Job Hunt

So, I thought that I was on top of things with the search for a teaching job for next year - I have worked on my resume and started to put together the foundations of a cover letter. Also, I've worked my butt off at Penn for the past semester. But when I called one of DC's charter schools today to inquire about their hiring timeline, they informed me that they're already taking applications and about to start interviewing. Seriously??? The DCPS online application isn't even up on the site yet!

Some of the folks from last year's Penn cohort came by today to talk to us about their experiences with their first year and how things are going. It was interesting to hear their perspective. Some of them had nightmare hiring experiences, and I'm hoping that DCPS isn't as painful as they describe Philly to be. Some of them were hired in July, and several others not until September or even October. Ugh. I'm hoping to have a job way before then, but it sounds like with public school that might not be an option.

I really care about public education. I went to public school from 1st thru 12th grade, but public school in DC is nothing like the schools I went to in California. If I had a school age child in the District right now, there are very few public schools that I'd be comfortable sending her to. I know that often the kids who end up in charter schools are the ones who have parents who are proactive enough to fill out the application, get them on the waitlist, etc. What about the parents who don't have the resources or the knowledge to advocate for their children's education like that? Education is supposed to be the great equalizer, and I really believe that every child deserves a free, excellent education. How else are they supposed to grow up to be successful?

I really want to teach in public school, it's something that I'm passionate about, but if I have to wait till August to be hired I'm going to go insane. If I get offered a job at a charter school, do I take it? Or do I just hold out and hope that I get a decent public school job instead? I really don't know if I'm going to have options for next year - I'd like to hope that I will, but after listening to everyone talk about the job process tonight I'm kind of worried.

Reading...

I did a LOT of reading over break... It was great to catch up with the books that I keep buying and haven't found time to read over the past semester. I cannot seem to control myself in the bookstore - every time I go in there I come out with at least one new title. Here was my winter break reading list...

Almost Moon, Alice Sebold
Twilight, Stephanie Meyer
The Road, Cormac McCarthy
The Working Poor, David Shipler
Digging to America, Anne Tyler
Water for Elephants, Sara Gruen
The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini
Midwives, Chris Bohjalian
Whatever It Takes, Paul Tough

On my list next... (most of these will have to wait till the summer)

The Abstinence Teacher, Tom Perrota
New Moon, Stephenie Meyer
Interpreter of Maladies, Jhumpa Lahiri
Thousand Splendid Suns, Khaled Hosseini
Middlesex, Jeffery Eugenides
Three Junes, Julia Glass
Taft, Ann Patchett
Drowning Ruth, Christina Schwarz

Any other suggestions? :)

Remote Post

I am on vacation in the BVI's - on Peter Island.
Feels like the middle of nowhere and I am so happy. And relaxed. And sunburned. 10 peaceful days on the beach is a much needed break from everything.

Teaching Portfolio

So, here it is, my portfolio of teaching on the Carnegie Website.
If you decide to take a look, feel free to ignore the copious amounts of text (it's basically a 60 page paper copied and pasted onto a website) and check out the adorable videos of my fourth graders in the middle column of each page.
(Don't worry - parents signed every permission slip in the book so that I could film and post these lessons).
www.cfkeep.org/users/gaelangallagher/teachingportfolio

In other news... I am off to John's office Christmas party wearing a shirt that is at least two sizes too small but that I managed to squeeze myself into because it is the only half decent festive-but-not-innappropriately-dressy-or-casual thing I have to wear tonight. I will feel uncomfortable all night and if my arms start to lose circulation, please take me home.

Then I'll be back to write an 8 page child development final, a childrens book, annotations for my math notebook, and make "Happy Holidays" bookmarks for my fourth graders.

As dad reminded me the other night... "There's light at the end of the tunnel. And its not a train."

Apologies

I have been so bad about posting. Mostly because I have 1.2 million things to do between now and December 18th when I get to go home to California. These weeks are the most intense part of the Penn program (or so I understand) so I am buried up to my neck in child development papers, seminar reflections, lesson-analysis, and picture book creating. The picture book is the only fun part.
I feel like I would really enjoy the other parts as well, the child development stuff is interesting, and my formal lessons went well and were a lot of fun, but there is so much to do in so little time that I feel like I'm not able to enjoy any of it!

Science Self Evaluations

I was grading papers this weekend and had the pleasure of reading the kids' self evaluations for science. We are almost half way done with our Land and Water unit using stream tables (STC Land and Water) and at this point their workbooks have them fill out two pages about how they are doing - how they are working with their group members, how they are performing on their own, what they are doing well and what they can improve on. They had some great things to say, and I feel really proud of them.

Here are some particularly cute excerpts in response to the question, "How well do you think you and your partners are working together?"

"Good and bad because one time I worked with girls and it turned out nice but when i work with ____ it is terrible! When I was working today I was overjoyed." - Dem

"Well I think we work great together a lot of team work is involved." - Nol

"I think we are working good together because I am understanding what is happening." - Tia

"When I was in my group I learned a lot more!" - Eth (YAYYYY!!!! I was so excited to read this... Eth did work really well in his group during this and I'm glad he is able to recognize it as well.)

"Horrible!!!!" - Har (Yes, that's 4 exclamation points - I wrote him a note to come talk to me about this and I hope he does.)

"I think that my partners and I work together well because we share everyones ideas and we write them down and everyone gets to talk." - Moh (Double Yay for taking notes on each other's ideas!!)

Everyone answered some variation of "I did really well on my observations and my record sheets" - for the most part, they are right, I think they have been doing really well, and their observations are definitely improving.

It seems that they write more, say more, think more, and are more excited during science than during any other time of day. They love the "hands-on" (or, as NLB would say, "materials-based") aspect of what we are doing, but I am not always sure that they are really getting all the points we are trying to make about how stream tables represent real life watersheds in our world. I know they are having fun and enjoying the activities and working well together - they make beautiful drawings of the stream tables and are able to label and describe what they see.

I guess I'm just concerned that they're not fully aware of the big picture. This is the first time that Mrs. C is teaching Land and Water using stream tables like this - and we're both kind of figuring it out as we go. I would really like to teach it again next year, I hope that I will get to do it with my class. now that I am familiar with the unit I think I would be much better prepared and would be able to make it more fluid and cohesive.

Harvest Festival

So, right after our Awbury field trip, we got back to school just in time for Harvest Festival. I had heard a lot about Harvest Festival - it is an M School tradition - but I really had no idea what all it entailed. Wow. There were huge tables set up along each hallway with more food than you can imagine - turkey, mashed potatoes, salads, mac and cheese, lasagna, the list goes on and on. Tons of food, mostly homemade by parents and teachers at our school (several teachers spent all evening on Tuesday roasting turkeys!) and it was all really wonderful. The kids got big platefuls and went from room to room hanging out with friends, seeing old teachers and just generally socializing. Everyone was so well behaved and there were so many parents who came for the feast.

As part of Harvest Festival, Mrs. C had the class turn in their Native American journals - WOW - they were incredibly beautiful and I was so impressed! They obviously spent a really long time working on them. THey all wrote 10 or more entries from the perspective of a Native American child around the time of the first Thanksgiving - they've been working on these at home for weeks. They apparnetly did a lot of research into games and foods and activities common for Native Americans and incorporated so much historical information into their journals. Most of them tried to use natural materials - some dipped paper in tea or coffee or put it in the oven to make it look old, some wrapped their journal in leather or bound it with twigs and glued leaves all over the cover. Here are all the journals lined up on our back table. I was completely blown away by the extent of their efforts.



When the big feast was winding down, they all took turns wearing the headdress that Mrs. C created and sitting in the big chair in the front of the room to read a journal entry from their work.



Their hard work was really apparent - however, some were a little more accurate than others. Here's an excerpt:

"I am a Native American girl, and I am 9 years old. My name is Flying Bird and my brother's name is Jumping Deer. I live in the woods with my family. My father does a lot of hunting and my mother makes blankets and baskets. Today I was walking through the woods and I found a beautiful tree with colorful leaves. I love it here, but I am also sad because it is hard being in a new place - we arrived on the Mayflower three weeks ago."

Hmmmm... we may have to revisit our lesson on the Mayflower. (I have to keep reminding myself that just because we taught it doesn't mean they learned it!)

Field Trip Success!

(Playing Lenape lacrosse!)

So, Wednesday's field trip to the Awbury Arboretum was MUCH more successful than my first field trip experience (ie: losing poor Eth in the Franklin Institute). It was so fun to have the kids outside in the woods looking at leaves and trees and learning about the Lenape tribes that lived in our area. They got to make cool little clay pots and play Native American games (like lacrosse! who knew?) and learn about the ways that the Lenape used different materials from their natural enviroment to hunt and build and take care of each other.


(Listening quietly to our guide, S)

They were all so well behaved, they asked questions, they took notes, they helped each other and shared and followed directions. They didn't wander off or get lost or anything. It was great. :) I feel much better about field trips now - thank goodness, since we're going on another one on December 2nd (to the Penn Museum of Anthropology and Archaeology) and then another one on December 8th (to the Philadelphia Zoo!). Crazy, but awesome. The kids do learn a lot from them - if our class wasn't so well behaved and small we wouldn't be able to do so much field tripping.



(Making clay pots!)

Discourse is just how you get there

In an earlier post I talked a lot about TALK in the classroom, but after reading "Choice Words" by Peter Johnson for my literacy class (it really applies to all subjects, not just literacy), I've realized that what I really want is for my kids to gain a "sense of agency" and talk is (in my opinion) the best vehicle for getting them there.

I want my students to become people who figure out things and solve problems and ask questions - and, maybe more importantly, to see themselves as such. I want them to see themselves as readers, as writers, as mathematicians and scientists. As Johnson says, "When you figure something out for yourself, there is a certain thrill in the figuring. After a few successful experiences, you mihgt start to think that figuring things out is something you can actually do. Maybe you are even a figuring-out kind of person, encouraging an agentive dimension to identity."

I realize that this is idealistic, but I really think that the best classrooms are the ones where the teacher talks the least. Where the teacher gives kids space and tools to figure things out for themselves, to discuss what they read, to respond to each other, to teach each other. There is nothing quite as good as feeling a sense of accomplishment. "I want children to see themselves not only as inquiring individuals, but as inquiring individuals who are part of a diverse community that inquires, whose members, through their active participation and diversity of perspective, contribute to each other's intellectual growth."

One of my favorite lines (can you tell I'm in love with this book?): "If nothing else, children should leave school with a sense that if they act, and act strategically, they can accomplish their goals."

Election

So, I should have written about this yesterday, but I kind of needed a day to decompress.

As I mentioned, we were supposed to do science for the last part of the day on Wednesday - I had an awesome hands-on (rather, materials-based) lesson planned, and I'm sad that it got scrapped. Instead, Mrs. C let me talk to the kids about the election for the last 20 minutes of the day.

Whoa.

They were so into it. They were all involved, they were all listening, they all had so much that they wanted to say about what they saw on TV, about their parents reactions, about what they were hoping for and excited about and how they felt. They may not grasp the full magnitude of what happened on Tuesday, but they are definitely listening and watching and aware that this is a big deal.

Els made a great comment - "I listened to both John McCain and Barack Obama talk last night, and I think they both did a really good job. McCain has a lot of experience, and he is a really good leader even though he did not win. I hope that Obama asks him to help him run the country now that he is president. It would be really good if they could work together, they both have good ideas and are good people, even though their campaigns said mean things before the election." She has been thinking very seriously about the election and I think she is very interested in politics and current events in general. She and I have had a couple conversations about the election, and I love what she has to say.

Els is right - and I really tried to emphasize this to the kids. No matter who you supported, no matter who your parents supported, now we need to work together to fix the things about our country that are broken. Both sides have good ideas and good leaders and Democrats and Republicans need to work together - fighting just hurts everyone.

Kal said, "I think this is really important because we've never had a black person as President before."

I tried to help them understand that what Kal had said was incredibly important. They get so little social studies, and they really have no concept of the fight for civil rights. I told them that only 40, 50 years ago, when my parents were kids, black people weren't even allowed to vote. And black children and white children couldn't go to school together. They couldn't use the same bathrooms, or the same drinking fountains, or the same entrances to hospitals, or sit in the same area on the bus.

Cam asked, "Wasn't slavery a really long time ago though?" ... Yes. Yes it was. And between when slavery ended, and when black people got the right to vote, there were 100 years where black people had very few rights and were considered second class citizens - and a lot of people, including Dr. Martin Luther King (who they've mostly heard about) fought long and hard for black people to have the rights that they deserve.

I tried to explain this to them, and they were shocked. Reb said, "Really? Black kids couldn't use the same DRINKING FOUNTAIN???" Yes. Yes. Horrible, and now, so hard to believe. In 50 years, we've come so far - we have a black president. Talk about CHANGE.

My eyes welled up with tears talking to them about this. Dem said, "Ms. Gallagher, are you CRYING?" Yes Dem. Yes I am. This is a huge deal, I am so proud to be an American, I am so proud of our country and of the change that is possible here. You can be anything. You can DO anything with your life. And I hope you change the world.

Time

I can't believe how fast this year is going. It's already November, and we turn in our Masters porfolios on May 1st. 6 more months. Crazy.

Also on the subject of time, there is not enough time in the school day. Also, I feel like a lot of our time is poorly organized due to various assemblies, music lessons for some kids, MG (mentally gifted) for an hour and a half on wednesday mornings, Fleisher Art Memorial on Thursdays and Fridays for an hour and a half in the morning, in addition to an hour in the library, two prep periods of Art, one each of computer, PE, and music throughout the week.

The kids are always leaving class for one reason or another - when do we have time to teach them? We get half the review for the math test in and then a handful of them have to leave. I really appreciate all of the extracurricular and non-academic stuff that M School offers, it is a wonderful school in that way, but its frustrating when you're trying to do group work or teach something new and you keep losing your kids! I end up taking a group out in the hall to re-teach the stuff they've missed.

I had a great science lesson planned for yesterday afternoon about streams and water speed and erosion. I had the stream tables all set up and had rummaged through the FOSS land and water kit to get everything I needed. The kids had been building up to this with other investigations on the properties of soil components (gravel, sand, clay, potting soil), how those components react when they're in water, etc.

But, by the time we got back from the unannounced 2:00pm assembly, it was 2:45, and they start packing up at 2:05 to go home. 20 minutes is not enough time to do that big investigation, so they didn't even get science yesterday.

"You can vote however you like"

Here's to the kids of the Ron Clark Academy in Atlanta for WRITING and PERFORMING an awesome parody to TI's "You can have whatever you like"... (Thanks for sending this Anne!!)

Here's the CNN interview, and below is the full performance. How cute are they?
(Note: They'll also perform on Good Morning America on Monday, Nov. 3rd! Check it out from 7-8am)






The Ron Clark Academy is doing some great work in Atlanta - providing every kid in the school with a laptop, super high tech classrooms, music and arts infused curriculum, awesome field trips - all for mostly low-income kids. And their test scores are good too. :) Check them out at www.ronclarkacademy.com

"All Students Are Smart"

In reading a section of "Teaching to Change the World" by Jeannie Oakes and Martin Lipton today for seminar, I was particularly inspired by this quote:

"All students are smart, as opposed to capable of being smart. They may not be smart about the same things, or in the same language. They may be smart about many things that others, especially adults, disapprove of or do not understand. But to respect the mental powers of students, teachers do not need to look at students' potential or their theoretical ability to reach school's idea of what it means to be smart. Students are smart. They are smart now.

My kids are smart. In so many ways. I am always so proud of them for the things they come up with, the observations they make, the things they say to each other that they don't think I hear. I don't ever want to lose that view of my kids - they are smart.

I feel like I need to come up with more ways for the "low-performing" kids to demonstrate their "smart-ness" in our classroom, while still encouraging them and supporting them to gain the knowledge and skills they need to be successful in school.

Classroom Discourse

*This picture is from our field trip from hell. But they're so cute. We have another field trip next week... I am already having nightmares.

**Author note: Kids are not stupid. Ever. But I didn't want to misquote my source, who uses the word as any teenage girl would, and it should be taken in that context. Carry on.

I've been thinking a lot about "Classroom Discourse" - helping chatty kids channel their chatting into productive talk and helping quiet kids speak up so their reasoning is heard and appreciated. My fourth graders desperately need to talk, they have so much to say to each other, and I WANT them to be able to talk, I just want it to be productive. Doing worksheets alone in silence is boring. And I don't want it to be all me talking - that's boring too. (Just ask Ra)

In the words of my very smart little 9th grade sister, Meg... "At school we always talk to each other about things we don't understand because sometimes my classmates have better answers and reasons than the teacher"

So true.

I want to create a classroom where there's a lot of talk. I think that this is becoming my focusing question for the year. I want my classroom to be a place where kids are respectful of each other's thinking, where they explain their own reasoning and listen to the reasoning of their classmates, where they question each other and themselves, where they teach each other.

Here are some of my issues with this. I don't want to always pair the high-performing kids with the low-performing kids. And I don't want to always put the low-performing kids together and the high-performing kids together. I also don't want one kid to always be giving other kids the answers. Meg says, "if you divide them into groups with similar academic capabilities then stupid kids wouldn't mooch of the smarty pants. I hated when kids mooched off my answers!"

Sigh. How do I keep the "smarty pants" from being mooched off of? Or even worse, giving their answers to the slower kids without explaining why or how they got them. But then we get back to the problem with making homogeneous leveled learning groups that scar the poor "stupid" kids for life. They're NOT stupid, but they will think they're stupid if they're continually put in the "stupid" group.

I want them ALL to understand it, and I need to create a culture where they teach each other. Meg recommends that "the smart and stupid kids combined groups could be good for completing and collaborating on classwork and homework or reviewing for a test" Good call Meg, if I keep changing up the groups maybe I can keep everyone involved and learning.

Also, I feel like we don't have a very strong sense of community in my classroom right now - no morning meeting, or even weekly meeting, and even though we have a small group (only 21 kids), I wish that they had a little more space to express themselves and appreciate each other. I think that a strong sense of respect for each other is necessary to make this whole "classroom discourse" thing work.

Mathy math math

I got to teach math to the "advanced" math group on Tuesday and they did great - they were so into it and we got to do much more advanced stuff than we'd have been able to do with the whole class. It seemed like they were excited about being "out in the hall with Ms. Gallagher" for once - I usually take the low-performing kids out with me to work one on one and this was the first time I'd taken out these guys. We worked on complex word problems involving time zones and travel times to various countries, stopping through other countries, and cost of travel for a group of travellers flying first class vs economy etc. There was a lot of "find the unknown" and they really had to reason it out together. In my Penn math class we've been talking so much about how important TALK is in math for kids, that they need to explain their own reasoning and listen to eachother's reasoning and I really believe that. They disagreed or agreed with eachother and talked it out and explained why and then listened to each other and adjusted their own reasoning. It was great to see the stuff we've been learning in action, and I feel like everyone got a lot out of the collaboration.

Today, however, I did math with our low-performing kids, and it was really a challenge. Eth in particular had a very tough day. I had a hard time keeping him on task in math, and an even harder time in our guided reading group later in the day. Today's lesson was about true and false number sentences, and we played a game where they were in teams and had to decide whether the number sentence was true or false and hold up a T or an F or a ? (if it wasn't possible to say one or the other). I gave a point to the first team with the correct answer. They did well with this - with team involvement - everyone participated. But I'm not sure that it really fits with the way that I think math should be taught. I don't want it to be a competition like that. I want them to explain WHY - not just give the right answer. I want to talk it out and to make sure that everyone understands. They did pretty well on the problems that they did on their own after we worked the concepts out together, so maybe they did understand it, but I didn't really walk away from the lesson feeling good on it.

I also tried to teach them that if you do something (like add 8) to each side of a true equation, its still true, and that this is a good way to figure out complicated problems if you see that there's something the same about them on both sides. This was WAY over their heads. They kind of got it, but when I tried giving them problems with the same thing on both sides, they all worked the problem all the way out rather than cancelling out the "same" things on both sides like we'd talked about. Maybe they just didn't recognize they are there? This is part of the Everyday Math curriculum, and it will help them a LOT in algebra if they start thinking about equations and number sentences like this now. We will have to work on it again next time.

I would like to do some more of this "if you do the same thing to both sides of a true number sentence, then those two things cancel each other out and the sentence is still true" with my advanced math friends. I think that I could do somewhat of a constructivist lesson with them, so they can figure out why it always works and why it's important and can make things easier for them when they're working on true and false number sentences.

I'm going to teach another lesson next week to a small group about the use of parenthesis and order of operations. I'm trying to think of ways to make it interesting, exciting, and meaningful, but it seems that my teaching tactics need to be determined by my audience, and I'm not sure who will be in my group.

Phillies Insanity

Thank goodness the Phillies won tonight. There is so much screaming and honking and beating of pots and pans outside my window (and gunshots?)... all we heard about in class all day was "Phillies, Phillies, Phillies" from the little guys, and I know they are SO excited right now! (Even though it's definitely past their bedtime.)

In other sports news, Car invited me to his football game next Wendnesday evening. So cute of him. "Ms. Gallagher, I am playing football this year, and I have a game next Wednesday, and you should come and cheer for me. Mik is going and you should come too."

So cute. If its not too cold and I don't have too much work I totally will go, even if its just for a little while. :)

Guided Reading

I haven't posted in 10 days. :(

I am sorry. I really need to get with it. I usually post after my two days at M School (Tuesdays and Wednesdays) and any other times I am inspired by articles I come across, class discussions here at Penn, etc.

I was in New Hampshire for the weekend with John, it was beautiful. :) Here is a picture of the beautiful leaves at St. Anselm College (where John went to undergrad). It was so nice up there - it made me realize how much I miss the country. I love the city, but its so nice to get out into the sticks again.

Anyways - re: teaching. I did my first guided reading group on Wednesday, and it went really well. I have our lowest level boys - Dem, Eth, Kal, Kaa, and Mik. Some of my very favorite students. I really love them - they don't always have the "right" answer, but they are so creative and interesting. This was the very first time guided reading was done in my classroom at all - I've never seen it done, and I felt like I was just kind of making it up as I went along. I have a few organizers and we've done readings on how it should be done in class, but the way Mrs. C asked me to do it isn't the way we've been instructed.

The piece she asked me to use was a "readers theater" style piece and I assigned parts and we read it out loud together. Because it was a theatrical piece, we talked about reading with expression and the clues in the text that help us know what to do with our voices when we're reading out loud. We talked about the title, we walked through the pictures, and tried to decode any difficult vocabulary together as we went. They seemed really enthusiastic and it seemed like they enjoyed reading together. I'm going to do guided reading with them again next week, but it'll be more traditional - they'll read silently and we'll discuss.

I wonder if Mrs. C would let me do a literature circle with them for guided reading instead of the Trophies texbook readings we're doing now. I want to think of some good chapter books that I could get six copies of for us to read together each week. I think that theres a lot to be said for reading a "story" from week to week and retaining comprehension, learning and practicing reading strategies, etc. I think that it would be especially good if I could find something the boys would be into and excited about.

I read the guided reading text I'm supposed to use for this week and it just seems kind of babyish and boring. Its about a boy, and his dog, "Loyal" and the dog runs away and protects some chickens and gets bitten by a fox and goes home. I have a feeling its just not going to be a good read for 10 year old boys. Maybe I can convince Mrs. C to let me do a chapter book with them. I will look in the library to see if I can find something at a similar reading level but with more interesting content. All ideas welcome!

Preschool?

Obama said a lot about early childhood education in the debate the other night, and this morning I woke up to this article in the San Francisco Chronicle. Universal Preschool Hasn't Delivered Results

"A comprehensive study last month - commissioned by the government itself - concluded that, barring at-risk kids, there was "no statistically significant difference" between the educational performance of second-graders who attended preschool and those who did not... [even though] the Tennessee program is regarded as the gold standard of preschool - meeting 9 of the 10 criteria for a high-quality program set by the National Institute for Early Education Research."

Interesting. (Granted, authors Shikha Dalmia and Lisa Snell work for the Reason Foundation and, I would imagine, are pretty staunchly in the McCain camp. I suspect they will be getting some furious feedback from SF Chron readers.)

In thinking about it, I don't think it really matters to me whether or not early childhood education raises test scores. I think that kids need to be prepared for kindergarten - social and academically, and one of the ways to do that is through an early childhood program like Head Start or any of the many other great programs around the nation. If the programs in Tennessee were considered the "gold standard" of preschool, then I am confident that those kindergarteners came in the door with a leg up on kids who didn't attend preschool.

I feel like this is particularly important in poor and urban neighborhoods where parents may not have the resources or the time to understand and facilitate child development, to read to their kids every night, to encourage language and phonics acquisition, etc. Geoffrey Canada's Baby College and GEMS - they are doing this work full-throttle, giving kids a "head start" from even before birth. Here's the link to the Harlem Children's Zone Page www.hcz.org and to an awesome article about Baby College specifically. The Baby College

I could write another post entirely on Harlem Childrens Zone and Geoff Canada... he, along with Michelle Rhee, is another of my "Educrushes." Paul Tough's new book on his work is really excellent, and I've been enjoying reading it in bits and pieces when I have a free moment.

In other good news... as of this morning, I am done with my 37 page midterm paper on Mik! I can't tell you how excited I am to hand that in in Seminar today. Woohoo!

Education Rheeform

Loved the shout outs to Michelle Rhee and DC Public Schools in last nights debate - from both sides of the aisle.

Some of my favorite quotes about urban education through the lens of DC:

McCain: We need to reform these programs. We need to have transparency. We need to have rewards. It's a system that cries out for accountability and transparency and the adequate funding...

Now, throwing money at the problem is not the answer. You will find that some of the worst school systems in America get the most money per student. So I believe that we need to reward these good teachers.

Obama: I think it's going to be critically important for us to recruit a generation of new teachers, an army of new teachers... give them higher pay, give them more professional development and support in exchange for higher standards and accountability...

The D.C. school system is in terrible shape, and it has been for a very long time. And we've got a wonderful new superintendent there who's working very hard with the young mayor there to try...

I love it.

What I'm signing up for next year...

"Only 43 percent of students entering the ninth grade in a D.C. public school graduate within five years, and only 9 percent get a college degree within five years of leaving high school."

-The Atlantic, 10/08

Whoa.