Children's Book Illustrators for Obama

(via Fuse #8)

Interactive White Boards

They really are quite fun. Doug Johnson and I both had differing, but not exactly opposite, takes on a post put up by Wes Frayer.

I was just wondering out loud about small districts jumping on the IWB bandwagon without enough thought.

Doug thought Wes was viewing the use of IWBs too narrowly.

Wes made a thoughtful comment on Doug's blog and Doug followed up with this post.

This kind of instant kicking around of ideas is what makes me love the blogosphere so much.

What are your thoughts or experiences with IWBs?

Carnival of Elitist Bastards V is Up!

Enjoy the cruise over at The Coffee-Stained Writer.

Get On That Technology Bandwagon!

This morning the always relevant Scott Mcleod had some great links, including this great one from Wesley Fryer.  Hilarious but sad.  It goes right along with what we've been discussing in our Information Technology class.  Remember the article we had to read for this class?  It describes a county that went whole hog buying SMART Boards for every classroom and are having a hard time keeping them up and getting people trained.  You just know some of those $3000 puppies are collecing dust or are being used as nothing more than fancy overheads.

I don't know what the answer is, but I think it might involve presenting the new technology, trying to get some teacher buy-in, then giving them a choice of technologies.  Some will lead the charge with the new interactive whiteboards and get others onboard.  Others could settle for $700 LCD projectors.  If the district leaders still have money burning a hole in their collective pocket, still others could buy some colorful and interactive, you know, books.  Just imagine $3000 for your classroom library.  

Best NCLB Metaphor

I've heard the Dentist one and the businessman one, but Tim at Assorted stuff wins the prize for the perfect NCLB metaphor comparing it to, well, you just have to read it.

I had a physical reaction not unlike the one I had when I got the photo at the end of this post from Doug at The Blue Skunk Blog.  Wooo-wee!

The Intenational Year of Astronomy

At the Skeptrack at Dragon*Con after hearing Phil Plait's talk and wandering through the vast event, I came across a table dedicated to The International Year of Astronomy.  Check out their site.  They want to impress upon us the advantages we have gained by studying astronomy and one of their big goals is to get everyone to just look at something out there through a telescope in 2009.  A fun and worthy idea!

Of course hanging around the table had nothing to do with it being manned by Phil Plait himself!  Noooo.

Of course it did!  I asked him about his recent promotion to President of the JREF.  I'd heard he and James Randi interviewed about it and one of his ideas is to get more involved with curriculum development in the schools to teach science, skepticism and critical thinking.  He's a great guy, so friendly and open and affable.  It was an honor to meet him, let alone his taking the time to lay out some of his plans.  Be on the lookout on the JREF site in the next year or two. He'll be wanting input from educators!

Blind Republicans

Mary Ann over at Learning the Language has a couple posts that should be generating some conversation.  First was "Republicans See English as the 'Official Language'"  They do know that is just like the Tom Tomorrow cartoon that shows then designating the Sun as our source of heat and light, don't they?  They get Orwellian with this, "...we support the English First approach and oppose divisive programs that limit students' future potential."  Even Mary Ann, an expert on these matters, has no idea where this "English First" nonsense came from.  It sure sounds like they mean bilingualism is bad, doesn't it?

Today she has "What's the Proper Role for English in the USA?"  Turns out some nitwit unfortunately named John Lillpop thinks "...Hispanics and other advocates of bilingual mumbo-jumbo are so blinded to reality?"  They're not blinded John, you are.  I was going to sum this up, but as usual Stephen Krashen already has:

Mr. Lillpot is badly misinformed. Everybody agrees that acquisition of English is essential. That's why we need bilingual education. Study after study shows that children in bilingual programs do better on tests of English reading than children in all-English immersion programs.  Bilingual education works because it uses the child's first language in a way that accelerates second language acquisition.

Of course, maybe I have this "English First" idea from the Republicans all wrong.  Perhaps they mean they're pushing some new financial incentive and providing more funds for English Language Learning, hiring more teachers and providing the curriculum and meeting space for adults as well as school children.  If they want our new citizens to learn English, that certainly makes sense.

Everything Is Coming Up Elitism!

Fellow Elitist Bastards!

Has it only been a month since my last post for the Carnival of Elitist Bastards? How time does fly. Elitism has been flourishing, mateys! Its even proving the progress in race relations in our country. Everywhere I poke around on the web these days, I find fellow elitists! From Merlin Mann at 43folders: "Embrace the disingenuous charge of elitism (or, as I prefer to call it, maturity) by not pretending that everyone is equally 'special' to you. Remind the people who matter to you that you’re always available for them, then tell them how to do that, including specific instructions (n.b. this is important for relatives who think the internet is just eBay, urban myths, and Joel Osteen). Get a friends-only email address. Get a friends-only GrandCentral number. Do whatever it takes to provide a backchannel for your super-secret network."

Thanks Merlin! (And what elitists your parents must have been to give you such a funny name!)

The election, of course, is elitist central. We have an old white millionaire who doesn't know how many houses he owns and a Harvard-educated smoothie duking it out. Roger Cohen from the NYT has some more on this: Obama's from Main St., Ain't He? Even Phil Plait, the Bad Astronomer gets into the elitist act on this subject. (He's probably just trying to catch up with PZ, though.) Bastard.

But it's education I'm interested in, being an elitist teacher and all. Jane Artabasy at the Teaching Excellence Network agrees: "Teachers are inherently a skeptical lot, not a natural base for the Kool-Aid culture of 21st century electioneering, with its cynical, smarmy manipulation of language. As a start, how about the most recent 'word du jour:' elitism? Only an intellectually bankrupt political system would dare to twist such a perfectly good noun into a pejorative, a negative, a mortal stigma. Webster’s defines elite as 'the choice or most carefully selected part of a group...' Sounds to me like the perfect baseline description of a president."

Thank you! She links to this post by a teacher of gifted students who tells us why gifted students hate school:

"Here it is, in brief: Gifted students hate school because school is a sucking quagmire of mediocrity."

and continues with:

"Okay, I know this hardly qualifies as an original thought, but perhaps my personal experiences can enlighten the issue a little bit: the mediocrity begins in society, but it seems to be concentrated, like B.O. in a cabbie’s upholstery, in schools of education."

But she sees teachers a bit differently than Ms. Artabasy: "The influential 1983 report A Nation at Risk, whose findings have not substantially changed since its publication, found that too many teachers are 'drawn from the bottom quarter of graduating high school and college students.' Those same students become teachers, so rather than your kids or my kids being taught by the best and brightest (or at least the solidly competent), they’re being taught in too many cases by people who essentially weren’t very good at school." Yes, she says, there are indeed smart, skeptical, inspiring teachers (like Ms. Artabasy), but unfortunately they can tend to be the exception and not the rule. What to do about this?

See you in a month. I'm sure the election mania will be at a fever pitch. Keep using your critical thinking faculties, my fellow elitist bastards, and perhaps we can begin working on turning the tide of this ingrained mediocrity. I'm open to suggestions. (I know, not very bastardly of me, but we need to start somewhere.)

Classes Begin!

Saturday was my first graduate classes in my journey to become a media specialist and today has been my first day with students. As an ESOL teacher, I have to spend the first two weeks of school testing new students and working out a schedule. So while the kids have been here for two weeks, today was the first day of school in my classroom.

Both the grown up and kid classes went relatively smoothly. They were both a bit more teacher centered than I like, but that's to be expected on the first day. Now if we can just keep the momentum rolling through the year.

I have one more group before the end of the day and I feel good. How I'm going to keep up with planning for six or seven classes and get all my grad school work done and continue being a good husband and father and tossing out the occasional blog post I don't know, but I'll try to keep you in the loop.

For now, check out a new post on Too Much Information from Tim at Assorted Stuff and one way to deal with it, or keep your Poop In A Pile by the Science Goddess. I need me one of those "bleachers!"

Reader Photographs

An amazing assortment of photographs of people reading. Do linger over these wonderful images.

André Kertész: On Reading

(via Norm)

Boys and Books

Tricia over at The Miss Rumphius Effect had a couple of posts earlier in the week I wanted to highlight. First up, Boys and the Bard getting into that always fun and controversial subject of whether it's more important to get kids, especially boys reading and loving it, or reading certain kinds of books. She quotes a Guardian article on the subject and highlights this excellent question:

Why do we still confuse the need for literacy with the experience of reading, and even more important to some, loving a canon?

Well? What do you think?

I think you know where I stand.

Next up, her post More on Boys and Reading. She quotes a press release that is a definite eye-catcher:

"If reading were an Olympic sport, it would be the women holding all the gold medals and world records - not the men. In fact, the women are not just passing their male counterparts when it comes to reading, they are lapping them around the track."

Hmmm.

My Adventures In Blogworld

I'm starting graduate school to become a School Library Media Specialist (although I much prefer the old "librarian" tag) and was considering shelving the blog. Then I start getting comments from people like Doug Johnson, Nancy Flanagan, Mathew Needleman, L. from the lovely Jacket Whys, george w., an inspiring one from Dana Hunter, many inspiring ones from Mary Lee, and even one from the man himself, Dr. Stephen Krashen! And everyone else on my "Linky Love" list of folks who link to me or help me out with comments.


If that wasn't cool enough Ms-Teacher handed my off a blog award and put me on a link of teacher tips today: check it out, there's some good stuff there.



Merlin, an awesome blogger himself, has a post up today on what makes a blog good and it's so goofy and personal that it is inspiring to me. I often worry that I don't have a proper "niche". I'm not a 'kidlitosphere' blog, but I sometimes write about kids books (and everything else I'm reading). I'm not a 'classroom blog' but I will sometimes write about things going on at school. I don't consider this a skeptical blog' but critical thinking informs everything I'm about and I can't help applying it to everything else: education, reading, teaching, learning, getting stuff done.


Lately, though, all of my biggest obsessions are kind of coming together because of this new career path I'm taking. A school librarian is all about reading and critical thinking. They're obviously concerned about what goes on in classrooms and in education. They encourage skeptical thinking. They like to play around with the cutting edge of technology and help students and teachers embrace these new tools. They're obviously concerned about First Amendment issues. They have a lot to get done and are always looking for tips and tricks to help themselves and others. They are me, I am them. We are the ninjas in the library.


Thank you all and stay tuned. It may get sporadic and jump around like grease on a hot griddle, but I'll stay here and I can't wait to hear more from all of you.

Being a Great Explainer

You listen to NPRs This American Life, right? It's a great radio show/podcast. I am always behind in listening (I always have a half-dozen or so on my iPod) so didn't get to this amazing episode until late in the summer. It's called "The Giant Pool of Money" and it explains, so that even an elementary teacher can understand, the whole sub prime mortgage lending debacle. It's fantastic and I'm clearly not the only one to think so. Norm linked to this today and it led me to this great dissection of why it's so great by Jay Rosen. He's writing for journalists but I think there's something there for my fellow educators and skeptics alike: people who want to truly explain things, give them context and engage critical thinking. That's us, right?

What's With All the Saints?

Two saint book reviews in one morning? The Patron Saint of Butterflies from propernoun and The Possibilities of Saithood from Library Stew. The papists are running amok! Looks like a trend Jacket Whys should look into...

Blog Award!

As I said to the amazing MS-Teacher, the bestower, I am not worthy! But I'll do my best to earn it. Her rules are to pass this honor on to seven (!) more bloggers I find great.

Here, in no particular order, are some blogs I dig and are worthy of some props:

Instructify

The Monkey Speaks

Assorted Stuff

What It's Like On the Inside

I.N.K.

A Year of Reading

and of course The Blue Skunk Blog

Happiness

...is nice 'chops





Create your own motivational posters at Motivator.

Doug is fond of them. (This one is especially great.)

"Gladwellian"

Now there's a new one! Score one for David Brooks. A lesser columnist would have gone with "Gladwellesque." Pshaw.

Five Things Policymakers Ought to Know

I've been tagged by kiri8 via Nancy Flanagan (who I teased back in May) with a new meme. I'm not a big meme fan, but this is meatier than most, so I'll give it a shot.

What do I wish the policymakers understood?

1. Books and media centers count. Educational research is a tough cookie to crack as we all know. There are too many variables and teacher buy-in is more important than is often taken into account. Yet some of the best and most reliable education research shows that the more books in the media center (and the more qualified the media specialist) the better the students do in reading, writing, spelling, everything. We don't need more computers or video games or smart boards or any of it--especially at the elementary level. We need more books and time to read them.

2. Grades--not so much. The Science Goddess has the goods on this, but it just makes sense. Rubrics and standards work. Grades mean next to nothing, especially at the elementary level. I went to a college without grades and I turned out ok (insert joke here). This will be hard to change but it can be done and I've seen it done. In the meantime just more sensible grading and grading reform would be a big help.

3. Accountability is good--standardized tests, not so much. I'm not saying all standardized tests are evil. I give the ACCESS test for my ESOL students and it is pretty good actually. The NAEP test has some great data. But we have a "testing window" that is eating up more time and money than you would imagine. It is affecting instructional time and the results are not always even used well. A lot of test publishing companies are getting rich off of things we don't really need. As Stephen Krashen says, just weighing the animal more often doesn't make it grow any faster.

4. Get educator input. Science Goddess already mentioned also mentioned no unfunded mandates and I'm with her on that. While you're at it, get more actual educator input on decisions. We had a county in Georgia that was trying to buy laptops for all of its students. There are some policymakers that must have just thought it would be cool or something. Like computers mean knowledge somehow. I don't know what they were thinking and it sure wasn't a teacher's idea. Teachers would have said, less portable classrooms, smaller schools, more books, less interference. Listen to what they have to say--some of them even know a thing or two.

5. More local control. In my humble opinion the feds would have nothing to say except that public schools are mandatory and the only thing they would get to decide is how much money the states got for education. Maybe some general standards. Same with the state government. They would be working on finding a more equitable way for the schools in their great states to get funding and that would be about it. The rest of the decision-making would be at the local level. Of course I'd like to see more and smaller school districts as well. I'm not sure how much bigger and smaller classroom sizes affect things. I am sure small schools and school districts are a good thing.

A pass this meme onto ms_teacher, Doug at the Blue Skunk Blog, and Library Stew because I'm pretty sure they'll have some interesting and different perspectives. Tag, you are it.

Carnival of Elitist Bastards #3

PZ has the goods up this month. He takes us all to task, including yours truly:

"Teacherninja does quote an exemplary elitist bastard in a defense of intellectualism that calls for more forthright educators, but is disqualified on a technicality. Teacherpirate would have gotten a nod from me, but ninjas are effete sneaky bastards who need to be slapped down more."

His brains have clearly been rum-soaked. The scurvy swine needs to take a look at this definitive pirate/ninja matchup.

Proud Bastard

My first entry into the waters of ye Carnival of Elitist Bastards was this post on being a proud elite.

Now I'm proud to be a bastard. My Lovely Spouse was dismayed when I first joined this particular Carnival because of the name. I'd made a promise as an educator not to put anything too nutty in my blog so I didn't get fired or freak out my student's parents or what not. So signing up to proclaim myself an elitist bastard seemed a bit against that grain.

I beg to differ.

The whole point of our public education system is not to get good test scores. It is not so that our students can go out and get good jobs. It's not even to "create life-long learners," even though that's a big part of it.

The point of our public education system is to make better citizens.

The fight against anti-intellectualism is a big part of that and it's worth being a bastard about. Susan Jacoby gives the example of a questioner not caring about whether or not his mechanic can locate Iraq on a map. He just want the mechanic to be able to fix his car. What the questioner fails to realize is that the mechanic is also a voter. All voters ought to be able to find Iraq on a map, among other things.

We all, each one of us, need to fight against this anti-intellectualism which is the real elitism. What we are fighting for is different.

As PZ Myers said in a recent bloggingheads interview: "We can be accused of being elitist but I think when you get right down to it we're the opposite of elitist because we're saying there are all these good kids...that we shouldn't write off. We want them [children of creationists] to be members of our society--contributing members of our scientific community."

That's why we have to fight against the creationists and anti-evolutionists and for the First amendment and our Bill of Rights.

During the evolution/creation trial in Dover, Pennsylvania there was a moment that was important. Allow me to quote it at length:

"Q. Let's go to our final line of questions. Mr. Callahan, do you feel that, as a Plaintiff in this case, you've been harmed by the actions of the Dover Area School District and its Board of Directors?

A. Yes.

Q. And can you tell us how you've been harmed?

A. I think it goes to the heart of the complaint. It's a constitutional issue. I'm a tax payer in Dover. I'm a citizen of Dover. I'm a citizen of this country. I think the heart of my complaint, my wife's complaint, is that, this is just thinly veiled religion. There's no question about that in our minds.

If you were to substitute where it says, intelligent design, the word, creationism, which, in my mind, it is, there would be no question that this would be a violation of the First Amendment. I've come to accept the fact that we're in the minority view on this.

You know, I've read the polls. I think, you know, a lot of people feel that this should be, that this should be in, that it doesn't cross the line. There are a lot of people that don't care. But I do care. It crosses my line.

And, you know, I've been -- there have been letters written about the Plaintiffs. We've been called atheists, which we're not. I don't think that matters to the Court, but we're not. We're said to be intolerant of other views.

Well, what am I supposed to tolerate? A small encroachment on my First Amendment rights? Well, I'm not going to. I think this is clear what these people have done. And it outrages me."

I'm not going to. That outrage is justifiable.

In our schools we need to value questions and different points of view. We need to value different intelligences and ways of learning and allow deep, thoughtful study of subjects. We need to teach our students Faulkner's advice to "Read, read, read. Read everything."

We need to do these things because citizenship is our goal and we can't afford to be lazy. We need to stand up for what we believe in and go ahead and be bastards if needed.