Mark Gomez (gomehead2000)'s Public Profile in the Diigo Community

Member since Nov 14, 2008, follows 4 people, 4 public groups, 33 public bookmarks (33 total).

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Education Week: Major Study Gives Edge to Scripted Reform Models on 2009-12-17
- When a program fails to increase students’ learning, for instance, was it because teachers simply didn’t implement it? Or were the instructional practices off base?
  - Mark Gomez on 2009-12-17
    
    or was it because of the myriad of other things that also affect student learning?
- the school improvement discussion under the Obama administration is focused on common standards and assessments, turnarounds of failing schools, creation of charter-friendly environments in states, innovation, teacher pay based in part on student performance, and data-driven reform.
  - Mark Gomez on 2009-12-17
    
    common standards and assessments are great for students receiving common instruction or at least in the same school or family of schools i.e. community, how does one balanc commonality with differentiated instructional practices that meet the needs of students?
    failing schools need innovation and real gut level conversations as to why they are failing...
    charter friendly environments? why? and yes... no problem there
    innovation? from who? priate companies or teacher experts?
    merit pay for what? how will student performance be measured? one dimensionally?
- 7 more annotations...
- - Accelerated Schools model, developed at Stanford University 23 years ago, uses staff development to build a school culture organized around its vision of learning, which calls for students to “construct” their own knowledge through interactive, real-world activities. But it offers teachers no prescriptions on how to go about doing that, saying instead that teachers must devise their own strategies.
    Mark Gomez on 2009-12-17
    
    this model sounds great... butit would take a certain type of person (teacher) to become comfortable in this style... the challenge being professional development... how do you train a teacher to be creative and innovative?
  - At the opposite end, the Success for All program, developed in the 1990s by Johns Hopkins University researchers Robert E. Slavin and Nancy A. Madden, uses a highly specified plan for instructional improvement and highly specified routines for teaching reading.
  - It organizes students into cooperative-learning groups and provides teachers with a weekly lesson sequence and scripts to guide them through the 90-minute reading lessons.
    Mark Gomez on 2009-12-17
    
    maybe those less creative teachers would flourish in this setting... schools for creative teachers and schools for technicians then? should we have test that measure that sort of potential in hiring teachers?
  - To track whether the programs were faithfully implemented, teachers in the study kept daily teaching logs, an innovation crafted specifically for the study
    Mark Gomez on 2009-12-17
    
    how novel an idea... reflection of your daily practice... whether it is on a blog or in a journal... perhaps this sort of structured reflection is what is missing from the profession... teacher logs?
  - what the researchers found was that, while teachers in the 28 schools using the Accelerated Schools model were most likely to feel a sense of autonomy and trust in their schools, their teaching practices were not significantly different from those used in the 26 comparison schools. The study’s preliminary analyses suggest that students, likewise, did not learn any more than their control-group counterparts did.
  - “I think we know in general how to get kids to read really simple, decontextualized passages well, and that is the strong point of Success for All,” Mr. Rowan said. “This isn’t sustained as you go out. It doesn’t inoculate you or teach you to read more-complex material.”
  - “For decades, studies have been saying that every school had to invent its own path to reform,” said Mr. Slavin, Success for All’s developer. “This is the absolute last nail in the coffin” to counter that idea, he said.
    Mark Gomez on 2009-12-17
    
    just hte language that is being used here.. as if a reform apporach or theory can truly be rendered "dead"... it alludes to the subconscious motives. to have a certain model or theory
    "win" or beat the other into submission, where one would be declared supreme victor...
    the success of students is what should be championed.. not the success of models and theories...
The American Crawl :: Students Respond to LA Times Column about Manual Arts and MLA Partner Schools on 2009-12-17
- The general consensus was that Sandy Banks’ perception of the school did not match that of our students.
  - Mark Gomez on 2009-12-17
    
    imagine that... quick visits don't add up to daily interactions in a space?
- the vitriol my students had for these efforts – the fact that emphasis in the column was placed on seemingly cosmetic changes rather than on changes that directly impact student achievement.
  - Mark Gomez on 2009-12-17
    
    this is not surprising... a lot of these students are enterring their 10th and 11th year in a system that has continually provided them with subpar classroom instruction.
- 8 more annotations...
- - If anything, Banks should have written about how Manual Arts needs improvement. By building up that little shit garden or not quite mentioning drop-out rates or other failures, we are giving those in charge of taking care of the school the chance to just walk away.
    Mark Gomez on 2009-12-17
    
    walking away... this is a thouhght that has crossed my mind several times both at manual and muir (its feeder school, my place of work) those negatives compell you to walk away sometimes because they are too much. students walk away and bus themselves to other schools at 5 in the morning to avoid these negatives, or escape them once and for all... good teachers leave... defeated.
  - Even though I helped make the garden I don’t have access to go inside it.
    Mark Gomez on 2009-12-17
    
    contested third spaces are a real issue when it comes to outside assistance... concepts of ownership. who retains the rights to claim responsibility for improvements, failures...
  - Also, the article talks about money that every student gets. As a senior, I haven’t seen any of the money go to my education. I see the same old computers in the same classrooms that are really old. MLA is just making MAHS look goof but not changing how students feel about it or how we are being educated.
  - I believe that fixing the garden and the graffiti is a good idea! But have you ever thought of seeing how teachers work behind the administrators’ back? Well some teachers act so racist or just treat you like if you’re another one of their friends.
    Mark Gomez on 2009-12-17
    
    racist teachers?! no way, not in south central!! my sarcasm is so thick to cover my sadness... as these are the people i am supposed to work with to make things better? these are my colleagues? my fellow union brothers and sisters? the ones standing next to me in the fight for social and educational justice...
  - I haven’t seen it payoff anything not even for the school. The TV in the cafeteria is not even turned on during nutrition or lunch so we might as well not even have that 30-something inch plasma tv in there.
    Mark Gomez on 2009-12-17
    
    i too always wondered why that tv was in there? and as for the programs available until 7pm? i still always had trouble trying to open up the cafeteria for the football team... amongst a laundry lis of other things. being a varsity football coach at manual felt like being a red headed step child. fed the scraps of respect that were left by everyone else trying to fight to get theirs... because so many times had it been robbed...
  - Sandy Banks doesn’t mention uniforms, there is also a reconstructed senior quad and a new college counselor. However, in my opinion, there are many things not working at Manual Arts. For example parents are not being respected when decisions are taken. And of course this is something MLA should take care of.
  - I don’t agree with this column. I think that MLA should work more on checking students to make sure no drugs are sold or consumed on our campus. Also they should not keep tardy people for 30 minutes that way students that come late would be able to not lose class time. We should be aware of the plans that are changing on our school and not after they already happen.
  - my opinion students should have a chance to give an opinion on what teachers should be laid off.
    Mark Gomez on 2009-12-17
    
    oh boy, wouldn't that be the day?
MLA Partner Schools shows promise in turning around Manual Arts High -- latimes.com on 2009-12-17
- It's hard to slam Los Angeles Unified for failing at reform when it's just trying to survive, with a projected $470-mllion deficit next year that may lead to 8,000 layoffs. But the bumbling has been painful to watch.
  - Mark Gomez on 2009-12-17
    
    it is NOT that hard to slam when you stop to remember that people MADE those decisions. budgetary, curricular, hiring, promoting and the likes... it was not as much an accident as it would appear. educating poor, students of color has its challenges... but they are not so different from educating children of any diverse background... good teaching is good teaching. real support is real support. honesty is honesty. and corruption is corruption is apathy, excuses, and dispair... not that hard to fault the designers and slaves to the system... at least not for me
- "My staff takes things that other schools think about but can't do" because of bureaucracy.
  - Mark Gomez on 2009-12-17
    
    and at times adds another layer of beauracracy? i will cotinue to sound the skeptic's horn until i sit down and talk to mike about what he wants at our school (muir middle school) and how that doesn't matter as much as what our students and their parents and our teachers want...
- 2 more annotations...
- - But I'm just as tired of the "shareholder" lingo, that gives power to everyone and let's responsibility slide. And I'm disgusted by the politics and power-grabbing that stalls or strangles reform here every time.
    Mark Gomez on 2009-12-17
    
    as am i, yet... reform is not the end goal... equity and educational equality is. reform can either bring that closer or further away...
  - "They told us 'We want a school open to us, where we can help. And that no matter how they come to you, you treat our children like they can go to college.' "
    Mark Gomez on 2009-12-17
    
    ???
MLA Partner Schools shows promise in turning around Manual Arts High -- latimes.com on 2009-12-17
- The school board and Supt. Ray Cortines plan to farm out operations for its 200 lowest-performing schools, in what is either a sign of new openness or an admission that L.A. Unified is incapable of raising achievement at failing schools.
  - Mark Gomez on 2009-12-17
    
    or an example that the educational system, 50 plus years after brown vs. board is still an institution predicated on inequality...
- So far, about all they've shown is how hard reform is.
  - Mark Gomez on 2009-12-17
    
    when you don't approach it strategically and do not include the key members the "reform" will affect in the creation process, i.e. students, teachers, parents, and community members
- 6 more annotations...
- - Teachers at eight of the 10 schools run by the mayor's partnership say the group's fumbling efforts have actually made it harder to get anything accomplished.
    Mark Gomez on 2009-12-17
    
    wow... LA times getting something right on education in LA? this is exactly the sentiment i have heard from everyone involved in this... even a few on the mayor's end of things
  - Manual Arts High School celebrated its 100th birthday this year. The classrooms are drafty; the buildings are faded; the campus has so many students, it operates year-round to accommodate them all. It's on a rough strip of Vermont Avenue, just south of USC, in a neighborhood with the city's poorest residents and highest rate of violent crime.
    Mark Gomez on 2009-12-17
    
    and home to some of my favorite young people in the world!!! and what the hell is USC doing anyway? when they going to lend a hand here?
  - Mike McGalliard, the founder of MLA Partner Schools, who grew up in Oregon and went into teaching "because I loved learning," then quit after two years "because I didn't have the endurance."
    Mark Gomez on 2009-12-17
    
    how is this guy supposed to support me in turning around my school again? what is he going to promise me and our students? this game IS endurance!
  - - $400 extra per student -- on grants for teachers and a 12-hour school day that offers clubs and classes until 7 p.m.
  - the way McGalliard and his crew prattle on about being data-driven and community-centered.
    Mark Gomez on 2009-12-17
    
    what kind of data are we talking here? how is it being created? analyzed? by whom?
  - It's decorated with college banners and furnished with a castoff table, mismatched chairs and a couch liberated from McGalliard's home.
    Mark Gomez on 2009-12-17
    
    i liberated a persian rug from my home for my classroom library... amongst countless other things... most of the time the things in my classroom (furniture and others) don't even grace the space of my living room or the likes... i just BUY THEM FOR MY CLASSROOM...
    
    i know thismay come off bitter and jealous sounding but there are so many teachers who are silent heroes... what is it going to take to turn shift the paradigm for how we critically examine true educational reform? coaches and ikea lamps are fine... but what is going on in the mind's of our students? how are we enriching their intellectual worlds? what are they learning from us? our actions? are implicit and explicit messages communicated daily?
Poll Reveals Havoc of Unemployment on Workers and Family - NYTimes.com on 2009-12-16
- Almost half have suffered from depression or anxiety. About 4 in 10 parents have noticed behavioral changes in their children that they attribute to their difficulties in finding work.
  - Mark Gomez on 2009-12-15
    
    i wonder how much of this is taking its toll on my students... and a relevant article for them to study the fall of Rome
- “After struggling and struggling and not being able to pay my house payments or my other bills, I finally sucked up my pride,”
  - Mark Gomez on 2009-12-15
    
    at what point will our society begin to change its paradigm so that "pride" and feeding your family is measured on a more naturalistic scale? you must eat... you needn't feel proud of how that happens?
- 3 more annotations...
- - With unemployment driving foreclosures nationwide, a quarter of those polled said they had either lost their home or been threatened with foreclosure or eviction for not paying their mortgage or rent.
  - “Everything gets touched,” said Colleen Klemm, 51, of North Lake, Wis., who lost her job as a manager at a landscaping company last November. “All your relationships are touched by it.
    Mark Gomez on 2009-12-15
    
    knowing this first hand in having to watch my wife, laid of school teacher extraordinaire, suffer daily... even as she attempts to spread joy in a classroom that was once all hers... i wonder if the distrcit ever considers this far reaching effect... on the human relational level... i would gues not though
  - Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the traditional image of men as breadwinners, men were significantly more likely than women to report feeling ashamed most of the time.
russell davies: playful on 2009-12-15
- I think of this as bubble-building rather than world-building. It draws heavily on the awesome power of pretending.
  - Mark Gomez on 2009-12-15
    
    the awesome power of imagination... we have to get back to unleashing this in the classroom on a regular basis again...
Border Crossing: There's an App for That | NBC San Diego on 2009-12-15
- California Coalition for Immigration Reform, are outraged and think the app's creators should be arrested.
  - Mark Gomez on 2009-12-15
    
    immigration reform is not what this group is after. "fighting the alien invasion?" i mean come on... the damn website feels like some surreal hyper pariotic video game... nonetheless... it is real
- "So while the intent may be good, in the wrong hands, it could turn out to be a bad thing."
  - Mark Gomez on 2009-12-15
    
    uhm... kinda like a gun?
- 2 more annotations...
- - "electronic civil disobedience" and an art project, even.
    
    "When it tells you where there's water, it also gives you, like, a few lines of poetry to like welcome you to the U.S.," Cardenas said.
  - $30 phones from the Transborder Humanities Institute at UCSD.
Google Wave on 2009-12-15
- this is to say: i think we should get on the same page about what we hope to get out of the group so that it feels worthwhile to folks. and, deciding if we're going to have a "usual structure" or something more free-flowing would also be helpful. how do people feel about spending some time next time on this
Some Biologists Find an Urge in Human Nature to Help - NYTimes.com on 2009-12-04
- An interesting bodily reflection of humans’ shared intentionality is the sclera, or whites, of the eyes. All 200 or so species of primates have dark eyes and a barely visible sclera. All, that is, except humans, whose sclera is three times as large, a feature that makes it much easier to follow the direction of someone else’s gaze. Chimps will follow a person’s gaze, but by looking at his head, even if his eyes are closed. Babies follow a person’s eyes, even if the experimenter keeps his head still.
  - Mark Gomez on 2009-12-04
    
    this is interesting... love breaking it down like that.
- This could have happened at some point early in human evolution, when in order to survive, people were forced to cooperate in hunting game or gathering fruit. The path to obligatory cooperation — one that other primates did not take — led to social rules and their enforcement, to human altruism and to language.
  “Humans putting their heads together in shared cooperative activities are thus the originators of human culture,” Dr. Tomasello writes.
Some Biologists Find an Urge in Human Nature to Help - NYTimes.com on 2009-12-04
- Selfish and in need of considerable improvement, think many parents.
  - Mark Gomez on 2009-12-04
    
    a parent who is truly ready to become a parent would understand the necessity for selfish stages on human life (uhm.. infancy) and be able to see the interdependent nature of of selfishness and selflessness...
- some biologists have arrived is that babies are innately sociable and helpful to others. Of course every animal must to some extent be selfish to survive. But the biologists also see in humans a natural willingness to help.
  - Mark Gomez on 2009-12-04
    
    certain people have intuitively known this... it is always good to see science come around...
- 5 more annotations...
- - “It’s probably safe to assume that they haven’t been explicitly and directly taught to do this,” said Elizabeth Spelke, a developmental psychologist at Harvard. “On the other hand, they’ve had lots of opportunities to experience acts of helping by others. I think the jury is out on the innateness question.”
    Mark Gomez on 2009-12-04
    
    either way it suggests an enormous amount of either inteligence and/or learning power, that if either was only fostered the way certain undesired human attributes are unintentionally cultivated in this society... then who knows of the possibility? a helpful and kind world?
  - It seems to occur across cultures that have different timetables for teaching social rules. And helping behavior can even be seen in infant chimpanzees under the right experimental conditions. For all these reasons, Dr. Tomasello concludes that helping is a natural inclination, not something imposed by parents or culture.
  - As children grow older, they become more selective in their helpfulness. Starting around age 3, they will share more generously with a child who was previously nice to them. Another behavior that emerges at the same age is a sense of social norms. “Most social norms are about being nice to other people,” Dr. Tomasello said in an interview, “so children learn social norms because they want to be part of the group.”
    Mark Gomez on 2009-12-04
    
    and then they hit 13 and what happens?!!?
  - If children are naturally helpful and sociable, what system of child-rearing best takes advantage of this surprising propensity? Dr. Tomasello says that the approach known as inductive parenting works best because it reinforces the child’s natural propensity to cooperate with others. Inductive parenting is simply communicating with children about the effect of their actions on others and emphasizing the logic of social cooperation.
    Mark Gomez on 2009-12-04
    
    this needs further research... or honest dialogue, but one informed by many perspectives...
  - “Children are altruistic by nature,” he writes, and though they are also naturally selfish, all parents need do is try to tip the balance toward social behavior.
    Mark Gomez on 2009-12-04
    
    is that all parents (and teachers) have to do? why do i doubt that teachers would agree with this statement? however unfortunate that may be...

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