Great stuff

"Caring is a prerequisite to achievement.
Promoting achievement is the ultimate form of caring."

Quoted from TMAO remarking on Dan Meyer's education blog -- two lines that really sum up how I feel about urban education at this point. There is nothing more important in the classroom than giving students the tools to succeed academically and personally in life. Yes, urban kids face unbelievable obstacles, but none of these obstacles are insurmountable. And because the kids in Anacostia have half the advantages of the kids living in Georgetown, our schools should be helping them twice as much. Caring about these kids means making high expectations and high achievement the number one priority.

Michelle Rhee

I have been meaning to write about my love for Michelle Rhee for a while now, and after coming across this video interview with Charlie Rose, I couldn't help but take this opportunity to gush. (Dan Meyer recently refered to his own warm fuzzy feelings for Chancellor Rhee as an Educrush, which I think is adorable.) I have lots of "Educrushes" these days, the more education books and blogs I read, the more I find myself falling in love with other people's ideas and philosophies on teaching. It has definitely been inspiring me to think about the kind of educator I want to be.

Here's the video: http://www.charlierose.com/shows/2008/07/14/2/a-conversation-with-michelle-rhee-chancellor-of-the-district-of-columbia-public-schools

I love her passion for accountablity, I love her no-nonsense, no-excuses approach to education. She seems to truly believe that every teacher should be a great teacher, and she is committed to making it lucrative and possible for extraordinary people to become teachers and succeed as teachers. The woman is not willing to settle for mediocrity, and she's shaking things up in DC education. And I love it. The city needs it.

There are so many factors that affect children's ability to learn, particularly in under-served, inner-city neighborhoods, but blaming all of those factors for a child's inability to read and write is unacceptable. They may not come to school as well prepared as children in other parts of the city, but if we use that as an excuse for why so few are testing at proficiency, then it lets us, as educators, off the hook. We may not be able to fix all of the social and economic problems in the city's worst neighborhoods -- but those problems are not an insurmountable obstacle in the education of the children who live there. Michelle Rhee, in her interview, notes that "education is supposed to be the great equalizer" and at this point it obviously isn't, but it SHOULD be.

Rhee's "red track" and "green track" concept for the teachers union contract is, in my opinion, brilliant. I would without a doubt choose, and be excited by, the opportunity to be evaluated each year (through standardized test scores, interviews, or whatever means necessary) and paid based on my performance as a teacher. I can understand the senority and tenure concerns of older, more experienced teachers, and I am glad that Rhee is giving them the option of staying on that path through the "red track." However, if my students did not learn in my class, then I know I did not do a good job as their teacher, and I take responsibility for their failures. I'm not afraid of being accountable for my work.

Vacation!

So, I know I have been horrible about posting, but I promise once the school year starts I will get better about it. There will be much more to say when I'm in the classroom with 30 4th graders all day. (Yes, I've again switched grades. Same school, but now I'm w the 4th grade class at M School. I LOVED 4th grade, so I'm excited)

As of now, I am on VACATION! Yay!! Summer session is over, I never have to look at either of my final papers again, and I have two weeks off to enjoy time in DC with John and go home to California to see the fam. Hooray!

In filling out the course evaluations for my very short, but action packed, summer session at Penn, I reflected a bit on the summer, and I feel like I really learned a lot. Although I am sick of talking about the "funds of knowledge" in my neighborhood, I really am sold on the idea of teaching through the "Teaching for Understanding" framework advocated in our Social Studies methods class. I really enjoyed designing my three week curriculum on immigration, and I feel like I learned a lot in the process - I'm also hoping that its something I can use in the spring when I'm in the classroom full time!

I stopped at the Penn bookstore's education section to pick up some summer reading for the next two weeks, and in case you're interested, here's what I got:

1. Lies My Teacher Told Me, by James Loewen... we read a chapter of this in Social Studies Methods and I thought it was pretty cool - it has definitely been changing the way I want to teach history.
2. Letters to a Young Teacher, by Jonathan Kozol... after reading "Shame of the Nation" and "Savage Inequalities," I had to have Kozol's new book. It looks like he wrote it just for me!
3. City Kids, City Schools...a new compilation of essays on urban education by lots of awesome people - Lisa Delpit, Michael Eric Dyson, Gloria Ladson-Billings, Pedro Noguera, etc.
4. Holler If You Hear Me, by Gregory Michie... one chapter of this was assigned in my course packet for my School and Society class, and I loved it, so, I picked up the rest of the book.

and two non-education books:
5. Run, by Ann Patchett... "Bel Canto," one of her other books, is one of my favorite books of all time, so I of course had to buy her new book.
6. The Road, by Cormac McCarthy... Pulitzer Prize winner, and I read a great review of this one in the NYTimes. Plus, I figure I should read something other than education books on vacation. :)