Elementary Rat

In SFUSD, equity  means that it's better to lay off 40% of the teachers at your high-needs school than laying off 16% of the teachers at...

Based on the Board agenda, I am going to be laid off to protect less-senior teachers at "zone" schools. Non-zone schools that ar...

Dear Various Departments, A SFUSD procedure  is not necessarily synonymous with state and/or federal law . While we might generally prefer...

Tomorrow there is no school in SFUSD. As a reminder, while teachers are not working tomorrow, they will not be paid, either.  This is the ...

Yet another  way charter schools work to manage their student load in ways actual public schools cannot: enforcing their own Kindergarten en...

It ends up my Resident is soloing on Valentine's Day, which is a pretty good idea, I think: celebration-management is important and not ...

It's time to nominate teachers for the Mayor's  Teacher of the Month  Award! Of course, 826 Valencia  also has a nifty TotM award.

So someone asked me the total cash amount of the various grants and whatnot I've done over the last five years (which is how long I'...

Our school has mice, regular ant infestations, encapsulated asbestos, and leaded pipes that require daily flushing.  It also has certain sys...

QUERY: Is it preferable to have catchy Kindergarten songs stuck in one's head, or totally Kindergarten-verboten songs stuck in one's...

Teach a primary school for a few years, and people begin to make certain conclusions about you: you own puff-painted clothing; all your s...

I make a monthly donation to a project at  Donors Choose  to support my fellow teachers.  I know several other teachers who do the same. T...

Chris Christie*: “We cannot ask parents to accept failure in teachers when their children’s lives hang in the balance.” I couldn't a...

Our 100 Day annual snack varies by where I manage to go shopping, but the deal is as follows: There are nine different items, of which eac...

So what exactly is a bad school ?  Does it beat you up and steal your lunch money?  Exchange emails about the stupid investors buying their ...

Barring major technical difficulties, Team Kindergarten will submit its Fund for Teachers grant application today.  Writing it was really di...

Plans: Make 100 day necklaces using 10 groups of 10 pony beads. Make 100 day trail mix, 10 groups of 10 snack items. Make 100 day pictur...

...erk, two days in a row of being irritated with the district and i'm pretty sore, having upped weights or reps for a whole mess of dif...

Good News: Some generous person or organization funded all the Donors Choose projects in SFUSD today.  I got two, one a biggie for recess e...

Superintendent Garcia has been busy letting the media know that  layoffs are imminent .  I suppose we don't have any of those truth vigi...

It's the rain, I think.  Also the football: all good bus routes begin near Candlestick, and either you get out before the game or you st...

I like teaching about color, light, and color theory in Kindergarten for many reasons, but definitely the art/science projects that come out...

Sometimes it's so easy to see how systems meant to help go bad.  Some of it is the strange exponential brew of unrelated line items that...

That is an important skill for whenever the New York Times  goes in for one of its "Room for Debates" on teachers.  The questions ...

You know, I don't think Jerry Brown really gets school funding at all.  Also, I think someone needs to show him some post-napalm picture...

Sometimes doing what's best for children means that you need to upset a lot of contented panels and people at the District Office. Gue...

Man, the Governor loves K-14 education so much!  Children are photogenic, after all. Sadly, the love is not backed up by the numbers: his ...

This week, I resolve to keep reminding myself that people have good intentions. Superhuman work was done to arrange a necessary all-hands-...

The triennial technology survey is some kind of state requirement, I think, because I've been doing them for years.  They used to be the...

Today I received in the mail a check for art supplies from an out-of-state foundation - a three digit check.  In the mail!  From strangers! ...