I spend most of Thursday pulling staples out of the wall, trying my hardest to keep the student work intact. Art work and thought-provoking writing are replaced by emptiness. Whitewashed walls extract the color, vitality and voice of our classroom
Read MoreWhy I Am Not Silent on Immigration
Juan's mom shows up, make-up smeared, holding his younger brother. My Spanish isn't great, but I can understand the message. We're going to Mexico. And if they don't want us there, it's back to El Salvador. His dad works construction while his
Read MoreThe Problem with VAM Scores
Before the district kill-and-drill benchmark test, a student says to me, "You look stressed." "I'm fine," I lie, offering a grin that looks more like a grimace. "I normally blow off the test, but my mom says you could lose
Read MoreAssessing Learning Versus Taking Assessments
I once tried to create a stop motion feature called "Phil in the Bubble." Here, the protagonist is a student who sits alone in a black and white silent classroom taking a test. Bubbles emerge from his multiple choice test
Read MoreWhen Teachers Aren’t Invited
During my prep period today, I ran across a discussion between a few people on Twitter. It revolved around a Harvard Gazette article where five experts engaged in a discussion regarding how to "jump-start effective learning." I read the experts and found
Read MoreThe Four Hour Block: Instructional Ghettos
When I began as an ELL teacher, I thought I would be working with students who were trying to learn English. I quickly learned that the ELL Four Hour Block classrooms are essentially instructional ghettos where students who have not
Read MoreThe Four Hour Block: Bad Policy Creating Bad Pedagogy
"Mr. Spencer, why aren't you doing STEM projects with us?" a student asks. "We're doing some of them," I point out. "But not like you did when you taught eighth grade," she says. "True, but I had more freedom. I
Read MoreInnovation Isn’t the Answer
I remember watching baseball games in the 1980’s. I couldn’t tell if the Giants were playing in Pittsburgh, Cincinatti or Philadelphia. Every stadium was the same – a giant, donut-shaped behemoth meant for concerts, baseball games and football games. It
Read MoreWhite Noise
The Spanish-American War was an act of conquest. I don’t teach it that way. I do, however, offer primary sources, statistics and stories from the time period that challenge the textbook assumptions that Mexico baited the U.S. into war and
Read MoreWhat If Assessment Was a Verb?
I often get the urge to say, "Ignore the dots on the wall, kids. Those dots don't demonstrate your value as a learner or your identity as a student." Instead, I hope they walk past it, ignore it, and walk
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