Sarah Tweaks Her Socratic Seminar Recipe

BY MIDDLEWEB · 06/23/2015

Powerful Problem-Solving … For Teachers and Students

By Kristin Gray June 24, 2015 12:00 pm

The movement of parents to "opt-out" is exciting. Parents are coming together and standing up for what they believe is good for their children. It is democracy in action, a revolution of sorts. But, the stakes are unclear and misunderstandings abound. Parents are paying attention, asking questions, and investigating what is happening in classrooms. We have wanted this for a long time...right?  We need to capture and harness this energy so that it doesn't dissipate when the crisis of…

Football or Music? What's the Best K-12 Investment?

• Ed Week

In a perfect world, all high school activities would be fully funded. But to educators struggling to find the financial means to establish and pay for educational priorities, it is clear that we…

We don't deny the necessity of accountability and the need for targeted support for teachers to address the needs of their students by learning how to fill their own gaps in teaching and learning. In schools, the continuously developing skills and knowledge of  is the goal.  Teachers need to be learning about the standards and content, the assessments, their students. At the nexus of these, teachers do their work. Standards are important and national standards in a country like ours,…

Every teacher and every school leader, remember today that racism detected in schools can more easily be eradicated than that which seeps, undetected, into and through the growing years of a child.  While we celebrate diversity, let's be sure the children know we are all members of the human race and our actions will determine its future. Our heads and hearts and hands are extended in this time and in this purpose to those will lead Charleston out of this night into a new light...one…

Vergara: careful what you wish for

A new article by Kevin Welner from the National Education Policy Center weighs whether the Vergara plaintiffs, in their eagerness to take on teacher unions, have invited litigation from policy and reform rivals. When the Vergara decision was first handed down, it was celebrated by advocates who sought a revision of the teacher dismissal process, particularly of teachers with low results from value-added models of student…

Too demanding too soon?

Do the Common Core Standards ask too much of 5- and 6-year-olds in reading? asks Liana Heiten in Education Week. The debate is heated, at its heart the standard stating kindergartners should be able to "read emergent-reader tests with purpose and understanding." Experts agree it's a more advanced expectation than previously, but have less agreement about whether it's an overreach. Critics argue the standard is not "developmentally…

To play or not to play

As American classrooms focus on test scores, younger students have gotten more instruction and less time in sandboxes, writes Motoko Rich for The New York Times. Nationally, schools have curtailed arts and recess in favor of longer blocks for reading and math. A study by the University of Virginia comparing federal surveys of kindergarten teachers in 1998 and 2010 found the number of teachers whose students had daily art and music…

 We find ourselves in a time when no matter the intention of the assessment of performance, whether of student, teacher, or principal, the result is an evaluation that is most often received as a judgment of and a stopping place for the evaluated...When principals, teachers, and students are being supported, encouraged, and motivated rather than graded and labeled, the path toward success for all is cleared.

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Chances are you are already using technology at your lessons. Nevertheless, very few of us, educators, turn to educational apps that by now are presented in a wide variety. For those, who are interested in applying new technology into education, below is a list of top apps for teachers and parents you haven’t been using but should.

Myhomeworkapp. The app is perfect for those wishing to control and track the progress of students remotely. Teachers can leave comments and…

The Opt-Out Movement Is Gaining Momentum

• Ed Week

While addressing a group of state schools superintendents in 2013, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan described…

Excellence Should Not Be Isolated…

There have been a plethora of talented researchers who have presented us with new ways to teach, to offer students new opportunities to learn and to perform their learning. And there are districts, schools, and classrooms that have tried mightily to embed the new theories and methods into their centuries old structures.  But the national results have not changed. Cities continue to struggle with low graduation rates.  Schools in the suburbs and in rural areas investigate their records…

Smoking Process

Smoking is a process that gives flavour to meat and helps preserve it longer. Manual smoking of meat, like smoking it out somewhere with wood and just hanging it above the smoke is a bit tiring, because you still have to monitor if the wood is already all used up, and if the meat is still properly hanging. Using an electric smoker save less monitoring time and helps you smoke meats with ease. on how to smoke meat…

Teachers need great principals who need great superintendents in order to be successful with our students. As far away as the superintendency may seem from the students, the responsibility for building and maintaining a healthy, dynamic, growing system ultimately resides with the superintendent. Read more...

Vicki Cobb: The Demise of the Artist-Teacher…