As many of you know I am a huge proponent of using technology to enhance education in schools. To that end I have been raising funds to supply laptops to the students in my classroom. Unfortunately it has taken me longer than I would have anticipated to put together the funds and get approval from my School District. 

That being said, I have decided to take a new direction with the project. Instead of trying to raise over $24,000 in order to acquire Google Chromebooks, I am going to reach for a much more manageable $9,500 in order to provide NetBooks. I think they will be a great asset to my classroom and since I have already raised over $6,500, they are within reach. Any assistance you can give would be much appreciated. There is a widget to the right that will connect to my paypal account for this specific purpose. I guarantee that 100% of the funds will be used for my student's technology use.

Thanks you for your help!

For many teachers and administrators across the School District of Philadelphia the District Walkthrough is a most harrowing experience. For a brief period of the school day the principal and/or assistant principals along with instructional support staff frantically cater to the whims of a large group of people charged with assessing the current academic progress of a school. According this document on the Empowerment Schools Walkthough Framework webpage, only 45 minutes are to be spent in classrooms. With the short amount of time allocated to this task the assessment of teaching and learning boils down to a simple checklist that leaves out most of the qualitative aspects of the classroom.

It is fairly easy to tell in the first 10 minutes of watching a class if there is actual learning going on that day. When it comes to walkthroughs, however, I have found that there is not so much a search for "learning" as a search for specific items deemed important by some external body. For example, I have been reprimanded over the past three years for lacking (at one time or another): a) posted objectives, b) current student work, c) state standards. Instead of spending the time to truly listen and watch what is going on, the focus is on these individual items.

My main quandary here is not so much that the walkthroughs exist - it is the fact that there does not seem to be any research behind their implementation. I have asked many people how or why it is important to student learning that I post my objectives, have loads of student work, or have a list of the state standards and have not received any cogent responses. If those in charge of maintaining the quality of education in schools do not, themselves, keep up on current research of pedagogy, how are they supposed to know what to look for? 

Unfortunately I am not as well versed as I would like to be in this field. As a third year teacher I do feel like I have a handle on many things in my classroom but I still think on a macro level of what is going on around Philadelphia. The teaching across the city is deeply important to me, though, so I want to make sure that those in charge of giving teachers red, yellow, or green dots based on our proficiency in teaching are assessing us in a valid way. Don't you?

While I was student-teaching in 2008-2009 in West Philadelphia I noticed a very large contrast in the types of conversations I had with students in school and the teenagers I worked with in my Jewish youth movement. The main demographic differences were that the West Philly kids were mostly black, mostly lower income, and all living in a highly urbanized area versus the Jewish kids were all white, mostly middle-class, and mostly suburban dwellers. I distinctly remember working with the Jewish teens on weekends and debating the finer points of how history influences current society as it related to education, economics, and the like. When I came into school every day, however, the conversation focused on parties over the weekend, being "on punishment," and new tattoos. It was striking.

So you can imagine my surprise when I overheard a conversation that piqued my interest during my school's one hour advisory period on Friday morning. Two black students were arguing over which was worse: the Holocaust or slavery. They had just started reading (or finished reading, I wasn't sure) Elie Wiesel's Night and had very passionate views. While I wouldn't say either of them were married to a particular answer, there were definitely "camps" and one student argued the Holocaust to be worse while the other said slavery was.

The points they were using were so impressive that I stopped what I was doing and just listened. One pointed out that slavery lasted longer; the other retorted that the Holocaust's concentration in time was a reason for it to be worse; the first responded by saying slavery has had a longer lasting affect; the other said we cannot know what will happen with the memory of the Holocaust. These are comments that philosophers and researchers are using to guide their conversations at much higher academic levels than these kids are right now, yet they are using the same arguments.

In contrast, conversations I had in my two years in neighborhood schools sometimes hit this high level but never for a sustained period of time (the conversation on Friday lasted the entire hour). Is this because students who attend neighborhood schools go home and either their parents are absent or do not have the energy to hold these conversations? Or do they not have the education? Are the kids at my magnet school more inherently motivated to talk about these subjects and just have more resiliency to maintain the dialog? I'm not sure, but it was a REALLY interesting conversation to take part in. I hope for more of those in the future!

What can one person do to make a difference? how will that difference make lasting change?

These two questions plague my thoughts every day. When I am working with students in a classroom it is easy to see and hear how they learn and get excited about new subjects. Just today I ran an activity based off Dan Meyer's Number Magic lesson plan and kids were ecstatic to make their own series of instructions to modify a number. It is a wonderful feeling and I should probably acknowledge it more often. 

But what about the rest of the 151,000 in the School District of Philadelphia? And the tens of thousands of others in private and charter schools? 

I want to be a part of a movement of change. One that will actually affect things for the long term. Former Philadelphia Schools' Superintendent Arlene Ackerman wrote yesterday that she thinks serious change can only come from the outside, and she points to voucher programs and charter schools as the solution. While I completely disagree with her solution, I think her premise does have some merit: inertia is a difficult thing to get past. 

For those with varying amounts of time, here are varying lengths of the update.

Tiny Summary: The Philadelphia Federation of Teachers has a large sum of money lying around in the Health and Welfare Fund so they are giving the School District $30 million to extend the current contract for one whole year and not lose any benefits.

Short Summary: A quote from the Proposed Contract Extension paper given to all members at the beginning of the meeting. "Due to careful planning, careful bidding processes, constant monitoring, and very careful investments, the H&W Fund was able to offer upfront financial relief to the School District with a delayed payback schedule. The financial relief will provide the School District with payment holidays to the Fund in an amount totaling $58 million. The School District will repay to the Fund an amount totaling $28 million in a schedule agreed upon by the parties." Basically, the PFT is lending the School District $58 million and getting $28 million back in three lump sums after this year.

Larger Summary: The PFT leadership has done some amazing things that will allow teachers to work without any concessions until August 31, 2013. The demands from the School District may have included 1) not getting the raise due to us on January 1, 2012; 2) having to pay premiums for health insurance and; 3) losing lots of PFT members (translation: layoffs).

That being said, this means the PFT is GIVING THE SCHOOL DISTRICT $30 MILLION! While I did vote in favor of the proposal (as did the vast majority of attendees, I'm sure) it still makes me wonder how we can afford that as a union. Perhaps our financial management is so good we should get some of our people over to the School District. Or maybe we can just become more like the Ontario teachers pension fund and buy a few sports teams only to sell them for millions later.

This was my first time at a large PFT meeting and I have to say it seemed more like a presentation than a call for input. Of the people who responded during public comment time only two of us (I was one of them) asked questions regarding the finances of this proposal. One person pointed out that the PFT is giving $30 million and asked how that was possible (to which Jerry Jordan politically maneuvered around the answer) and then I asked if we were also receiving interest on the $28 million dollars that would have been given to us on time (to which the answer was a simple "no"). 

I am very grateful to have a union as powerful as this - I just hope more people get involved in asking the tough questions. I was quick enough to stand in front of the microphone tonight because I have a few years of experience under my belt. I wish more people would do the same.

Yom Kippur, often translated as the Day of Atonement, has just ended. This year marks the third in a row I have spent taking time at Wissahickon Creek in Philadelphia reflecting on my experiences and my sins. I have found this time to be very therapeutic and practical as it gives me a particular method during which to think of and act on mistakes I have made over the past 12 months. This Yom Kippur I focused on the fact that I do not think I have been generous enough with my resources and I want to rectify that. 

I find it extremely interesting but not coincidental that the Occupy Wall Street/Philadelphia movement has gained much strength over this past weekend. Aside from the fact that over 1000 New York Jews joined together last night for the opening services of the holiday, people across the country are recognizing that what used to be a country of the people, by the people, and for the people, has slowly changed to prop up the few extremely wealthy while downgrading the hard workers below. While I do not consider myself to be among the richest of the rich, I am definitely comfortable - something millions across the country (and the world) cannot say. 

"Where does my responsibility lie?" is the question I asked myself during this Day of Atonement. I work for an impoverished School District in a city that seems to be losing more money every month. Should it be enough that I go to work each day? Or do I, like other teachers, need to spend hundreds of dollars of my own money on my students to buy necessary supplies like paper and pencils? What if my students don't have access to the kind of modern technology the business world demands they are familiar with - do I spend hours trying to find donations/grants/foundations?

This question harkens back to the age-old aphorism that "it takes a village to raise a child." As a firm believer in collaborative efforts in general, especially when it comes to education, I beg all those with or without a stake in schools - please help us. I haven't exactly figured out what more I need to do for this, but that doesn't mean I've given up trying to figure it out. 

Let this Yom Kippur be the last that we say an al chet (confession) for the sin of not helping our children. After all, even though they make up 25% of the population, they are 100% of our future.

This week is a testing week across the School District of Philadelphia. The Predictive Test (or ACUITY test) is administered three times a year across almost all grade levels in the city in order to assess what a student's current level of knowledge specifically in preparation for the PSSA. Regardless of your opinion of standardized testing (which you probably know mine is fairly negative) I have noticed that students at my current magnet school are much faster when reacting to issues like this.

My experience the past two years of these types of tests has been mixed. Some students consent to taking the test with no problem; others moan, groan, and refuse unless you make a deal with them. Classes are supposed to be completely silent and over the past two years it has been quite hectic. I truly believe it is not the teacher's fault in many of these scenarios - especially when you have 30 students in a classroom and you need to make sure they all have the correct supplies out and their cell phones put away (And you wonder why neighborhood schools score lower?).

In my classroom the vast majority of students finished the test with time to spare and when I asked them to rearrange the desks back into small table-groups it took about 45 seconds for them to complete the task. I have asked similar things in years past and been met with reactions like, "why should I do that - it's not my class!"

While there are some problems in magnet school testing situations (especially amongst the older grades) it seems a lot easier than neighborhood school situations.