On Vacation

It has been quite some time since I last posted anything. I am on vacation in the States now and it has been a good one. All of my life vacation was connected to school with me as a student. I had vacations in Korea but they were so short and the work wasn't nearly as hard. This year, this year was such a challenging year that for the first time in my life I feel like a totally deserved this break. I earned it in so many ways and I remind myself of it sometimes when I am starting to feel bad about insisting on certain food or visiting certain people. I earned this vacation. My brain needed a real rest and respite from the mental overload of the past 10 months.

All of that being said, I can really look back on this past year teaching with a new appreciation. I see now how it served to strengthen my character and open my eyes to some unhealthy habits and thought processes. I have had to remind myself that the career path I have chosen is intimately entwined with service to humanity. Being of service to others means to adopt a position of humble learning, willingness to change, work generated by love with focus on the higher reason for the work I do.

Second and Third semesters flew by. I didn't start doing centers again until Third semester. I think I got too wrapped up in the small parts that the bigger picture escaped my vision. I was not able to divide student work into leveled folders, although I have prepared leveled work. I still struggle with instructional time management and I was not as creative as I wanted to be.

The last 3 weeks after the students stopped coming, I did a lot of prep work for Fall semester. I was able to streamline somethings and prepare some new activities for centers and for Fast Finishers.

Although I am excited about the up coming school year, this vacation has opened up many possibilities. My husband was not able to find work while we were there and this was a real hardship for him. We are looking at him coming back early and as a result, I have re-activated my profile on some job sites for SC and NC. I have spent hours in a coffee shop here in Boone where we are visiting his brother and wife, working on populating these websites. I have to remind myself that I have a job and if I don't get an offer before I leave or before school starts, that is fine. I will just keep them updated as the year progresses. So there is a definite possibility that I will be alone in Abu Dhabi for some time.

I am excited by what the future holds for me. I will write in a separate post about what I am working towards in me head that I think will begin to really come out into the world this year.

Back to VACATION!!!!

Read When I Have Time

No Child Left Behind Act and Race to the Top

* original NCLB act
* The Obama administrations' revision of NCLB
* information regarding Race to the Top
* criticism regarding Race to the Top (RTTT)
* article which compares NCLB and RTTT

Diane Ravitch

Diane Ravitch is Research Professor of Education at New York University and a historian of education. In addition, she is a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. From 1991 to 1993, she was Assistant Secretary of Education and Counselor to Secretary of Education Lamar Alexander in the administration of President George H.W. Bush. From 1997 to 2004, she was a member of the National Assessment Governing Board, which oversees the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the federal testing program.

* In this article she responds to PISA
* letter to Florida lawmakers as they geared up to vote in 2010 on merit pay for teachers based on testing scores of their students
* criticism against Ravitch's views, though I was confused as the blogger first accuses Ravitch of neoliberalism and then a few paragraphs down accuses her of neoconservatism.

Michelle Rhee

* Students First page about her
* from a Teach for America alumn (one of the programs that Rhee supports for reforming education)
* criticism against Rhee's position as DC chancellor of schools

Waiting for Superman and Race to Nowhere

* map showing connections between big money and education reform
* critique of Waiting for Superman
* regarding the involvement of private investors in education
* more about the involvement of big business
* Race to Nowhere - interview with Abeles

Today's Education Reform Movement and Teachers

* link to my FB note "Response to education article in Newsweek"
* link to article by a teacher ed professor addressing school leaders and policy makers regarding new teachers
* "When Did Teachers Become Bums?"
* "We're living in the darkest times for teachers that I've ever seen in my life."
* Marion Brady on teacher accountability

Repercussions of the Education Reform Movement and our Children

* link to my FB note "The Travesty We Call Public Education"
* repercussions of today's public education system's "movements"
* what this is doing to our children
* a short video about and by students
* on creativity
* the story behind Chinese students' outstanding test scores

Sir Ken Robinson

follow this link and there are other videos by this engaging speaker

Henry Giroux

Giroux currently holds the Global TV Network Chair Professorship at McMaster University in the English and Cultural Studies Department. He has taught at Boston University, Miami University of Ohio, and Penn State University. Routledge named Giroux as one of the top fifty educational thinkers of the modern period in 2002.

* Henry Giroux writes about Freire and the education plutocracy

Paulo Freire

I have no links, though be sure to check out Wikipedia's information on this towering figure in education. Books that are on the shelves of the responsible teacher are:

• Pedagogy of the Oppressed


• Pedagogy of the Heart


• Pedagogy of Hope


• We Make the Road By Walking


• Teachers as Cultural Workers: Letters to Those Who Dare to Teach

Other texts for the responsible teacher

The Moral Dimensions of Teaching, editors Goodlad, Soder, Sirotnik

The Manufactured Crisis: Myths, Fraud, and the Attack on America's Public Schools by Berliner and Biddle - a response to A Nation at Risk, a document prepared by a committee under the direction of Reagan's secretary of education