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Author Archives: schooldog
Schools and Politics: Reflections on the Occupy Movement and Teachers
Intuitively the conditions of economic imbalance that have spawned the Occupy movement and the condition of school bureaucratic inertia have similarities worth taking a look at. Currently both systems, our schools and our economy as a whole, are dysfunctional, or … Continue reading
School Bureaucracy: Teacher Rumblings
Many of my stories of bureaucracy have involved my own experience as a counselor, together with my history as a teacher, though I have ample reason for believing my emotional experience of a school bureaucracy is not unique. Recent rumblings … Continue reading
School Bureaucracy: More Tales from the Trenches, Some Retrenchment
Last week I posted a tale in which rigid administrative decisions conflicted with what seemed to be a more flexible idea to give more students a chance to make up credits they had previously failed, and so have a better … Continue reading
School Bureaucracy: More Tales From the Trenches
Summary: A simple tale of a credit retrieval plan provides a thematic setting for structure versus flexibility in school decision making. Kids fail classes mostly because they simply do not do the work, and thereby reveal the whole panoply of … Continue reading
School Bureaucracy: Hierarchy vs. Collegiality
Summary: Further thoughts on hierarchical versus collegial styles in school administration. Having had time to reflect on my post of 10/10/11, School Bureaucracy: A Comparison of Superintendent Styles, a couple more remarks occur to me. Briefly, in an article in … Continue reading
School Bureaucracy and Bob Marley: Redemption Song
I ride to work this morning. I think about bureaucratic rigidities, this straight jacketing of human responses, the numerous menial indignities and disrespect integral to daily life in schools, not the insults of person to person, but the anonymous slings … Continue reading
Schools and Culture: Basic Skills and the Global Economy
Summary: Though we may be making grudging progress on the basic skills of reading, writing, and math, a recent article by Thomas Friedman begs the question, when we will finally be proficient in those basic skills areas, will the train … Continue reading
School Bureaucracy: A Comparison of Superintendent Styles
I recommend to you an article in the recent June Atlantic magazine written by Joel Klein, former Chancellor of the New York City Public Schools, about his efforts to reform the school system (“Scenes From the Class Struggle”). Mr. Klein … Continue reading
Teaching/Learning Lexicon: “Education” as Cultural Artifact
Today I find myself meditating on the word “education”. In some ways I avoid a more comprehensive set of topics that I will get around to, I suppose. But also a workshop earlier today and an article read this evening … Continue reading
Teaching/Learning Lexicon: “Explain” and “Guide”
Summary: This post extends the “Lexicon” of teaching and learning introduced 8/23/11. It may be useful to review that post before diving into what follows….. Here be the introductory paragraph from the 8/23/11 post, which sets the groundwork for this … Continue reading
Posted in A teaching/learning lexicon
Tagged guide students, introduce new material, learning, teaching
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schooldog 