" (In which there is a place called, I think, Tangerina.)
Helen: "No." Here Helen looks at her shoes and furrows her brows. "Didn't Caroline (my niece, her very glamorous cousin) go to Orangina?"
Me: "Ahhhh....that would be Argentina."
See, kind of cute, but on reflection, not that funny. Still, I'm going to hit "publish post" on this one just maybe because I can.
Helen: "Is there such a place as Orangina?"
Me: "No, why? Where you reading My Father's Dragon?" (In which there is a place called, I think, Tangerina.)
Helen: "No." Here Helen looks at her shoes and furrows her brows. "Didn't Caroline (my niece, her very glamorous cousin) go to Orangina?"
Me: "Ahhhh....that would be Argentina."
See, kind of cute, but on reflection, not that funny. Still, I'm going to hit "publish post" on this one just maybe because I can.
Monday, September 5, 2011
On 9/11
There's a lot to read on the subject 9/11. Here's something from Andrew Sullivan, it's very compelling.
Near the start he writes:
We need to understand that 9/11 worked. It worked as a tactic to induce American self-destruction, even if it failed spectacularly as a strategy to advance Al Qaeda—and its heretical message of suicidal warfare—across the globe. It worked because this was not just another terror attack. The emblems were clear: the looming towers of Western capitalism in New York, the cradle of Western democracy in Washington. When the third plane crashed into the Pentagon and the fourth (United 93) was brought down by its passengers, the drama didn’t cease. We saw the symbol of America’s military preeminence lying with its side opened like a tin can.
Near the start he writes:
We need to understand that 9/11 worked. It worked as a tactic to induce American self-destruction, even if it failed spectacularly as a strategy to advance Al Qaeda—and its heretical message of suicidal warfare—across the globe. It worked because this was not just another terror attack. The emblems were clear: the looming towers of Western capitalism in New York, the cradle of Western democracy in Washington. When the third plane crashed into the Pentagon and the fourth (United 93) was brought down by its passengers, the drama didn’t cease. We saw the symbol of America’s military preeminence lying with its side opened like a tin can.
The Romance of the Great Teacher
Yesterday, my husband handed me a folded up section of the paper and said, "Here, you'll like it." I looked down and there was Charles Blow's current column, one titled "In Honor of Teachers." In it there's yet one more telling of the same old story: A teacher changed my life! Teachers are great! Teachers should be respected, like they are in countries where children do well in school!
In this version, after falling between the cracks and being labeled slow Blow had an amazing fourth grade teacher who inspired him to work and by high school by golly this New York Times columnist was in a G&T program of two!
Now, of course it's great that Mr. Blow's life was transformed by a great teacher. But, honestly, I'm pretty tired of hearing that teachers should be respected because of the one transformational teacher a highly successful person met along the way.
I'm not saying that I'm not interested in transformational teachers or that I don't hope, fervently, that I might be one some day, at least for a child or two. What I'm saying is all the nostalgic talk about that one teacher out of many perturbs the discussion of teaching and sets up unreasonable expectations what an individual teacher should do for his students. It obscures the role of the school in supporting teaching. It elides the function of a community in which a school operates and a teacher teaches. In talking about schools and what they do the great teacher is starting to be a great big problem.
Because what about the everyday teacher who's doing a pretty good job and is working steadily at doing better? What about the school that's cultivating an atmosphere in which the professional insights of teachers matter and where a culture of learning informs all decisions? And the community that's engaged by and with that school and those teachers? These stories don't necessarily make great copy but I bet they make pretty darn good schools.
Fundamentally, great teaching is what matters for students and great teaching isn't isolated in one person. It's supported by institutions and communities, year after year. The romance of the great teacher is only that, a romance. Sure there are methods that all teachers might adopt, but the classroom experience that in retrospect changed everything, that experience relied on a certain chemistry between adult and child, an alignment of need and personality. When you had a great teacher, you had a relationship with that person for just one year. Remember what your life-long partnership was like after its first year?
If we want to talk about what will help students year after year then it's probably time to tear ourselves away from the rosy vision of the teacher as savior and turn to the question of how teacher and student and school and community might sustain a satisfying and evolving relationship. Maybe a student who went through a school where the focus is on fine teaching and not The Great Teacher won't one day mistily recall that one Ms. Smith who showed him all he can be. But he and many others will have had one heck of a time learning every day they were there. That's my theory anyway.
(Here's a footnote! "Attribution Error and the Quest for Teacher Quality," by Mary Kennedy. Educational Researcher. Vol. 39, No. 8, (pp. 591-598) November, 2010.
In this version, after falling between the cracks and being labeled slow Blow had an amazing fourth grade teacher who inspired him to work and by high school by golly this New York Times columnist was in a G&T program of two!
Now, of course it's great that Mr. Blow's life was transformed by a great teacher. But, honestly, I'm pretty tired of hearing that teachers should be respected because of the one transformational teacher a highly successful person met along the way.
I'm not saying that I'm not interested in transformational teachers or that I don't hope, fervently, that I might be one some day, at least for a child or two. What I'm saying is all the nostalgic talk about that one teacher out of many perturbs the discussion of teaching and sets up unreasonable expectations what an individual teacher should do for his students. It obscures the role of the school in supporting teaching. It elides the function of a community in which a school operates and a teacher teaches. In talking about schools and what they do the great teacher is starting to be a great big problem.
Because what about the everyday teacher who's doing a pretty good job and is working steadily at doing better? What about the school that's cultivating an atmosphere in which the professional insights of teachers matter and where a culture of learning informs all decisions? And the community that's engaged by and with that school and those teachers? These stories don't necessarily make great copy but I bet they make pretty darn good schools.
Fundamentally, great teaching is what matters for students and great teaching isn't isolated in one person. It's supported by institutions and communities, year after year. The romance of the great teacher is only that, a romance. Sure there are methods that all teachers might adopt, but the classroom experience that in retrospect changed everything, that experience relied on a certain chemistry between adult and child, an alignment of need and personality. When you had a great teacher, you had a relationship with that person for just one year. Remember what your life-long partnership was like after its first year?
If we want to talk about what will help students year after year then it's probably time to tear ourselves away from the rosy vision of the teacher as savior and turn to the question of how teacher and student and school and community might sustain a satisfying and evolving relationship. Maybe a student who went through a school where the focus is on fine teaching and not The Great Teacher won't one day mistily recall that one Ms. Smith who showed him all he can be. But he and many others will have had one heck of a time learning every day they were there. That's my theory anyway.
(Here's a footnote! "Attribution Error and the Quest for Teacher Quality," by Mary Kennedy. Educational Researcher. Vol. 39, No. 8, (pp. 591-598) November, 2010.
Sunday, September 4, 2011
Huge Protests in Israel
Four hundred thirty thousand people demonstrated across Israel on Saturday night. Israel's population is 7.7 million. If 770,000 people are about ten percent of the total population, that means about 380,000 people would be five percent, that makes 430,000 people, what?, close to six percent of the population. Is that right? Even if I'm wrong, the numbers are HUGE. And what are they protesting about? The cost of living; the salaries of teachers and policemen; the concentration of wealth among an elite few families. Good golly it's heartening.
Saturday, September 3, 2011
Can't See the Forest for the Smog
Yesterday I just read a one-liner that went something along the lines of, "Obama rolls back smog regulations, capitulates to Republicans," and I thought: "Enough!"This morning I read this piece by Michael Tomasky which asks, basically, where did Obama go and will he come back in time to be taen seriously as a leader?
Ugh.
Ugh.
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