this week's readings...

i'm unfortunately not going to be in class tonight, so here are my reactions to this week's readings. i posted below about how cool i thought the carrot revolution blog was, so now to the kennedy center. this is a less exciting site, but i have been using it some this semester to write lesson plans for workshops for my museum as critical curriculum class. it's pretty easy to navigate, and i like the way their lesson plans are presented, with different tabs for objectives/procedures/materials, etc. it's certainly a more appealing way to browse through lessons than if they were all in one long, word doc-like format.

to rayshawn's reading: i read what alana posted about it on her blog, and agree with a lot of the things she has to say. i think for me, a lot of it comes down to framing and rhetoric. instead of talking about "turning away students at the door," why couldn't the principle be talking about what kind of a wake-up call or measure is needed to get parents in the door for meetings, or for students to realize that they are jeopardizing their future? i was especially put off by this analogy:

They're not going to be able to go to work and miss 66 days and then expect the job to take them back.

True, but is that really relevant? These are not adult, working professionals -- they're kids, who have yet to finish their high school education. There are obviously a lot of factors at play when students miss over 66 days of school -- shouldn't there be concerted efforts toward identifying those factors? What efforts are being made to get parents in the door? What can be done to keep kids from falling into truancy? It just seems like this kind of tough stance is actually a lazy stance. Sure, it takes money and resources to keep kids in school, but the main issue here seems to be that it also takes a lot of work.

raising the status of teachers

sometimes i check out the "room for debate" feature on the opinion pages of the new york times, and recently, this article about ways (besides raising teacher salaries) to attract more people to the teaching profession.

i particularly liked the response of vern williams, a middle school math teacher in virginia, called "let us teach!" he writes that teachers need to take back the profession:

until practicing classroom teachers are allowed to make real decisions regarding curriculum, assessment, textbooks and professional development, the status of teachers will remain low.

this seems so obvious, and yet it is something that really resonates with me, as i think this accounts for at least part of the reason that i decided i didn't want to be a classroom teacher. mr. williams cites his experience working with johns hopkins university's center for talented youth one summer as proof that teaching sixth graders can feel as prestigious as being a college professor, if the institution you're working for hires selectively but then places confidence in the strength of your choices and methods as an educator. i've worked for the last three summers on the residential life side of mmla, a summer language immersion program for middle school and high school students. i'm going back this summer as a french teacher, and i'm so excited about it -- because in addition to the beginner french class i'll teach in the morning, for 2 out of the 4 weeks of the program i'll also be teaching a 2-hour elective entirely designed by me. i started working at mmla during its first summer and the program is far from flawless, but the directors put incredible faith in their instructors, and it pays off. the learning that occurs takes strange and numerous shapes, and is truly inspiring. i can't help but wonder what would happen if some of that same confidence and freedom was granted to classroom teachers across the country.

forgetting to remember

thanks to sarah for posting the article about bill gates, and thanks to jessica for pointing out the comments in response to the article. i always enjoy reading the comments after articles that seem polarizing or somewhat controversial and trying to figure out what kind of people are reading and responding.

this sentence in the middle of one of the longer comments jumped out at me:

there is no linear correlation between quality of teaching and student performance, and for one very good reason: nobody has the slightest idea, beyond common sense, of what constitutes quality teaching.

i agree with the gist of this statement, although i would argue that nobody has the slightest idea of what constitutes quality teaching because no one is using common sense. when i think about the teachers i had in grade school/middle school/high school, most of the ones that come to mind didn't teach subjects that i loved or even did spectacularly in -- instead, the ones i remember as being great teachers are the ones who worked hard to find ways to facilitate understanding in those students who didn't "get it" the first try, and the ones who didn't balk at getting slightly off-track or incorporating digressions and slightly unorthodox activities into their lessons if it was going to help people learn.

it's hard for me to believe that the people who think standardized testing is a good way to measure teacher quality, let alone student achievement, have ever taken the time to reflect upon their own experience with teachers in schools. what can we do to make them remember?

oh là là: a new french history museum?

i was skimming the times website the other day and i found this article about a new museum that french president nicolas sarkozy is planning to open. first, a bit of history:

about french presidents

they like to memorialize their presidencies by having national monuments built (and named after themselves) while in office. this sounds like i am generalizing/stereotyping, but it's just their way.

georges pompidou has the centre pompidou, an incredibly cool modern and contemporary art museum:

françois mitterrand has the national library:

and jacques chirac has the quai branly, a controversial museum of indigenous art from africa, asia, oceania, and the americas:

about sarkozy

the 9 months that i lived in france fell within the first year and a half of sarkozy's election, and were peppered with student, government worker, and transportation strikes, in response to reforms he tried to implement and as a result of general disgust with his person. in a way, sarkozy is much more american than french -- always pushing for productivity, unafraid of privatization, and unapologetic about his own blinged-out lifestyle. from what i saw and heard, the french population over 35 seems pretty split about how good he is for france, but the french youth? they hate him with a passion.

about the new museum

one reason why sarkozy is so unpopular among french youth is that he is anti-immigration and, well, downright racist (this is ironic, as one of his parents was a polish immigrant). which bring us to his proposed legacy: a museum of french history. while in theory there is nothing wrong with this, rest assured that sarkozy's take on french history will glorify all the usual suspects (ahem, napoleon), and gloss right over the travesties bestowed by france on places like algeria. the problem with history is that it's always told by the victors. this museum would be just one more slap in the face from a narcissistic power monger to the neglected and abused, though culture-rich, immigrant populations in france. normally, i'm all for new museums, but imagining walking through this one makes me feel nothing short of disgust.

more comments

i don't know what's going on with my blogger account, as i'm still not able to post comments on anyone's blog. i suppose for the moment, i'll just have to keep reacting via my own blog. i wanted to remark about two posts in particular. first, lee's post about AR apps:

when lee was talking about this the other night, i was a little confused about what an AR app would look like, but reading about these apps cleared things up for me. i particularly like the "nearest tube" app -- i would totally use something like that. this also made me think of gis (geographic information systems), a program that a lot of my friends who studied geography in college used to make these crazy-detailed maps overlaying various sets of data (normally dealing with the distribution of resources).

also, i liked sarah's post about "cyberped and revolution." this reminded me of an article i was reading in the new yorker the other day about mo ibrahim. he's a sudanese man who is largely responsible for the presence of cell phone towers in many parts of africa. he's made a whole bunch of money and is now giving away his fortune chunk by chunk to african leaders who reveal themselves to be genuinely for democracy and to have the interests of their countries' people at heart... i'd recommend checking it out, there's a very interesting correlation between political reform, youth engagement, and technology suggested there, too.