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Bless You, Matt Damon
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Thank you to a reader alerting me to this video. Matt Damon is at some event and gets a question about teachers and the incentive to work hard. (He also gets in a good shot to a smarty-pants cameraman.)
Do teachers in Seattle really work long hours for crappy pay?
Jack Whelan said…
Same motivational criteria ought to be applied to superintendents and other downtown staff. What about finding a dedicated educator whose first priority is to make SPS into a model urban school district, not to get a salary the north side of 250K.
Is it my imagine but is he getting hotter as he gets older?! Must be the shaved head. Or his anti-reform stance. : )
Anonymous said…
Ironic that MSNBC (Ed Schultz & Lawrence O'Donnell) is heralding Damon's comments as Right-Wing comeuppance, while meanwhile they have, to this point, been completely in bed and in the tank with the Ed Reformers, Waiting for Superman fans, Gates, Rhee, and the usual suspects. I guess 24 hour television makes for strange bedfellows too!
By the way, if anyone watched any of the videos from the Save Our Schools march, a couple of reporters mentioned this blog, although not by name, as they couldn't recall the "organized group" in Seattle.
OMG!! Lawrence O'Donnell just skewered Ed Reform, perhaps unintentionally, on The Last Word, tonight (8/2/11), while heralding Matt Damon and calling out the "blame the teacher" nonsense.
Unbelievable! Will he have a job tomorrow? Gates owns a healthy chunk of MSNBC, and OMG, O'Donnell has gone ROGUE! Watch for revisions and retractions in the coming days, as MSNBC tries to unwind this ball of string!
WSEADAWG
Anonymous said…
Wow, Wow and WOW AGAIN!
Teachers, you've got to give Lawrence O'Donnell a prize for what he just did for you all. He's doing it primarily to hit right wingers, but let's be honest: When it comes to ED REFORM, Gates/Walton/Broad, et al, are purely RIGHT WING in their tactics and beliefs.
A good day for teachers, when L O'D calls the attacks "maliscious." WSEADAWG
Anonymous said…
See Damon's piece and an MSNBC report about it here. WSEADAWG
WSEADAWG - I think they were referring to the Seattle Ed 2010 blog, the people who started it and who work with other activists, some of whom also are part of Parents Across America Seattle....
and the SOS March was a joint event, with people from Parents Across America involved in the planning, execution, speaking at the rally, marching etc...
The emphasis seems to have become that this was a teacher action.... it wasnt teachers only - a huge number of the people involved are parents/community members...
IF WE ARE TO TAKE PUBLIC EDUCATION BACK FROM THE ED DEFORMERS, WE ARE GOING TO HAVE TO PRESENT A UNITED FRONT...
The speaker list is up for the Board meeting tomorrow; not as packed as I thought with just four people on the waitlist. The majority of the speakers are speaking on high school boundaries (with several wanting to talk about Ballard High). There are only three of us speaking about the Green Dot resolution asking the City to not grant the zoning departures that Green Dot has requested. It's me, long-time watchdog, Chris Jackins, and the head of the Washington State Charter Schools Association, Patrick D'Amelio. (I knew Mr. D'Amelio when he headed the Alliance for Education and Big Brothers and Big Sisters; he's a stand-up guy.)
Update 2: an absolutely fabulous interactive map made by parent Beth Day (@thebethocracy on Twitter - she covers Board meetings and is fun to read). end of update Update 1: Mea culpa, I did indeed get Decatur and Thornton Creek mixed up. Thanks to all for the correction. end of update I suspect some who read this post will be irate. Why do this? Because the district seems very hellbent on this effort with no oversight skid marks from the Board. To clearly state - I do not believe that closing 20 schools is a good idea. I think they hit on 20 because they thought it might bring in the most savings. But the jury is still out on the savings because the district has not shown its work nor its data. I suspect closing schools and THEN leasing/renting them is the big plan but that means the district really has to keep the buildings up. But this district, with its happy talk about "well-resourced schools" is NOT acknowledging the pain and yes, grief, that is to come fro
Update 2: So I have seen a message from President Liza Rankin on why she, Director Evan Briggs, and Director Michelle Sarju backed out of this meeting. In a nutshell: - She says there was no organization to the meeting which is just not true. They had a moderator lined up and naturally the board members could have set parameters for what to discuss, length of meeting, etc. All that was fleshed out. - She also claimed that if the meeting was PTA sponsored, they needed to have liability insurance to use the school space. Hello? PTAs use school space all the time and know they have to have this insurance. - She seems to be worried about the Open Public Meetings law. Look, if she has a meeting in a school building on a non-personnel topic, it should be an open meeting. It appears that Rankin is trying, over and over, to narrow the window of access that parents have to Board members. She even says in her message - "...with decisions made in public." Hmmm - She also says that th
Comments
I got it by following a link from An Urban Teacher's Education Great blog with good coverage of the SOS March with lots of links.
By the way, if anyone watched any of the videos from the Save Our Schools march, a couple of reporters mentioned this blog, although not by name, as they couldn't recall the "organized group" in Seattle.
Check it out here.
WSEADAWG
Unbelievable! Will he have a job tomorrow? Gates owns a healthy chunk of MSNBC, and OMG, O'Donnell has gone ROGUE! Watch for revisions and retractions in the coming days, as MSNBC tries to unwind this ball of string!
WSEADAWG
Teachers, you've got to give Lawrence O'Donnell a prize for what he just did for you all. He's doing it primarily to hit right wingers, but let's be honest: When it comes to ED REFORM, Gates/Walton/Broad, et al, are purely RIGHT WING in their tactics and beliefs.
A good day for teachers, when L O'D calls the attacks "maliscious." WSEADAWG
Finally, somebody speaks out and calls bullshit on all the hate aimed at teachers. WSEADAWG
The emphasis seems to have become that this was a teacher action.... it wasnt teachers only - a huge number of the people involved are parents/community members...
IF WE ARE TO TAKE PUBLIC EDUCATION BACK FROM THE ED DEFORMERS, WE ARE GOING TO HAVE TO PRESENT A UNITED FRONT...