Tag Archives: Education

Education

What the Market Basket Grocery Strike Can Teach Educators

marketbasket strkers strike
Market Basket strikers – Credit BBC

In just three weeks, employees of Market Basket,  a regional chain of grocery stores based in Massachusetts, pulled off an upset in the world of labor relations: They successfully drove that company’s board of directors to re-hire their loved CEO who had been fired by other distant family members in a boardroom squabble over control of the company.

This successful strike organized by managers, supervisors and workers has much to teach educators about how the power of numbers can offset the power of the rich.

Continue reading What the Market Basket Grocery Strike Can Teach Educators →

Education

It Takes Practice to Become This Kind of a Rainbow

My students are from lots of places: Columbia, Guatemala, Mexico, Vietnam, South Korea, China, and Taiwan this year. The mix is always changing. My two classes are adult-ed, English as a Second Language (ESL) classes.

I am lucky to have such a good part-time job working for an awesome community college. This is only my second semester to teach in this program.

Continue reading It Takes Practice to Become This Kind of a Rainbow →

Education

The Poor Pay the Highest Price for Charter School Experiments — Part 3 — Newark

Newark Parents wait in line for school assignment.
Newark parents and students wait in long lines to find out their school assignment. Next, they stand in line at another location to actually enroll. Credit: myfoxtampabay.com

This is the 3rd in a series of three posts pointing out how corporate, investor-owned charter school organizations have chosen to experiment at the expense of children who are mostly from poor families.

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Education

The Poor Pay the Highest Price for Charter School Experiments — Part 2 — Detroit

Part 1 of this series focused on New Orleans and the radical experiment there with ALL charter schools serving the city this year. I showed that New Orleans is an example of how investors and hedge fund managers see “reform” experiments as an option only for the poor. We really don’t see much, if any experimentation being proposed in the upper economic sectors of this country right now.

Next, let’s look at another example of the callous disregard for the future of poor children to serve the business desires of investors and edu-corporations.

Continue reading The Poor Pay the Highest Price for Charter School Experiments — Part 2 — Detroit →

Education

Charter Schools to Be Defining Issue of Okla State Superintendent Race

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Democrats had two unusually good choices in this runoff race for the State Superintendent nomination between two long-time, dedicated education leaders: Freda Deskin and John Cox, the winner.

Now it is a race between John Cox and Joy Hofmeister. Both have a long track record of personal integrity. Both have a long track record of dedication to educational leadership and compassion for children. Both are highly personable, winsome, likeable people who understand the motivations of teachers and administrators.

Check.

Unless Hofmeister shifts positions, what will distinguish these two candidates will be their stance on “reform” as ALEC defines it, which means corporate charter schools and management corporations profiting at taxpayer expense.

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Education

Poverty Is Still a Huge Issue for Students – Michelle Rhee Is Still Wrong

Michelle Rhee
Michelle Rhee – Credit: Education Week

Never really getting true reform, Michelle Rhee has stepped down from her role as the leading spokesperson for the corporation schools front organization Students First.

She held fast to an ideology – yes, ideology and not data – that denies the power of poverty in interrupting  poor students’ education. Instead, she focused on schools and teachers that serve those areas of high poverty. She placed blame liberally on teachers, insisting that with better teaching, poor students could succeed in spite of their poverty.

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Education

School Discipline Policies are Where the Anger Begins for Too Many Black Americans

Ferguson, Missouri protest, Aug 16th, Credit: CBS News
Ferguson, Missouri protest, Aug 16th, Credit: CBS News

What we are seeing in Ferguson, Missouri and in other cities is, in part, a direct outgrowth of misguided school suspension/expulsion policies over the last 50 years.

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Education

Survival Guide to Teaching Alternative School, Part 2 — Your First Year

3 oclock high - Jerry Mitchell

After you have worked your way through the prep and first few days of your new job teaching alternative school, what next?

During that first year, your teaching abilities will change and grow as never before because the students won’t allow it to be any other way!

In any setting, teaching causes you to grow  personally and professionally.

But, in alternative school, that is a hyper process. The demands of these students are bigger and more pressing than students who you might have taught in student teaching or in earlier teaching positions.

In those two big areas of teacher growth here are my ideas about surviving your first year teaching alternative school.

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Education

Survival Guide to Teaching Alternative School, Part I — The First Days

The-Breakfast-Club-1985-001

Out of the 16 years that I spent teaching in public schools, 6 were spent teaching in alternative schools. I know some stuff that might help.

This is my good news for you about teaching in alternative school:

The pressure will make you a far better teacher than you ever would have been if you had spent the same amount of time in a traditional school with seemingly compliant students.

Continue reading Survival Guide to Teaching Alternative School, Part I — The First Days →