Archives: Reading

In a recent New Yorker Magazine article, Malcolm Gladwell, author of “The Tipping Point” and “Blink” states,  “After years of worrying about issues like school funding levels, class size, and curriculum design, many reformers have come to the conclusion that nothing matters more than finding people with the potential to be great teachers. . . . The students of a very bad teacher will learn, on average, half a year’s worth of material in one school year. The students in the class of a very good teacher will learn a year and a half’s worth of material. That difference amounts to a year’s worth of learning in a single year. Teacher effects dwarf school effects: your child is actually better off in a ‘bad’ school with an excellent teacher than in an excellent school with a bad teacher.”

The problem is, he says,  “No one knows what a person with the potential to be a great teacher looks like.”  For example, he says researchers “have investigated whether it helps to have a teacher who has earned a teaching certification or a master’s degree. Both are expensive, time-consuming credentials that almost every district expects teachers to acquire; neither makes a difference in the classroom. Test scores, graduate degrees, and certifications—as much as they appear related to teaching prowess—turn out to be . . .[practically useless] in predicting success.”

He concludes, therefore, that “Teaching should be open to anyone with a pulse and a college degree—and teachers should be judged after they have started their jobs, not before. That means that the profession needs to start . . . an apprenticeship system that allows candidates to be rigorously evaluated” and that “tenure can’t be routinely awarded, the way it is now. . . .  An apprentice should get apprentice wages. But if we find eighty-fifth-percentile teachers who can teach a year and a half’s material in one year, we’re going to have to pay them a lot—both because we want them to stay and because the only way to get people to try out for what will suddenly be a high-risk profession is to offer those who survive the winnowing a healthy reward.”

Read the entire article here:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/12/15/081215fa_fact_gladwell?yrail

From the Center for the Study of the Public Domain, an announcement:

The Center for the Study of the Public Domain is delighted to announce the publication by Yale University Press of “THE PUBLIC DOMAIN: ENCLOSING THE COMMONS OF THE MIND//,” the new book by CSPD Faculty Co-Director James Boyle. Appropriately given the book’s theme, it is both for sale in hardback and available online for free under a Creative Commons license. To download the book or read it online, please visit http://www.thepublicdomain.org/

Not surprising that Boyle would do this; you may be interested though in his explanation/argument for doing so. Read the comments though to see what he thinks about distributed comment and annotation. This is basically what we’re talking about doing with lesson plans, right? His (admittedly brief) comment sounds like some things I’ve said, and it sounds like what the teachers at our user group meeting in April said.

The question is, are our lesson plans more like a scholarly book or more like a blog post?

Join us to read Shame of the Nation by Jonathan Kozol in the LEARN book club. We will order copies of the book, and invitations will be sent to those interested to the brown bag meetings on November 17, December 15 and January 12.

Email Keri by October 15 if you are interested.

Read the review from Publishers Weekly here: http://www.amazon.com/Shame-Nation-Restoration-Apartheid-Schooling/dp/1400052459/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1220971936&sr=8-1

As is evident to anyone reading, I have struggled with blogging. My “fits and starts” are a result of my uncertainty of purpose and lack of time to allocate to this process. Who am I writing for? What is important enough to require my chiming in to the discussions in the blogosphere? How can I find the time to actually process issues of import? For me, Blogging has been more of a thing to be observed than a thing that comes naturally.

For others, however, it is a very different story. I have enjoyed the work of avid bloggers who write to think, and the product of their effort really contributes to the conversations about teaching and learning. This inspires me to keep at it, and brings up another important point — just because I am not driven to blog doesn’t mean blogs are useful as tools for learning. (Hear Homer Simpson here… “D’oh!”)

Two interesting ideas that seem right on to me. The first, Blogging the Research Process. In a September 2007 blog entry, Joyce Valenza recommends this practice as a way to facilitate transparency and constructivism, noting that through blogging, students can reflect on the process, get organized, and involve others in the process, ultimately contributing to the larger body of knowledge. The second, also from School Library Journal, is another simple yet powerful way to use blogging tools to enhance learning… a Book Blog. Like a book club, the Guerrilla Season Book Blog provides a place for students to engage their classmates and the rest of the world a project in which the “… diverse group exchanged thoughtful impressions about the book and pondered some provocative questions, adding a whole new dimension to the reading experience.” (Langhorst, 2006)

Simple, logical, powerful tools for learning. I get it. You can too! Pick up The Guerrilla Season and join Eric Langhorst’s book blog project between MARCH 3 and APRIL 4, 2008. See you there!