Currently browsing Values and Habits
Two California teachers win “culturally responsive” awards
A kindergarten teacher from San Francisco and a 5th grade teacher from Los Angeles were two of only five winners selected nationally for the 2012 Teaching Tolerance Culturally Responsive Teaching Award. The Southern Poverty Law Center’s Teaching Tolerance project each year recognizes educators who have demonstrated excellence in teaching students from diverse racial, ethnic and cultural backgrounds. Teaching Tolerance provided profiles and videos of the California winners: Robert Sautter, a kindergarten teacher at Leonard R. Flynn Elementary School in San Francisco, creates a bond of trust between himself, his students and their families. He opens his classrooms with a “community circle” in which students greet each other using their home languages. He also makes sure that students see themselves and their families in the books, artwork and photography displayed in his classroom. Sautter … Read entire article »
Filed under: English learners, Poverty, Quick Hits, Race, Ethnicity, Students, Teachers, Values and Habits
Rural district serves as model for offering healthy meals
By emphasizing partnerships with community nonprofits and businesses, taking advantage of statewide grants and making good nutrition a financial priority, rural Fort Bragg Unified has continued to provide healthy food and nutrition education to its primarily low-income students, despite budget cuts. The state Department of Education has recognized Fort Bragg as a model for Northern California under its Stepping Up to the Challenge, Creating A Healthy School Environment program. Pilar Gray, the district’s nutritional services director, does trainings … Read entire article »
Filed under: Featured, Health, Nutrition, Fitness, Poverty, Reporting & Analysis, Students, Values and Habits
The grit factor: hard to measure, hard to succeed without
Much of the debate over how to reform public schools has fixated on improving student achievement by focusing almost exclusively on strengthening academics and students’ cognitive skills. Paying disproportionate attention to standardized tests, teacher quality, per-student spending, technology, extra learning time and adequate facilities is like putting the heaviest boys on one end of a schoolyard see-saw. In his important new book, How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity and the Hidden Power of Character, New York Times … Read entire article »
Filed under: Equity issues, Featured, K-12 Challenges, Interventions, Poverty, Poverty, Race, Ethnicity, Reporting & Analysis, Research, Values and Habits
Clovis Unified sued for giving inadequate sexual education
Two parents, a physician’s organization, and a “gay-straight” activist group are suing Clovis Unified, charging that the district is not providing high school students with adequate sex education because it relies primarily on a textbook that offers abstinence as the only way to avoid sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancies. The lawsuit charges that the Fresno County district is violating California law, which requires schools to teach about abstinence and “medically accurate information on other methods … Read entire article »
Filed under: Health, Nutrition, Fitness, Reporting & Analysis, Values and Habits
Brown’s veto throws wrench in AVID college prep program
The national executive director of AVID, a successful college preparatory program for students in the middle, vowed Tuesday to continue a strong operation in California, in spite of Gov. Jerry Brown’s veto last month of $8.1 million in state funding for it. “It’s going to be painful at times, but we are going to make it work; there is too much at stake not to,” Jim Nelson told 2,700 teachers and counselors, half from California, at the … Read entire article »
Filed under: A to G Curriculum, Achievement Gap, Categorical Funding, Equity issues, Featured, High School Completion, Jerry Brown, Proposition 98, Reporting & Analysis, Values and Habits
How can the content of character be measured? And should it be?
(This commentary first appeared in TOP-Ed.) My daughter’s first-grade report card came in two sections, one related to her academic work and the other for her teacher’s feedback about the character she displayed in school. Did she play well with others? Did she participate in class? Did she take risks? In a few years, my daughter’s report cards will become less personal, and probably less interesting. Letter grades and test scores will assume for her the central role that they play for just about everybody in education. “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” – Martin Luther King Jr., I Have a Dream, 1963. For the past … Read entire article »
Filed under: Commentary, Values and Habits
Video Highlights from
2013 EdSource Symposium
Transforming Public Education: What's Next For
Students, Teachers and Schools
- In Partnership with the California State PTA -
May 4th symposium in San Jose featured a number of prominent speakers on key challenges in education today, including Linda Darling-Hammond, Martha Kanter, and Pedro Noguera.
You can find video of those speakers and more at our new YouTube channel by clicking below.
Establishing the intersection of “Be nice” and “Know a lot”
September 30th, 2011 | Add a Comment | By Charles Taylor Kerchner / commentary
(This commentary first appeared in TOP-Ed.) No Child Left Behind is apparently disappearing with a whimper, or at least a waiver. The originally bipartisan law has become a bad brand. The pragmatics of the law’s demise rest in its rather silly calculation of test scores, and the backloading of expectations so that in the final years of the law the majority of schools in the United States would be labeled as failures, something that no state or governor or education secretary could stand politically. But the problem with the whimpering exit is that we haven’t gotten to the root of the matter or had the political debate about what we want from the schools. In a recent column in this space, Jeff Camp raises the question of the content of student character: whether and how … Read entire article »
Filed under: Commentary, No Child Left Behind, Values and Habits