Posts Tagged ‘New Teachers’
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Dope Lessons for Urban Students: Figurative Language BATTLE
You are about to witness high schools students battling. But don't worry, it won't be them actually punching each other in the throat, like what you can find on YouTube simply by searching the name of your high school followed by the word "fights." [...]
Parent Outreach? Not in an Educational Landscape of Opposites
Oprah’s Teacher of the Year, Ron Clark, has an article on CNN.com today about the drawbacks of parental involvement. He gives examples of teachers and even principals who are leaving education because they are so annoyed at having to deal with [...]
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 [...]