Enthusiastic Reader > Recent Status Updates

p 232 - If you're doing something worthwhile, something that pushes on the edge of things even just a little, you're going to slam up against your limits, not to mention your insecurities and demons.

p 228 - "Let me pose the concept of diligent risk. There are certain protections and safeguards that can't be broken, certain demands of analytical rigor. But within these constraints, interesting things can happen."

p 214 - "My concern, evident throughout this book, is that the economic motive and attendant machinery of standardized testing has overwhelmed all the other reasons we have historically sent our children to school."

p 207 - "But there is something compelling, I think, about raising one's gaze outward, beyond the immediate doorway or fence, to the biology lesson at the forest's edge or the novel crammed into the hip pocket at the center of the city. The public school gives rise to these moments in a common space, supports them, commits to them as a public good."

p 203 - "Citizens in a democracy must continually assess the performance of their public institutions. But the quality and language of that evaluation matter."

p 169 - "I know the feeling of successful remediation, of re-mediating mathematics in a manner that countered a dozen years of failure and aversion. Of course, I had changed along the way and had powerful motivation to get the stuff this time around. Of course. But the scholastic graveyard is littered with people who wanted desperately to master a topic and didn't. It takes more than desire."

p 166 - "writing filled with grammatical error does not preclude engagement with sophisticated intellectual material... error can be addressed effectively as one is engaging such material."

p 159 - "The fact that the academy has so readily embraced the vocabulary and social dynamics of celebrity culture should be a source of shame and ridicule."

It bothers me when articles such as these blame either the students or their schools for their lack of preparation for a certain college. Unlike public schools, universities choose who they admit. If university teachers have concerns about the abilities of students in their classes, they should take that up with the admissions office.

p 126-127 - "an article appeared in the Atlantic Monthly ... written by Professor X, who teaches freshman composition and introduction to literature... The purpose of his article is to challenge the notion that everyone should go to college."

p 124 - "Many discussions of standards stay at the level of test scores or models of excellence. Instead of these static measures of attainment, our focus should shift to the dynamics of development."

p 111 - "As students developed competence, they also became more committed to doing a job well, were better able to monitor and correct their performance, and improved their ability to communicate what they were doing and help others do it."

p 105 - "It costs money to do this."

p 103 - "The development of values occurs best in situations where young people are engaged in ongoing, meaningful activity. The values displayed in these examples were not taught in a didactic way, nor were they the topic of a lecture or instilled through lists, logos, or disembodied religious texts."

P 80 - “The hope for a better life has traditionally driven achievement in American schools. When children are raised in communities where economic opportunity has dramatically narrowed, where the future is bleak, their perception of and engagement with school will be negatively affected.”

p 78: "Schools are frequently the site of this brand of photo op for the powerful: a politician reading to kids, a business executive conducting a lesson. What is telling to me is that we don't see this sort of thing with other professions... As a teacher all of my adult life, I can't help but be bothered by the familiar implication that anyone can teach."

p 64 - "NCLB and RTTT do raise important questions about equity and expectations, and this is a major contribution to a democratic discourse about schooling."

p 53 - "Experience is defined as years on the job, and it's no surprise that years alone don't mean much... What people DO with their time on the job is crucial and becomes the foundation of expertise."

p 51 - "You can prep kids for a certain kind of test, get a bump in scores, yet not be providing a very good education."

p 29 - "There's not much public discussion of achievement that includes curiosity, reflectiveness, uncertainty, or a willingness to take a chance, to blunder." Feels pretty good to hear that because that's what I push for!