All posts tagged: Politics

Best Practices For Teaching During COVID-19

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One of my favorite pictures of teaching in action. “Hey Google” “What are the best practices for teaching during Covid-19?” Spoiler alert: There are none. When my school district produced a mandatory professional development session that taught teachers how to transition to online learning, I became immediately skeptical. I was also frustrated at the utter hubris it takes to claim to know anything about online learning when your background is everything but, and then present it as a mandatory training module. While I did learn some things about Canvas that I was completely unaware of (which I am deeply grateful for), there was a lot of unnecessary stress added by the way the PD was rolled out. I want to make it very clear, I’m not frustrated with our district coaches. I’m frustrated with the administration that made the decisions and how it was rolled out in typical half-ass fashion, i.e., not having their poop in a group. Every year teachers are bombarded with crap. And I do mean crap. Between education corporations looking to sell you the latest …

The Needs of the Many

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I spend far too much time on Facebook these days. Being quarantined at home has it’s own toll on your mental health, but scrolling Facebook for hours on end also has it’s own toll. One of the tolls Facebook creates is actually a dichotomy. On one hand it’s a false sense of empowerment. The feeling that you have a voice and can tell the world exactly your stance. On the other hand, it’s an inescapable feeling of powerlessness and depression when you notice that no one is listening. We spend so much time shouting into the echo chamber that the chamber becomes a void. Like a vacuum, it eats our words regardless of the ideologies we support.  One of the subjects that has caught my eye more than once has been the idea that education needs to change. Yet, I can’t help but to notice that whenever the idea is brought up, no one has an answer for how education needs to change. This is where my vacuum comes in. This is where I am …

Teaching and Politics: Part 1

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Teaching is political. There is no way to get around that fact. Anyone who says otherwise is fooling themselves and those around them. Evidence? Easy, look at the legislation in some states that are pushing for creationism to be taught alongside science. They want to teach that slaves were nothing more than happy servants in Texas. Last but certainly not least, children are taught a very watered down version of Columbus when they are in grade school. All because, someone doesn’t like their “history” to be challenged. All that is controlled at the legislative level. So when people tell teachers not to get involved into political arguments, I say too bad. This is our fight. We are on the front line of the truth and reality. We are also on the front line as advocates for many of our students. In this case, we are also on the line for our own lives as well as our children’s. I am tired. I am tired of seeing innocent children’s lives lost at the cost of someone …

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To wrap up the year, I thought I would reflect on the things that have impacted my teaching the most. From the strategies learned and tested to the sociopolitical atmosphere currently stressing the foundations of what education is. These are the things that for good or bad I have taken away from the 2017 year. Model EverythingEvery time I model something, I learn something new.  I am finding that this is the most powerful tool for teaching students skills that we expect them use. Even modeling how we expect their names to be placed on the paper is so easily overlooked. We sometimes think that because they’re (insert age here), they should know things that we want them to know. The examples I realized this year are as follows; how to make a bulleted list for note taking, how to use the proper margins on loose leaf and journal page paper and how apply a rule for writing conventions. Each of these things need to be modeled step by step to ensure that the children …