Art Gelwicks's Library tagged teaching →  View Popular

I’m not saying there isn’t a place and a time for strategic thinking, what I’m saying is that the edublogosphere is loaded to the freakin’ gills with it. How many ways can you discuss the innate digital skills of middle school students before realizing it’s worth more to talk about what works and doesn’t work with them. In this case the why is truly “academic”.

We’ve twittered, blogged, bookmarked, tagged, forwarded, and flogged this horse to an amazing degree. What I don’t see is the same amount of energy in capturing what’s been done with the students, the successes and failures, in anything longer than 140 characters.

If we want our teachers to learn to fish, we have to show them how to bait the hook and cast the line…not wonder if the fish are truly hungry.

"Based on our interpretation of the current state law, the public interest demands those e-mails be released."

Bubolz said in July he made the request to see if the teachers were doing their job "... the way it's supposed to be done."

Horace Mann’s endowment was $60 million at the time, but the construction budget topped $100 million. To finance the project, the school floated $103 million in bonds certified by the city’s Industrial Development Agency over the next five years. According to documents filed with the IDA, Horace Mann’s total debt will reach $339 million, including principal and interest, over the 42-year life of the bonds. The board has since raised tuition (now $29,000) and has completed two major fund-raising campaigns, including selling the naming rights to its new buildings (lockers at $500,000, computer classrooms $150,000 a pop, the orchestra pit for $250,000).

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One consequence of the debt has been the consolidation of wealth on the board. The last full-time educator to serve as a trustee, Barnard dean Marjorie Silverman, left the board in 1999. Nowadays the board is dominated by lawyers, investment bankers, and real-estate developers, and, possibly as a consequence, the school’s relations with its teachers have suffered.

Then, after lunch, McGuire and Sheehy were walking in front of Tillinghast Hall when a woman wearing alligator sunglasses stormed up to them. It was the trustee whose daughter had formed the anti-McGuire club.

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“You logged into Facebook under a false name,” the woman said, glaring at McGuire.

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“I had a right to defend myself against defamation,” McGuire responded.

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“Students are just blowing off steam,” the trustee said. “They’re very stressed; it’s not unusual for them to say racist and sexist things … The site is private.”

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“No,” McGuire insisted, “it’s got 9 million users.”

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“What you did was like breaking into my daughter’s room and reading her diary … ”

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“No,” McGuire said, the emotion rising in her voice, “what your daughter did was the equivalent of posting something in Times Square.”

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McGuire could not control herself any longer. “What your daughter did was actionable, and I’m not talking about this anymore,” she said before walking off.