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Praise Helps Redefine Student Roles |
A colleague of mine recommended a book called How to Talk So Kids Can Learn by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish. Even though the book was published the... |
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Clarity Comes After Viewing of 'Bully' |
Like many school districts in the country, Oakland (Calif.) Unified
School District joined an initiative called “The Bully Project,” sponsored
by the... |
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Bathroom Rules to Keep Students Safe |
Last October, the board of the East Aurora (Ill.) School
District took an important step toward protecting the rights of transgendered
students by... |
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Gender Spectrum Illuminated by Schoolyard Game |
At the high school where I teach, we have a game called Trash
Ball. Born out of necessity when we occupied a school site with no field, no
track and... |
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Where Boys Become Men |
Early in the
school year, members of a youth gang came to our Oakland, Calif. campus. Their
target was a young woman from the ninth-grade class. As... |
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Students Rally for Change, Peace |
All over the
nation people strive to answer Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous invocation: “What
are you doing for others?” Many engage in projects to... |
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When a Student Dies |
How does a
school community deal with the violent loss of a student? Unfortunately, this
is a question my school has had to answer too often. Still,... |
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Student Advocates Help Realize a DREAM |
Oct. 8, was
a day of victory for a group of 22 Life Academy students in Oakland, Calif.
They are
part of a 2-year-old advocacy club called “The... |
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Not Only Can Big Boys Cry, They Do |
I decided to
show a short You Tube video clip in class the other day. It’s a montage
of scenes of men crying from various movies complete with cheesy... |
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Online Hate: Unfriend or Speak Up? |
The
morning of the 10th anniversary of 9/11, I logged in to Facebook as I do most
weekend mornings to see the status updates of 200 or so... |
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Hard to Muster Laughs at ‘Bad Teacher’ |
Just when we thought that
public opinion of teachers couldn’t get any worse, a new film, Bad Teacher by the writers of the
television mockumentary,... |
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Exploring Gender Stereotypes Through Dance |
When I took
the opportunity to co-teach a mixed-grade level coed dance class, I expected
some of the boys to be reluctant to participate in the... |
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Change at a ‘Rapid Fire’ Pace |
A group
of talented young poets has emerged at my school, Life
Academy,
over the last three years. They call themselves “Rapid Fire.” When they speak... |
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Often a Teacher, Always a Student |
As a student teacher, my mentor Paula told me that the best teachers were lifelong learners. Following her own wisdom, she took fiddle lessons every... |
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Go Outside, Meet Your Students |
“All these
kids … you must be brave,” said the man in hiking gear.
After a
sunny but cold day on the beach punctuated by a trudge through sandpaper... |
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Making Disability Explicit |
In order to teach tolerance, a teacher must proactively bring in those who are typically left out of the mainstream. With the 2010 release of the... |
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Pedro Noguera’s Tips for Effective Schools |
Oakland
Unified School District is trying to change its image. And well it should since
it has a reputation for mismanaging funds. In 2002... |
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Teens Find Fun, Focus in Summer Programs |
Summer is the most violent
time of year in urban areas. Some cite hotter temperatures,
while others point the finger at out-of-school teenagers. No... |
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Creating Authentic Audiences for Writing Students |
One of the surest ways to motivate students to not only write,
but to write with passion, purpose and power, is to make sure they have an
authentic... |
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Linking Advocacy to English Class |
At the recent California
Association of Teachers of English (CATE) conference in Sacramento, I found
myself surrounded by passionate English teachers... |
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100 Days of School, 100 Days of Bullying |
When you
say the word “bully” most people tend to think of the caricature of a bully.
One of my students described the thinking of this stereotype... |
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Disparities in School Lunch |
If you’ve read To Kill a Mockingbird, you might remember the scene in which Scout beats up Walter Cunningham in the schoolyard. It’s the first day of... |
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Jim Crow Today |
It can be daunting but also amusing to set the context for Harper Lee’s classic To Kill A Mockingbird. If my students thought the... |
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'Teach: Tony Danza' Captures Classroom Reality |
In my household, where my husband and I are both high school English teachers, we generally do not watch movies or TV shows about our profession... |
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In Jail, Pencils Are Weapons |
Today, I opened my classroom door to a surprise.
Diego was back! He put his arm around my shoulder and said, “It’s good to see
you again.”
One of... |
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A Call for Effective, Non-Violent Voices |
Editor’s Note: This post is a follow-up on Jill E. Thomas's Nov. 11 blog
post "The L.A. Riots Echo Loudly in My Classroom." In that post, she... |
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The L.A. Riots Echo Loudly In My Classroom |
My students are too young to remember the 1992 Los Angeles riots. Just four years before their birth, they refer to them as something from “back in... |
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Rosa’s Law Changed Words—Now Let’s Change the Prejudice |
On the rare occasion that I spend time with people who are not educators, it’s inevitable that someone will drop the word “retarded.” The “R-... |
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Getting a Read on Teens Through Anti-Bullying Books |
“The Trouble with Tuck by Theodore Taylor,” I began to tell my
class, “is an important book to me because it was one of the first that I read
again... |
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Building Life-Long Readers One Book at a Time |
Silent
Sustained Reading (SSR) is a staple of many classrooms. At my school it
lives in Advisory, a 50-minute mixed-grade class that balances... |
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Summer School: Punishment or Second Chance? |
This spring, my principal asked who
would be interested in teaching a two-week summer session for our own students.
I found myself saying, “I’ll do... |
