Thursday, February 7, 2013
Monday, February 4, 2013
Art that soothes...Art that energizes...
Art that soothes and energizes inspires me. Just like music, I find its effect remarkable. Gaze at this extraordinary piece of art. What does it do for your soul?
Saturday, February 2, 2013
Thursday, January 24, 2013
Getting Schooled by Fools...
www.govtrack.us
Thanks, LA Senator Mary Landrieu, for making it EASIER for all of those new for-profit voucher schools to get instant principals. So now, we are outsourcing our administration certification process to anyone who wants to apply for a charter from the state to "train" them! Here's my favorite quote from Congressional Act 1250: "The Principal Preparation Act shall not have unnecessary restrictions on the methods the principal preparation academy will use to train principal candidates, including restrictions or requirements." I wish I was kidding...
Public Education as Social Justice
Public Education as Social Justice
The greatest civil rights injustice will take place once all public schools have been sold to the highest bidder and our poorest and neediest citizens will be denied entrance into schools because they are "too expensive" to educate. There - I have taken the the policy to its furthest logical conclusion. And it will strip away ALL that we have fought for these past 200 years. Only 3rd world countries privatize their schools.
Choosing Change
"Every time one schoolteacher is fired for standing up courageously for justice, it must be faced with the fact that there are four thousand more to be fired."
Martin Luther King
LOVE, love love this colorful version of Reverend King...but mostly his "truth stare"...like he's looking right at me, challenging me, loving me, asking me if I will choose change - and all that goes with it.
Comparing Apples and Oranges...
What do international tests really show about US student performance?
I hate it when our own government betrays its citizens by telling them how BAD our schools are compared to other countries. PLEASE! We educate and test ALL citizens. Those countries cited by the USDOE that outpace us do not use data from all school age children like we do.
Excellence...
Jarle Berhoft -"C'mon Talk"
Gave my standard 10 minute lesson today about the purposelessness of having a "good enough" mentality... that doing one's best in the littlest things promotes a standard of lifelong excellence. Then I showed them what that looks like-the daily personal decisions to make a total effort that eventually culminate in personal and professional success. My students were in awe!
Jindal- the destroyer of the good public schools and GOOD public school teachers in Louisiana
Gov. Jindal shows disdain for teachers, public education
Every occupation has the best of the best and the worst of the worst. Education is no exception. I suspect every hospital has about the same percentage of bad and great employees as a school does. But we would never go in and fire all of the doctors and nurses at hospitals where a disproportionate number of patients die - something being done in schools where disproportionate numbers of students fail. Urban schools, just like urban hospitals, deal with high risk humans who reflect the society around it. We can do better at finding the correct solution for the specific situation - not these blanket over-corrections Jindal is endorsing.
Our current schools are a reflection of our current culture - not the teachers in the school. Teachers and administrators in a school building make up only a fourth of the equation. Parents, students and the community are the other three contributors and yet it is the TEACHERS who are receiving 100% of the blame for low graduation rates and higher illiteracy rates. That makes no sense. If I am a doctor and a sick patient comes to me in poor health, and I give him an appropriate prescription for health, but it is not followed, who do we blame? Exactly...
Teachers like me are STUNNED that our public servants have turned their backs on their own constituents to appease their big business backers. But where there once was a community of seasoned educators at the policy table helping to make schools more effective, we have lobbyists who see experienced, educated teachers as barriers to for-profit education. Jindal and White have found the perfect recipe to fail schools faster. And it's not reform - it's rejecting an entire system that took 200 years to build and selling it off to the highest bidder.
Every occupation has the best of the best and the worst of the worst. Education is no exception. I suspect every hospital has about the same percentage of bad and great employees as a school does. But we would never go in and fire all of the doctors and nurses at hospitals where a disproportionate number of patients die - something being done in schools where disproportionate numbers of students fail. Urban schools, just like urban hospitals, deal with high risk humans who reflect the society around it. We can do better at finding the correct solution for the specific situation - not these blanket over-corrections Jindal is endorsing.
Our current schools are a reflection of our current culture - not the teachers in the school. Teachers and administrators in a school building make up only a fourth of the equation. Parents, students and the community are the other three contributors and yet it is the TEACHERS who are receiving 100% of the blame for low graduation rates and higher illiteracy rates. That makes no sense. If I am a doctor and a sick patient comes to me in poor health, and I give him an appropriate prescription for health, but it is not followed, who do we blame? Exactly...
Teachers like me are STUNNED that our public servants have turned their backs on their own constituents to appease their big business backers. But where there once was a community of seasoned educators at the policy table helping to make schools more effective, we have lobbyists who see experienced, educated teachers as barriers to for-profit education. Jindal and White have found the perfect recipe to fail schools faster. And it's not reform - it's rejecting an entire system that took 200 years to build and selling it off to the highest bidder.
Worldwide Literacy
by Deborah Hohn Tonguis on Monday, April 26, 2010
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| World Literacy Map |
When I was growing up in the 1960’s and 1970’s, much public attention was spent freeing the emotions, helping repressed, post WWII individuals get in touch with their feelings. That was a time before the internet and before there was equal access to infinite sources of firsthand information. But now, after reading Dewey, Goleman, Gardner, Locayo, Sternberg and many well written and researched internet articles, I have entered into a personal “renaissance”, a time characterized by a freedom to explore for myself the thoughts of others and after practicing reflective learning, allow them to clarify my own thoughts and feelings. This brings me back to a time in history before the invention of the printing press, when only priests, nobility and scholars were literate and the illiterate impoverished masses depended upon secondhand information their entire lives. How precious the gift of literacy and the ability to find at ones fingertips information once locked away in dusty archives and lonely library basements. The World Wide Web perpetuates it own growth as millions educate themselves and contribute to the growing knowledge base. I am happy to be alive at a time when worldwide literacy could be achieved.
Peace.
by Deborah Hohn Tonguis on Monday, January 31, 2011
Video of Tsunami is eerily familiar...
Kiss your loved ones and be thankful, ya'll.
I have to take a break from watching the Japan Tsunami flood footage. I couldn't figure out why I was so nervous and unsettled today - and then I realized that I was feeling that helpless feeling one gets when watching human suffering and devastation. Here in New Orleans, it's a short ride to the lower 9th Ward and St. Bernard Parish to remind us of the same types of scenes. Is anyone else who went through Katrina seeing the similarities? Watching the video of the wall of water rushing over the houses and the cars landing in tree tops is eerily familiar.
The Dalai Lama in Washington D.C.
The Dalai Lama in Washington D.C.
by Deborah Hohn Tonguis on Monday, July 11, 2011
So I was sitting at a local DC restaurant having dinner and the Dalai Lama walked past the window right next to my table! My phone was buried in the bottom of my purse so I couldn't get to it fast enough to take a picture. I wanted to race after him, but didn't want to cause a scene with my other dinner guests. Isn't that ironic. One of the greatest living spiritual leaders was 3 feet away from me and I was worried about what others would think if I ran after him just to see him face to face. Vanity...I wonder how many other opportunities I have missed because of it.
Where was I on 9/11?
by Deborah Hohn Tonguis on Sunday, September 11, 2011
Someone asked, so I'll tell: Where was I on 9/11?
I was teaching in a 7th grade classroom at Mandeville Junior High. My husband called my cell, uttered 5 words, then abruptly hung up - "The U.S. is under attack." Stupidly, I grabbed the TV remote and pressed the ON button just in time for an entire class of pre-teens to watch the second plane fly into the WTC. They thought it was a movie. I quickly turned the TV off and sat in numbed silence before students looking at me in disbelief that I wouldn't let them watch such great special effects. Telling them the truth without crying was one of the hardest things I've ever done in my life.
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