Elementary Rat

For my own sanity, every time I get a new iteration of my class list, I make new name badges, name writing sheets and name project pages for...

IN THIS CORNER, me.  On a scanty three hours of sleep after an attack of ADHD brain, wearing a disappointingly plain outfit and equipped wit...

I really hate the "teachers need to be held accountable" argument. To what, exactly, are you planning to hold me accountable? ...

About 20% of my students decide they want to be Kindergarten teachers when it comes time to decorate their promograduation sashes.  Scientif...

I didn't get the furniture sorted.  I did get some counters cleared off and I put up light filters on some of the windows.  That was a b...

Charles Blow  of the New York Times  breaks down how children are doing in the United States. The anti-intellectual, offensive and illogic...

I'm leaving at noon.  Or at least by 1.  Definitely.  Absolutely. Today I want to get the furniture sorted so that I have a cohesive s...

1. Kindergarten Enrollment at my school: We've got 71 kids booked for three classes.  Presumably some of those kids will disappear as th...

Gary Rubinstein , a far bigger person than I am, has been writing a series of posts  that are a "debate" (by email) with Whitney ...

Over half the staff of my school spent their Saturday at school, for which they were uncompensated.  Among the chores completed: moving clas...

The biggest reason I am not marching in Washington this weekend is that I go back to work on Monday.  I've been to school several times ...

Run a reduced version of the Bread unit .  I wrote this unit with a first grade teacher who is no longer at my school, and it is too complic...

I have a week of vacation left, six unfunded Donors Choose projects, and arthritis. ADHD fidgeters should not be diagnosed with arthritis....

I try to mix up my classroom design every year.  Two years ago I tried all-child-responsibility, which meant a lot of really low shelves and...

“I can study Vygotsky later,” said Tayo Adeeko, a 24-year-old third-grade teacher at Empower Charter School in Crown Heights. She was referr...

(I  do not link to the Huffington Post , which is the source for this quote.) [SFUSD Superintendent Carlos] Garcia said he thinks AB 11...

Whenever one gets to the brass tacks of charter school enrollment and retention, charter advocates immediately point out that charter school...

I often take umbrage with Chronicle stories because I find their framing biased.  For instance, their political reporting on the debt limit ...

We use a big chunk of our site budget to buy mental health support at my site.  We are one of the District's schools in a partnership wi...

No. It means that fewer of those of us still employed join you. I am not a giant fan of the current system of teacher layoffs, because...

I was absolutely supposed to: laminating several sets of flash cards for long-term viability , mapping out where the furniture goes this y...

Tomorrow will be the first day I go to school to get ready for the upcoming year.  (I did one day in early June, but that was not targeted t...

No matter how many obstacles are removed from the charter school path,  somehow failures abound. Here we have an extremely well-connected,...

The next politician, pundit, deformer or school official to worry about the technology gap and students unprepared for the glorious global c...

There is nothing in AB114 that would compel districts to hire back teachers currently laid off.  If you are a currently employed teacher, yo...

Here's an example from the New York Times: By then, Matthew was throwing up most mornings and asking his mother if he was going to be...

Having comment-threaded with any number of pro-charter, pro-reform types, I think I've discovered their primary strategies for debate.  ...

Since I've been teaching for awhile, I've been able to experiment with lots of different toys and games.  Some haven't worked ou...

It's amazing how much really simple, obvious stuff is not so obvious when you are actually, you know, teaching.  It's like the const...

Yes, it is okay for teachers to have feather extensions.  A member of our afterschool program does hair bling and feathers, so teachers at m...