About this Blog
“Theories and goals of education don’t matter a whit if you don’t consider your students to be human beings.”
Even though it’s my birthday week, I am not talking about the type of sobering that involves alcohol. . . Craig was laid off last night at 7:05 and we spent the evening shell-shocked and anxious. No matter how much we tried to stay optimistic, or prayed, or made bitter jokes about how he could spend his time, the reality of not having a job really hit home.
That event made me think about a lot of things: marrying sooner than June, how to put him on my insurance plan if we did, moving somewhere if he found a job, and then of course Teach For America, and my students.
You see, this week was also exam week, and one of the essay prompts in my Literature classes asked my students to explain why they think Obama’s election is a memorable historical event and if they have seen “Change” yet. If so,…
One of the other teachers at my school just told me that I must be a horse whisperer, because when I was gone for Grandma’s funeral, my students were just crazy. I’m not sure if it’s cause and effect or simpler correlation, but I was happy to hear that! That’s my silver lining for the day,…
read more »I thought Madison was Halloween-crazy, but in retrospect, that was just the UW-Madison campus… In Chicago, everywhere I go, there is talk and decoration in preparation for the upcoming holiday. It is strange to me, the way that some of the shop windows have cute, cuddly-looking pumpkins and scarecrows, while others look like something from…
read more »Chicago Public Schools has a day off today, for teacher inservices. We’re here. So far, though, my classes have been less than half full today… Wow. My students’ attendance overall has been pretty good; out of my classes of 25-30 students, usually 20-25 are in class. (The same is not true for the sophomores and…
read more »First off, suggestions on how to find the silver lining… Between sometimes negative staff departments, frustrated students, very long hours, not enough desks for my students, and a host of other daily distractions, it has been getting harder and harder to stay positive. Normally that’s not an issue for me, but lately it has been…
read more »I can already forsee some of my friends wondering why I chose the quote above to introduce my philosophy of education… I have been asked by a lot of people over the past few months what my Theory of Education is. For the most part, Teach For America’s is a good one: “One day, every…
read more »I will start with a brief overview of what school is like at Austin Busines and Entrepreneurship Academy (ABEA). We are a small school on the fourth floor of a once-huge school; now, the first floor is all administration, the second is Austin Polytechnical, the third floor is Austin Voice and we are on the…
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