Category: Fat Paragraph

Day of the Dead, Mark Twain and Cognitive Magic

Belief Gap, Blog, Fat Paragraph / tagged , , , , , / / by

This is gonna be short, but incredibly sweet.

This here photo is of a Day of the Dead altar built by students, teachers and parents. It seems Mark Twain had a thing about San Antonio – and who doesn’t? – and so the community at Mark Twain Dual Language Academy and Middle School there set out pan dulce and marigolds, among other ofrendas, under the curmodgeon’s portrait.

It was my privilege today to spend time at the school, which features a kind of state-of-the-art bilingual education unique, at least in Texas. This particular school teaches some children who arrived speaking only Spanish, some speaking only English and a sizeable population whose parents lost their Spanish as children because historically in U.S. schools the goal has been to move kids into English-only instruction, and as quickly as possible.

Some of the sweet kids I talked to today – schools in San Antonio enroll kids as young as 3 — may soon be able to speak to their grandparents. Go ahead and let that wash over you a second before we move on to today’s most interesting bit of learning – for me. Continue reading →

In Which Kerry Jo Talks Too Much, Test Prep Turns Out Not to Be Satan’s Tool and Buses Run the World

Accountability, Blog, Fat Paragraph, High Standards, Minneapolis / / by

 The Zillion Open Tabs Edition

 

I don’t know if you do this too, but I am in the habit of leaving things I want to come back to for one or another reason open in tabs on my computer. And yes, that computer is a MacBook so I have a reading list function. And yes, a dear friend turned me on to Evernote and it has changed my life. And yes, I do still have drawers and drawers of actual paper files archiving treasures.

In the most primitive part of my brain, the tabs are like electronic boxes there for the ticking — markers of the daily chaos we all fantasize is tame-able. Other people subscribe to Real Simple or pin photos of tiny houses, where one presumes big messes can’t be made. Me, I dream of a day when the browser can safely be closed.

Why am I boring you with my monkey mind? Because it occurs to me that the fully fashioned blog posts I thought to pen about some of the aforementioned tabs could really just be an annotated list. Which is a win for both of us, right?

Without further ado:

 

I reserve the right to come back to this one at some length: Here is a proposed Minneapolis School Board rule about talking out of turn. Scroll down to g, “director speaking time,” and h, “other.” It says, essentially, no more running your yap until your fellow directors are forced to call a point of order, particularly if your verbal expositions are couched as questions about items in the board agenda packet you clearly didn’t read.

I’m calling this the Kerry Jo Felder rule.

Continue reading →

Will Washington State Let Adult Politics Shutter Gap-Closing Schools?

Belief Gap, Blog, Fat Paragraph, School Choice / / by
Friends, in January I had the great fortune of visiting a high school in Seattle that shares the AMAZING personalized learning platform being piloted by my younger son’s school here in Minneapolis. Those of you who know me In Real Life, in internet parlance, know that this move has changed both my boy’s life and mine in a revolutionary way.
 
When I was in Washington visiting schools I met tons of kids whose families could not get special education services from their neighborhood schools, sometimes despite tremendous wealth and willingness to advocate full time. Summit Sierra is changing their fortunes the way Venture Academy has changed mine.
 
Except…. last week the Washington House of Reps failed to advance a bill that would have resolved the funding issue that the state’s very politicized supreme court declared unconstitutional last fall. (No, it did not declare charters unconstitutional, just the tapping of a particular pot of money.) This despite caravan after caravan of students making the trek to ask lawmakers for a reprieve.
 
I watched their testimony in the Senate. It moved policymakers and gallery-sitters to tears. The House apparently not so much. The legislature adjourns sine die March 11. Which leaves little time for the cavalry to find a new solution.
 
Washington, as nationally recognized researcher Robin Lake pointed out in a commentary on the sorry mess, may thus have the dubious distinction of becoming the first state to close schools that are closing gaps for its poorest, most disenfranchised learners.
You can find Lake’s commentary here. There’s a link to my feature embedded it in. If you want to cut to the chase you can find my story here.