Date+Sept+12

2-3:50

DISCUSSION: 1. Hole and McEntee. "Reflection Is at the Heart of Practice"

Question: How do teachers, working alone, escape bias in their reflections?


 * See controversy over Ruby Payne's work: A Framework for Understanding Poverty. HERE

2. Ducharme. "The Great Teacher Question: Beyond Competencies."

Question: Do teachers who teach student holistically inadvertently raise their test scores?


 * See Malcomb Gladwell's New Yorker article comparing the search for good teachers and good quarterbacks. HERE

3. Mawhinney and Sagen. "The Power of Personal Relationships"

Question: How do we maintain respect and care while not bending rules?

See Cline, Foster and Jim Fay. Love and Logic resources. HERE

4, 5 & 6 Baldacci "Why New Teachers Leave" Johnson "...And Why New Teachers Stay" Giroux "Teachers as Transformative Intellectuals"

How do your schools measure up? To what extent does your CT (and other teachers you encountered):

  With any extra time, return to the first several articles asking to what extent your CT  
 * receive support from administration (Baldacci 20)
 * demonstrate optimism about doing job well (Baldacci 22, Johnson 25)
 * receive support and give support to colleagues (Baldacci 28)
 * have supplies that he/she needs (Baldacci 28)
 * implement a given curricula or critically evaluate it (Giroux 35)
 * act like an intellectual or a specialized technician (Giroux 36-39)
 * make changes to given curriculum (Giroux 39)
 * make changes to school, community, society (Giroux 39)
 * love questions and risk taking rather than answers (Ducharme 8 & 10)
 * demonstrate knowledge and commitment to some endeavor or to beauty (Ducharme 9)
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">seem at home in the world (Ducharme 11)
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">know students and allow them to know him/her (Mawhinney and Sagen 14)
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">listen carefully with empathy (Mawhinney and Sagen 15)
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">treat students with respect (Mawhinney and Sagen 15)
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">use humor to put students at ease (not poking fun) (Mawhinney and Sagen 16)