Sorry, for taking a few days off. After this school year, I just needed a bit of a break. I will be continuing to log all Summer, but I’m going to do so a little more sporadically. My goal is to update 3 times a week during Summer. I want to continue to update regularly, but I don’t want to spend my Summer tied to the computer.
As a teacher, I spend my days trying to instill the importance of civility and cooperation in my charges. However, I think civility at times is actually counter productive. If you’re walking down the street and a madman approaches you wanting to chop off both your arms with a hatchet, agreeing to let him chop off your left arm isn’t really a good idea.
When a policy maker wants to impose a “reform” on your school that is 180 degrees away from what will make your students successful, compromise isn’t the answer. When two people have similar goals and disagree about how to get there, they can compromise. However, if you don’t want to go in the same direction, it’s pretty much impossible to compromise with another person.
There are some people pushing misguided reforms who do so for pure motives. Unfortunately, if there ultimate goal is a privatized test factory, they’re not someone I’ll ever be able to agree with. Agreement for the sake of agreement doesn’t work. It only leaves us with bad policy and ineffective schools.
Why These Students Disaffiliated from SFER National
“As a university founded on Vincentian Principles, we as DePaul students aim to be sensitive to and care for the needs of each other and of those served, with a special concern for the poor or less fortunate members of society. The children of this nation, and even more personally the city of Chicago, are being deprived of a quality and meaningful education.”
Chicago Teachers, Parents, Students Protest Budget Cuts to Schools
“Teachers, students, parents and activists from two dozen Chicago schools descended on the Board of Education Wednesday to protest what they say are “deep, painful” budget cuts at local schools.”
CPS Budget Cuts: Demonstrators Demand More Money for Schools
“They don’t need to cut from our schools,” Mayle said. “Rahm [Emanuel} keeps talking about hard choices. The real hard choice for him is to go back to his rich friends and ask them to pay their taxes. That’s what will solve this.”
Board Members Mumble their Way through Scripted Lines
“High points came for me when Barbara Byrd Bennett, with a straight face, told the Board that her “Chief Innovation and Incubation Officer” would handle one thing. Oh, and while the new “Chief Accountability Officer” (which she actually said was a new idea) would handle something else.”
Statement: Progressive Reform Caucus on Chicago Public School Budget Cuts
““As elected representatives of the communities of Chicago, we are alarmed by the stripping of basic necessities which define a school. The neighborhood schools have been reduced to beggars, lacking such essentials as sanitation supplies, library book funds, field trip money, playground supervision. The principals have been given the new budgets and told to ‘do more with less.”
How Chicago’s Five-Year School Plan was Dead on Arrival
“Ah yes, Mayor Emanuel and the teachers. Let’s see, in his first two years he took away the raise their last board promised them; unilaterally ordered them to work a longer day; mocked them as spoiled brats when they noted that the longer day came with few resources to help them do something meaningful with the time; then continued to fire hundreds of them in school closings, turnaround plans, and other ruses that circumvent tenure.”
CPS CHATTER 
Recent Comments