Elementary Rat

I am not enthusiastic about the CORE waiver.  I recognize the CORE districts believe their stance is revolutionary, but what the waiver ado...

Today I am deciding if I am keeping two or three silkie chicks.  I have been spending  a lot of time perusing  this thread at Backyard Chick...

I just found out that motion sickness can endure for a few days after the event that caused it. In my case, the trigger was our last field...

So my spraddle-legged chick lost the splay after two physical therapy sessions and has been renamed Baby Fave (from Baby Splay).  Collective...

Sooooooo I'm moving to a different school next year.  It's another high-needs school, but its particular needs are somewhat differen...

I don't get why SFUSD is proposing spending $30,000 buying ten Teach for Americans for the next school year.  SFUSD is a popular distric...

Hatch Count: Seven healthy chicks in a variety of cool, fluffy colors.  (They are all silkies). One has a splayed leg.  I'm 99% this w...

(h/t  Diane Ravitch .) Shorter  coalition of education reform organizations masquerading as civil rights groups :  If the Department of Ed...

ETA: Two chicks are fully hatched and two more were actively unzipping when I left today at 6pm.  Fingers crossed for happy living chicks dr...

Shorter New York Times : Parents need to stop freaking out about these Common Core tests.  If we don't fail more children today, how wil...

In California, Kindergarten isn't mandatory.  If parents so desire, children need not be enrolled until first grade. Despite the incre...

...Or, The Things I Think About While Waiting for the Bus. All of these can be sung (more or less) to the tune of "London Bridge...

I'm not at school today (doctor's appointment), but I went in to set twenty four silkie eggs in the new, fancy, donor-provided  incu...

This morning I read the "California Office to Reform Education" No Child Left Behind waiver request.  It is available  here . It...

Edited to add: I just saw this  accountability rubric for Bill Gates .  It is a wonderful start to sharing the responsibilities more broadly...

Self, It is bad time management to spend eight weekday morning minutes drafting a comment to a New York Times article, no matter how silly...

I meant to read the "CORE" districts' waiver application this week, but I got distracted by the indictments coming out of Atl...

NB: I am not a new teacher. For the last three years, I have had a almost full-time student teacher in my classroom.  They all purport to ...

During the Amazing Cape Interlude of 2013, a significant percentage of my class started to use long vowel spelling patterns  - specifically,...

The writing unit we are working on presently is information writing, and the framing is that you are writing to teach somebody about somethi...

I am rereading Tested , which always reminds me how very little rigorous testing has done for rigorous learning.  (It also makes me really h...

The District's K, 6th, and 9th placement letters were to be mailed out on Friday, which would mean that they would start showing up in m...

This week alone, we have capes (the world's gaudiest, featuring both glitter paint and fake jewels) insta-snow sprouting seeds tad...

I must hand it to the District: this year's preliminary budget allocations are presented in an easy to read, clear format with tables  t...

Yesterday I had benchmark reports for each child in my class, comparing their performance to some benchmarks set by persons unknown for the ...

Philadelphia Public Schools Superintendent William Hite   wants you to know how much he values the hard work and professionalism of his teac...

My students are really into two things right now: This book; Love. It is kind of a weird combination but pretty fun.

ETA: I am trying to go all BEST INTENTIONS on this.  I mean,  we DO need to be real about the opportunity gap.  And we DO have a pretty obvi...

Kindergartners are in general not aware of the time on the clock.  They know the structure of the day, what happens when, and so on, but not...

Conference week is always a little strange.  The children are startled by the early dismissal ("Why are we leaving?  We are not playing...