My Happy Place

"I Met the Walrus"

In 1969, a 14-year-old Beatle fanatic named Jerry Levitan, armed with a reel-to-reel tape deck, snuck into John Lennon's hotel room in Toronto and convinced John to do an interview about peace.John Lennon's voice and spirit,40 years ago. Now,Josh Raskin added his talent.What was the result? It's a very good animated film. Simply,timeless...

Diane Ravitch

Now seventy-four, Diane Ravitch has been a forceful voice in education debates for more than four decades. A research professor at New York University since 1995, she has taught at Columbia University’s Teachers’ College, served as an Assistant Secretary of Education, and edited education journals. She has written ten notable books on education history and policy. Most recently, she has written a series of scathing rebuttals of reform measures in The New York Review of Books and some two thousand posts on a blog she started in April, which has received almost a million and a half page views. Since the publication, in 2010, of her book “The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education,” she has barnstormed across the country giving speeches berating the reform movement, which, in addition to test-based “accountability,” also supports school choice and charter schools (public institutions that often receive substantial private funding and are free from many regulations, such as hiring union teachers in states that require it), and which she calls a “privatization” movement.

http://dianeravitch.com/

http://dianeravitch.net/

Teach Like A Champion

Same talented colleague... New recommendation... 

 

Teach Like a Champion offers effective teaching techniques to help teachers, especially those in their first few years, become champions in the classroom. These powerful techniques are concrete, specific, and are easy to put into action the very next day. Training activities at the end of each chapter help the reader further their understanding through reflection and application of the ideas to their own practice.

Among the techniques:

• Technique #1: No Opt Out. How to move students from the blank stare or stubborn shrug to giving the right answer every time.
• Technique #35: Do It Again. When students fail to successfully complete a basic task—from entering the classroom quietly to passing papers around—doing it again, doing it right, and doing it perfectly, results in the best consequences.
• Technique #38: No Warnings. If you're angry with your students, it usually means you should be angry with yourself. This technique shows how to effectively address misbehaviors in your classroom

To go to the website click HERE!

A Framework for Understanding Poverty

This book was recommended to me a very talented colleague. I powered through it this weekend and can't recommended enough.

The Teacher Wars: A History of America's Most Embattled Profession

This book is coming in the mail.  Until it arrives I will have to be satisfied with this interview on Fresh Air.  To hear the interview click HERE!!!

40 Maps that Explain the World

The Washington Post.com has an amazing article that contains 40 incredible maps that could be very helpful to students.  To see the article and all the maps click HERE!

Here are a couple of my favorites...

Where the world's people live, by economic status

 How humans spread across the world

When the Mongols took over the known world

How countries compare on economic inequality

Where the world's 30 million slaves live

North America's languages, before colonialism

Starbucks and McDonalds Map

To get a better look at this map click HERE!

I found this map on the Rhode Island Geography Education Alliance website.
The Rhode Island Geography Education Alliance (RIGEA) was established in 1991 to increase and improve the teaching of geography in Rhode Island schools.  Its membership consists of K-12 teachers, but membership is open to everyone.  RIGEA is supported by money raised in Rhode Island and through grants from the National Geographic Education Foundation.  The Alliance is part of a network initiated by the National Geographic Society, which now includes all fifty states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and Canada.

Education Levels Around the World

New Language Empires

Classroom Management Gurus

Rick Smith presenting Conscious Classroom Management from Conscious Teaching on Vimeo.

Grace Dearborn presenting Conscious Classroom Management from Conscious Teaching on Vimeo.

Somewhere in America...