With the heated debate about which presidential candidate to vote for (or to not vote in general), Americans aren’t spending the same efforts when considering local elections. Twelve states will be electing governors: Delaware, Indiana, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oregon, Utah, Vermont, Washington, and West Virginia. As of September 7, 2016, […]
Current Events in Education
Posted inCommon Core
We Need our Educators Now More than Ever
We desperately need dedicated educators willing to build a career around serving today’s learners and today’s communities-our tomorrow depends on it. Under the guise of “reform”, public education and teaching have been under a years-long attack driven by private interests in collusion with policymakers looking to profit from and gain control of a private education […]
Posted inInstruction & Curriculum
Are SPED Teachers Being Wells Fargoed? How Special Education Resembles the Wells Fargo Scandal
Cross-Posted at maribeeappletree Those that handle our funds have a fiduciary duty to properly handle our hard-earned money, right? Recently our faith was shaken. In order to keep their $12 per hour jobs, low level Wells Fargo employees opened fraudulent bank and credit card accounts in their customers’ names. Top executives pushed managers to […]
Posted inCurrent Events in Education
Transforming the ‘Trump Effect’ in Schools
As early as March of this year, teachers were reporting a significant increase in anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant, and bullying behavior in their students since the start of the 2016 presidential race in what has become known as the “Trump Effect.” The Southern Poverty Law Center tries to get some data on these anecdotal reports, and ran […]
Posted inCurrent Events in Education
The Destruction of a School District
The destruction of the School District of Philadelphia began in 2001. That was the year when the schools were in serious financial trouble. The lack of funding had two culprits. Philadelphia’s City Council was not interested in raising real estate taxes to help the district. Pennsylvania’s state legislature has never wanted to seriously fund Philadelphia […]
Posted inInstruction & Curriculum
Celebrating Banned Books in the Classroom
Even though Banned Books Week has officially passed, you don’t have to restrict talking about censorship to just one week of the school year. In fact, I would encourage you to discuss censorship and why books might be challenged throughout the school year, not just for a week in September. I actually like to keep banned […]
Posted inOpinion
Religion Isn’t Dead in Schools
From time to time, I receive an email from a parent asking “how do you go about teaching religion?” They are afraid that learning about other religions or even Greek mythology will taint the family beliefs that they and/or their institution have taught. As a public school teacher, there’s really one answer – “I don’t teach […]
Posted inCommon Core
Have You Been To A #GAFE Summit?
I’ve been teaching for 26 years – English, AVID, Yearbook, Reading, History and any sort of intervention class that gets thrown my way. I’ve been through whole language and back. I’ve survived NCLB. I’ve been trained in teaching the Gifted and Talented, the At-Risk and 21st-century students. And last weekend, I went to my first […]