don't read this yet. Please. KWL

http://abcde.teachfor.us/

blog entry about research

I think the whole entry is worthwhile, but this quote is what I want to keep in my face:

School research at the school and classroom level has as many variables as it has students; and our outliers are not research distractions to be dismissed, they are children who must be helped.

http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/place_at_the_table

Prezi-- about team talk with Vicki

I think we have an embedded Prezi.  Let's see....
a few minutes later....
I checked it. It sort of works.  Click on the Play arrow on the white Prezi window. Then it's best if you move your cursor to the lower right of the white Prezi window, and choose full screen and choose autoplay. (Sometimes the autoplay seems non-automatic. I'm not sure why. When that happens, I just keep clicking on it until it becomes automatic. You can also use the mouse or arrow keys to move through the Prezi.  I've watched it about 10 times now, made some changes (improvements) and I can see how I will do the next one differently.

This is the first one I made, and I really like the possibilities. I am aware the movement on this one tends to induce dizziness.

Please let me know what you think of the whole Prezi thing, not just this particular one.

Retention and tests

Say It With Me Now: Retention!

So, for me, the role of the summative assessment is actually to give me a larger picture of a standard I don’t explicitly grade: Retention.  I give a summative midterm and final in all of my classes, and it’s because I want the kids to know how well they do or don’t retain information. The larger SBG structure is designed to help them prepare, reassess, and otherwise learn to be actual people who think about what they don’t know. These pin-prick summatives are the bit of me that knows I have to get them ready for the testing aspect of college in a meanignful way.
My approach has always been to add the summative scores in as a separately weighted category ancillary to my behemoth category called “Standards.” Most often final grades are composed of 85% Standards, 7.5 % midterm, and 7.5% final.
Why the fractional precentages? I just don’t think it should be possible to get an A without being able to retain more than half of the material in some way. However, knowing the inherently flawed nature of a single-shot assessment, I have left the A- wide open for that kid that wants to work their butt off to get their standard’s scores through the roof.

Am I rewarding responsibility with a grade? Hell Yeah. Am I doing it by grading homework and “participation.” Hell No.

retention entry

so many layers to this job-profession-calling

This has my mind today:

If we lack the language, and therefore the awareness, to right the imbalance between the vocational and the civic, if education in America—despite the heroic efforts of individual teachers—is no longer in the business of producing the kinds of citizens necessary to the survival of a democratic society, it’s in large part because the time-honored civic function of our educational system has been ground up by the ideological mills of both the right and the left into a radioactive paste called values education and declared off-limits. Consider the irony. Worried about indoctrination, we’ve short-circuited argument. Fearful of propaganda, we’ve taken away the only tools that could detect and counter it. “Values” are now the province of the home. And the church. How convenient for the man.

How does one “do” the humanities value-free? How does one teach history, say, without grappling with what that long parade of genius and folly suggests to us? How does one teach literature other than as an invitation, a challenge, a gauntlet—a force fully capable of altering not only what we believe but how we see? The answer is, of course, that one doesn’t. One teaches some toothless, formalized version of these things, careful not to upset anyone, despite the fact that upsetting people is arguably the very purpose of the arts and perhaps of the humanities in general.

Dehumanized

In Teach Like a Champion, the schools cited are said to be places where education is a matter of "life and death."

At our meeting Tues., I said I could understand that stance in some schools, but at our site, that essential aspect eludes me.  However, as I read this article, I think I may find-- authentically-- some of that sine qua non. I'll add some quotes after I read and re-read the article.

poetry, email and responses

something to contemplate doing......

I model– no– I conduct, real-time– our search, over the digital projector: Googling the author’s name, searching the poet’s biographies, looking up websites. We find an email address, pull up my school account, write the email together, and send it, having conversations....

Read the whole blog entry for the full picture.

theline.edublogs.org

how much beauty

This is something I wanted to share with those I admire.

My point is this:

It matters how much beauty you create in the world. Because it sticks. Your actions have consequences. Your products, your services, your companies, your customer service techniques, these things literally raise or lower the aggregate level of happiness in the world with every act and omission.

And it will be remembered.

The code you write today may still be running in 20 or 30 years. How much happiness will it have created? How much frustration?

I beseech you: engineer beauty. Peddle pleasure. Sell happiness. We agree on happiness. We all want happiness.