Tuesday Open Thread
Interesting discussion at the NY Times; Should books for children be political?
Speaking of books for kids, I love this one - My First Kafka (which would be Runaways, Rodents, and Giant Bugs).
Recess - it IS for learning. Great article from The Atlantic on one teacher's research.
The arguing continues in the Seattle Pre-K discussion. The other initiative - not the City's - Seattle Initiative 107, has filed an ethics complaint with the City, charging that there were meetings with City Council members that violate the ethics rules.
As I previously reported, the Sacramento School Board will be meeting this Thursday to vote on whether to appoint Superintendent Banda as their new superintendent. As well, they will also vote to approve his contract. There has not been a start date set but I think he would likely leave SPS by the end of the July.
What's on your mind?
Speaking of books for kids, I love this one - My First Kafka (which would be Runaways, Rodents, and Giant Bugs).
Recess - it IS for learning. Great article from The Atlantic on one teacher's research.
The arguing continues in the Seattle Pre-K discussion. The other initiative - not the City's - Seattle Initiative 107, has filed an ethics complaint with the City, charging that there were meetings with City Council members that violate the ethics rules.
As I previously reported, the Sacramento School Board will be meeting this Thursday to vote on whether to appoint Superintendent Banda as their new superintendent. As well, they will also vote to approve his contract. There has not been a start date set but I think he would likely leave SPS by the end of the July.
What's on your mind?
Comments
This spring, my family had the pleasure of attending a performance of “Kiss Me Kate” at Roosevelt HS. I was quite impressed with the quality of the production and the talent of the performers. But, not being very familiar with the work, I was a little taken aback with some of the themes of the musical. For those not familiar, there are moments in the story, where the lead male: spanks the lead female, cracks a bullwhip at her, has a discussion with the lead female’s fiancé about women needing a ‘firm hand’ and that they even ‘like it’. And no one seemed to think this was problematic.
No dear readers; I wasn’t swooning and clutching my pearls at such racy material. As regular reader of The Stranger and Dan Savage’s column, I am well aware of themes of power and control, corporal punishment, and domination and submission and I think that they are fine themes for mature individuals to explore. What troubled me was that Kiss Me Kate was performed straight up, by kids maybe as young as 14 or 15, without a hint of irony, no mention of the context in which it was written, and apparently no critical analysis of the work by the students performing it. I can say this because our family knows a student in the band who confirmed that the band had not participated in any kind of critique and was unaware of the other performers having any such discussion. I’ll also add that with maybe one or two exceptions, the show was cast pretty strictly along race/gender lines – another thing I found surprising in the era of Glee and LGTB student associations.
I get that it’s hard to get away from stereotypical gender/race/class roles in works that originated decades or centuries ago. But, I don’t think that the age of a work automatically gives producers and performers a free pass to present works without considering the problems they pose – at least for works performed by and for young audiences. This seemed to go beyond mere boy/girl stuff and veer into attitudes that reinforce date rape, domestic violence, and demeaning or belittling women. And I could be okay with that if I knew that there had been a larger discussion around those issues. At any rate, it certainly prompted a discussion with our two young (younger than HS) daughters.
I guess I’ll leave it there. I was never a drama or musical theater kid and the whole thing made me wonder at the process of schools choosing and performing problematic works and whether any critical thought went into addressing them. It certainly seems like there are some teaching/learning opportunities to take advantage of.
AGENDA
LPB 399/14
Landmarks Preservation Board Meeting Seattle Municipal Tower
700 5th Avenue, 40th Floor
Room 4060
Wednesday, July 16, 2014 – 3:30 p.m.
0711614.2 DESIGNATIONS
071614.21 Fire Station No. 5 30 minutes
925 Alaskan Way
071614.22 Woodrow Wilson Junior High School / Wilson-Pacific 30 minutes
1330 N. 90th Street
If that's true than all the skullduggery at City Hall is in their backrooms.
It provided a few teachable moments, though, so I guess that's something! Clearly nobody in the cast had had any discussions about the underlying lessons being taught about women and their place in the world -- like that it's cute when they're feisty, but really they just want to be dominated and carried off as chattel. "But that's supposed to be ironic!" they claimed; from the preview I saw, they played it absolutely straight: no irony either intended or received. Given the intellectual power and liveliness of these students, I found it disappointing.
--- swk
Not trying to be contrary. Honestly do not have that information/evidence. If you do, please share. I am following the arrival of CC and the subsequent CC testing in Seattle closely. Thank you.
EdVoter
--- swk
Washington State will be using the SBAC tests, which are different from PARCC tests. PARCC tests will be more like our current state tests where every student gets the same questions for a given grade. SBAC tests will be adaptive, like MAP.
parent
The district is focused on implementing CCSS, but seems to have lost sight of the importance of teaching a basic body of knowledge K-12. Simply following CCSS is not enough. There needs to be an actual curriculum and Readers and Writers Workshop is not adequate past K-5.
parent
Word Crimes
Yesterday's was "Tacky", set to the tune of "Happy". I trust y'all can find it.
-RHS Parent
Arch, Josh & RHS Parent,
Similar reactions. As neighbors whose babysitter was a cast member, we also took our two elementary age kids to the Roosevelt musical.
We do subscribe to the Fifth Avenue Theater musical productions, sometimes also bringing our kids, and several of those older scripts often do raise troubling questions when contrasted to today's values (specifically, for examples, we have now seen several musical portrayals this year of what is now certainly considered domestic abuse}. On the other hand, most of those Fifth Avenue audiences are mature adults so it is a different setting.
Bearing that in mind, and blithely ignorant given the innocuous nostalgic sounding title Kiss Me Kate, I was taken aback to see such themes acted out without adaptation on a high school stage before a family audience. I have not raised the issue since with our talented young babysitter, but since your posts above I think I may ask a little more about their choice and their direction and staging of the Roosevelt production. It does seem a missed opportunity or worse if no collective discussion took place about such important matters.
P.S. According to our babysitter, there is actually a "Nostalgia Club" among many others at Roosevelt High School, which she finds amusing because none of its members can remember the '90s (yes, 1990s!) which is its focal decade. Oh, and by the way, as a frosh last year she absolutely loves Roosevelt and says that everybody there does find their place . . .
@SWK: What is the raised cut score going to be in our state? In other states? This is something worth continued discussion.
@Everyone else. Green Dot officially filed yesterday to open a charter in South Seattle.
EdVoter
Completely student written, composed, orchestrated, produced, designed, directed, choreographed, acted....
Jonathan Small, a newly-minted college graduate from North Dakota is invited by Microsoft to work in Seattle, and is confronted with everything weird and wonderful about the city, including fanatical office workers, hipsters, and, of course, love. But when Jonathan's quest for a life beyond the great plains of North Dakota is put in jeopardy, he rallies the people of Seattle together as a community to save his and his friends' happiness.
If you love Seattle, musical theater and young adults, you have to see this! Actually come even if you don't like young adults! You'll be glad you did.
July 17,18,19,25,26 at 7:00pm
Jul 27 at 2:00pm
Ballard High School
1418 NW 65th St, Seattle, Washington 98117
Tickets available at blacktieproductions-mt.com and at the door.
Black Tie Productions is a student-run nonprofit. Any profits from the production will benefit Seattle Children's Theater. (Suitable for Seattlites of all ages.)
Before I posted that paragraph, I had a chat with the author, who happens to be sitting on my couch watching Red vs. Blue on Netflix. I was told that she can imagine many people would find the script homophobic and sexist and that the producers and cast talked a lot about whether or not they would be offending anyone. She told me about the Bechdel test, which I had never heard of. So they worry about it, and aren't sure they are doing it perfectly. I guess that is progress.
Club and Google Group!
After controversial leader, Sacramento City Unified eyes low-profile replacement
reader47
Banda is known for a "...tendency to delegate some difficult decisions to handpicked administrators."
“I don’t go out and make headlines,” he said. “I build relationships.”
Maybe not, but the lame-brained moves of his handpicked muckety-mucks stepped in it many times. e.g. Mann Building, Pinehurst Clsure, math adoption, Sped C-CAP etc etc.
All Smarter Balanced states have agreed to comply with the achievement levels set by the consortium for accountability purposes.
--- swk
Banda has his pluses and minuses and with SSD coming off a Broad guy, he'll look great.
But he's really much more of a mid-management guy and that may become more apparently should he decide to stay more than two years in SSD.
Too soon for meeting minutes to be posted but the link for agendas and minutes:
http://www.seattle.gov/neighborhoods/preservation/agendas.htm
It means that any proposed designs or options must be presented at a Landmarks Commission hearing. Not very meaningful, considering that many landmarks have been demolished in our town. (I'm thinking of the lovely theater that was replaced by an ugly parking garage just north of Pacific Place.)