Posts Tagged ‘help for new teachers’
The Beauty of Service Learning: What Are You Doing?
One of the new buzz terms, especially in the emerging world of charter schools, is the idea of Service Learning Projects. SLPs are generally projects undertaken by students where they identify a need in the community and address it through community [...]
New Year’s Resolution: Start Beef With PhDs
One of the cool things about being a teacher who has been around for awhile is just before Winter Break, all your former students who are now in college stop by and pay you a visit. It is always amazing how grown up they seem and they strut in with [...]
My First Letter for a Dreamer
Last week a student walked into my room whom I hadn’t seen in two years. He came in with a big smile, gave me a real handshake, and asked about my wife and kid. He looked good, healthy, he had a coffee in his hand. He was confident.Then his [...]
Education is Personal, Not Corporate
With the school year rapidly approaching, we've decided to highlight some other voices around the educational world. Here are some great thoughts from teacher extraordinaire Kimberely Gilles.Education is Personal, Not CorporateOkay, here’s [...]
An Overdue Letter to Parents
Dear Parents,We’ve had this conversation before, so this time I wanted to write it down with the hope that next time you have the same question, I can simply refer you to this letter. It is an important letter because it seems to carry in it [...]
Should English Teachers Get Paid More?
Okay, so I’m biased right off the bat. Let's get that out of the way.Everyone knows we need to increase teacher pay. Everyone knows it, yet no one seems to be doing anything about it. There are Teacher Evaluation Programs being designed and [...]
All Those Damn Kids Have Cell Phones Though, Don’t They?
My uncle is a Republican. He says he is a Democrat, but then begins defending rich people like they are going to be thrown out of their houses and begin starving any minute now. This is common Republican reasoning—defending people who own most of [...]
Making Education Look Good
When you ask a classroom full of high school students who wants to be a teacher, they start laughing so hard it’s almost impossible to bring the class back to order. “A teacher?” They cry. “Why would anyone want to be a teacher?”And [...]
REALITY: Punching a Teacher not an Expellable Offense
I’ve been writing this blog for over a year and a half now. I originally started writing to bring light to the REAL face of education in this country, specifically the broken, pale, drawn face of our low-income public schools. Today’s entry, [...]
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 [...]