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• Virginia Teachers Get Flack for Pro-Obama Email

  The Virginia Teachers Union is in hot water for allegedly mixing education with politics. A union member sent out an email encouraging teachers to participate in “Obama Blue Day” by wearing a blue shirt (without displaying any candidate names), and getting at least two people to register to vote. Read More... Posted Oct 04 2008, 02:30 PM by Hannah Tennant-Moore with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: education, politics, teachers, Virginia, barack obama, classroom, students, republicans, obama, youth, email, get out the vote, nonpartisan, virginia teachers union, union, voter registration, obama blue day

• How to Fire Bad Teachers

  When Anthony Lombardi took over as the principal of a below-average public school in Queens, New York, he began a controversial practice to improve student performance: he fired bad teachers. Within a few years, the percentage of fourth graders in Lombardi’s school who could read at grade level went from 37 to 90. According to Slate, studies show that predicting whether a teacher will be effective in the classroom based on his or her résumé is nearly impossible. And once teachers are hired, teachers unions essentially ensure them a job for life. Read More... Posted Jul 29 2008, 05:03 PM by Hannah Tennant-Moore with | with 3 comment(s) Filed under: principal, classroom, New York, bad teachers, public schools, test scores, queens, student performance, fire bad teachers, good teachers, tenure, teacher evaluations, school performance, anthony lombardi, teachers unions

• Wha? School Starts Sex Abuse Investigation Based on Psychic's Tip

  File this one under, "If it happened to me, my rage would know no bounds." Colleen Leduc has an eleven-year-old daughter, Victoria, who is autistic. Last month, shortly after she picked up her daughter from school, she got a call from the teacher saying she should come to the school immediately for an urgent matter. When she arrived for the meeting with the teacher, principal, and vice-principal, the teacher told her an educational aide in the classroom had been to see a psychic over the weekend, and that the psychic said a little girl with the initial "V" was being sexually abused by a man in his twenties. Ridiculous, no? Well, by the time the meeting took place, the school HAD ACTUALLY REPORTED IT to Children's Aid Services, opening an investigation... Read More... Posted Jun 21 2008, 12:02 PM by Kelly Mills with | with 7 comment(s) Filed under: mother, school, child, autism, sexual abuse, superstition, classroom, protection, report, investigation, autistic, psychic, idiots, aid

• Note To Parents: No Embarassment Or Strippers For Birthdays, 'Kay?

  I have never understood the whole birthday-as-opportunity-for-humiliation thing. Why would you want to commemorate someone's special day by making them feel like an ass? It's part of my stance against birthday spankings. And I even have a recurring nightmare about being in a restaurant and having the waitstaff come out and put a funny hat on my head and then everyone singing...bleugh. So I'm less sympathetic about this story last week when one mom wanted to playfully embarass her son on his 16th birthday and the whole thing went terribly awry in a naked lady/public humiliation kind of way. The mom says she contacted a party entertainment company and hired a gorilla to show up in her son's drama class to chase him around on his birthday. Somehow the booking got mixed up... Read More... Posted Nov 12 2007, 02:31 PM by Kelly Mills with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: Embarassing Your Kids, schools, birthdays, classroom, sweet 16, strippers, humiliation

• Babies Are Going to School to Teach Compassion

  My kids have always been on the sensitive side. Just the other day my eleven-year-old son was close to tears because there was a dying mouse on our driveway. Being a sensitive mom myself, I was unable to even think about it let alone look at it, but I was happy to learn later that the poor little mousie had somehow managed to drag itself away somewhere. Most kids who aren't psychopaths have sensitivity toward animals, I think. But what about toward people? Having a little brother in the house has taught my older kids a level of compassion that I doubt they would have had otherwise. They often are protective of him, and they certainly accept him for who he is. Most of the time anyway. So hearing that babies are now teaching school kids about empathy doesn't surprise me all that much. Read More... Posted Jun 06 2007, 05:05 PM by Karen Murphy with | with no comments Filed under: babies, Canada, teaching compassion, classroom, school children, Roots of Empathy

• Texas Parents "Allowed" to Keep Multiples in Same Classroom

  Parents of multiples will now be able to decide whether kids should be kept together or separated in classrooms according to recent proposed legislation in Texas.  Currently, principals decide, but Senate Bill 403 would change that. The bill was conceived by Julie Robinson, mother of 2 year old twins who wants her kids in the same classroom by the time they reach school age. Robinson has collected over 1700 parent signatures in support of the bill. Not surprisingly, the legislation runs unopposed. What lawmaker would have the nerve to oppose something that makes so much common sense? As a mother of twins who will start Kindergarten in the Fall, I can't imagine separating them at such a crucial juncture.  Twins (and I imagine other multiples) often lean on each other when faced with new situations, but once they're comfortable they branch out and meet other kids and integrate into the activity at hand.  Good thing I don't live in Texas. Posted Mar 21 2007, 07:32 AM by Rachael Brownell (Redsy) with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: education, twins, school, multiple births, multiples, classroom, kids separated in school