Romeo and Juliet

Romeo and Juliet converted into a graphic

I don't know why this version is blurry, the original isn't.  Easy to make, cool to look at!
Romeo and Juliet on wordle.com

Playing With LEGOs

This weekend, it's back to childhood...

Just a little something

Marni Barron and Leigh Dingerson conducted a short experiment on the system for evaluating teachers in the D.C. public school system (a system heavily influenced by the reform movement in education) and, together, they found out that the lovable Ms. Frizzle of educational cartoon fame, just about failed her teacher evaluation.  Check out the article.

I'm sorry, ma'am, but there just isn't a place for you here anymore.

Up to Your Elbows in Voices

Lately, I've started reading a couple of blogs by teachers and researchers involved in the education field.  Wandering around this corner of the internet, I've run across a lot of really great and inspiring voices in education.  Last time, I mentioned someone I have a lot of respect for, Alfie Kohn.  Timothy D. Slekar has a great list of more voices that I'd like to share here.  Finally, The Frustrated Teacher always has relevant and interesting things to add to the conversation.

Some great issues to look for:
Poverty and education: particularly how these two things get linked together in political discussions.  Hint: they're both huge problems and I'm not even sure that prying them apart is possible.  See Matt Di Carlo's article.
Creative thinking and problem solving: mostly how wonderfully it is used by individual teachers and how often it seems to get left behind in discussions of policy by legislators.  See below:

What education policy should look like.

That said, someone I really admire once advised me to never stop asking questions, so I'd encourage everyone, anyone who cares, to interrogate these links until they are neck deep, or at the very least up to their elbows, in the unfamiliar and the interesting.

It's Been A While

Maybe I'll actually keep this thing going intermittently.

Maybe you’ve never felt that 3a.m. satisfaction of sealing a paragraph airtight with the explanation of a final citation.  Maybe you’ve never understood the joy of understanding your own essay for the first time, followed by the uninterrupted pitter patter of fingers on keyboard keys, a steady stream of letters.  Maybe you’ve never felt like a composer, waving tensed hands at an array of words until they align into perfection, each in its place, each moving together with the whole.

Also here are some terrific articles about teaching by a really smart guy: Alfie Kohn

Family Teaching

Tonight I got to spend a lot of quality time having a very delayed (and also very delicious) thanksgiving dinner with my extended family.  This means twenty minute debates about pie crust from people who you don't expect to debate the finer details of dessert, it means book recommendations (my Grandpa likes Obama's, someone else called him an Obamaniac), it means hearing my cousin recite a terrific speech she gave at an Ups for Downs fundraiser (she killed), and it means that down in the basement below all this conversation, a horde of young cousins are hacking away at one another wearing bedsheet capes and weaponry improvised mostly from cardboard and duct tape (although that craft has gotten incredibly more sophisticated recently, pvc pipes, CDs cut into shapes to decorate the pommels of impressive weapons, imaginative stuff).

Seriously. This stuff. Twenty minutes, maybe half an hour of conversation
Although, I do get to eat the topic of discussion, so it maybe breaks even.

   But lately, I'm coming to realize that having the chance to catch up with all of the teachers and former educators in my family is one of the most interesting and valuable parts of these gatherings.  Before I'd looked into teaching as a career, they had always had a certain teacherly air, and occasional stories about a class or a student or the profession, but now, my ears are open.  When they start talking about teaching, I lean forward and start to pull out the valuable stuff, the need-to-know's and the if-they-woulda-told-me's.  I try and tattoo that sort of thing onto the inside of my brain, in one of those gray lobe-y folds where it won't get erased by some mental janitor who stumbles over neurons.  Even more fun than listening, I get involved.  Established teachers can't be the only ones who get to hold the floor here, I just had to listen to these people talk about the ratio of butter and shortening in pie crusts for crying out loud, and really, it's more holding the table than the floor anyway.

Growing Up, Not Grown Up

Looking around at other people's blogs, I see a lot of people talking about what it's like to be getting older.  My whole life, I've had a brother six years older than me to look up to and measure as a standard for growing older.  He's left home, gone to college, and gotten married (in September), but as I followed a similar path, I began to see my brother differently and understand that growing up doesn't have to mean becoming a grown up.  Maybe I first noticed this when he came home from college for spring break and played with LEGOs in the basement, or maybe it was when he decided to have "Here Comes the Bride" played on kazoos at his wedding; either way, it helped having someone who wasn't quite a parent to point me in the direction of figuring that out.  It helps to think of this when I'm trying to remember that life is more than just a tug of war between wishing to be older and wishing to be younger.