1 space after periods, not 2

I've taken to reading legal writing blogs, mostly because Katie Beals & I are getting toward the end of our writing exercises for Ed's textbook, and I keep worrying we're shaky on topic chains (or topic strings).

Idealawg has a fabulous interview with George Gopen. Well worth your time.

It also has this.

Off-topic: John Mulvaney on SVU

Chris just showed me this bit, and we guffawed….'cuz we've watched a lot of SVU in this household.

Warning: language. SVU language.

Little Drummer Boy

I spent the first 5 seconds of this video thinking This is ridiculous, and, about 5 seconds after that, This is fabulous!

Little Drummer Boy Pentatonix

You have to watch the video, and the singers' faces.

just let me staple the vicar...

I am going to try to get back on track here any minute now....but, in the meantime, and via Language Log, here is Peter Kay.

Teachers' unions, explained

Making the rounds of some charter schools.
Enjoy.

Telling truth from fiction

One of these stories appeared as a front page, May 18th Philadelphia Inquirer article. The other one is made up. Which is which?

Story A:

Some teachers swear that the best way to establish their authority is to avoid smiling for the first two weeks of class.

David Hall takes a very different approach with his students at North Penn High School by cracking self-deprecating jokes and pretending to be the dude who thinks he is hip but so is not.

In the classroom, Hall brings social studies alive, bypassing textbooks in favor of original sources and creating his own lesson materials. Inside and outside the classroom, he spends time getting to know students, hoping to connect with them and inspire them.

Now in his 13th year of teaching, Hall, 37, recently received a "Teacher as Hero" award from the National Liberty Museum in Philadelphia, the latest in a long string of teaching laurels. The Liberty Museum cited Hall's field trips to courtrooms and prisons in Philadelphia and his work as an adviser for the school Gay-Straight Alliance. During summer vacations, Hall does corporate training on workplace diversity issues.

Lauren Ewaniuk, 28, who graduated from North Penn in 2001, called Hall her "all-time favorite teacher by far."

"The best thing about his class was we didn't use the textbook very often," said Ewaniuk, now a teacher in Cheltenham. "He taught us in different ways. The classroom was set up as a circle - it was all class discussion. We read court cases, we did interactive things, watched videos - it was very engaging."

Story B:

Some teachers swear that the best way to engage with students is to crack jokes and relate to them as peers.

David Hill takes a very different approach with his students at South Penn High School. He spends most of his time standing in front of the class and rarely goes off topic

Hill brings social studies alive by ensuring that students can make sense of it. His approach bucks what has become a common trend among award-winning teachers: creating lessons from scratch out of original source materials. Noting that students often find such materials confusing or overwhelming because they lack the necessary background knowledge, Hill makes teaching this knowledge his number one priority.

"My job is to get them ready for the kinds of serious, primary source research that occurs in college and graduate level courses," Hill explains.

Now in his 13th year of teaching, Hill, 37, recently received a "Teacher as Teacher" award from the National Liberty Museum in Philadelphia, the latest in a long string of teaching laurels. The Liberty Museum cited the well-informed essays that Hill's students wrote about the history of prison reform in Philadelphia and Hill's own original research on Gay-Straight relations in Philadelphia high schools. During summer vacations, Hill seeks out the most informative, interesting history texts and conducts workshops for teachers in what he calls "Textbook Resuscitation."

Evelyn Lemaniuk, 28, who graduated from South Penn in 2001, called Hill her "all-time favorite teacher by far."

"The best thing about his class was how he renewed my interest in reading history," said Lemaniuk, now a teacher in Cheltenberg. "Most of the approved textbooks are incredibly low-level and boring, and so the better teachers tend not to use them. The problem is that, without a textbook, we're really at a loss when it comes to understanding primary source materials and how they fit into the bigger picture."

(Cross-posted at Out In Left Field)

Jaywalking

funny as always

save the whales

Susan S sends this link to The Onion

"Seinfeld teaches history"

at the Cooperative Learning Community

I'd never seen this before. (A Karen H find)

Is this 21st Century Learning?

If you can get through the song, perhaps you might enjoy the "Fling the Teacher" game on his website which asks 16 questions in a Who Wants to be a Millionaire" style.

Q8 What are the three parts of an essay? one answer: "There is only one main part to an essay and that is writting it."

When you answer all 16 questions, your teacher is bound and gagged and stuck in a barrel where he is flung from a trebuchet and lands with cuts and bruises.

Makes hangman look rather humane. I'm really glad I don't teach in the U.K.

core knowledge

glumbert - Dumb luck pays off

Have I ever mentioned the fact that I won $9,000 cash on a game show two days before I got married?

Well, I did.

My winning answer: Who is Norman Lear's producing partner?

bad day

glumbert - Bad Day at the Office

Susan S sent this --

Parkour soccer

glumbert - Parkour Soccer

woo hoo!

New Where's the Math Video

Where's the Math has a new video, which is about 20 minutes but worth watching. It focuses on the schools in Bellevue, Washington. Schools in Bellevue score high on Jay Mathews' index, but this video tells a side of the story that isn't publicized very well--and it should be.

Go here and the video is labeled "Math Education in Bellevue, WA"

BOE Vice President comments

From Ridgewood NJ, "Nowthatshockey" has posted a new video from their BOE.

Out of the mouths of (fill in blank). This guy states he doesn't want parents coming to meetings telling the Board what are the problems with TERC. He just wants to know what are the problems with TERC. He acknowledges there has been documentation of what's going on in a 3rd grade classroom. But that's a 3rd grade classroom. No one has told him how these students will be unprepared when they leave the school in fifth or sixth grade. Uh, what'm I missing here? Didn't they quote Wilfried Schmidt at one point, and Jim Milgram, and get testimony from parents who are engineers, talking about how TERC does not provide proper background for advancement and learning in math? No amount of evidence short of removing him from the board will convince him of anything he doesn't want to be convinced of. Even removing him from the Board will not do it.

aack! aack!

Just got this from my neighbor ----





so today I was reading Science News....something about....a smart pill for seniors ($)....which can't hit the market a moment too soon as far as I'm concerned....

CULTURE WARS ALERT

This is a non-partisan blog (sort of)

Not anti-Republican

Not anti-Democrat

Or.... ummm.... alternatively, possibly anti-Republican and anti-Democrat in equal measure

Point is: I post this YouTube because it's funny!

EOS

Taking "male" bias out of math

I got a good laugh out of this clip from the Simpsons

I don't know if it is still being seriously argued in some feminist quarters that it is necessary to take the "male" bias out of math to make math accessible to girls. In my own experience teaching math to middle graders, I find that girls do very well with real math, for the most part better than boys.

In any event, the clip is funny at least as a museum piece.




Hat tip: Mindless Math Mutterings

senior exhibition

from Myrtle, who points us to a Senior Exhibit of 21st Century Skills posted at The Essential Blog:





what is happening here, CES version:

Why is this visual so significant? We know that what gets measured in school is what gets taught, and the problem with today’s standardized testing regimen is that it measures students’ ability to recall discrete facts rather than to engage in complex thinking and problem solving. So, rather than widening the gap between the skills students are acquiring in school and those they need for the future, performance assessments like those depicted in this video clip allow students to demonstrate 21st Century skills, such as critical thinking and problem solving, communication, creativity and innovation, collaboration, information and media literacy, and contextual learning. When student achievement measures are based on the ability to research and synthesize information, think critically, and present publicly, then we can have confidence that those skills will be taught.

what is happening here, ktm-2 version:

Students looked stuff up on Google.

division the EM way!!!

RPS Tactics

Nowthatshockey has posted a video on YouTube that shows typical school board behavior with respect to math programs that they want installed despite parent protests.