Posts Tagged ‘Disciplining Students’
Should Students Get to Evaluate Teachers? I Think So.
The debate about evaluating teachers is heating up. It isn’t heating up in any kind of real discussion by those who want to become president—they’d rather focus on whether or not to build an oil pipeline through one of our largest water [...]
Redefining HIGH School
To say marijuana is a problem at my school is a gross understatement. There is a tree next to the gas station across the street from campus where students smoke weed almost every morning at 7:30 AM. I drive by and see groups of wannabes huddled in [...]
America’s Real Immigrant Problem
I was recently talking to a teacher from another district who has more undocumented students than my district. His high school has a larger Latino immigrant population, and therefore his students face obstacles in their everyday lives most people [...]
Teaching SLAM Poetry Using Occupy Anger
I am in the middle of a Slam Poetry Unit, and I cannot think of a better way to teach it than by using the Occupy movement to teach social justice. Let’s be honest, Saul Williams, Mos Def, Russel Simmons, and the other founders of Slam Poetry and [...]
Crowd-Surfing on Field Trips
Part of any good college-going program at the high school level is the field trips. Time and again, the kids that actually make it to college point out the field trips as being an important motivator by allowing them to see first-hand what college [...]
The Lost Art of the Handshake
For many years now I have been conducting a social experiment in the doorway of my classroom. The subjects of my experiment have been all shapes, sizes, and colors. Some limp, others drool, many of them have trouble writing down the correct day of [...]
One From the Vault: Teaching Against Culture
As I'm ramping up to start blogging full time again, I came across this one in the Teach4Real vault. I don't know why I didn't run it in April, it probably had something to do with STAR testing and wanting to pluck out my eyes with all the number [...]
Greatest Hits: A Lesson on Urban Identity
It is summer, and I have been blogging for a year. As I decompress from last schoolyear and prepare for the next, I am posting my most popular articles. The feedback I have received from educators and parents has been humbling, so if you are new to [...]
Greatest Hits: Accepting the Fact That Nothing Will Change
After a year of blogging, I'm posting some of my most popular posts here at Teach 4 Real. With the middle class disappearing as we speak, I thought this REAL assessment of the state of education is particularly timely. At some point we all need to [...]
Latino Boys in the Red White and Blue
For the next month I am going to celebrate one year of blogging with some of my greatest hits. Here is one about Northern California gang colors that explains just how difficult it is to be a Latino kid in the good ole' red white and [...]