1. See my Mrs. Puglisi's 100 National Standards
    Join our Facebook page

    I just read a nice editorial about HOW RELIEVED a newspaper is if we have National Standards.
    In the New York Times, you can read it here.
    Finally, it said, as if stranded in the desert seeing at the very last moment of possibility the solution to their thirst there at the oasis on the horizon. And like that, it's probably a mirage.
    At least this writer isn't aware how much we are and have been standards driven in the 30 some years I've been working in the field. But it must feel more "right" if the nation says "knows the 50 states" or "understands separation of church and state" or more importantly "understands the role of the free press in democracy." Yeah, well, national control, now that's a cheering thought, so much works so well once that gets going.

    My mom had printed out the commentary and before you knew it, I read the thing.

    For months I've tried not to read too much she handed over fearing it might contain yet another blow. Being a teacher right now is open season. I believe they expanded the season.
    I work in an Underperforming school, in some very difficult poverty, and therefore the Secretary of Education and my President may well label me "bad." Neat. That's the reality, among many now sadly. My close friend and partner teacher continually invites this National leadership to her classroom. To spend real time, and then maybe open awareness, dialog and learn about the realities. So far, no helicopter on the lawn.

    Last night I began thinking about my own "standards" what I'd wish for children.
    What I OFTEN do not see. But we aren't allowed to talk about that. And all too often as teachers we have been labeled if we did talk, about that anyway. Labeled as excuse makers. But just the same I'd like to see these things as standard.
    I know that's not what's being talked about. Still, it's what I assert matters "nationally."

    What I'd wish for the children I work with is this kind of bottom line. A set of standards. According to the best theory we have our not attending to these underpinnings of care and security prevent educational, personal, community health, well being, and stunt normal development. But that's not as easy as saying the teacher is bad. Not as target ready. Rather than fire, you might have to approach the entire situation by building good facilities, launching into community health, figuring out how to provide work, you might have to build a butterfly pavilion in every community, imagine, or cough up some art supplies, time, you might need to drive where I drive and really in-depth and individually look at things.

    So Today, before I do other things that I need to do, I'm going to list my standards:

    1. All children should know love.

    2. All children should know that they have a bed to sleep in tonight, and next week, and for their life.

    3. All children should have adequate, even delicious food, and know all about their food.

    4. All children should have support within the walls of their homes.

    5. All children should have the experience of play.

    6. All children should know nature, value nature, interact within nature, and be in families that have some capacity to do the same.

    7. All children should know, have, and be able to be friends.

    8. All children should have clothes to wear that help keep them warm, and expresses their beauty.

    9. All children should feel that their family is accepted, and is of value.

    10. All children should learn language, learn to speak by finding their world one that enjoys communication, the more languages that they know the more broadened the understanding.

    11. All children should have health and DENTAL care that their families are not fearful about, or simply can't afford or have, and know illness cannot bankrupt them. They need health care that attends to their well being.

    12. All children should be regarded as potentially, and individually, and instantly a part of whatever cosmic beauty, goodness,whatever we wish to call it, that exists and as such is the reason we all live with hope and possibility.

    13. All children should be permitted to listen to adults that are permitted to think.

    14. All children should be assured of schools, fair schools, schools where we do not reinforce unfair notions that already existed at birth, like if your family "has more" or lives on some piece of real estate or is somehow smarter or edging out another, then your school will be better. This unfortunately underpins the current national policy. That even includes the President. Whoever they are every child deserves a very nice school. Not a me, then everyone else educational model. (Check out Finland)

    15. All children should have books. Libraries are great.

    16. All children should have toys, but maybe ones parents make as well as buy.

    17. All children should have parents, family, neighbors, mentors that make things.

    18. All children should have systems at work within their lives that build healthy communities seeing them as the reason the community exists.

    19. All children should have adults that can cooperate, hear one another, resolve conflict, have the capacity to demonstrate love, attention, concern, solutions, turn taking, deference.

    20. All children should have paper, pencils, crayons, scissors, sprinkles, cookies, cups,cans, materials, glue, paste, making and doing.

    21. All children should have adequate sleep and rest.

    22. All children should have music. Every form, in utero on, to listen and sing to, in choir, to play, as a part of life. As a part of study.

    23. All children should be involved in learning projects.

    24. All children should know transportation systems to get them around safely.

    25. All children should enjoy celebrations, the most important at least once per year a celebration of that child and their value to our life.

    26. All children should begin the process of literacy not as a race but as a right, a joy, an exploration, and a normal function.

    27. All children should enter school believing and maintaining as long as possible a joy in learning, and a belief in self as not "behind", not labeled, not seen as less.

    28. All children should experience lives without bullies, and when there are bullies, teasing, cruelty, be able to easily find the resources, the support, the fairness to have access to help. To be heard.

    29. All children should know technology.

    30. All children should be given opportunities to demonstrate understandings.

    31. All children should learn within family and school to cook and care for their food.

    32. All children should be served food at school that is interesting, fresh, well made, delicious and not a frozen, re-baked, cultural wasteland.

    33. All children should be allowed to respect, care about, and return to teachers as important to their lives. They should know Mrs. P may well be in the same school in her room waiting 20 years later to see you again!

    34. All children should have time with the adults that conceived them. Daycare should be an option that is last on the list.

    35. All children should be allowed comfortable school furniture. Very comfortable.

    36. All children should do more each day in a school than they sit, or rarely be engaged in passive workbooking.

    37. All children should be educated in reasonable, perhaps even outrageously small groups, so that each child can and does get the care they need. No more than 15.

    38. Children should have opportunities to draw, color, illustrate, print make, dye, batik, sketch, paste, cut, collage, design, sparkle, explore, respond within art so that they have experienced quality materials and competent artists actively. Real papers, real crayolas, real inks, paints, that allow them to become human through art. And not bought by their underpaid teacher.

    39. All children need to hear the big pictures, even when we are still engaged in understanding the big pictures.

    40. All children should learn about their brain, body, systems, and how they work.

    41. All children should see the differences in cultures, people, societies as opportunities to become aware and to be amazed.

    42. All children should find mathematics from the time they hold the concept of three, until they are fully grown, as a part of everything we do, that mathematics has history, context, thought, theory and that they can find themselves perfectly a part of the understandings of this within its forms and functions. Male or female, rich or poor. (I'm pleased this worked out to be number 42)

    43. All children should learn to observe, should learn this within natural settings.

    44. All children should be engaged in science.

    45. All children should know animals, their care, to care for animals, support, raise and love them and understand as well the cycle of life.

    46. All children should know schools that support all of the above, and fight for these things ahead of anything else.

    47. All children should run on beaches, in grass, have playgrounds, feel forest floors, fly kites, gather leaves, cross streets safely, visit fire stations, meet the police in nice days to learn about hard jobs with the ability to ask them about their work, go to groceries, learn about money, see movies, roll down hills, sled, walk by crocus, talk to grandmas and grandpas, collect and recycle, play cards, take turns, have dice, play Candyland, do dance, gymnastics, try waterslides, learn swimming safety, go to farms, pet animals, cut pumpkins, smell pine, wash the floor with a friend, have chores, taste baked bread, knead dough, water plants, grow seeds, take care of fish, walk in lines, put on shows, sing with friends, flop on the floor, use blocks, without feeling anything but how good all of that feels.

    48. All children should develop constructs of learning that set and achieve goals, with the child involved.

    49. All children should be read to and start to read in a lap in a house or a home.

    50. All children should be cleaned, bathed, cared for as if they were a joy.

    51. All children should have shoes.

    52. All children should have coats and sweaters, gloves, hats and people that care whether or not they are wearing them or have them. And possibly make them for them.

    53. All children should have rules, limits, safety nets, systems, understandable patterns, routines, mentors, and those that love them well enough to have flexibility and judgment in using them ahead of rigidity and power.

    54. Children should be able to learn about work.

    55. Children should learn about how their society functions in terms of money, jobs, labor, roles, learning of others and their situations and within something hard to define, with open minds, with introduction of the complexity in society, the stratification.

    56. All children should feel that their family has capacity, intelligence, worth and intrinsic value.

    57. All children should sometimes ask and receive.

    58. All children should sometimes cope with a no.

    59. All children should have sharing time, if possible far longer than adults teaching them want to tolerate.

    60. All children should be allowed to wash their hands before eating, after play times as a normal experience.

    61. All children should attend schools, live in houses with adequate facilities to know a toilet, a bath, a way to clean clothes and to enjoy being clean.

    62. All children should live in a world where if mental illness affects the family there are ways to have, find, sustain help for them, and not drown.

    63. All children should have bandaids, both the real thing and the metaphorical kind. To heal.

    64. All children should be able to hear stories of kith and kin, hear other children's story, and grow within structures that value these experiences of "our story" above all else.

    65. All children should move in dance.

    66. All children should know sport.

    67. All children should watch Reading Rainbows, once per week well through 8th grade.

    68. All children should learn to build a fire, how to use a compass, how to set up a tent, ways to safely do the things that ensure our survival, taught in ways that don't frighten, but do allow them confidences and maturation. Camp, they should get to go to camp and ALL children need a trip to the nations capitol and to museums.

    69. All children should skip a stone over a pond, catch and cook a fish, throw back more than they catch, know snow, understand seasons, begin to feel the earth under their feet, be taught the earth's movement, time, the calendaring systems with contexts that engage them fully in experiential learning.

    70. All children should make large sidewalk drawings in chalk.

    71. All children should make presentations, displays, have fairs and experiences to present to families that come, watch, interact, appreciate and value as community experience.

    72. All children should learn about feelings.

    73. All children should make, have, use puppets, experience drama and plays.

    74. All children should find that they are valued for their opinion, and asked why, and expected to be heard as well as listen to another.

    75. All children should have literacy as a foundational right, have books be the center of educational experiences, find that what they read, experience within words to be valued as highly as possible.

    76. All children need access and understanding of history, time-lines, historical figures, historical perspectives, historical understanding of things we have learned from both our successes, but also our mistakes.

    77. All children should write, read and engage with poetry.

    78. All children should respect their own learning, and understand that their achievements help them individually to evolve, not to better over others, but to become more fully alive. And thus of value to others.

    79. All children should learn about the systems of religion, philosophy, schools of thought.

    80. All children should learn about death, in caring ways we should allow them to develop their understandings so they are not paralyzed by both their fears, but the realities they will face.

    81. All children should have a backpack.

    82. All children should look forward to each day.

    83. All children should be allowed to wear hats. Sunglasses too.

    84. All children should have someplace to do their homework, and someone that cares to talk about it with them.

    85. All children should find their talents and learn to use their strengths understanding as well their weaknesses.

    86. All children should laugh.

    87. All children should watch the sky. Value weather, learn about the earth, be engaged in the atmosphere, understand water tables, be aware of how these systems work.

    88. All children should learn to answer a phone, safely , and intelligently.

    89. All children should write, in a multiplicity of ways, all day and as a part of understanding, as a tool.

    90. All children should one day look up in their classrooms and rather than seeing an authority in the "watch" their teacher mode, see a President or an Ed Secretary or other important folk in looking at all the things they are doing, valuing their learning, finding within that community things to see as right in their learning.

    91. All children should take turns and know they will have a turn.

    92. All children should understand that if they do work, try, show themselves to be willing to learn, make mistakes and process them, that they can enter into fields they choose, that no door is closed because they are not rich, they should understand careers and opportunities and their roles, as well as community roles, in seeing them into futures.It should not be a mystery.

    93. All children when they fall, need a helping hand.

    94. All children should feel that they work within dynamics that see success over failure.

    95. All children should know the warmth of a heater, the light of a bulb, the luxury of air conditioning in rooms over 80. All children should see the value in those comforts and fully understand how that is provided to them.

    96. All children should get gifts.

    97. All children should make and give cards and gifts as expressions of thankfulness and connection.

    98. All children should have a blog in a child safe atmosphere.

    99. All children should learn within local settings that help to set goals and standards and to maintain ways to over see this.

    100. All children should be integrated, rich, poor, black, white, restricted by disability, glasses wearing, free thinking, Republican household, Democratic, representing every color, creed, view, and from such a base learn about self and others to the best of our ability to mix ourselves together within community, neighborhood, nation, to think of such things as more important than writing a bunch of standards and thinking that was the same as doing all of the above.


    I have more but I have work to do.
    I've taught children missing all of the above.
    I've taught these last 27 years knowing stories of kids that might break your heart that renders much of what I hear "proposed" into a joke like stance for some of our children while I was, and teachers like me were, scapegoated over understanding the complexities of the issues. Children deserve better than that. They deserve thinking adults. And schools and systems designed for them to do well. If this is addressed as the NY Times writer thought by these standards then I assume the above has been articulated into systems, structures and supports.
    23

    View comments


  2. Since I am talking about some Dr. Seuss books my 1st graders enjoy, I've decided to share one story of my favorite character's, Horton. It's common for me to mix them up, the two stories Seuss wrote about him. The one I'm writing about today involves "the egg."
    Today I'm also, in my home taking out all my pysanky supplies to begin making my mostly yearly eggs. Maybe things will fit together and this will talk about how I use books to extend into activity within my classroom in March.

    (noting I'm out until back surgery so this will be scenes from the last few years )

    Horton is an elephant. You no doubt know that if you've been Seussickled.
    So far in the videos, movies, clips for me he hasn't been voiced as I hear him in my head.
    I want a Red Skeleton Horton.
    I just never hear him as goofy as the voice-overs make him...But Horton perhaps is one of the kindest, gentlest, and most aware of the Dr. Seuss creations. (And I've yet to see Jim Carrey attempt him. Oh my.)
    In Horton Hatches The Egg he also appears to be rather easily duped.
    I have an affinity for that too.
    This year my school was mandated to study idioms, lest you think the egg is not well represented check this out.
    Back to Horton, of course.....
    A wayward momma bird, Maizee seems easily able to convince Horton that she needs a bit of a break from her egg and nest duties, and he gets to try out some egg sitting.
    I always liked this story because it was an opportunity to say to children maybe just a little bit about how it is to wait for a child to be born. Often I ask as a homework for them to ask if someone can remember at home waiting for them....and write a few sentences together (which sometimes we save and use as a cute mothers day or father's day card idea) I suppose it's a little bit my affection for the guilt of that. Or so my daughter pointed out recently rather pointedly. However, in the story Horton is going to take on the responsibility of the nest.
    And the egg.
    You can see that unfold in this rather plain creation...



    Now if you were to stop this here and talk to students about things they've just seen in 1st grade you could construct a re-tell. You could then even have them write a few sentences to do that. You could illustrate those. You could even watch again.
    Or, perhaps, you might talk about emotions. How was Maizee feeling at first? Why did Horton stop? How does Maizee feel when she can leave her job (a bit careful how you handle this)? How does Horton feel when he begins sitting on the nest? How does Horton feel during the storm? How does he feel when his friends tease him?

    Then you can dig deeper asking why?
    Why would a momma bird do that?
    Why did Horton do that?
    Why did the animals tease him?
    Why does Horton keep repeating that he honors his word?

    What you are doing then is using the reading, then the video cli to begin with young children looking at the meaning of the text, as well as just reading the text.

    So the story of this elephant that agrees to nest sit, despite the pressures of weather, teasing, continues onward...



    Now you get some trouble..."the plot thickens", perhaps some comment on mothering, with the appearance of the hunters.
    Horton puffs up to say "I said what I meant, I meant what I said..."
    But of course the novelty of the nest sitting elephant becomes an idea to the men for some profit margins. And Horton is transported with nest and tree by ship to a place to sell...hopefully for tickets.
    But poor Horton. 100% sea-sick.
    Right to a circus, sold. I love to look up on maps all the places Horton went with that nest...Seuss does a great job of taking you all over America in this story.
    And in a town close to Palm Beach, Horton gets visited by Maizee, the wayward Momma.
    Who wants back her egg.
    But something really charming happens.
    One of the charming things about Dr. Seuss. He decides to give an interesting ending. I try to shut down the movie here so kids can guess.
    Did you guess.....???

    ******spoiler alert******

    Yes, Horton watches the birth of the elephant bird. It loves him so much.

    Because, after all....he was a part of how this egg came to be hatched.

    It's a wonderful way to introduce the idea of saying what you mean, meaning what you say.
    And , parental love.
    And, elephant affection.

    The 1942 Warner Brother's Version is great to then play....children love versions.
    I prefer this one of course.



    Actually hearing the story turns out to be helpful to beginning readers.
    I've watched my students sound out things then in their own reading, rather more ready from the process of having heard the story. It's not uncommon in my room for the third graders to come in, one I once had included, to read these stories to their peers.
    Also tremendous.

    So at this point you can go several directions.

    Suppose you decided to go "with the egg."
    Well you could teach all about eggs right now. It's spring, goodness. Birth. How beautiful. Get good egg books to read. I love this one and
    just got it last year:

    An Egg Is Quiet.



    If you click on that title you go to a beautiful reading of Sylvia Long's book.
    It's egg-cellent.

    The next thing I found was thiis fascinating author interview.
    It's a link to a really nice "book talk."
    I like book talks. This one is lovely.




    PLEASE LISTEN TO THAT LINK. The Booktalk tells you EVERY REASON TO STUDY THE EGG.

    I like to then ask the children to watch a great Reading Rainbow, Chicken's Aren't The Only Ones, based on a Ruth Heller book. Trying to find it is a bit of a bear though now.
    Too bad a blow was dealt Reading Rainbow...
    Then we watch the Reading Rainbow based on Rechenka's Egg.
    There was a program, Reading Rainbow, that will never be matched. Not ever.

    And so...after learning all about eggs, and being introduced to Pysanky, I ask them to design Horton's Egg.
    You might get something that looks like this:
    (black paper, colored chalks)



    So from there you are left open to go further, set up bird studies, enter the world of eggs and birds. OR you could go learn about "the elephant."
    Not today though for me.....
    Oh my.
    You'd be busy.
    I'm not even quite ready today to do that, you know why?
    In a few minutes I begin my yearly pysanky.
    I don't really do the traditional designs, but I do attempt the methods.
    Last year I ordered goose eggs. Once you use goose eggs it's hard to return to chicken eggs. You have to hollow the eggs. I just ordered 48, they are supposed to come today! I'm excited.
    Almost as excited as I was once when we raised "the ducks."

    Here are the results from last years designing...





    However you go...you really can enjoy 'the egg' with your students especially through the story "Horton Hatches An Egg."

    ..

    ..
    1

    View comments

  3. DSC01607 by you.
    Yeah, somehow I didn't really get that "tree hugger" was a way of labeling.
    It always sounded so nice to do.
    I love trees. (I don't mind hugging either.)
    You?
    As a teacher I always had kids do as many projects as I could around listening to and observing a tree. Those lessons came from this book. Teachers go to that link, it's excellent!



    But today I'm going to talk about another book that I really enjoy:

    The Lorax.jpg
    "The Lorax" is wonderfully adored in my 1st grade, I admit if you are celebrating Seuss that you might not go to that book until you have learned some of his other works. I just wait until the day a child asks to read "this one" from our Dr. Seuss March You Pick It box.
    The webpage from his official site on the Lorax is so wonderful. You must go to see. Here.

    And, also, please if you are considering what to do for Earth Day, soon approaching...go look at The Lorax Project. You'll love it. I do too. (That and my shout out for The Earth Day Groceries Project. )

    I don't think The Lorax has yet been made into an excellent film version, Wiki suggests it soon will be, but I keep hoping for one that a film animated along the lines of this Pandora sensation, just utterly takes your breath away. Each time this book, The Lorax, is selected from the U Pick It reading we do after lunch in my Sheltered Immersion 1st grade I know at least one person on the carpet is going to enjoy the sing song today-and certainly that would be me.
    I grew up in the trees of West Virginia, born to a father very at home in the woods. Very few Sundays ever passed Dad didn't drive us out somewhere for a walk in the woods. I love to walk in the woods. Very few days I didn't spend in our backyard woods. Later we had a farm, those woods later taken by a highway project, for awhile we had 86 acres to explore.
    My students, many have never seen a forest. Some have never stood in something I'd call a human right. Not too far from us in Santa Barbara is a lovely forest that sometimes I have been able to take my students to see. Everytime I do so I watch them in wonderment.
    I read an essay recently by a person that communicates with trees, it was in the book Kinship With Animals.
    Here is an excerpt from an essay called "In the Company Of Great Teachers, by Linda Tellington-Jones, she was communicating with an ancient fig:

    "Come and sit by me, and I will tell you a story.
    Sit on me. Anywhere in the sun.
    Once upon a time there were many like me.
    We had lived long upon this planet and had aquired much wisdom.
    Our understandings and love sent out positive vibrations, which had
    far-reaching effects.
    Then came man with his lack of understanding,

    In order to re-balance and re-align the earth, your people
    must once again recognize the Kingdom of the Plants, the Animals
    the Minerals, and the Nature Spirits as one
    and as vital to the survival of the planet.
    That your race recognize the God within is only the start.
    That we are recognized as one with you in the balance of existence
    is the key to-not only survival-but to
    heaven on earth"


    Maybe Dr. Seuss did tree talking too, although his trees are especially exotic.
    First the story.


    via videosift.com

    If you are unwilling to give the 25 minutes to watch I'll give a short synopsis. Very short because I think I can refer you out to Wikipedia.
    ****************spoilers******************
    This is a caution tale. It's about a world already ruined.
    You enter the book and everything is so ugly, so spoiled, it smells horrible, no one can breathe.
    Your job in the story is to understand why.
    Eventually you are lead to the Onceler who tells the tale, the secret hidden tale from inside his hidden shack, through his can and string.
    It seems that the trees, Truffula trees once grew in these parts.
    Once.
    But something happened and you are there to understand how useful those trees became.
    For that unwinding you need wisdom. Remembering, recall, the history.
    If you want to introduce the IDEA of history to children, who at 6 sometimes kind of just look at you and roll over...you can discuss this as the history lesson of what happened in this pretend world. You can even keep a kind of time-line to introduce quite clearly the idea of "timelines."
    What came before?
    And before?
    And before that?

    It is a warning from way out wherever, speaking for the trees, about what consuming all of them to run into the production of goods in exciting lives, what that can do ...seen from a desolate, ruined, tree-less mess of a ruined world, that used everyone of them.
    You really wouldn't say this is painted here with a light hand.
    I do like it, so much, but I recognize that it is heavily laden with a point of view, one even if I share, I can use to discuss "point of view" and even further discuss with the third graders that usually come over for our follow up tree making and design work, use to suggest we look to the language within it that is persuasive.
    It makes an argument, puts forward evidence, and it's a way to talk about this kind of writing.
    So from the get go, even with young kids, I start to teach considering author intent.
    Thinking about things like
    What does this book seem to be teaching?
    How did you feel when x y or z happened?
    How does the author exact those responses?
    (After teaching personification) How do we see personification used?
    Oh, you get it....

    Truthfully I do read the book in spring, I do quite a few lessons connected to trees and the cycle of the deciduous trees right about now, so I do move into creative, science projects and other work. Our Avenues books for ELD had a lovely tree story of the seasons of a tree. So that comes out. Along with other I really enjoy sharing.


    Sky Tree: Seeing Science Through Art

    There are so many tree books to share, and the favorite books are my many identification guides. I have ones that emphasize leaf, others tree. So we begin to think about trees, on a treeless campus stuck in a hood that more closely resembles a prison than anything else I know off hand. All our trees were chopped by eager maintenance crews every summer until their work is done. Even those planted to recall students we lost.
    Hum.

    To get us in the mood I like to share a slideshow with my kids. I have my own, from Santa Barbara :



    But this one from Flickr is also wonderful:



    They like to look to music and for that may I suggest you find something woody.
    Maybe:



    Well, once there was a place with beautiful trees, in a beautiful land, that found so many uses for the trees they forgot the greatest reason for them, the utter beauty they supplied.
    And were left with nothing but one, one important thing, a seed.

    Here are beautiful Santa Cruz trees I like to share with my kids..



    He was so proud of this picture...

    DSC01597 by you.
    This was a project we did as a follow up to reading, my 1st graders making Truffula trees....their way. We used these wonderful paints, dot paints from Lakeshore.
    It really made the project work. Then we wrote tree poetry.
    I did too.



    Perhaps.....you'll forgive my writing.
    Trees mean so much to me....I can't do them justice.

    Thank goodness Dr. Seuss and The Lorax did.
    0

    Add a comment

Total Pageviews
Total Pageviews
4 1 9 3 5 5
My Blog List
My Blog List
Blog Archive
About Me
About Me
My Photo
I'm a public school elementary teacher from W.V. beginning my career in poverty schools in the 1980's. (I have GIST cancer-small intestinal and syringomyelia which isn't what I want to define me but does help define how I view the meaning of my life.) I am a mom of 3 great children-now grown. I teach 3rd grade in an Underperforming school, teaching mostly immigrant 2nd Lang. children. I majored in art, as well as teaching. Art informs all I do. Teaching is a driving part of my life energy. But I am turning to art soon. I'm married to an artist I coaxed into teaching- now a Superintendent of one of the bigger Districts in the area. Similar population. We both have dedicated inordinate amounts of our life to the field of teaching in areas of poverty hoping to give students opportunities to make better lives. I'm trying to write as I can to the issues of PUBLIC education , trying to gain the sophistication to address the issues in written forms so they can be understood from my teaching contexts.I like to blog from daily experiences. My work is my own, not reflective of any school district.
Loading
smpuglisi. Dynamic Views theme. Powered by Blogger.