May 20, 2013
by Larry Ferlazzo
1 Comment
Dan Pink has just posted a nice and short video demonstrating the importance of asking good questions.
I’m adding it to….The Best Videos Showing The Importance Of Asking Good Questions.
May 19, 2013
by Larry Ferlazzo
2 Comments
No One Likes To Be Changed is a useful post at The Harvard Review that includes research and examples useful to educational policy issues and the classroom.
Here’s an excerpt:
I’m adding it to The Best Posts & Articles On “Motivating” Students.
May 19, 2013
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments
I’ve written about my frustration with many quotation sites on the Web because they don’t provide their sources. There are some out there that do, and you can find them at The Best Places To Find Quotations On The Web.
I’m adding Quotesome to that list. The quotes have links to their sources, you can search by topic or person, and you can add your own.
May 19, 2013
by Larry Ferlazzo
1 Comment
The Los Angeles Unified School District’s recent vote to ban student suspensions for “willful defiance” — without having a plan in place for alternatives (the Superintendent has four months to develop such a plan) — is a complicated issue. Clearly, out-of-school suspensions are not the ideal way to handle problems. Our school, for instance, has reduced these punishments dramatically by instead using “in-school suspensions” where teachers provide class work for them to do elsewhere on campus. And the relational culture, including conflict resolution, developed by our administrators, hall monitors and teachers are also extremely effective in dealing with discipline issues.
Nevertheless, there still are cases where out-of-school suspensions are used.
I also recognize that they can be and have been used inappropriately in some schools, and that not all schools have a similar relational culture.
I just seems perplexing to me that this ban was approved prior to having an alternative strategy in place, and I wonder how much educator input was solicited prior to the decision.
First, I’ll share links to articles about the ban, and then a commentary by Martha Infante, a very respected teacher in the Los Angeles district (and she’s respected throughout the state, too!). I hope readers will share their own thoughts:
Los Angeles Schools Ban Suspensions for ‘Willful Defiance’ is from Education Week.
LAUSD will no longer suspend students for ‘willful defiance’ is from Ed Source.
L.A. Schools: We Won’t Suspend Kids For Mouthing Off Anymore is from Take Part.
L.A. Unified bans suspension for ‘willful defiance‘ is from The Los Angeles Times.
LA Schools Throw Out Suspensions For ‘Willful Defiance’ is from NPR.
Commentary From Martha Infante:
Martha Infante teaches at L.A. Academy Middle School. Ms. Infante was the 2009 Teacher of the Year for the California Council for Social Studies (Middle Level).
It is the dream again. The one where you’re standing at the front of a classroom and a roomful of defiant students is disobeying your every instruction, laughing at your every command for order. It’s a nightmare actually, and many teachers have it on a recurring basis. I’m sure Freud or any other psychoanalyst would have something to say about the root causes, but I think it boils down to fear. Teachers have an enormous responsibility for the welfare and education of each and every one of their charges. But when it comes down to it, the vast majority of time, teachers are alone in the classroom, outnumbered 35 to 1.
In real life, most would not guess that I suffer from this nightmare as I am one of the stronger presences on my gritty, urban middle school campus. I am a veteran of the curse-outs, pushes, shoves, death threats and punches. Flying doors that smack you in the face? Not me, I keep a three foot distance from the range of doors. Water bottles thrown down the stairs and hitting you smack on the head? Not gonna happen, I always look up before climbing to the second or third stories. And as for suspending students for not bringing pencils or talking back? Well, lets just say the consequences I impose on my students are less desired than suspensions.
Yet I support respecting the discretion of teachers to issue a suspension for willful defiance.
The truth is that over my 20 years as an educator in an urban district I have seen student behavior get worse, not better. Teachers are being asked to take on the roles of counselors, therapists, disciplinarians, and now food servers, as we implement Breakfast n the Classroom next year. Which is fine. I’m up for the challenge.
But don’t take away my tools for behavior modification.
Counselors disappeared years ago. Psychiatric social workers are a luxury most schools can’t afford. Administrators are carrying the largest loads ever, and support staff is severely limited. Budget cuts have left schools with skeleton staffs and the students know it. No one is there to help me. It is my nightmare come to life.
I have many tools at my disposal as a seasoned educator. Even the most defiant of students tones it down when it comes to my classroom. But every now and then you have to show students you can and will remove them from the classroom and even the school if they are unwilling to maintain the integrity of the classroom. I’m not talking about defiance toward me exclusively. It could be a student that won’t stop calling your daughter a female dog, or your son a homosexual. One boy could not stop making sexual remarks in spite of getting a primo counseling spot with our school’s only therapist and the parents were not able to stop him either. So when he got into an argument with a girl and said she needed to be raped, he had to go!
The counseling didn’t work. The parents were ineffective. It’s me, the defiant student, and 34 other children. And now I’m supposed to keep him in the classroom? I do not agree.
Most suspensions I’ve been involved with have to do with other teacher’s students. I have no connection with them, cannot teach them the value system we create in the classroom. These are the students that say F you when you ask them to go to class, or blatantly tell you they are ditching when you ask them where they are supposed to be. Just yesterday I called for assistance on my radio in one such case, and the student laughed all the way to his next ditch spot. What can we do to help students understand how to respect authority? I do not have the answer to that. I think it lays with parenting. I think it has to do with the lack of follow through by burned out teachers who have had to deal with years, decades of troubled students with little support, and certainly no respect. Those kids know they can wear a teacher out and only the crazy ones will hunt you down to give you your consequence.
I believe that removing the right to suspend students for wililful defiance neglects the reality that the role of teachers has changed. I’d give anything to not have to discipline students, but no one else is taking care of that for me. And the truth is that the smartest of the defiant students (and many of them are very smart) will figure it out and take it as an approval of their sometimes horrid behavior. And as this policy is set to start next school year,I hope with my deepest of hopes to be wrong.
May 16, 2013
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments
Social and emotional learning gaining new focus under Common Core is a very useful and interesting article published by Ed Source.
I’m adding it to:
The Best Social Emotional Learning (SEL) Resources
The Most Useful Resources For Implementing Common Core
May 16, 2013
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments
Educators’ Guide to RSS and Google Reader Replacements is another great post by Sue Waters. It’s probably the best review of alternatives that I’ve seen.
I’m adding it to The Best Alternatives To Google Reader Now That It’s Being Shut Down.
May 16, 2013
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments
The Best Multilingual Resources For Parents is a new “The Best” list I just posted over at my other blog, Engaging Parents In School.
You might, or might not, find it useful….
May 16, 2013
by Larry Ferlazzo
3 Comments
It’s that time of the year when new schools are interviewing potential new teachers and, thankfully, the beginning of the economic recovery actually provides some promise after years of tight school budgets.
This list focuses on K-12 jobs — I’ll eventually do a separate list related to overseas ESL/EFL job-seekers.
Here are my recommendations for The Best Sources Of Advice On How To Get A Teaching Job (and feel free to suggest more in the comments):
What Principals Look For In A Prospective Teacher is a column from my Education Week Teacher blog that was published last year.
Principals’ tips for teacher interviews is from Curt Rees.
How to Find Your Dream Teaching Job is by Heather Wolpert-Gawron.
Six Steps to Landing Your First Teaching Job is from the National Education Association.
FAQs About Teachers’ Employment is also from the NEA.
More Tips for Landing that Teacher Job is by Pernille Ripp.
If you found this post useful, you might want to consider subscribing to this blog for free.
You might also want to explore the 1100 other “The Best…” lists I’ve compiled.
May 15, 2013
by Larry Ferlazzo
2 Comments
Photo Credit: Luc De Leeuw via Compfight
As regular readers know, each year I teach a double period ninth-grade English class that often contains a number of very sharp students facing challenges. After just completing two weeks of mind-numbing standardized testing, and with only four weeks of school left, some of those challenges are playing out even more than usual in class.
So, I came up with a strategy that I thought I’d give a try, and decided to first see how it would work with a clique of five boys. I figured if it worked with them, then I’d use it with others — some individually, some in pairs.
I pulled the five out of the class they had during my free period (with the permission of their teacher, of course) and brought them to my room. I told them that I wanted to see how we could improve the atmosphere of our class. I wanted to first tell them three things that I wanted and then they would get a chance to say three things they wanted. Then we would see if we could work out a deal. They agreed to give it a try.
I told them that I wanted:
* to be spoken to respectfully.
* not to have another student try to involve themselves in a discussion I might be having with another student.
* do what I asked them to do the first time I asked.
I then said it was their turn.
The first thing they came up with was wanting to play “Cool Math Games” (a website that, as far as I can tell, has minimally educational math games) if we were at the computer lab and they were done with work. I countered with an offer that if they completed the classwork earlier, and if they finished one section of extra credit advanced work (you can read more about those activities here), I would be okay with them playing Cool Math for the last ten minutes of class. They agreed.
Then I said, “Okay, I agreed to one of the things you wanted. Which one of the three things I wanted are you going to agree to?”
They agreed to speak to me respectfully, and work on not saying everything they might be thinking.
They then came up with two other items that were easy for me to agree to, and they agreed to my remaining two items.
I explained that, of course, we were all human, and sometimes we would forget, or be having a bad day. In that case, I asked, how could we each remind each other in a respectful way. The students came up with the idea of telling me “Don’t eat the marshmallow” (see my previous post on that lesson) and I would say, “Remember our conversation.”
We then all shook on it.
It has seemed to go well so far, and I’m starting to have similar conversations with other students. Who knows how long it will last?
I’d be quite happy with a time-span of four weeks…..
I’m adding this post to My Best Posts On Classroom Management.
May 14, 2013
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments
Here are some useful additions to The Best Posts & Articles On MOOC’s:
Laptop U: Has the future of college moved online? is from The New Yorker.
Higher Education in the Digital Age is by Richard Kahlenberg.
May 13, 2013
by Larry Ferlazzo
2 Comments
The concept of “close reading” has been getting more and more attention lately as the Common Core Standards are being implement.
As Dr. Douglas Fisher explains:
Close reading isn’t in the Common Core State Standards. However, an analysis of the Common Core State Standards really says you’ve got to learn the text well. The Common Core State Standards require that students provide evidence and justification for their answers. The only way we know how students can do this – that they really learn to provide evidence and justification – is if they closely read.
You’ll find a number of related resources in other posts, but I thought it would be useful to start a compilation specifically related to this “close reading” concept. And I hope you’ll contribute more.
Here are some previously published posts that might be useful:
The Best Posts & Articles About Why Book “Leveling” Is A Bad Idea
The Best Resources Documenting The Effectiveness of Free Voluntary Reading
How Reading Strategies Can Increase Student Engagement
Here are my choices for The Best Resources On “Close Reading”:
Closing in on Close Reading is from Educational Leadership.
Close Reading and the CCSS, Part 1 is a video and transcript of Dr. Douglas Fisher. Here’s Part Two.
How Do We Teach Close Reading? is from Teacher 2 Teacher Help.
Common Core – Close Reading is a Pinterest Board from Chelsea Higgins.
What, exactly, is close reading of the text? is by Grant Wiggins.
Tools for Teaching: Developing Active Readers is from Edutopia.
Here’s a sample chapter from Notice and Note, the great book by Kylene Beers and Robert E. Probst.
Grant Wiggins has written a very thorough and helpful post on the topic.
Does Background Knowledge Matter to Reading Comprehension? by Russ Walsh.
Here are some Close Reading sample lessons from Achieve The Core. Thanks to Rita Platt for the tip.
If you found this post useful, you might want to consider subscribing to this blog for free.
You might also want to explore the 1100 other “The Best…” lists I’ve compiled.
May 13, 2013
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments
It’s been pretty hard over the past week to miss the video of Texas student Jeff Bliss publicly evaluating his teacher.
Now, someone has created a great musical remix of what happened (thanks to Scott McLeod for the tip). In this post, I’ve embedded three videos: first, the remix; then the original; and finally, an interview with him.
It’s difficult to determine exactly what goes on in a classroom based on a ninety-second clip and the testimony of a single student. And I suspect all of us have had days when we’ve been less-than-stellar teachers. However, to me, the most telling point of this entire situation is that a student actually videotaped it and put it on YouTube. I think I’m echoing a point made years ago in a post by Alice Mercer — if a teacher has allowed a relationship in the classroom to deteriorate to the point that a student wants to publicly humiliate their instructor, then it’s likely something pretty toxic is going on there.
May 11, 2013
by Larry Ferlazzo
3 Comments
I have just confirmed my schedule for next year (though, of course, it’s not written in stone until the school year begins).
I’ll once again be teaching a combined class of Beginning and Intermediate English Language Learners. As usual, it will be one period of English and another period of Geography.
Of course, I’ll be teaching another year of the International Baccalaureate Theory of Knowledge class. I’ve usually had a number of non-IB Diploma candidates in the class but, this year, I’ve worked even harder to recruit students who might not typically take such an advanced class, so I’ll have even more next year. The mix benefits everyone.
And I’ll be teaching English to two classes of ninth-graders.
Originally, I was going to teach a higher-grade level, my colleague Katie Hull was going to teach ninth-grade, and we were going to do an exciting project of having the older students teach the younger ones many of the life skills lessons found in my books (see The Best Resources On The Value & Practice Of Having Older Students Mentoring Younger Ones).
We’re still doing the project, but the roles have been reversed — now Katie will be teaching the older students, while I’ll be teaching the younger ones. I anticipate writing a lot about our experiment later in 2013 and early 2014.
I’ll be publishing a post soon about some summer writing projects I’ve got up my sleeve but, for now, I’m focusing on finishing the school year and dealing with the task of moving rooms — both Katie and I are moving to another Small Learning Community (see The Best Resources For Learning About Small Learning Communities) that will be emphasizing support to our English Language Learners.
Plus, our annual 100 student trip to San Francisco is coming up in a couple of weeks. May God help us all — especially us chaperones 
!
May 10, 2013
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments
I’ve previously posted about research on the value of doodling and what my classroom practice is on it (see Will Doodling Help Students Learn Better?).
Here’s a new video reinforcing that research and practice:
May 10, 2013
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments
When Helping Hurts is a useful column in today’s New York Times, and it’s useful to both parents and teachers. Here’s an excerpt:
It’s another way of saying the famous “Iron Rule” that governs the community organizing work of the Industrial Areas Foundation, where I worked for many years prior to becoming a teacher:
You might be interested in The Best Sites To Learn About Saul Alinsky.
May 10, 2013
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments
This is definitely one of the most interesting and useful TED videos I’ve seen (it’s actually a from a TEDx event). Marc Chun talks about Diving Into Deeper Learning. Unfortunately, since it’s a TEDx video, and not one from TED, they don’t have a transcript available. But it’s definitely worth watching.
I’m adding it to The Best Resources For Learning About The Concept Of “Transfer.”
May 10, 2013
by Larry Ferlazzo
1 Comment
I’m adding this infographic to The Best Resources To Learn About World Teachers Day:
Source: obizmedia.com via NEA on Pinterest
May 9, 2013
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments
TED Talks just posted Professor Angela Lee Duckworth’s unedited talk from their PBS Special. You can also find the transcript at that link.
I’m adding the video to The Best Resources For Learning About The Importance Of “Grit.”
May 8, 2013
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments
PBS has just put last night’s TED Talks On Education Online. I’ve embedded it below:
Watch TED Talks Education on PBS. See more from TED Talks Education.
Here are the names of some of the presenters and links to some supplemental materials:
Bill Gates spoke about, among other things, his big new $5 billion initiative to videotape teachers. You might find these posts useful:
Videotaping teachers the right way (not the Gates way)
The Best Posts & Articles About Videotaping Teachers In The Classroom
Many of my previous posts about Gates, along with his MET Project.
Gates Foundation Minimizing Great Tools For Helping Teachers Improve Their Craft
Professor Angela Duckworth spoke about “grit.” Check out her work at The Best Resources For Learning About The Importance Of “Grit.”
Geoffrey Canada from the Harlem Children’s Zone. You can find a link to my many posts — both positive and critical — here.
Sir Ken Robinson. Check out a previous post and video titled “You Cannot Make A Plant Grow — You Can Provide The Conditions For Growth.”
You might also be interested in The Best Teacher Resources For “TED Talks” (& Similar Presentations).
May 7, 2013
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments
Education Week is sponsoring a free and potentially very useful Webinar on Wednesday titled Common Core State Standards: Teaching ELA/Literacy to English-Language Learners.
You can read more about it at Lesli A. Maxwell’s excellent Learning The Language blog.
It starts at 3:00 PM Eastern Time, which makes it inaccessible to most of us educators on the West Coast. However, Leslie tells me the entire Webinar will be archived within 24 hours after it’s completed and be available free for viewing on Ed Week’s site.
