I’m a badass tomboy, made of stone and all that. Getting misty-eyed and writing in my Feelings Journal is not my thing. Teacher and blogger, Paul Bogush, wrote this post about the learning experiences students deserve to have and why devoted teachers choose to teach.

Excerpt teaser:

Our classes should be filled with unforgettable learning experiences.

I just watched a video from Steven Spangler. In it he says that teachers are not creating unforgettable learning experiences. We teach facts, not wonder, discovery, and exploration. Good teachers teach facts. Great teachers give students an unforgettable learning experiences. The student might not even remember what was learned in the class, but will remember loving the fact that they were sitting there every day. More…

It didn’t make me cry like a dumb wussy girl, but I did think grateful thoughts, yet again, that I’ve been lucky enough to have had some phenomenal teachers in my life.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

(unsinkable 101)

Oh, it’s coming. Denying it won’t help you. Fall Term is starting up soon whether you’re ready or not. When the first week of classes have been attended and while you’re still focusing on first chapters, small quizzes, tolerable assignments, and the finer points on your professors’ syllabi, at the very least please skim this: How to Study: A Brief Guide. Learning how to learn is, how do you say, crucial, of the essence, invaluable, indispensable and totally effing necessary.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

(take notes)

Watch it, people. Just because information is second only in volume to pollution on this planet, it does not mean all info is available for you to use and then slap your name on to it like you wrote it or something. Plagiarism, for those of you who missed that day in class, is when you take someone else’s work and falsely claim it as your own. It’s very bad, and it makes you look like an ass@$%*.

The NY Times has an article up about plagiarism and the tech-savvy information generation. The lines are blurry for Gen-Y, apparently.

If you’d like to avoid being an uninformed cheating ass@#$%, the following links are helpful.

Purdue Online Writing Lab: Avoiding Plagiarism
Plagiarism.org

I must go. The line above regarding information and the volume of it is freaking me out. Can digital information have volume at all? And is it possible to measure the volume of every printed word on the planet? What about all the still-intact newspapers in old landfills? Do those count as existing information? Crap!

Posted by Alexa Harrington

I think we all know how I feel about standardized testing and the No Child Left Behind profanation. If there remains any confusion as to my opinion regarding those particular atrocities (and if my hints haven’t been overt enough), there will be an opportunity to catch up on your reading below.

Standardized testing, while possibly necessary in that there currently exists no practical way to collect student-achievement data from every public school in America, is still evil and has crushed an already handicapped education system into a non-functioning machine that has time and money only for teaching to the test. It has failed utterly and I work at maintaining some level of optimism that my kiddos will somehow manage to escape its evil clutches.

Bad news for me and my innocent progeny: New and exciting standards in science and math for public school kids are being implemented now, with the new assessments to begin in 2011 for math, and 2012 for science. The fabulous-er dog and pony show requires that students pass the exams in order to graduate. Were educators not teaching to the test enough already?

On the bright side, State Superintendent Randy Dorn is trying to convince the powers that be that the time between implementation and assessment is too speedy for the first wave of kids to be tested. People should pay attention when a politician uses the word “fair.”

Dorn said students and schools will need more time with new math and science learning standards that are now being implemented around the state. The new standards won’t be assessed until 2011 for math and 2012 for science. That doesn’t provide ample opportunity for the class of 2013, current ninth graders and the first class required to pass four state exams, to learn the standards, or teachers and schools to align curriculum and materials to them, he added.

“It doesn’t take a mathematician to see that we have a big problem in our state. Less than 50 percent of our 10th graders are passing the math and science exams,” said Dorn, who noted 10th graders’ passing rate on the reading and writing exams is more than 80 percent. “We need to be fair to our students and give them time to learn the new standards. It’s simply a matter of doing what’s right.”

This fiasco is happening in several other states as well. The only choices eye-rolling, head-shaking, utterances-of-disgust-making parents have are (a) suck it up and hope for the best, (b) private school, (c) home school, or (d) give the offspring a handbasket each and wish them well on their subterranean journey.

Further Reading:

Supt. Dorn Calls for Changes to Math, Science Graduation Requirements
Be Realistic About Standards
A Washington State Fight, a Nationwide Debate
Strong Words in Washington: Don’t Punt on Math Requirements

Previous Posts:

Accountability
Obama’s Race to the Top
It’s Not on the Test
Looking Good Only on Paper
No Child Left Behind Is Ruining Our Education System

Posted by Alexa Harrington

(image source*)

While writing the previous post, I went searching in the archives for relevant previous posts. I found entirely too many to tack onto the end of an already-lengthy post. Here they are, including some Education Reform posts proving I’m not always in disagreement with President Obama.

Teaching and Teachers:

The Teachers You Remember
Which Road Do the Quality Teachers Walk In On?
“Don’t Teach Your Kids This Stuff. Please?”
The Knowledge of Educators
Teaching the Truth

Education Reform:

Obama’s Wacky Ideas: Teamwork, Responsibility, Working Hard, and Learning Stuff
Obama’s Race to the Top
“What’s Wrong With Merit Pay”
Teacher Compensation Reform
President Obama’s Plan for Education
First Lady Michelle Obama Speaks to the Dept. of Education
Obama Girls to Attend Private School
Nicely Put
Education Advice for the Next President
Sen. Obama’s Education Reform Speech
Obama Chooses Arne Duncan for Secretary of Education
It’s Not On the Test
Accountability

Education:

The Future of Education
Moxie
Kindergarten Readiness
11th-Grade Activities
21st Century Learners
“Bursting the AP Bubble”
The Salubriousness of Recess
Play-Doh Smeared Credentials

Schools:

Detroit Public Schools: Photoessay
More Upheaval For Detroit Public Schools
Find Your Happy Place
Virtual Schools
How Charter Schools Affect Student Outcomes
Home-Schooling Grows
‘H’ Is For ‘Half-Measure Haggis’

Posted by Alexa Harrington

(image source*)

At one time in the not-so-distant past, home-schooling was an option chosen mostly by parents who wanted their kids out of the mainstream education system for religious or moral reasons. As either a sign that parents these days are much more involved with their kids’ education, or that the education system in this country is so broken that parents feel they can do a better job of educating their kiddos than the schools can, more parents are choosing the home-school route.

The number of home-schooled kids hit 1.5 million in 2007, up 74% from when the Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics started keeping track in 1999, and up 36% since 2003. The percentage of the school-age population that was home-schooled increased from 2.2% in 2003 to 2.9% in 2007.

Some of the newer motivations parents have these days for wanting to home-school their kids are financial, increased family time, and “unschooling.” The unschoolers are the parents who want to move away from standardized curriculum and toward a non-traditional approach to teaching and learning.

As a parent interested in education, I tend to come across a lot of parenting and education blogs. There exists a solid contingent of parenting blogs by dads who have opted to stay home with the kids and do the home-schooling themselves. It’s like modern-day Sensitive Dad DIY stuff. And you know those dads win at any playground they go to; not only do they care enough about their kids’ well-being to opt out of the rat race, they also want to be in charge of the big learning project and do it all themselves.

As long as kids are being educated and have access to frequent social interactions with other kids, I don’t really care where their schooling takes place. I, myself, have nowhere near the level of patience required for staying home all day and teaching my kids what they need to know to survive. I can barely handle the weekly play dates my children have with their friends. The parents who are comfortable being home all day with kids AND who can spend hours every day teaching them have my utmost respect.

Since home-schooling will clearly never be an option for my family, I will always need to be involved with my kids’ schools and their policies on the two issues that would tempt me to jump ship and teach my kids myself: teaching to the test and recess reduction. Thus far, my daughter’s elementary school and my son’s preschool are maintaining a safe distance from my Limit Fence on those two issues.

Should recess time be reduced or should I catch a whiff of anyone teaching to the test, I’ll go from being a cooperative parent who helps out with classroom stuff and sympathizes with the teachers, to a cranky b**ch who takes her kids out of school everyday for their 20-minute “dentist appointment” so they can run laps around the block, and who oddly goes on a family vacation every spring and takes her kids out of school during NCLB standardized-testing week.

Home-Schooling Resources and Links of Note:

Getting Started and Homeschooling Basics
Alltop Homeschooling
Why Homeschool
Pass the Torch: Homeschool Tips and Advice
American Homeschool Association Resource Links
Homeschool.com’s Top 100 Educational Web Sites of 2008
Home Schooling Links
LD Online: Homeschooling
NY Times: The Anti-Schoolers
NY Times: There Are Benefits in Homeschooling
1.5 Million Homeschooled Students in the United States in 2007

Posted by Alexa Harrington

image sources: flowers and soil