Totally 3rd Grade Blog

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Statement:

We refuse to pay for the crisis created by the 1%. We refuse to accept the dismantling of our schools and universities, while the banks and corporations make record profits. We refuse to accept educational re-segregation, massive tuition increases, outrageous student debt, and increasing privatization and corporatization.

We call on all students, teachers, workers, and parents from all levels of education —pre-K-12 through higher education in public and private institutions— and all Occupy assemblies, labor unions, and organizations of oppressed communities, to mobilize on March 1st, 2012 across the country to tell those in power: The resources exist for high-quality education for all. If we make the rich and the corporations pay we can reverse the budget cuts, tuition hikes, and attacks on job security, and fully fund public education and social services.

We have the momentum, the numbers, and the determination to win. Education is not for sale. Let’s take back our schools. Let’s make history.

Invite your friends to the March 1, 2012 Facebook event:https://www.facebook.com/events/206613039422535/

Thursday 26 January 2012
by: Marion Brady, Truthout | Op-Ed

Imagine the present corporately promoted education reform effort as a truck, its tires nearly flat from the weight of the many unexamined assumptions it carries.

On board: An assumption that punishment and rewards effectively motivate; that machines can measure the quality of human thought; that learning is hard, unpleasant work; that what the young need to know is some agreed-upon, standard body of knowledge; that doing more rigorously what we’ve always done will raise test scores; that teacher talk and textbook text can teach complex ideas; that … well, you get the idea.

Misdiagnosing the Main Problem

Right now, the biggest, heaviest assumption on the reform truck has it that, when the Common Core State Standards Initiative is complete – when somebody has decided exactly what every kid in every state is supposed to know in every school subject at every grade level – the education reform truck will take off like gangbusters.

It won’t. If all the reformers’ flawed assumptions are corrected, but the traditional math-science-language-arts-social-studies “core curriculum” remains the main organizer of knowledge, the truck may creep forward a few inches, but it won’t take the young where they need to go if we care about societal survival. The mess from this generation’s political paralysis and refusal to address looming problems can’t be cleaned up using the same education that helped create it. Continue reading »

Regular visitors to this site know that my wife, Cara, is a veteran 3rd and 4th grade teacher. As a seasoned pro, she’s often called upon to train both student teachers and other less experienced educators.

One of the early realizations that these newbies have is that teaching takes a ton of planning and it also requires access to a huge variety of resources so that the needs of individual students can be met.

One way that she can help educators who will never have the privilege of working directly under her supervision is to simply share her current resources via the Internet.

MrsMace.com is her personal website and it contains links to resources that she’s currently using in her classroom.  These change pretty often and they’re kept up-to-date.  They’re not stale and you’ll rarely find a broken link.

Organized and easy to scan, this site might be a good starting point for any lesson plans that need a little “something” to make them come alive.

Despite its name, Multiplication.com is an interactive mathematics website that offers free, self correcting quizzes for students studying multiplication, division, addition or subtraction.

Instant grade feedback and ease of use are the primary reasons to utilize this site, but other features like a test timer and  on-demand printing  are also handy (if you need a hard copy of a student’s success or lack of it).

For a purely traditional application, quizzes can be printed in advance although I personally don’t see the need to waste paper for such exercises.

Easy to navigate, free to use and fairly complete, Multiplication.com is a site worth bookmarking for all basic mathematics skills training.

I invite you to take a look and help us explain why educators and other public employees are the enemy?

This has been a rough week.

I don’t understand – why am I the enemy?

I put myself though college – twice, bachelor’s and master’s – while my kids were little.  I worked full time, went to school at night, paid out of pocket, never got a bridge card or unemployment , ADC or welfare.

I get up and go to work every morning.  I pay a percentage of my healthcare and even pay extra to have my husband covered.  I pay into my retirement fund.

I pay taxes – income tax, property tax, school tax, sales tax, and registration fees on the American cars I’ve always owned.

I had nothing to do with Wall Street scandals or the housing bubble, and my house is now worth half of what I paid for it, but I still pay my mortgage.  No short sales, no foreclosures, no sticking it to the banks and taxpayers.

Why am I the enemy?

[Is it] Because I have worked hard without entitlement programs to get two degrees and a decent job?

No CEO bonuses here.  Not even a UAW bonus.

My kids had to take out student loans for college too – with 10% per year tuition hikes.   Because Mom and Dad go to work every day, we’re too “rich” to get handouts.

Why am I the enemy again?

[Is it] Because my job involves teaching children to read and write and [to] understand math and science, which can’t possibly be complex or demanding?

[Is it] Because I provide Band-Aids and pencils and Kleenex and calculators, and wipe away tears and tell my students that yes, they can master fractions if they will just come in early or stay late with me and I’ll help them?

[Is it] Because I use everything I’ve learned about brain research in graduate classes to make their learning process natural and fun and exciting, to the point where they think my class is easy? Because I treat them as individuals, and manage to challenge kids who read at a 12th grade level, while differentiating for kids who read at a 2nd grade level, all at the same time?  Is that why I’m the enemy?

[Is it] Because everyone’s been in a classroom and it seems so easy to run one?  Is that why I’m the enemy?   (Does getting your oil changed at Jiffy Lube regularly mean you could design combustion engines as well as the engineers at Ford?)

I’ve always worked hard and paid my own way, and yes, I got an A in calculus and I can explain redox reactions and Newtonian physics to middle schoolers.

But I’ve never made a fortune, never gotten [sic] a bonus or a company car or cell phone or expense account or incentive trip to the Bahamas.

I just work with kids every day.  Whoever shows up – hungry, sad, tired, bouncing off the walls – I work with them.  I teach them.  They know more when they leave my classroom than they did when they came in, every day.

But I’m the enemy.

Why is that again?

Please explain it to me.