Friday, June 22, 2012 has been designated as “Take Your Dog to Work Day”. It is said that allowing employees to bring their pet to work can result in increased productivity, satisfaction, morale, and camaraderie.
Continue reading ““Take Your Dog to Work” Day–Today and Every Day at West Wind”
In my second year as a doctoral student, I worked with a professor who was finishing his first book. Among my many tasks was to help him write footnotes for his first chapter. This is how I was introduced to Rosina Lippi-Green’s English with an Accent: Language, Ideology and Discrimination in the United States (1997). Although a bit dated, many of the points she makes are still salient as we consider creating and implementing effective policies to assist English Language Learners (ELLs). Continue reading “The Burden of Understanding: The Challenge for English Language Learners”
Yesterday was the last day of school for my first grade son. He came home with a backpack full of journals filled with writing, unsharpened pencils, jackets I thought were gone forever, and a bag of candy from his teacher. His younger sister will go to Kindergarten in the fall and she is full of questions about school. She asked him what the best thing about first grade is. His reply made me both smile and frown as comments from older brothers to younger sisters often do. He said, “My teacher, of course. She is cool and nice. But she is going to a new school, so she won’t be your teacher.” My daughter looked a bit sad, but then he said, “You know school is a nice place to go. There’s recess and P.E. and music. And when you do have to learn stuff the teachers make it fun, so you don’t want to leave. Plus you get rewards if you are good. I can show you how to act good.” I am not sure what exactly that means, but I am choosing to be proud of it anyway. Continue reading “School’s Out for the Summer!”
Thank you, Deborah Meier, for being able and willing to reveal your own racism! As Meier tells Diane Ravitch in the blog they write to each other and willingly share with the world:
I think I have fallen into the trap, too, when pointing out that the white poor face many of the same obstacles that the black and Hispanic poor do. I, too, have been urging a more colorblind attack on our school system’s miseducational policies. Tactically, it might have seemed wise, but factually, it’s nonsense. Continue reading “The New Jim Crow”
I recently observed a conference room full of superintendents sitting in complete silence as they pondered a challenging question, “Should teachers be required to participate in professional learning?” Richard Elmore posed this question, and after what seemed like an uncomfortable amount of wait-time, a superintendent responded in an uncertain voice, “Yes.” The audience was engaged in learning how to improve student learning through the implementation of the Instructional Rounds approach and Elmore was pressing them to think about how to advance reforms that are likely to make a difference in improving student learning. Continue reading “Should Professional Learning be Required?”
As a company passionate about imagining and enacting a public school system that overcomes historic and persistent inequities, you might think that celebrating national cultural heritage months is a standard staff activity for us. It is not.
Don’t get me wrong. The West Wind staff agrees that these observances are important. Our dilemma is, what is what are we recognizing? What does it mean to celebrate groups based on certain shared physical or genetic attributes? When we try to decide we find ourselves with all sorts of questions: Which cultural heritage months do we observe? Which cultural/social attributes count: Race? Ethnicity? Gender? Is it an observation or celebration and what action do we take to observe or celebrate? By making these observances are we taking part in something that separates specific groups from the whole of American history and experience? Continue reading “Observing Cultural Heritage Months: Not a Simple Decision”
“Whatever we do to strengthen and elevate the teaching profession, we should bear in mind that reforms that fail to heed the voice of teachers are doomed.” Secretary Duncan
West Wind took to Twitter (using the below hashtag) to thank some of the influential teachers in our lives. It was often difficult to come up with just one!
Presented by Circe Stumbo and Deanna Hill at the 2012 AERA Annual Meeting in Vancouver, BC. Written by Circe, Deanna, and Bonnie Riggan
Library image (cc) Amanda Tipton
On Tuesday, April 3, West Wind Education Policy, Inc. and the Bijou Theatre at the University of Iowa co-hosted a screening of the American Teacher, a documentary produced by the Teacher Salary Project. The Project aims to raise awareness of teacher working conditions in America, including salary, hours, and respect for the profession. The film’s producers include Ninive Caligari, co-founder of the 826 National writing programs and a former classroom teacher who also co-authored the book Teachers Have It Easy: The Big Sacrifices and Small Salaries of America’s Teachers with co-producer of the documentary Dave Eggers, best known for his 2000 book, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. The film is directed by Vanessa Roth, who won an Academy Award for Freeheld, and narrated by actor Matt Damon. Continue reading “West Wind Hosts Screening of the American Teacher Documentary”
“College- and career-readiness” has become a “new” goal for education reformers nationally. (I put “new” in quotation marks, because this is not a particularly new idea or debate, though certainly the term “college- and career-readiness” is new.) The aspiration of many reformers is that each and every young person will graduate high school prepared to enter some kind of post-secondary learning environment, as well as to enter a career, which would provide graduates with all sorts of very real opportunities. At West Wind, we are working with the National High School Center on several tools that will be available to state leaders working to make sense of the multitude of improvements needed to ensure college- and career-readiness for all students. Continue reading ““College- and Career-Readiness” Calls for High School Transformation”