Jersey's priorities are skewed

Governor Christie slashed millions of dollars promised to public schools last year. Our district lost teachers.

Today the Star-Ledger announced that the Governor is lending over a quarter billion dollars to a failed casino project in Atlantic City.

"The state will put its efforts and its credibility and its money where its mouth is."

The Governor Who Would Be King
Star-Ledger, Feb 2, 2011, p. 29

We, the state of New Jersey, are now a 20% partner in the Revel Hotel and Casino. Our state mouth is sucking on a shell of a building.

Casinos over schools. Shameful.

Photo by Mel Evans, Associated Press.

An Cailleach Bhearra wanders again

Ebb-tide has come to me as to the sea;
old age makes me yellow;
though I may grieve thereat,
it approaches its food joyfully.

Beginning of "The Lament of the Old Woman of Beare"

We're halfway through winter. American children will hear tales of Punxsutawney Phil today, wrapped in cozy classrooms, bellies full of lunch made by strangers.

An Cailleach Bhearra wandered around back in the 10th century in western Ireland, looking for firewood yesterday.

If the day was bright and sunny, beware--she had gathered plenty of wood and was set for many cold days ahead. If the day was gray, she didn't bother, and she will make the days warm up again. Sound familiar?

The next three months will see the days grow longer faster than they do at any other time of year. We gain over two more minutes a day of sun now at our latitude. We'll gain a quarter hour of sunlight a week, over an hour's worth in a month.

So when children gather around the internet this morning to see Phil's forecast, brush up on your astronomy and spend a moment or two asking the students to watch what happens to daylight in the next few weeks.

I'm going to look for crocuses today.

Corn dolly from Miskinfolk website here

Punxsutawney Phil's cartoon from his official site here


And no, I am not a pagan or wiccan --but if you're going to celebrate humans dragging rodents out of their burrows, 
doesn't hurt to know the science behind the American myth, based on stories of early Christian myths (Candlemas), 
themselves founded on earlier pagan myths developed back when paying attention to the natural world might keep you alive one more winter.

And 2011 update--we're buried under snow and ice--the crocus hunt will have to wait....

This was originally posted in 2009.

No thanks, we'll stick to our valedictorian

“The winning school will understand that their number one priority is making sure that our kids are learning what they need to succeed in this 21st century economy.”

President Obama, announcing competition for his commencement speech today

It's the same as any other century, Mr. President. What we need, truly need, comes from the earth, the air, the water, the sun. We learn about this in biology class.

But I suppose that's not what you meant.

Number one priority. Over community. Over democracy. Over pursuing happiness.


I though maybe selecting Arne was an accident. You were busy with wars and budgets, and gosh, Arne let you win a few games of hoops. He's not so bright, you surely saw that, but it's only education, and who would notice?

Turns out Arne truly is a marionette.

The Three Stooges poster is from Black Agenda Radio Commentaries here. Permission pending.

Science fiction

 13 percent of teachers explicitly endorse creationism or intelligent design, and spend at least on hour of class time presenting it in a positive light. An additional 5 percent reported that they support creationism in passing or when answering students’ questions.

from Wired, citing Science.

What if 13% of science teachers announced in class that they didn't believe that our current economic system is sustainable, that there are limits in biology, that capitalism as practiced today will collapse in the face on natural limits? How long would they last?

What if 13% of science teachers made it a point to discuss the biological basis of homosexuality, to explicitly analyze twin studies suggesting that genetics plays a role in sexual behaviors? How long would they last?

What if 13% of science teachers explicitly discussed the phenomenal rise of breast cancer in our land since the 1940's, the rise of carcinogens found in breast milk, the local CEOs who dumped toxins on our towns, the politics of industrial waste disposal?

Heck, what if 13% of science teachers explicitly discussed the threat of leprous leprechauns roaming the countryside?

Ask your child what your science teacher "believes"--then do something about it.

The photo of the book cover from here.

And no, I do not speak of economic collapse in class. 

We do talk about population growth and carrying capacity. I let your children come to their own conclusions.

EduCon Retweet

A few of us are looking from the outside in, peering into our Twitterboxes, painted in the same vague blue of the Magic 8 Ball.

Aesop was a wise man, but really, the "Fox and the Grapes" fable was a bit over the top, no?

Still, those of us not rubbing iPads in Philly peer into our monitors like voyeurs, sifting through the tea leaves, deciphering the top tweets.

For entertainment purposes only--these are tweets, not treatises, and should be taken as such.

@plugusin: Note to principals: If you want me to innovate, you've got to create conditions that encourage me to experiment. 76 Retweets

I used to ply my trade, succoring the afflicted, in public housing, in homeless shelters, on the street.  A lot of docs still do. You won't hear much about them, but they're out there....because they did not wait for administrators "to create conditions" that encouraged them to do what they do.

Teachers need to take to heart these words: It is easier to be forgiven than to get permission. Truly.

Experiment, and let the chips fall--if you're working in the best interests of the children, you will land on your feet. Principals have their hands full with NCLB, budgets, local superintendents, county superintendents, governors. Take a risk, get it right, and they'll toss you a bone.

To blame principals for our inaction only feeds the perception that we're "just" teachers.

@NMHS_Principal: Good teaching is exhausting, but bad teaching is just as if not more exhausting @garystager 31 Retweets

No, bad teaching is easy--it's why it's so prevalent. Serial work sheets. Canned PowerPoints. Quick referrals to admins. Jabber on about how kids suck at academics, and slither out of the building hours before the sun sets.

If teaching badly was hard, few people would do it.

@dcinc66: "we must be WILDLY creative in order to solve our problems in education" 8 Retweets

Nope. Creativity isn't the problem. Courage is.
How many of us feel NCLB testing harms education, and participate anyway?

@colonelb: What if we gathered up the admins and teachers at #Educon and started our own charter district? Awesome thought! 4 Retweets

 
Maybe an awesome thought, but a terrible idea. The gated community mind-set has killed the commons. Public school hangs on by a thread--and democracy depends on a functional public.

We need good admins, good teachers, for every child, for every district. That this only got 4 Retweets gives me some comfort.

Yes, tweets are spontaneous, brief, and often incomplete--retweets, however, take a tweet to the next level, from the amygdala to the cortex. Think before you retweet.

A lot of us are watching....

I'd love to know what the RealTeacher/EverybodyElse ratio™ is at EduCon today. Any ideas?
Fox drawing fromLitscape here. It was from 1881, so I think it's in public domain now.

Midterm blues

Imbolc's just a few days away, and the crocuses will not be far behind. They are already stirring beneath the frozen earth. I forget this, every year.

I am wrestling with our midterms--I am sifting through our essential questions, through conversations that crackled in July (and no doubt are continuing today at EduCon), and through my goals for the year, and there's a huge cognitive dissonance brewing. I am blessed to have a supervisor who not only encourages reflection (it's easy enough to say), but also allows us to work towards solutions.

Be careful what you wish for--I am trying to construct a better mousetrap for assessing what my students can do, within the constraints of a traditional midterm format. How we assess reflects on what we think matters.

If I fail, and I might, at least I have a better handle now on what's been roiling in my skull. Our current system rewards the wrong things. Deliberately.

A child can parrot the Calvin cycle without knowing a thing about a seed, about food, about the billions, trillions of other organisms teeming around him.

***

I love Steinbeck's Cannery Row, partly because of its wonderful biology, mostly because of Steinbeck's loving, honest look at people.

The kind of women who put papers on shelves and had little towels like that instinctively distrusted and disliked Mack and the boys. Such women knew that they were the worst threats to a home, for they offered ease and thought and companionship as opposed to neatness, order, and properness.

Change "women" to teachers, and "home" to classroom. 

I teach biology, the study of life, in a culture that fails to recognize death. The children spray themselves with unnatural scents, yet shy from the pond water and the mud brought in from outside.

We got peas and carrots and basil and dill and tomatoes and egg plants and wheat sprawling all over the classroom. The kids are getting better at this planting thing. They no longer plant 25 seeds in one pot, no longer over-water, no longer expect insta-grow seedlings.

I can hardly grade a child on her ability to keep a plant alive in a public building. I cannot ask a child to slaughter a calf in class. I can ask her to tell me how many NADH molecules are generated from one molecule of glucose during the Krebs cycle.

As much as Hans Krebs and I stammer in excitement over the citric cycle, as much as I can teach the children how to  paw at the ground like Clever Hans, the wonder horse that could count, as much as we want to compare how well our students paw at the ground in China and Korea, none of that is science.

I have scanned through thousands of  released questions, and very few of them go beyond challenging the Clever Hans's in our midst.

If we want children to re-discover the world most westernized adults have left, we need to assess what matters.

The scary thing is that I suspect that's what the dominant culture thinks matters--how else to explain our idolatry of standardized tests?


Neatness. Order. Properness. Get the degree, kid, or starve to death. Now there's a lesson in biology....

Clever Hans photo found and  discussed here.

And now a PSA--get your flu shots! I should be in Philly...sigh.

EduCant

Despite his penchant for the Phillies, Chris Lehman strikes me as a mensch, a term I rarely use, and he promised me a cheesesteak. Sean Nash is there, who has bent my concept of friend. So is Jen Orr, who makes me think every time she blogs. And Jose Vilson, who, whether he likes it or not, is going to be a focal point of the next real revolution in public education, because he worries about the kids the charter schools leave behind, and because he's brilliant, and because he has cojones most of us lack.

I wanted to bang heads with Gary Stager, who seems to shy from real discussion in the virtual world (but then again I'm small potatoes). I hoped to tangle with Eric Sheninger, who has no problem exposing his lambs, though I suspect his heart is in the right place. I wanted to dance with Alec Couros, who has the 21st century view of privacy. I love conflict, because that's where we solve things.

I'm an old fart with a new-fangled virus coursing my veins--not sure if it's the California, Perth, or Brisbane forms making the rounds that got me, but I got got pretty good.

So it's wait 'til next year! If the EduCon registrations are transferable (and I have no idea if they are), let me know if you want in, and you can pretend to be me.

I'm sorry to kiss away the $150, even more sorry to kiss away the experience. On the plus side, I'm a huge believer in Home & School Associations--I did my part for the SLA.

And maybe someone can talk Principal Lehman into an EduCon lite for the summer when the teachers among the educationerati have a moment to breathe.

Sean, give them hell....

Flu pic from National Geographic here....

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