Students without Teachers

There’s a limit. There’s a line. There’s an end. As teachers get less and less pay and less and less benefits, then inevitably they will start to seek out different positions and opportunities that do offer health benefits and a sense of security that they thought the public school system guaranteed. When that happens, there will …

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Classrooms without Teachers

Education isn’t about students anymore, it’s about money: Relentless fund-raising, be it for the annual fund, the spring benefit or the latest capital campaign, is as much a feature of private schools as small classes and diverse offerings. But with schools hitting the upper limits of what they can charge for tuition, consultants, parents and …

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What do I say?

I am working with a student who is trying to get his GED because he has been told that is what he needs to get a good job and to succeed. What do I say? I am working with a student who is in the middle of standardized tests and has extreme test anxiety because …

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Are we teaching a lie?

When you buy into a system that you think is going to guarantee a new chance and a new opportunity and it doesn’t deliver, what happens next? This week, a judge dismissed a lawsuit against New York Law School filed by some of its own recent graduates. They claimed the school’s marketing misled them about …

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Are students asking to use mobile devices in your class?

It’s amazing as a teacher when you encounter a community of learners without noticeable barriers and boundaries between teachers and students. That’s what I saw today at Oakbrook. I saw teachers who were reflectively considering the way that technology would be used in their classrooms and who were thinking through theses decisions as their students …

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Is school about money or students?

More and more I am wondering whether public schools are about students or money: One of the leading criticisms of voucher programs—and charter and virtual schoolsfor that matter—is that they undermine traditional public schools’ finances by sucking away their per-pupil funding and resources.