“The stone that the builder refuse Will always be the head cornerstone-a; The stone that the builder refuse Will always be the head cornerstone.” – “Cornerstone,” Bob Marley This fall marks my tenth year at the Mission Hill School. I have taught five through nine year olds. Each year there have been students with special needs in my classroom. Sometimes
Major school decisions are made by students and staff voting on proposals: one person, one vote. Some decisions must be made by the staff because of law, education policies of New York State and the city school district, and the spirit and philosophy of the school. The decision-making process was developed by the school community in 1976 in order to
In the mathematics department at Vanguard High School, we have taken on a mission to raise students’ interest, skill, understanding, and performance in mathematics Over the past several years, we have wrestled with the implications of the achievement gap, a pressing fact for us, as students enter our school well below grade level. Our own belief in education as an
How people in a school behave to each other – in classrooms, halls, central office and faculty lounge – sets a tone that has profound effects on what students learn. What makes a school a decent place to be? Walk into a school and you can tell almost at once if it is a decent place to be. The signals
by Kathleen Cushman and the Students of What Kids Can Do, Inc. (The New Press, 240 pages, $24.95) reviewed by Jill Davidson “Getting adolescents to talk honestly takes only genuine interest in what they have to say,” writes Kathleen Cushman in Fires in the Bathroom, a book of advice to teachers coauthored with forty high school students from New York
With a B.S. in math but no prior math education training, my first job as a math teacher was at an alternative charter school with a holistic mission. I was charged with teaching math to five groups of 17 7th, 8th, and 9th graders, embracing problem solving, communication, and collaboration. Few of these students had been taught math in this
In 2004, a group of ninth graders with significant learning challenges entered Fenway High School unconventionally, as Fenway English teacher Rawchayl Sahadeo explains. This gave Fenway— a CES Mentor School community committed to equitable, inclusive education—an opportunity for renewal and growth along with controversial and sometimes frustrating essential questions. Is separation for some students the most equitable and educationally sound
Making Art Together: How Collaborative Art-Making Can Transform Kids, Classrooms, and Communities by Mark Cooper and Lisa Sjostrom (Beacon Press, 208 pages, $26.95) As a senior at Quest High School in Humble, Texas, my final exhibition was on the arts and education. While my presentation was geared towards policy and finance, research on how art programs help kids develop and
Widening the Circle: The Power of Inclusive Classrooms by Mara Sapon-Shevin, (Beacon, 184 pages, $16.00) Widening the Circle argues that all learners—and teachers—contain multitudes. On that basis, inclusion of all students is fundamentally equitable, educationally beneficial, and morally imperative. Inclusion reinforces our democratic commitments, commitments that Essential schools in particular are poised to make or have made already. Fundamentally, an
School Redesign Network The School Redesign Network, based at Stanford University, is a powerful collaborative that provides resources both for creating small schools and for redesigning large schools. The School Redesign Network’s web site is exceptionally useful, with lessons and ideas for small school design, guidelines, research overviews, video clips from scholars and practitioners discussing small school development, access to
Stewart Jones, Rachel Russell, T.J. Estandian, Yaffa Katz-Lewis, and Peter Lauterborn, five seniors from San Francisco’s Leadership High School, discussed their views on educational equity with Horace editor Jill Davidson. A 400-student public charter school founded in 1997, Leadership High School attracts students from across the city. To learn more about the school, visit www.leadershiphigh.org. Horace: First of all, tell
By Mark Edmundson(Vintage, 288 pp., $13.00) BUY NOW! Reviewed by Eva A. Frank Perhaps I have seen Stand and Deliver and Dead Poets Society too many times. Until Mark Edmundson’s Teacher, I think I believed a teacher’s story only worthy if the outcome is monumental student transformation. Disenfranchised students receiving 5s on the Advanced Placement Statistics test, high school students
“Mister, when am I ever going to use this?” When I started out as a new math teacher, these were the words I hated to hear because often, I wasn’t so sure myself. In my own life as a math student, the sheer un-usability of the material was a big draw. As a teen, I could not figure out my
Exploring the connections between language, race, identity, and school success, The Skin That We Speak’s thirteen essays delve into how speakers of “nonstandard” English —mostly varieties of African-American dialects, or Ebonics —view themselves, how schools have often perpetuated the educational inequities of African American and other children, and how educators can create the best frameworks to honor students’ language and
By Sam M. Intrator (Yale University Press, 208 pages; $23.00), BUY NOW! reviewed by Katherine Simon These are tough times for those of us who believe that the core of learning has to do with igniting the imagination, unleashing students’ creativity, and whetting their appetite for knowledge. This kind of rhetoric seems embarrassingly na??ve these days, and ever so far
LD Online LD Online is a big tent, providing deep and broad resources for people with disabilities and their parents, educators, and friends. Its comprehensive offerings, mostly focused on the United States and Canada, include descriptions of a wide range of learning disabilities, expert commentary, an online store, pointers to school, summer, and other programs, an active online community, research