Teacher Defends Small Schools

Interesting dialogue captured on the web page linked below. Centers on how small schools might be undermining public school education by “stealing” high achieving student and turning away those with more intensive requirements.

I suppose this is possible – not my experience at all, of course. And I have to wonder at the link in some people’s minds between public education and large schools: yes, that the way it is, but is that the way it must be or even should be?

Education Notes Online: Teacher Defends Small Schools and Others Respond.

Arts appear to play role in brain development

From the Baltimore Sun

Classes can change brain and the way people think

By Liz Bowie | liz.bowie@baltsun.com

May 18, 2009

For years, school systems across the nation dropped the arts to concentrate on getting struggling students to pass tests in reading and math. Yet now, a growing body of brain research suggests that teaching the arts may be good for students across all disciplines.

 

Read the rest of the article.

1 in 50 Children Homeless, Study Says

ASCD Inservice: 1 in 50 Children Homeless, Study Says.
Even if, as the post suggests, this includes children staying with relatives, it points to a serious underlying problem.

Aligning Belief & Action

From an Amy Goodman interview with Tim DeChristopher, the student in Utah who recently bid on lands that the BLM was trying to illegally auction  off for oil and gas drilling, and now faces 10 years in prison.  (My emphasis.)

“TIM DeCHRISTOPHER: I think that the most powerful relevance of Edward Abbey to what I did was his statement and really his expression of the idea that sentiment without action is the ruin of the soul, because I think that’s what I had seen throughout my work as an environmentalist previous to this, where I had seen this massive crisis and massive challenge that we were facing in climate change, and I saw that my efforts of writing the letter here and there and riding my bike and things like that weren’t really aligning. My actions weren’t aligning with my sentiment of how serious this threat was, and I knew that. And so, I felt that kind of conflict within myself.

And when I stepped it up at this auction and was putting myself out there and winning all these parcels was really the first time I felt like my sentiment—or I felt like my actions were aligning with my sentiment. And I felt this tremendous sense of calm when I started doing that, because for the first time that conflict within me was gone, and I knew that when I was, you know, standing up and risking going to prison, my actions really were aligning with how big of a crisis this is. “

 

Read the entire interview here: http://www.democracynow.org/2009/4/3/utah_student_who_prevented_bush_admin