Some links

The Patience Problem: http://chronicle.com/blogs/onhiring/the-patience-problem/34818

Get Naked and Take a Nap: http://www.upworthy.com/get-naked-and-take-a-nap-plus-21-other-life-hacks-you-can-learn-from-a-kid?c=ufb1

For further perusal down the road.

The First Day of the Rest of My Life

. . . will be tomorrow.

Today I am turning in my term paper for English 678, returning my NIU library books, and attending the last class session of my Master's degree.

Today is Jack's last day at Theresa's house, the babysitter who has watched him since he was four weeks old.

In a couple of weeks I will begin to teach 8th American History for the first time.

On that same day, I will begin to teach college Composition as an adjunct instructor for the first time.

In a couple of weeks, my three-year-old will start at a new babysitter's house.

At the end of this month, he will begin attending preschool, where he will have his first cubby, his first nametag, his first teacher.

I am leaving behind the known world. Here goes nothin'.

How should we train teachers?

One of the most interesting questions. This hearkens back to my favorite Malcolm Gladwell piece (see "Tenure" post from August). There's a whole series on Marketplace, including interactive features. But I'm old-school. Here's the transcript of what I heard on the radio Thursday night.

http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2010/11/18/pm-improving-lousianas-schools-starting-with-teachers/

Pros and Cons, Kindle Edition

Things I like about my Kindle:

1. Always have a book with me
2. Can always get a book if I read them all
3. One word: Minesweeper
4. Don't need a pen and post-it to annotate a book
5. If I want to look up a word, I don't even have to leave the page
6. Public domain books are free
7. Google is only a click away
8. No backlighting
9. The geek factor

Things I don't care for about my Kindle:

1. Can't read it in the bath. Or at any rate, I don't want to try.
2. All the books are in the same font. I feel like the typeset occasionally adds to the reading experience.
3. New books are still kinda expensive
4. Can't borrower nor lender be
5. No backlighting (I know, it's also a pro. Therefore, it should negate itself. But sometimes it's one, sometimes the other.)

Anecdotal evidence for liking Kindle: 

Every day in 8th grade, for the last 20 minutes before lunch, we all "drop everything and read." One boy hardly ever has anything to read. Sometimes he sits there with his head in his hands, sometimes he's a library creeper, sometimes I catch him listlessly flicking through the pages of something I know he already read. On Thursday, I went up to him with my Kindle and asked if he'd like to check it out. I showed him the basic navigation buttons, then went back to my desk to read. When the kids were dismissed for lunch, he brought my Kindle back over. I noticed he was reading The Mystery of Edwin Drood, and I excitedly told him about its real-life mystery factor (that Charles Dickens died before it was finished). 

The next day, I brought him a paperback copy of Drood so he could take it home with him if he wanted, but I also gave him the Kindle again. He took it to his seat and quietly told his neighbors, "Don't be jealous." I think the cool tech factor sucked him in, and before he knew it, he was reading Dickens and actually making progress (as of yesterday, he has read 2% of the novel.)

The shape of learning

Slate dares its readers to redesign the American classroom. How does the changing landscape of American education inform our choices about how we use our physical space?

Radioworks Documentary and The Turn of the Screw

This is becoming a linkdump, but this is the afore-mentioned "Testing Teachers" radio documentary:

http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/testing_teachers/index.html

Diane Rehm is discussing this topic tomorrow. It's suddenly getting so much attention that my blog is in danger of becoming entirely devoted to rounding up stories on the topic of teacher effectiveness. Is it because of Malcolm Gladwell? NCLB? I'm glad for the scrutiny and certainly the pitch can only become higher as the wave catches on in non-urban areas.

Also, many questions re: The Turn of the Screw (via today's entry at 750words.com) -

Is it a ghost story?
Why did Miles die?
Will Flora die too?
Did Miles ever really see Quint?
Did he see Miss Jessup all along?
Did Flora ever see any ghosts?
If no, did she get feverish and have to leave because of her governess saying that she saw the ghost?
If there were no ghosts, why did the governess have Quint and Miss Jessup's descriptions so precisely?
If the kids were playing a trick on her, how did they do it?

Looking forward to having someone to discuss this with. Still mulling it all over in my head: not ready to spout opinions yet.

Even more on teacher effectiveness

I may be a bit obsessed with this theme, but it touches upon such bedrock issues as "Should I be in the career I'm in?", "How do we improve public education?", and "What is best for the students?" that I find it hard to ignore.

There will be a public radio documentary on this theme airing tomorrow night at 6 p.m. I don't know if I'll catch it, because I plan to be soaking up the last warm rays of the waning summer with my family, a beer, and nature around me. But I love that NPR makes it easy to find transcripts and/or recordings of almost anything you miss, so I will definitely be looking it up.

More on teacher effectiveness

"An L.A. Times analysis, using data largely ignored by LAUSD, looks at which educators help students learn, and which hold them back."

I haven't read the whole series yet, but the premise strikes me as so level-headed it's almost crazy. If we know that the quality of the teacher in the front of the room is the single greatest factor affecting student progress,* and we have the data to see how students progress from year-to-year,** and we don't look at it,*** what does that say about how much we care about student progress?

*and we do.
**ditto.
***ditto again.

Tenure

Some thoughts:

Christopher Beam at Slate, on tenure in higher education

Malcolm Gladwell at the New Yorker, on teachers and classroom success

Great minds on education

"The greatest success of education occurs when the student learns to reject claims that are unsupported by reliable evidence - including his own." - My old French teacher, James Higby