the dangers of cell phone use on the CTA

today we were talking about sitting on the train messing around with our phones, or observing everyone else messing around with their phones.

i have heard numerous stories of people getting their phones, ipods, ipads, iwhatevers stolen right out of their hands on the train.  you're distracted and people seize the opportunity.

then i came home and read this article.  it really is a very sad story or wrong place wrong time- but definitely puts a stolen cell phone into perspective...

"Achievement"

Thanks Sarah for sharing this article on Bill Gates and his foundation's work on education reform.

Here, in this article, and in the op ed piece Gates wrote for the Washington Post, we are hearing a lot of the same talk in regards to teachers and student achievement.  Gates is making the argument that neither seniority nor advanced degrees warrant increases in teacher salary- rather, we should focus on finding successful teachers (and by his definition, this would be teachers of students who show the most "achievement"), see what they are doing right, give them "four or five more students", and reward them with merit based pay that will come as a result of eliminating unsuccessful teachers.  Done.  Problem solved.

I can only assume that student achievement in this sense is measurable achievement, a.k.a. good standardized test scores.  So the next obvious assumption, then, is good teachers help students achieve measurable success- high test scores.  So we should find the teachers that teach to the test the best, give them even more students, and get rid of the underperforming teachers.

At this point, I don't even know what to say about all this anymore.  Yes, there are bad teachers.  I have had some of them.  There are also teachers who are really good at taking a prepackaged curriculum and making students memorize a bunch of stuff and score really well on a test that only has meaning because someone else says it's important.  There are teachers who, despite the discourse that says what they do each day is an easy part-time job, despite a staggering lack of resources, actually try and teach something beyond filling in stupid answer bubbles.

Definitely check out the comments that follow the Washington Post piece-

AREA Chicago

I spent a lot of time clicking around on this site- there's so much to read...  I really liked the City as Lab issue- there are some interesting articles in this issue.  Therese wrote a concise history of CPS as well as an article on the proliferation of military schools in Chicago.

I also really liked this- interesting stories from people who have watched the city change over the years.

Also, there is an illustration section, and this particular illustration, unfortunately, hits way too close to home...yuck.

“We like teenagers, even though they have big backpacks and are always hungry.”

Thanks Lindsay for sharing this article!

This sounds like such a cool program- not only does it get kids involved in the museum, but it provides them with an opportunity to interact with contemporary art and artists, AND they get a stipend for their participation.  On the surface, it sounds much like an ASM program, but it seems to go in a totally different direction.  The students are serving as youth coordinators in the museum, creating events, learning situations, and interactions for other teens.

They also have their own website, where the Teen Arts Council members have their own profiles and can showcase their work.

I wanna join.

oatmeal is better than nomeal

I started writing this Tuesday night, but it has taken me a minute to finish it up...

Myths, Realities, and New Visions

nights like tonight help me to begin to grasp the complexities and the challenges that lie ahead.  I felt motivated and encouraged to not just want to understand, but to act.  The power in the forum really came from the wide range of people who were speaking.  The academics, the organizers, the parents, the teachers and the students.  Early on in the evening, one of the researchers was talking about the way most educational policy focuses on the individual- the student, the teacher, the principal, the school- at the expense of looking at the whole, the system, or the collective of people that work, live, and learn through it.  Tonight, we saw that collective of people.

And then I come home- and I watch this.  The Daily Show is funny- and so is the clip- but the fact that this type of conversation is what the situation has devolved to is beyond disturbing.  I am not sure I even know what to say to all of this- it is soooooo absurd.



(edit- 3/3:  I know sarah posted it too, but I think it warrants reposting).

It is so easy right now to get swept up in coursework- thinking about a thesis, getting this reading done or that paper written, that I start to feel like I'm not doing anything real. I get really caught up in the frustration about thinking about thinking, hypothesizing about teaching, talking about the broken backwards system we are heading into.  But I understand that my responsibility, right now, is to be as informed and engaged as I can be prior to jumping in.

Sarah and Jessica's Art Genome Project (AKA Art Pandora)