We Are Teachers has a bitter sweet post up about the funny things people say to teachers – with appropriate responses.
Here is a sample:
The comment: “Johnny NEVER misbehaves/has trouble paying attention/hits other kids/acts out at home. I wonder what you’re doing in the classroom to make that happen.”
UPDATE: For those who took offense at this graphic know that as I saw it the teachers’ drinking was a result of the cycle, not the cause. I interpreted this graphic as a slag on parents (myself included). If you are a teacher and were offended please accept my apology. If you are a parent and were offended – go volunteer in your local school. Regular readers will know that I have nothing but the highest respect for teachers.
One simple graphic from the always brilliant Jessica Hagy untangles the whole complicated mess.
Nuff said.
Congress finally passed some support for state budgets to make sure there are enough teachers as school opens.
Kind of “yay.” We accomplished this by planning to cut food stamps starting in 2014.
This comic succinctly captures the essence of our national experience since the summer of 2007 when all this kicked into gear. (ht balloon-juice)
Yesterday the minority in the Senate ended the chances that the Extender’s Bill would pass the Senate. While 57 Senators – a clear majority – wanted to do the right thing a determined minority used procedural votes to force mass layoffs of teachers, firefighters, and police across the country (300,000-500,000).
There are rumors that the two sides are still talking – but most analysts say that any action will likely take place after the Summer Recess in mid-Fall.
It isn’t just education that is affected. Over a million people will be dropped from unemployment rolls. As a side benefit Hedge Fund Managers get to keep paying taxes on their multi-million dollar bonuses at a rate (15%) lower than most of the formerly employed teachers and cops (25%).
Education jobs fell for the first time since 1959 while enrollments were increasing. There were only three other years in the past 50 years where education employment shrank – and all of them were during periods of declining enrollment as the baby boom petered out.
Business Week has the details.
The decline was -0.9%, or 121,000 jobs lost. It is also the biggest drop by a wide margin in both percentage and actual jobs (the previous record was 1981 where it was down -0.4% or 29,000 jobs).
Products designed for the classroom must meet the needs of teachers first. If students are the primary users of your instructional materials this may sound a little backwards – but it isn’t. Teachers can make or break your product before a student ever sees it.
Designing for teacher ease-of-use should be a core competency at any education publisher.
Today we tackle issue #4 in the series on selling and marketing to educators.
Fresh hot blog links to education topics here. These are some of the posts that caught my attention recently – enjoy.
Facebook for Teachers. This article is sad – lots of promise and money invested by people who just don’t get it. One district can not support their own social network – it takes hundreds of thousands of users to make these communities vibrant. How about we look at what is actually happening on Facebook for teachers? I Am Teacher – a Facebook plugin from We Are Teachers – already has almost 10,000 active users and over registered 50,000 users.
Video Games Improve Cognitive Skills. The title says it all. Go read about it on Richard Carey’s blog.
My prior post on iTunes and Textbooks started with this iMix. As I mulled the educational implications over I realized that this was exactly how teachers should be sharing instructional materials.
As a musician and music aficionado I listen to a lot of new music. My tastes range across genres – what draws my interest is solid musicianship, great lyrics, and a good tune. Over 2-3 months I probably listen to 200-300 new songs inspired by recommendations from friends, recommendations from iTunes and Pandora, and stuff I hear randomly. Oddly, I find some of the best stuff on political blogs (Juan Luis Guerra below). I rank the songs using iTunes and from the short list of 5 star songs I create a mix to share. I also toss in a couple of old favorites that I haven’t listened to in a while (like Cocker on this mix).
My musical adventures are not typical – but I hope that is why playlists like this are valuable to others. I’ve done the leg work of culling through a lot of new stuff to find the best (for my ears).
A family member – who works in a Texas middle school – forwarded this bit of wit and wisdom to me today.
A teacher dies and goes to Heaven. When she gets there, she meets Peter at the pearly white gates.
Peter says to her, ‘Welcome to Heaven. Let me give you an orientation first.’
By Guest Blogger Randy Wilhelm
Educator’s love the internet but they have valid concerns about using it in the classroom. Thinkronize’s study, “Schools & Generation ‘Net” uncovered compelling insights from nearly 1,000 principals and library media specialists. Relevancy, commercialization, information literacy, instructional validity, and children’s safety were all significant issues. Today we look at 5 ideas that can help you rethink your on-line offerings to fit into today’s classrooms.
1. The Internet is a Valuable Instructional Resource
The Education Business Blog