A rolling thread where we are teachers

I really want to read the Ravitch book - it's next on my list. Have you guys seen the interview she did recently in Slate?

Here's the Ravitch interview: http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/thewrongstuff/archive/2010/05/17/diane-ravitch-on-being-wrong.aspx

What teaching related journals/magazines do you guys read regularly?

Also! Can any of you recommend a good history of pedagogy text?

a history of pedagogy? why would you want to read that?

i imagine it might be more reasonable and useful to narrow it down by audience, context and content.

I was thinking something like this: http://books.google.com/books?id=bfITAAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=history+of+pedagogy&source=bl&ots=xQOHCjbq9O&sig=4g2SYh77K-b1e0ZjdfRBC30CPcg&hl=en&ei=fogdTK70CYOmNfrAqcwM&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBwQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false

But more recent than 1905. I found this: http://www.amazon.com/Companion-Philosophy-Education-Blackwell-Companions/dp/0631228373/ref=pd_ybh_19?pf_rd_p=280800601&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_t=1501&pf_rd_i=ybh&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=054YP4HXE2WBKW0C0WM5

Which might actually be good, but I thought someone here might have a better idea. If not, I'll just go with probably the Blackwell thing.

Sorry about the spammy links. Next time I'll just tinyurl it.

also remy tell me your class! i bet that is an awesome class to be in.

admrl, how'd you go about starting to teach video production to teenage latinas?

It's through a community arts program affiliated with my school. It's awesome though, an all-girls' public high school in East LA. My students could "MESS" YOU UP (I probably shouldn't swear here)

High school history.

Plasmon, doing the JET program and another ALT job in Japan convinced me to become a teacher.

It is very likely that come September I will be starting the path to teaching HS level students in MA. Pretty excited about this tbh.

yay Erica! is it an alt cert program? mine technically starts in september, too, a year-long university program. taking a couple classes this summer.

I probably make reference to this too much in other posts and in my writing in general, but I teach elementary school in the Toronto area. I've done either grade 6 or grade 7 for the past decade. I'm eight school days away from summer vacation. The public just loves us for the two months off.

x-post - :D It's actually pretty confusing and I need to call the state ed dept on Monday but I *think* that as long as I pass the Massachusetts Tests for Educator Licensure, I can get a preliminary license. I'm just not clear on what that means exactly and whether or not it's good enough for the kinds of positions I'd be interested in.

i find all the certification stuff endlessly complicated, too. but yay, that rules!

:D

btw - It rules that you are also doing this and I echo what Max said above.

Is there any US equivalent to tes.co.uk - like, an actual site that respectable US teachers read and post at?

ilx?

what what, new teacher training in less than 2 weeks

me too! orientation in a few weeks. btw, don't think i've mentioned it here, one of my highschool classes next semester is US History + Popular Music.

:O hella jeal

English to foreign types. Favourite quote: "If I have the million pounds, I will buy big house in the cunt."

― rhythm fixated member (chap), Wednesday, June 16, 2010 2:34 AM (1 month ago) Bookmark

me too. favorite misspelling: "Mohammad was chosen to deliver a massage from Allah."

just found out i'm teaching mostly geometry, but one period of alg 2.

http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc4/hs216.snc4/39154_685807015335_25406876_38972997_4079718_n.jpg

http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash2/hs116.ash2/39154_685807025315_25406876_38972998_699063_n.jpg

this is what my classroom looks like rite now, have very few ideas of how to pretty it up. thinking of doing a section called IMPORTANT MATH PPL and highlight contemporary ppl doin tite math 4 a living (nate silver, that lady who got on the futurama dvd, jaime escalante even tho he is rip'ing it up now ;_;). that should maybe get 10% of the walls.

do you have to leave the desks where they are?

some of these are a little silly, but:

http://www.mathteacherstore.com/middle/midlpost/5-8/mathpostA.htm

http://www.mathsoul.com/

have shown up in my room

FRACTALS

And pictures of that pointy green cauliflower that grows in spirals. Or maybe just a fresh head of it on your desk every week. I could look at that freak of nature all day.

remy - i can do whatever with the desks, i scattered them just to see how much spread i could get in terms of width b/c they were shoved on one side when i got in yesterday morning

laurel - i will so post pictures of geometrically interesting foods, 4 real

Also: Square watermelons.

okay, these are really cool. i wonder if you could print/enlarge them?

http://www.geekosystem.com/fruit-mri-pineapple-orange-banana/

a rolling thread where we are exhausted

a rolling thread were we are still on holiday

how is this going for you?

just started orientation yesterday. already tired.

(lol. it'll be better tmmrw when i can start carpooling half hour to work and not hour + half by public transportation)

Bison do Ken Keeler in yr maths dudes talk too!

starting next monday. hopefully I can get moved into my new flat before then.

first class this morning. think of me!

Good luck, LL!

I teach rotating terms of legal writing, business law, and contracts to paralegal students at a community college. I'm a lawyer by day, but love teaching so much more than I love lawyering, so once I get a little more experience under my belt, I'm going to see how I can maybe teach full time. First bizlaw class of the term is this Saturday. I'm pretty excited, but I had foot surgery so I have one foot in a big boot thing which is going to cramp my very mobile, pacing, animated teaching style.

i lived! i think it was among my best first-classes ever. i gave good examples and tied everything together by the end of class and led right up to their homework. i love teaching.

now i am eating a salad that smells a little old/off but i am eating it anyway because the only other food i have here is a package of ry-crisps and some stale graham crackers. (file under: sad contents of teacher's desk)

Awesome! High five!!!

er about the class, not about your sad lunch.

xposts to trayce

i'm doing spec ed math, so ken keeler will be a bit inappropriate for their current level understanding, but i am going to find a way to throw futurama in there (thinkin the wall street episode, the montage where they go down different streets, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, πth street...where does pi go on the number line, BOOYAAAAA)

Yess :D

dyao – sucks. i'm not able to move into my new place until (9/1), and i'm teaching full time beginning next week (8/30) and the movers are charging me nearly $800 to move 3 miles.

that sucks remy. I schlepped my fridge (not a big one but still reasonably large) across town yesterday, was not fun. I'm moving my flat piece by piece, lucky in that I have an office to serve as a intermediary stop. hopefully will get done by the weekend. your movers sound like highway robbers!

got teaching materials yesterday for a class that starts monday. still no word on teaching materials for my other class which starts wednesday. found out for that class, it's only going to be and this other guy who's the course coordinator. he's the dude who basically plagiarized teaching materials from the web for this same course last year without giving credit, who was always late in distributing course materials, completely changed the nature of the final exam and basically screwed over the students. looking forward to a fun semester working with this dude.

Just found out today that I'm teaching an 8th grade class of boys a lit semester themed around Survival that is including at the very least "Alive" and "Into Thin Air."

a nickel will get you a dime that lord of the flies is on the syllabus. yeah?

only way to respond to that plan, good lord

Definitely a challenging day--12 Ks who felt like 25--but the micro-developed dayplan hurt more than it really helped.

The kind of thing that makes anyone who's been at this for a while just shake your head: major revamp of the Ontario language curriculum, released yesterday, government wants it in full effect by September. That's bad enough, but the funny part is the new focus on phonics (and reintroduction of cursive!). When I started supplying in the early '90s, anything phonics-related was being phased out for "whole language," and when I started full-time in '98, phonics was practically verboten. My board purchased some expensive, rather insane program around that time called First Steps. Every three or four years, there'd be something else new come along--First Steps went from the number-one focus to something you monitored on a casual basis to something you dashed off as an afterthought in June to a piece of paper buried in the deepest recesses of each student's OSR. Now everything's come full circle.

I know cursive is a nice skill to have, but seriously? In today's world?

https://globalnews.ca/news/9787008/cursive-writing-reintroduced-ontario-schools/

Very humid outside, storm looming, end-of-year intermediate dance (whole school), Friday afternoon, A/C not working--truly one of life's best experiences. I had cafeteria supervision: thought I was going to pass out. Was also reminded of the eternal mystery of how anyone gets through adolescence. There was this one kid, sort of looked like Michael Cera, who wandered around for the full two hours clutching this large box of Welch's Fruit Snacks. I don't know if it was his way to ingratiate himself with others--there was something sad about it. I did see four of five students wearing Expos hats, so maybe that's a thing now.

Very last thing you want to see on a dayplan: instructions for vacating the room in case your one student-of-concern has a meltdown. I think I run into this once every couple of weeks now. Luckily, I haven't yet had to follow through (and today, the student-of-concern is absent). Before I retired, there were two such students in the room next to me (grade 1/2). They'd clear out frequently, leaving whichever one of them was having the meltdown to turn the room upside down while an adult stood there and watched.

Last day for me; they didn't bump the retired-teachers days, so I've hit my limit for the year. I've got stuff to attend to but expect I'll go crazy anyway. Five months off will be the longest not-working window of my life, along with that first COVID spring-summer--which, because there was so much to monitor and think about and discuss, didn't feel like a layoff.

Half-day in a middle school to finish, and they're having a pre-Easter fun day. One period in the gym for a school-wide rock/paper/scissors tournament, one period co-supervising the games/art room (where I am right now). Free money.

Why I'm posting: one of those absurd moments that still makes me love this job. As 300 adolescents filed into the gym, all hopped up on cinnamon swirls--I mean hormones--whoever was in charge of music had Black Sabbath's "Paranoid" blasting. Surreal and thrilling. When the tournament got underway (class winners going against each other in a double-knockout format), the noise level was enough that I had to get some tissue paper and make impromptu earplugs. Insane--how did ESPN not cover this?