In One Place

Just finished Inamorata by Joseph Gangemi. For a few hours, I was transported back to Philadelphia in the 1920s, into the world of parlor seances. The description was particularly vivid and I was sorry to come to the end. My thanks to the owner of the Fountain Bookstore, who recommended it. She’s right…the paperback cover doesn’t do it justice.

I am talking to a group of media specialists in Roanoke under the direction of Jane James.

I am at the SITE conference in Phoenix, Arizona, and not feeling so nervous anymore about my presentation. No hard core data, just people like me talking about what they’ve done, including a guy who basically reported on his blog lesson plan! So, I need to start doing some writing! I am going to the session on being a reviewer but can’t get to the writing session as I will be presenting. And, there’s a late call for Ed Media presentations: I’m tempted to put in something about Noter. It would force me to work on it some more. I have seen a few people I know but don’t have a dinner date for tonight. I may go to the reception just for some food but then I should head back to the room to do some work for Roanoke and my paper.

I am slowly coming to realize that I am post-church. I like going to church to sing in the choir and hear a good sermon. I don’t need the church for anything more: potlucks, circle dinners, or book groups. My musical interests, while they arose from the church, are now separate from it with the exception of choir. In fact, using graduate school as an excuse, I now only attend when the choir sings. But, grad school IS an excuse. I get more out of my quiet Sunday mornings at home than from church. With the exception of the RE minister, I haven’t heard a decent sermon in two years. And now that I’ve seen the really ugly side of church politics that included a board member shouting an obscenity at my husband in my living room, I am just ready to walk away. I know, of course, that no church is perfect, but I expected better from this group. But–remembering that there is nothing worse than a fundamentalist liberal–I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.

Congratulations to KQED for scheduling the “Sugartime” episode: KQED | About KQED: News and Events: Postcards From Buster Letter From President

So, the first Education secretary under Bush called the NEA a terrorist organization and now this one is criticizing PBS. It seems clear that this is not an adminstration that is interested in fostering dialog and supporting diversity: The New York Times > National > Official Criticizes a PBS Cartoon

I had my first research design class last evening, and the professor suggested that one of the purposes of the class was to make us generally better consumers of educational research. We would learn to question when people discuss research. Here’s my first example of the way we reference research without really making it clear. From the Tech Tonic report of The Alliance for Childhood: “Research strongly indicates that face-to-face
relationships with people and the rest of the natural world are critical not just for young children but
for older students as well” (p. 9). But, the report does not include any references to back up this statement. What research? What reports? I am sure they exist, but without them embedded in this report, I have no way of knowing. And, the average reader who isn’t engaged in a class on research, would probably not even think twice about the lack of references. Instead, an apparent authority is telling them such research exists, and that’s probably good enough for them.

More on Lawrence Summers from The New York Times…now, it’s more a question of his general leadership style. Do good leaders naturally attract controversy? Or is Summer just a loose cannon who says things without really thinking and then is often forced to back away? At Harvard, the Bigger Concern of the Faculty Is the President’s Management Style

This article from The New York Times discusses the return of handwriting to the elementary and middle school curriculum. It points out that teaching handwriting is often not covered at all in pre-service teacher education and it made me wonder if anyone at William and Mary handles it.

NB: I have to choose a curriculum issue to cover for my Advanced Curriculum class so I’m collecting articles about curriculum issues. I don’t that this is the issue but it’s interesting that within about three minutes of going out to read the paper, I found an article about curriculum. Certainly, it is THE real discussion in school: what and how to teach.

I’ve been following the story of Lawrence Summers’ comments about women and found this editorial defending him. I have to say that I agree that Summers should be able to hypothesize in public and rather than walking out, we should engage in debate. But it’s tough for women to be emotionally detached from this debate, especially considering that Summers’ other idea was that women can’t move ahead academically because they can’t work 80 hours a week with children. And that seems to imply that it’s OK for the fathers to work 80 hours a week. So, men aren’t really all that important in raising children?? That’s a theory right out of the biography of Abigail Adams that I just read. Glad to see Harvard hasn’t moved too far from its Puritan, colonial roots up there in Cambridge. Continue reading →