Social media

The October 2010 Kappan had an article with some interesting ideas on the use of social media by educational institutions including publishing about a wide variety of education topics, embedding twitter feeds into existing pages, partnering with other educational institutions and posting fan videos.

Summer Programs survive

EdSource has published a report summarizing summer program offering this year in California. It accurately describes the drop in LAUSD from over 50 million a few years ago to 3 million this year. However, even with the drop LAUSD has been able to offer “something” for all grades, if not all students. There is no doubt that more students fall behind during the summer when they are not engaged in a summer program. Continued cuts create a “sysiphian” situation of having students made advances during the school year only to have them lose some of those advance during the summer.

English Learners

The Nov/Dec issue of Leadership has a very nice article on supporting English Learners. Among the steps discussed were providing ELD classes, English courses that met college entrance requirements, careful placement based on multiple criteria, ongoing assessments, PD for teachers of English Learners, “pep talks”, advanced courses in L1, special recognition for students at graduation with more than one language, and reclassification celebrations. I enjoyed the article in particular because it did not speak of English Learners in the deficit mode but as bringing value and encouraging that value. The positive assessment results show that building on strengths is a better approach than trying to “fix” kids.

E-Learning Expands for Special-Needs Students

E-Learning Expands for Special-Needs Students. “E-Learning” is a viable option for all students. This summer we had a wide range of students with a variety of needs.

Changes in education

For a thought provoking article on the “changes” in education over the last twenty years, take a look at Martin Haberman’s article, “11 Consequences of Failing to Address the ‘Pedagogy of Poverty'” in the Oct 2010 issue of Kappan. In it Haberman argues that for all the “changes” tha have occured the “acts” that constitute teaching have remained the same, to the detriment of students.

Shared Leadership

In my research I found that one of the commonalities of high performing 10/10 schools was that they all practiced shared leadership. While I did not discuss in great detail how they accomplished that the November/December 2010 issue of Leadership magazine has a good story and example of how it was instituted in Moreno Valley Unified School District.