A student at KIPP Believe in New Orleans is brutally murdered. John pays his respects and looks at the bigger picture.
Tag Archives: new orleans
The Super Bowl, A Sea of Media and Control
Several seemingly unrelated subjects have been floating around in my head lately. The first involves New Orleans, a city that’s gone crazy about its football team’s first appearance in the Super Bowl on Sunday, February 7th. All but two of the school districts in and around New Orleans have cancelled school for the Monday after the game, reasoning that most students would be partying hard all weekend and wouldn’t show up anyway.
(Some readers may know that we’ve been tracking the efforts of Paul Vallas to rebuild the schools in the Recovery School District there. Well, I’m happy to say that Paul is one of the two superintendents who is opening schools on Monday.)
Football and mathCall me an old fogey, but I find closing schools to be irresponsible behavior on the part of the adults. Are the 2nd, 3rd and 4th graders going to be worn out from partying? What are working parents supposed to do, or are they also exempt from going to work?
Worse, however, the educators are bypassing a remarkable teachable moment, a chance to connect learning with the city’s obsession with the Saints.
Teaching for America or Learning on the Job?
To what extent is classroom teaching a skill? How long does it take to learn those skills, and is there a best way to learn them? These are important questions at any time, but I submit they are of particular importance today, with Teach for America (and other alternative routes into the classroom) growing in [...]
