World-Shaker

"Students at an Attleboro, Massachusetts, middle school went hungry this week, if they had a negative balance on their pre-paid lunch cards.
Five cents of debt was enough for cafeteria employees at the Coehlo Middle School to instruct kids at least one day this week to dump out the food they would have normally eaten, CNN affiliate WJAR in Rhode Island reported."

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No noon meal for kids in debt at middle school

Interesting relevant fact: Food at that school is provided by a private company instead of the district. 

"In a new survey by AT&T, almost half of adults admitted to texting while driving, compared to a slightly smaller number of teens who fessed up to the same thing. About 49% of adults say they’ve sent a text while behind the wheel, according to a new survey conducted for the mobile company, compared with 43% of teens in a survey from last April.
And here’s the thing — they all know it’s wrong.
A full 98% of respondents said they’re aware that texting and driving isn’t safe."

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Survey: Adults text more than teens while driving

Yikes.

"As his Republican peers in other states search for ways to cut public school funding, Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad is charting a different course. He’s doubling down on education. Branstad, who was elected in 2010 as part of a resurgent GOP, has made proposals many Republicans would sneer at: raising minimum teacher salaries and offering incentive pay for teachers who take on more responsibilities — all by tapping $187 million in new school funding."

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In Iowa, a GOP governor charts a different course

Sharing because I’m shocked/relieved to see a state actually investing in education.

"Over the past 18 months, a massive $100 million public-school database spearheaded by the $36.4 billion-strong Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has been in the making that freely shares student information with private companies. The system has been in operation for several months and already contains millions of K-12 students’ personal identification ‒ ranging from name, address, Social Security number, attendance, test scores, homework completion, career goals, learning disabilities, and even hobbies and attitudes about school."

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Bill Gates’ $100 million database to track students

Not cool, Bill. Not cool.

Moss Point schools ignore harassing anti-gay environment, Southern Poverty Law Center says →

Holmes, who attended the junior high for 1 semester during the 2011-2012 school year, said she was forced to leave the school after being incessantly tormented by peers and faculty members.

She sought help from her principal, she said, but the principal told her, “I don’t want a dyke in this school.”

For the first 3 days of school, she was repeatedly referred to as “he” by teachers even though she told them she was a “she.”

Holmes said teachers and students called her “it,” “queer,” “freak,” “alien,” “dyke” and “he-she,” and teachers denied her access to the girls’ restroom.

“They don’t even know me,” Holmes, who is now homeschooled, said during the media event.

Shameful.

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allisonunsupervised:

No. 

I hate headlines like this for two reasons:

1. They perpetuate the lie that there’s a silver bullet to fix every problem with our education system.
2. They raise educational technology up as a superior solution to the human element of teaching, which encourages educators to scorn rather than embrace it. This makes my job substantially more challenging.

Will educational technology be part of the solution to the problems in our current education system? Absolutely. 

Do they offer exceptional and new value by promoting expression in ways that weren’t possible even ten years ago? Absolutely.

Will an iPad, or any technology for that matter, replace the value of pedagogy, instructional design, classroom management  community, respect, or the ability of a competent educator? Absolutely not. 

Technology is a tool. An incredibly effective tool when used intentionally by someone who comprehends the science and art of teaching and learning. But a tool nonetheless, not a replacement for effective instruction and guidance. 

And I do believe some of you are on my lawn. 

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Mozilla Launches Version 1.0 of OpenBadges for Learning

[source]

"Children who are bullied often carry the scars of their experience into adulthood and suffer from anxiety, depression and suicidal thoughts, a new study indicates. Even bullies themselves are at risk for psychological problems when they grow up, the researchers added. And children who have been both perpetrator and victim suffer the worst as adults."

— Childhood Bullying Can Leave Lifelong Scars

"The Obama administration is planning a decade-long scientific effort to examine the workings of the human brain and build a comprehensive map of its activity, seeking to do for the brain what the Human Genome Project did for genetics."

— Project Seeks to Build Map of Human Brain - NYTimes.com

"Homosexual students come to me with their problems, and I don’t agree with them, but I care about them. It’s the same thing with my special needs kids, I think God puts everyone in our lives for a reason."

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That awkward moment when a TEACHER compares being gay to having Down Syndrome.

UPDATE: Local Students Want “Traditional Prom”, Gays Banned

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Brace yourselves.

Well I hope Monopoly apologized to her…

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High School Math Teacher in Trouble for Tweeting Nude Photos, Calling Students ‘Jailbait’

Semi-nude selfies and jokes about on-campus drug use are just some of the things found on one Colorado math teacher’s Twitter page.

23-year-old Carly McKinney, a first-year teacher at Overland High School in Aurora, also raised eyebrows among district officials with tweets like, “Just got called Ms. McCutie. Points for being clever, however you are still jailbait.”

McKinney was busted by a viewer tip to local NBC affiliate 9News, and subsequently deleted her account, CarlyCrunkBear.

Taft High School Shooting: Conversation Between Gunman, Teacher Allowed Other Students To Escape →

The 16-year-old boy had allegedly wounded the teenager he claimed had bullied him, fired two more rounds at students fleeing their first-period science class, then faced teacher Ryan Heber.

“I don’t want to shoot you,” he told the popular teacher, who was trying to coax the teen into giving up the shotgun he still held.

Recounting the suspect’s words, Kern County Sheriff Donny Youngblood said the confrontation was enough of a distraction to give 28 students time to escape their classroom Thursday at a California high school.

With everything going on lately, I’d like to propose [Inter]National Hug a Teacher Day. Can we make that happen?

Ninja update for Beanni

"[Mr. Thomas] and others are trying to build a movement to gather “the people’s history.” And their project could spawn a new model for massive open online courses, or MOOC’s. Since 2010, scholars and students at Nebraska and at James Madison University have organized a series of “History Harvests”—community events where families share their artifacts and stories with students, who document and digitize them. The idea is to make visible histories and materials that otherwise would be largely invisible, and to share them more broadly online. Scholars benefit, and so do students, who learn to apply their disciplinary skills in real-world situations."

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‘History Harvest’ Project May Spawn a New Kind of MOOC

This is an awesome application of MOOCs.