The Blue Blog

During my fourth tutoring session at Meadow Valley Middle School*, I once again had the chance to do one-on-one work with Lynn*, a sixth-grade student in a special education math class.  I made one quick observation of my own actions at the beginning of our time together while we were still in the classroom.  The [...]

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My third tutoring experience at Meadow Valley Middle School* was very interesting, and involved switching classrooms with my student and two substitute teachers.  I started out with Lynn* in her regular math classroom, where there was the first substitute teacher of the day, Mr. N.*  A conflict erupted almost immediately when Mr. N. told the [...]

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A few weeks ago, I also read the article mentioned in Anna’s blog about a small school in New York City that has Human Rights as its emphasis.  Although I did not comment on the article at the time, I find Anna’s insights on the structure of the schools very interesting.  It is possible that [...]

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Thinking about education at the levels discussed in this article is something completely new in my own schema about what it means to be an educator.  Since there was a lot of information covered and most of it is new to me, I would like to approach the material on educational philosophies by arguing which [...]

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Listen up, teachers of every level!  I found this article at the Boston.com news site, and after reading it I think it’s about time to write about sex on this blog.  The article describes the actions of Rhode Island education officials who have banned a certain abstinence-only program from being used in public schools because [...]

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After reading the original article and Lauren’s response, I would have to agree with her opinion and say that I do not think that adding more days onto a school year is necessarily beneficial to students or teachers. The rationale behind the plan is to expand the hours students and teachers spend together as [...]

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Before reading Linda M. McNeil’s writing on the relationship between knowledge control and classroom control, I never would have thought that the two classroom issues could be so interrelated.  However, I think she makes a very good argument for the substitution of more challenging course content with simpler lessons as means of keeping order in [...]

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As future educators, we all know that it is important to encourage understanding and acceptance of all people in our classrooms.  We also know, as students who all went through school, that not everyone around us was as accepting of their fellow students as our teachers probably hoped.  This CNN.com article caught my eye because [...]

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During my second visit to Meadow Valley Middle School*, I finally had the chance to do some one-on-one work with Lynn*, a student in the sixth grade. I started our session by asking her about her week and what she had been doing, but while we were working on fractions Lynn repeatedly stopped to [...]

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The original article can be found at:
 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/4754412.stm
This BBC News article describes an educational movement in Britain, where some people think that higher-functioning students should be singled out early so that they can begin to receive specialized attention.  Others say that this practice will inhibit the ability of schools to appropriately administer enrichment to those students [...]

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