Katherine participating in the “self-portrait wall” outside her Kindergarten class.this post enabled by airblogging.com….
Katherine participating in the “self-portrait wall” outside her Kindergarten class.
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Went with Katherine today to meet her new Kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Jones. She evaluated Katherine for Kindergarten readiness (no question about that) while we filled out the inevitable panoply of…
Went with Katherine today to meet her new Kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Jones. She evaluated Katherine for Kindergarten readiness (no question about that) while we filled out the inevitable panoply of permission slips, clearance slips, contact forms.
Mrs. Jones seems very nice (and pregnant — she’s expecting, I think, around Christmas or so, but already has her fill-in planned, and already had called us to let us know), and her room is full of all that cool, fun stuff that makes Kindergarten classes so much fun. Including Stripesy the Turtle. The general “motif” is spotted cows — lots of decor around that motif, as well as activities. This includes “cow spots,” rewards that can be turned in for cool prizes, including taking Stripesy home overnight. Katherine already has that one planned …
We also got Katherine’s bus assignment. The bus will pick her up at the top of the street at 8:08 a.m. (or so) and deliver her back home around 3:30 p.m., the new delimiters of our day.
Katherine seemed charmed by Mrs. Jones, and vice-versa. I think it’s going to be a good school year.
Next up: Parent-Teacher Night next Wednesday, followed by the First Day of School on Thursday (which is only an hour long … don’t ask me why), followed by the first full day of school next Friday.
Here we go!
I’m not sure that I would have expected anything else, but it’s still deeply irksome that Bush is such a dolt about this: Transcript of the roundtable interview of President…
I’m not sure that I would have expected anything else, but it’s still deeply irksome that Bush is such a dolt about this:
Transcript of the roundtable interview of President Bush by reporters from Texas newspapers on August 1, 2005, in the Roosevelt Room.
Question: I wanted to ask you about the — what seems to be a growing debate over evolution versus intelligent design. What are your personal views on that, and do you think both should be taught in public schools?
THE PRESIDENT: I think — as I said, harking back to my days as my governor — both you and Herman are doing a fine job of dragging me back to the past. (Laughter.) Then, I said that, first of all, that decision should be made to local school districts, but I felt like both sides ought to be properly taught.
Both sides should be properly taught?
THE PRESIDENT: Yes, people — so people can understand what the debate is about.
So the answer accepts the validity of intelligent design as an alternative to evolution?
THE PRESIDENT: I think that part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought, and I’m not suggesting — you’re asking me whether or not people ought to be exposed to different ideas, and the answer is yes.
Bush sort of waffles around on it, but … damn, Mr. President, the ideas I expect to be taught in science class are, well, science, not mystical mumbo-jumbo about how life is too complex for us to understand it, thus there must be someone smarter behind it all (Prometheus, natch) and, by the way, all that evil-ution claptrap is unAmerican and immoral.
That’s not science, Mr. President. That’s sitting around in caves, scared by the thunder, and deciding it must be the giants playing nine pins or something.
For shame. Somewhere in Beijing, the Minister of Long-Term Educational Planning and Taking Over the World’s Economy through Scientific Training is cackling maniacally.
For the last year and a half, 90% of my commutes home have been by way of C-470 to 285 to 85 to Belleview to the Village to pick up…
For the last year and a half, 90% of my commutes home have been by way of C-470 to 285 to 85 to Belleview to the Village to pick up Katherine — from pre-school, from summer school, whatever.
This week — nope. Straight home down C-470. Except for Wednesdays (comic book days).
Strange. Even when school starts at the end of the month, she’ll be at a new school for Kindergarten, and taking the bus home.
Very strange. And kind of sad. Not quite Empty Nest Syndrome — but, maybe, Empty Back Seat Syndrome.
I’ll have to spend some extra time with Katherine to make up for it. 🙂
Katherine and Miss Brenda, the lady who runs Rainbow Room, on Kitten’s last day of summer school, and last day at the Village pre-school.this post enabled by airblogging.com….
Katherine and Miss Brenda, the lady who runs Rainbow Room, on Kitten’s last day of summer school, and last day at the Village pre-school.
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The story says it all: The word “fail” should be banned from use in British classrooms and replaced with the phrase “deferred success” to avoid demoralizing pupils, a group of…
The story says it all:
The word “fail” should be banned from use in British classrooms and replaced with the phrase “deferred success” to avoid demoralizing pupils, a group of teachers has proposed. Members of the Professional Association of Teachers (PAT) argue that telling pupils they have failed can put them off learning for life.
A spokesman for the group said it wanted to avoid labeling children. “We recognize that children do not necessarily achieve success first time,” he said.
“But I recognize that we can’t just strike a word from the dictionary,” he said.
The PAT said it would debate the proposal at a conference next week.
Amazing.
Can you hurt a child with words? Sure. Maliciously delivered words, and sometimes even thoughtless words, can have an effect on people.
But you can hurt kids, too, by being dishonest with them. Indeed, that’s an even greater hurt, because dishonesty breeds distrust. And distrust undermines any efforts to educate kids, including (or perhaps especially) efforts to make kids feel legitimately good about themselves.
Kids do fail at things. They should be encouraged to try again, but there’s a difference between acknowledging and learning from and being inspired by failure, and denying that the failure ever took place, that it was just a blip. Just a “deferred success.”
I can’t think of any better way for kids to never get to that “deferred” success than to deny that they have anything further to succeed at.
Britain’s Education Secretary, Ruth Kelly, agrees.
“To be quite honest, I think it’s really important for young people to grow up with the ability to get on and achieve, but also to find out what failure is.
“When young people grow up and enter the adult world they have to deal with success and failure, and education is about creating well-rounded young people who can deal with these sorts of situations.”
That simplisme doesn’t sit well with Real Educators, of course.
Jean Gemmell, PAT general secretary, defended the ideas behind the motion and suggested that Ms Kelly was being too “simplistic”. She said it was “unhelpful” and “unfortunate” that Ms Kelly was commenting on a motion which had not even been debated yet, and was therefore not yet PAT policy.
“We are talking about young people who struggle to read, write and can’t relate to other people,” she said. “These are things you cannot be allowed to fail at.”
So Secretary Kelly shouldn’t comment on an undebated motion — eve though Ms. Gemmell clearly is willing to assert its truthfulness.
As to her final statement — it seems to me the way to keep kids from failing at reading, writing, and “relating to other people” is to focus on sound pedagogical techniques, not simply banish the concept of failing. Though I suppose it would make the teachers feel better about the job they’re doing if none of their kids ever fails, just defers success to some other grade level.
Maybe I’m just being unhelpful and simplistic, too.
(via DOF)
Pink clothes, playgrounds, and Princess suitcasethis post enabled by airblogging.com….
Picking up Kitten after school is a high point of my day. (Even if she looks like she’s being marched to the firing squad.)this post enabled by airblogging.com….
Picking up Kitten after school is a high point of my day. (Even if she looks like she’s being marched to the firing squad.)
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Having served my time in the Ed Biz, I’m not shocked by this, but I am deeply angered. I’m not 100% sold on the idea of retention — but the…
Having served my time in the Ed Biz, I’m not shocked by this, but I am deeply angered.
I’m not 100% sold on the idea of retention — but the threat of retention can be a hell of a motivator. And, frankly, so would the threat of any number of other things which might make the Boy’s school experience a lot less pleasant, and so incent him to get off the dime, but which some namby-pamby policy-maker or lawsuit-cowed administrator is unwilling to do.
Yes, I’m talking about punishment here. Carrots and sticks are a great blend, and you rarely get the same effect if you use only one of them and not both. Public schools, out of fear of harming the little tots’ psyches, or of getting sued by litigious parents (of which there are a plenitude, to be sure), have lost that.
Kid doesn’t have his homework? Multiple times? We’ve determined it’s not a problem with the home or a learning disability? Fine. Go sit in the corner. That one. Back there. Or go report to yard patrol activity, picking up paper around the school, or cleaning out the trash cans at the cafeteria. Or go do [fill in mildly unpleasant and/or somewhat demeaning activity] and report back when you have your assignment in hand. Or you’re suspended — have your folks pick you up, and explain to them that they need to find some way to take off work to watch you for the next two days; better bring your missing work back with you.
Yes, making school an unpleasant experience if you don’t make the effort might cause some kids to drop out. But we’re talking kids who are already in trouble, academically, and who are already a lot more likely to drop out. And it may actually make some kids sit up and take notice and get their frelling acts together.
Yes, punishment can be abused (though so can neglect). And it does, often, take extra time and effort to administer (which means that the lazy will shy from imposing it).
But this is, as Doyce implies, not an acceptable state of affairs.
Okay, some might call it some brainless exercise in meaningless praise, but I think it was kind of cool that her pre-school class did a round-robin of “things I like…
Okay, some might call it some brainless exercise in meaningless praise, but I think it was kind of cool that her pre-school class did a round-robin of “things I like about” each of the kids. The results for Katherine?
I like her shoes, and her play me. (Mayola)
She shares to me. (Tony)
I like her Incredible shirt.* (Michael)
Sometimes she plays good with me, and she plays animals. (Trent)
I like her flower tattoo.** (Devyn)
I like it when she plays kitty and she is very nice. (Savannah)
She has a beautiful smile. (Mrs. Stephanie)
I love her beautiful blonde hair. (Ms. Amy)
She shares something when I want it. (Andrea)
I love her stories. (Ms. Moe)
Sometimes she plays with me. (Emilio)
I like her Incredibles shirt.* (Noah)
She always does her job with a smile. (Ms. Dana)***
She is a great helper in Brown Room. (Ms. Shelly)
I like her shirt. (Ashley)
I like her pants. (Jacqueline)
Cool beans. Katherine rocks. Now the whole Internet knows …
* She was wearing her Incredibles shirt today.
** She got an airbrushed “rose” tattoo at the zoo on Sunday.
*** Katherine’s pre-school teacher
If you can’t pretend that Intelligent Design is Science, then redefine Science to include Intelligent Design. The hearings in Topeka, scheduled to last several days, are focusing on two proposals….
If you can’t pretend that Intelligent Design is Science, then redefine Science to include Intelligent Design.
The hearings in Topeka, scheduled to last several days, are focusing on two proposals. The first recommends that students continue to be taught the theory of evolution because it is key to understanding biology. The other proposes that Kansas alter the definition of science, not limiting it to theories based on natural explanations.
Because, of course, those pesky “natural explanations” don’t let folks teach about Genesis — or about Giant Tortoises, or Giants, or whatever supernatural Creation story one wants to teach. I mean, just imagine! (No, literally!)
“Evolution is a great theory, but it is flawed,” said Martin, 59, a retired science and elementary school teacher who is presiding over the hearings. “There are alternatives. Children need to hear them?. We can’t ignore that our nation is based on Christianity ? not science.”
And, um, so? I mean, it’s not like having Science around means that Christianity is outlawed.
And the reason why you can’t teach about Christianity at home, or why your church can’t teach it to you, or why concerned Christian parents in your neighborhood can’t band together and create religious training programs for your children?
I mean, really — you want government employees to be teaching your kids about religion? Are you mad?
There’s a truism that in academia, one gets judged by the quantity, not the quality, of what one writes. If so, then the SAT has clearly been redesigned by academics….
There’s a truism that in academia, one gets judged by the quantity, not the quality, of what one writes. If so, then the SAT has clearly been redesigned by academics. In the 25-minute essay section of the test — where students read an essay and then write out answers — the test-takers are, apparently, graded on length, not on content.
“It appeared to me that regardless of what a student wrote, the longer the essay, the higher the score,” Perelman said. A man on the panel from the College Board disagreed. “He told me I was jumping to conclusions,” Perelman said. “Because MIT is a place where everything is backed by data, I went to my hotel room, counted the words in those essays and put them in an Excel spreadsheet on my laptop.”
Perelman studied every graded sample SAT essay that the College Board made public. He looked at the 15 samples in the ScoreWrite book that the College Board distributed to schools nationwide to prepare students for the essay. He reviewed the 23 graded essays on the College Board website meant as a guide for students and the 16 writing “anchor” samples the College Board used to train graders to properly mark essays.
He was stunned by how complete the correlation was between length and score. “I have never found a quantifiable predictor in 25 years of grading that was anywhere near as strong as this one,” he said. The shortest essays, typically 100 words, got the lowest grade of one. The longest, about 400 words, got the top grade of six. In between, there was virtually a direct match between length and grade.
Publish by the pound, as they say. Regardless of whether it makes any sense.
He was also struck by all the factual errors in even the top essays. An essay on the Civil War, given a perfect six, describes the nation being changed forever by the “firing of two shots at Fort Sumter in late 1862.” (Actually, it was in early 1861, and, according to “Battle Cry of Freedom” by James M. McPherson, it was “33 hours of bombardment by 4,000 shot and shells.”)
Perelman contacted the College Board and was surprised to learn that on the new SAT essay, students are not penalized for incorrect facts. The official guide for scorers explains: “Writers may make errors in facts or information that do not affect the quality of their essays. For example, a writer may state “The American Revolution began in 1842″ or ” ‘Anna Karenina,’ a play by the French author Joseph Conrad, was a very upbeat literary work.” (Actually, that’s 1775; a novel by the Russian Leo Tolstoy, and poor Anna hurls herself under a train.) No matter. “You are scoring the writing, and not the correctness of facts.”
You are scoring the “writing,” not the “correctness.” So people who write more are, obviously, better writers. At least as reflected in their SAT scores.
A report released this week by the National Council of Teachers of English mirrors Perelman’s criticism. It said a single, 25-minute writing test ignores the most basic lesson of writing — that good writing is rewriting. It warns that the SAT is pushing schools toward “formulaic” writing instruction.
Actually, it’s worse than that. It’s pushing schools toward teaching kids that content doesn’t matter, just length. Formulaic writing instruction can be fine — the basic essay form is an excellent structure to hammer into kids, so that they can then learn when it’s okay to break out of it. But simply pushing them to throw around a lot of dates and judgments and names and to do so in long sentences, long paragraphs, and long answers, regardless of what’s actually being said, isn’t what writing is about.
Except on the SAT.
(via Pharyngula)
A middle school marching band in Michigan has been forbidden by the school superintendent to play “Louie Louie.” Yes, it’s not that anyone would actually hear what the lyrics are…
A middle school marching band in Michigan has been forbidden by the school superintendent to play “Louie Louie.”
Yes, it’s not that anyone would actually hear what the lyrics are — assuming that there are actual lyrics, or that anyone actually knows them beyond the chorus — since it’s a marching band we’re talking about. And it’s not like they were having any rogue Texas cheerleaders dancing to it. No, it was just considered inappropriate.
Which leaves the band songless for their Saturday performance. Great lesson there, Ms. Superindendent Ma’am.
There have long been rumors that the lyrics for “Louie Louie” are raunchy (or, at least, raunchy for the 50s-60s), but …
“Louie Louie,” written by Richard Berry in 1956, is one of the most recorded songs in history. The best-known, most notorious version was a hit in 1963 for the Kingsmen; the FBI spent two years investigating the lyrics before declaring they not only were not obscene but also were “unintelligible at any speed.”
Sort of like school superintendents.
(via BoingBoing)
Busy, busy, busy … Drove to pick Katherine up. Parent-Teacher Conference night, with ours scheduled for 6. Unfortunately, that confluences with several other things that need to happen that night,…
Busy, busy, busy …
Not, all told, a bad evening, but anything but relaxing or entertaining.
Why soliciting plagiarized term papers on the Internet can be a dangerous thing: you might contact a comedy writer who’s also a blogger with academic standards … I reached one…
Why soliciting plagiarized term papers on the Internet can be a dangerous thing: you might contact a comedy writer who’s also a blogger with academic standards …
I reached one more branch out to her, in the form of misspelling the name of the god of destruction as a liquor brand. But it wasn’t enough to get her to tell me to fuck myself, so I started making up my plan. Which was real simple: Take her money and cut and paste a paper together from the internet that was so obviously plagiarised that she’d be guaranteed to get caught. And then, if I was able to get the information out of her, I’d report her to whatever her school was, and who knows, maybe even pump her for double money in exchange for not turning her in. Either way, I’d eventually be writing the story up in this blog, and sending her the link to it.
Is this harsh? Eh, I don’t think so.
Good luck, Laura Pahl of Lewis University … you’re going to need it.
According to the Princeton Review of best colleges, one of the criteria for a “diverse” university is ignoring God. Huh? Delving into the individual pages, one finds the question restated…
According to the Princeton Review of best colleges, one of the criteria for a “diverse” university is ignoring God.
Huh?
Delving into the individual pages, one finds the question restated as “Are students very religious?” Which makes sense, maybe, if you equate being “religious” with “the school is full of a single, vocal, socially-enforced common religious/denominational point of view.” Maybe.
Certainly one can consider the distinction between the top five two categories given:
But does a homogeneous non-religious student body represent a more “diverse” school than a (presumably) uniformly religious one? I’m not sure I’d agree there. (Would a student seeking an active spiritual life, for example, find the “Regularly Ignoring God” students of Lewis & Clark more diverse or tolerant, for example?)
And … um … “monochromatic” as the antonym for “diverse”?
Identifying colleges as being more religiously-oriented vs. less religiously-oriented is, probably, of value. But I’d tend to consider a college that had both strong religious organizations and activities and non-religious/secular ones (even anti-religious ones) as the more diverse campus. Just as, for example, a campus that had a large and active gay community would be more diverse than a gay-only or straight-only college.
Weird.
It would be really funny if it weren’t so annoying. A well-published author of an essay included on a state standardized test (the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills, or…
It would be really funny if it weren’t so annoying. A well-published author of an essay included on a state standardized test (the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills, or TAKS) looked at the five questions asked about the essay in the test. She has a few problems with them.
On her way home from George West, Naomi was struck by how the students had remembered details of the piece but, when she asked, could remember none of the questions. When I sent her copies of the questions, she said “It reminded me of the trouble I always had with standardized tests.”
The trouble? “Almost every question has more than one ‘right’ answer,” she said.
That’s the difference between testers and writers. Poets and other literary writers see literature as a collaborative engagement between the writer and the reader. They expect different readers to have different reactions to their work, to draw different messages based on their experiences and concerns.
So she had a problem with a question that asked what the essay was “mainly about.” Answers included “moving to a new place” and “the significance of names.”
“Say a kid had just moved to a new place and had a lot of revelations about himself, that would be the right answer for him,” she said. “Another kid who felt special about names would focus on that.”
She had similar arguments with the answers to several other questions, arguments she had had since, at age 22, one of her poems was selected for a textbook.
“Out of five questions the kids were supposed to answer, I couldn’t answer three,” she said.
The biggest problem with interpretive questions (“What’s the essay mainly about?”) is just that — there is rarely any single answer, and rarely universal agreement on the “best” answer (or what “best” means).
Or, as Ogden Nash put it,
He o’er the works of Shakespeare
A thousand hours spent
And found a thousand meanings
That Shakespeare never meant.
Granted, academic English departments often go completely overboard in reinterpreting and deconstructing and otherwise mangling interpretations of works of literature. That they can, though, is indicative to me that testing on subjective questions like this is bound to cause trouble — not to mention embarrassment.
I don’t know how you test whether kids can draw a theme from an essay or story (let alone determine whether that’s something that should be tested for), but there should be a better way.
(via Liz)
Margie and I went to a meeting at Katherine’s pre-school as the official Coaching Parents in the Transition to Kindergarten gathering. We were among only a handful of parents there,…
Margie and I went to a meeting at Katherine’s pre-school as the official Coaching Parents in the Transition to Kindergarten gathering. We were among only a handful of parents there, and, to be honest, we didn’t hear a lot that we (or even I, who haven’t been to all the meetings) haven’t heard before.
The presenters were from the Family Services group at the Village, so they had a bit of a different perspective. Most of the skill sets they rattled off, though, Katherine has more than mastered, so, at least from an academic and classroom behavior perspective, I’m not too worried. The increase in class size (her preschool classes are 15 kids with one teacher and one parapro) is a bit more worrisome, but there’s not a lot to be done about that (except quit and volunteer to work there).
I was, though, a bit taken aback by, again, the “oh, prepare yourself, because this is going to be so tough on the parents the first day” bit. Maybe I’m just a cold fish who thinks Katherine should be shunted off to boarding school or something, but … well, if this was going to be her first school experience, I could see it being a bit traumatic (for her and/or us), but given that she’s been doing pre-school for a couple of years now, I don’t anticipate being some sort of emotional wreck when The Day comes. Sure, it will be milestone step, but a good one. IMO.
Of course, ask me again in August.
Be prepared for the Next Big Backlash in school: no explosives! Or, as these things usually go, nothing that anyone could construe as, turn into, or somehow confuse with an…
Be prepared for the Next Big Backlash in school: no explosives! Or, as these things usually go, nothing that anyone could construe as, turn into, or somehow confuse with an explosive. And it’s all (or initially) this guy’s fault:
David Pieski, 42, used an overhead projector in class to give instructions in making explosives to students at Freedom High School, including advising them to use an electric detonator to stay clear from the blast, an Orange County sheriff’s arrest report said.
In Pieski’s classroom in Orlando, authorities found a book labeled “Demo,” which includes the chemical breakdown for a powerful explosive, the arrest report said.
[…] Pieski was charged with possessing or discharging a destructive device and culpable negligence. Pieski, who was booked into the Orange County Jail on Monday and released on $1,000 bail, declined to comment.
Pieski told investigators he detonated chemicals in a coffee can by a ball field four times for his students, the sheriff’s office said. He said he did this as a chemistry project to show a reaction rate, the arrest report said. […] Pieski guided investigators to an unlocked metal cabinet in the back of a classroom, where there was “a can of black powder stored next to other chemicals,” the sheriff’s office said.
Assuming we’re talking about actual black powder black powder (as opposed to “a black powdery substance”) it’s clear that this guy is, in fact, a danger to himself and his students.
But sure as shooting, it won’t stop there. I predict a new wave of school purges and regs and crack-downs, as administrators fearing law suits and parents fearing Little Billy Learning Something Bad And Getting Hurt make any sort of rapidly reacting chemical that could, in sufficient qualities, produce enough energy to make a noise that could frighten the little ones into a fireable/expellable offense.
For example, when I was in high school chemistry, I remember going out onto the quad with the chemistry teacher and watching as he put a small dollop of sodium metal into a coffee can of water. Rapid reaction and boom and boy that sure was educational (and fun). Bets that legitimate, reasonably safe, and nothing-like-teaching-kids-details-about-detonators lesson plans like that will now be a thing of the past?
(Mutter, mutter, mutter …)
So when did Valentine’s Day become a school candy fest? When I was a kid (shortly after the invention of candy), we did have the standard “Everyone Trade Cheap Cards…
So when did Valentine’s Day become a school candy fest?
When I was a kid (shortly after the invention of candy), we did have the standard “Everyone Trade Cheap Cards With Everyone In The Class, Even The Kids You Don’t Like, So That Nobody Feels Left Out” soiree, but, aside from the occasional little heart candy with a message (always carefully picked out), there wasn’t much in the way of eats.
Katherine, on the other hand, came home loaded for bear, especially bears with sweet teeth. There were plenty of cards (and I envy the parents who only had to have their kids inscribe “Noah” on the FROM line, rather than “Katherine”), but even most of them were carrying cases for some sort of sweet.
Of course, who am I to talk? Through some strange happenstance, this year became a Best Buy Valentine’s Day, and Katherine and Margie netted some DVDs as the objects of my affection. Throw in a trip to the store with Kitten to pick out a (very attractive, her choice) Valentine’s Day card for Mommy, though, and it wasn’t a bad celebration.
