Oh, that month again. Here's some reading from the week. Remember to pass along what speaks to you.
Common Core Creator Slammed Reading Teachers for Having a Research Gap-- How Ironic
Nancy Bailey sounds the irony alert on a critique of teachers and research.
Why New Educators Resent "Reformers".
Let's hear from the newest generation teachers-- the ones who grew up with reformster policies shaping their education.
Algorithms Ate My Homework
A new-to-me blogger talks about machine scoring and standardized testing. And there's a cartoon.
DeVos Sides With For Profit Colleges.
Jan Resseger takes a look at one of Betsy DeVos's more recent bad decisions.
Paul Pastorak
The indispensable Mercedes Schneider takes a look at reformster Paul Pastorak. It's a long read, but it not only serves as a warning to Puerto Rico, but yet another case study of how these guys network and just keep falling upward.
Cultivating Kindness In An Unkind World.
An interesting classroom experiment, and some thoughts on kindness and narcissism.
Can We Get School Accountability Policy Right
Deven Carlson says no, and he gives two reasons why not.
The new educators post is encouraging and I loved the one on cultivating kindness.
ReplyDeleteFrom the compassion article: "‘Can compassion be learned?’"
ReplyDeleteThat's the exact wrong question. Kids don't need to learn compassion - as social creatures, we are born with compassion. The question is, how can we stop raising children so that their natural compassion gets overridden? When you raise kids in an environment of competition - where one person's success depends on another's failure - lack of compassion is the natural result. When you raise kids in an environment of rewards and punishment - otherwise known as power and control - rather than seeing and accepting them for who they are, the natural result is lack of compassion. When you teach kids that those who get good grades and those who score well on tests (and, in other contexts, those who can play ball well) are somehow better than others, lack of compassion is the natural result.
If we want kids to grow up compassionate, we have to start listening to people like Alfie Kohn and Teacher Tom and start treating children as worthy human beings, not pawns in a game of "success".
Amen, Dienne.
ReplyDelete