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
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But this is just another example of out-of-touch administration that have no idea what really goes on in a classroom or what it's like to be a teacher. I have no doubt that thousands of equally brilliant innovations are rolled out in schools across the country every year.
“It’s the 21st century — you don’t need desks,” Connelly said, sources told The Post.
Connelly told teachers she “does not want them sitting,” an insider said, although no chairs were tossed.
“Figure it out,” she snapped when staffers asked where to store their supplies, a source said.
As to where teachers should grade papers, Connelly answered, “Use the lunch room,” sources said.
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So where has this strategy been used effectively to increase student achievement?
Show me the data.
Will this effort maximize the learning opportunity for each student?
Will classroom instruction be significantly improved?
Do these teachers believe they are being treated as education professionals?
If NOT then why was any of this done?
I guess this is alignment with 21st Century thinking.
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As bizarre as the above action seems it happened at only one school.
So now consider the undercover abandonment of the "Math in Focus" scope and sequence at every SPS elementary school. Ask the same questions
So where has this strategy been used effectively to increase student achievement?
Show me the data.
Will this effort maximize the learning opportunity for each student?
Will classroom instruction be significantly improved?
Do these teachers believe they are being treated as education professionals?
If NOT then why was any of this done?
I guess this is alignment with 21st Century thinking.
YIKES!!!
-- Dan Dempsey
reader
You know, I took a class from Marva Collins whom some of you might remember from 60 minutes and other media events. She was a great teacher who taught in very poor neighborhoods. She had a private school for black kids. She believed teachers should never sit but circulate, circulate, circulate. Of course, in those days, teachers were teaching far more basic than now. Our plates are much, much fuller. And she had a shorter day. I liked her idea then.
Some teachers do sit more than they should. But this woman has an anger management problem or she is narcissistic. Something like that. To throw out medical devices is asking for law suits. Honestly, they ought to remove her from the school because she is a problem and I think that school is in danger of her outbursts. Her behavior is just not normal or even rational. Scary.
Working in the trenches in SPS is kind of like being self-employed.
When we got our new building, we got huge, heavy office bookcases. Brand spanking new. 12' deep. We had to get rid of our old school district customized bookcases which were efficient, less deep, made of hard wood, and narrower. Much better for classrooms than these behemoths we have now.