The English language probably has more words than any other language on earth.* So why is it that, lately, people feel the need to replace perfectly serviceable verbs with nouns masquerading as verbs?
A dictionary is perfect for gifting.
You can keep it on the mantle in your fireplaced living room.
Take it out when you liaise with friends.
Outreach to those who’ve developed the jargon habit.
I’m visioning a future in which we can still understand each other.
A language is a living thing and we can’t expect it to stay static. English needs to grow and develop if it is to maintain the capacity to articulate the changes in our culture and our world. I don’t object to the additions of a new meaning for “mouse” or eight million words with e as a prefix, but I have to object to replacing effective, widely used words like “giving” out of sheer laziness or mistaken self-importance.
If, after reading this post, you are looking back at the title and thinking: “that doesn’t mean what she seems to think it means,” well-- you’re right.
*http://www.askoxford.com/asktheexperts/faq/
aboutenglish/mostwords?view=uk
Showing posts with label education. Show all posts
Showing posts with label education. Show all posts
Friday, July 27, 2007
Saturday, May 26, 2007
On why I enjoy paying my taxes:
I was listening to the news yesterday and I heard that the citizens of very wealthy Milton, Massachusetts have declined to pass an override that would increase their taxes in order to balance the town’s school budget. The alternative may be shutting down all sports programs or raising the fee for participation in a sport to over $700! They may have to excess 30-some teachers and make other cuts. But Milton residents so dislike paying taxes that they are willing to allow the quality of public education suffer rather than pay a little more. Maybe some of them think having to pay for shared community services is unfair. Maybe some of them consider paying taxes "throwing money down a hole." Maybe they don’t trust government to spend the money wisely.
People want everything but they don’t want to pay anything for it. They want better public transportation, better roads, cheap gas and cleaner air. They want infallible homeland security, a big bad standing military, and (though many may have changed their minds since) during the last election, a majority apparently wanted to pursue the suicidal occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. They want American students to pass high stakes tests, to be well-rounded, to go to college, and to be able to compete in a world market.
In the last few years, conservatives have gotten very good at controlling the language of the debate in the American political arena. Like “liberal,” they have made “taxes” a bad word. But taxes are really good for us all and for our community. Rampant individualism has made us forget about the benefits of living in community even as we continue to receive them-- for now.
I don’t know about you but I want my trash picked up so my neighborhood doesn’t smell like a dump and the streets repaired so I don’t lose a hubcap or break an axle in a pothole. I want good quality free public education for all children because it’s only fair, but also because when we don’t educate all children well, we, as a society, have to deal with the consequences. I even want the government to provide help to people who are struggling to get by, because I know there will always be people who need help. Equal access benefits from the government seem more fair and more effective than relying on individuals to notice people in need and invite them into their homes or churches for a meal, a bath or a place to sleep. I believe these necessities need to be provided on the community level and that they are worth paying for.
As for the argument that government can’t be trusted to spend money wisely... um, this is a democracy and we choose the people who run the government and, through them, what its laws and policies are. Yeah, sometimes elected officials don’t do what we want. There’s a remedy: vote them out! (Actually there are two. If we need to get someone out quick, before he starts World War III, we can impeach him!)
Maybe we should drop the term “taxes” and call them “dues” instead, or a “membership fee.” That’s basically what they are. You want to belong to this club? You want to get the benefits of driving on roads, of public services, of the national defense? Then you have to pay your dues.
Don’t let rich conservative republicans like George Bush (whose real agenda is for themselves and their cronies to make more money and pay fewer taxes) tell you that “taxes” is a four letter word. Taxes are the life’s blood of our society. I’m happy to pay mine to keep its heart pumping.
People want everything but they don’t want to pay anything for it. They want better public transportation, better roads, cheap gas and cleaner air. They want infallible homeland security, a big bad standing military, and (though many may have changed their minds since) during the last election, a majority apparently wanted to pursue the suicidal occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. They want American students to pass high stakes tests, to be well-rounded, to go to college, and to be able to compete in a world market.
In the last few years, conservatives have gotten very good at controlling the language of the debate in the American political arena. Like “liberal,” they have made “taxes” a bad word. But taxes are really good for us all and for our community. Rampant individualism has made us forget about the benefits of living in community even as we continue to receive them-- for now.
I don’t know about you but I want my trash picked up so my neighborhood doesn’t smell like a dump and the streets repaired so I don’t lose a hubcap or break an axle in a pothole. I want good quality free public education for all children because it’s only fair, but also because when we don’t educate all children well, we, as a society, have to deal with the consequences. I even want the government to provide help to people who are struggling to get by, because I know there will always be people who need help. Equal access benefits from the government seem more fair and more effective than relying on individuals to notice people in need and invite them into their homes or churches for a meal, a bath or a place to sleep. I believe these necessities need to be provided on the community level and that they are worth paying for.
As for the argument that government can’t be trusted to spend money wisely... um, this is a democracy and we choose the people who run the government and, through them, what its laws and policies are. Yeah, sometimes elected officials don’t do what we want. There’s a remedy: vote them out! (Actually there are two. If we need to get someone out quick, before he starts World War III, we can impeach him!)
Maybe we should drop the term “taxes” and call them “dues” instead, or a “membership fee.” That’s basically what they are. You want to belong to this club? You want to get the benefits of driving on roads, of public services, of the national defense? Then you have to pay your dues.
Don’t let rich conservative republicans like George Bush (whose real agenda is for themselves and their cronies to make more money and pay fewer taxes) tell you that “taxes” is a four letter word. Taxes are the life’s blood of our society. I’m happy to pay mine to keep its heart pumping.
Friday, February 2, 2007
On teachers and their critics:
I am so sick of armchair experts passing judgement on teachers. I’m sick of the low pay and little respect accorded teachers in this society. I wouldn’t think of going into a software firm or a nuclear power plant and telling those folks how to do their jobs. But look at the No Child Left Behind law. It is Big Brother for teachers, designed by politicians-- many of whom have no experience in education.
We have to have statewide standardized tests that are so difficult and which are given so much weight that we literally have kids in tears or staying home sick because they can’t deal with the pressure. And we have to teach to these tests rather than just teaching. We have to have standards and schedules and everybody teaching the same material in lock step with no room to utilize the teachable moment or capitalize on kids’ interests and curiosities. We have to have federally-dictated yearly progress goals which are, if the truth is told, random numbers, and because the goals keep increasing no matter how much progress is made, unreachable. We have to have punitive measures for not reaching these goals which include schools being taken over by state bureaucrats (how’s that going to help?). We have to have all this because people do not trust that teachers know how to teach or care enough or work hard enough.
Unlike the armchair experts, teachers are not people who just know about school from having gone themselves or from sending their own kids.
Like experts in any other field, teachers have earned degrees (in Massachusetts most teachers have a Master’s or more) They continually undergo professional development (probably more than in any other field). They know kids because they work with many kids over many years. They know better than any law or policy what is best for their particular kids in a particular year because they spend 5-6 hours a day, for 185 days, teaching them. In general, it is not the teachers who are the problem. The problem is what they are up against.
Not that teaching isn’t rewarding. It is, but it's also just damn hard, and getting harder. A teacher spends most of her time as the lone adult in a room full of kids-- it’s lonely and exhausting. At the elementary level a teacher is standing before her class teaching for about 5 hours a day. Imagine giving a presentation that lasts 5 hours! Imagine doing it every day. Imagine how long it would take to prepare for it.
We are not reading a few paragraphs out of teacher’s manual, mind you. In Boston, where education reform has brought instruction a long way, a teacher is creating reading lessons tailored to small groups of students at the same reading level (she may have 7 or 8 different groups in a class) and based on trade books (a new one everyday in the lower levels) which she has chosen for their fit with students and the teaching point. And that’s just one subject of 5!
I used to work from 5:30 - 6:30 in the morning over breakfast, then get to school at 7 to do more prep, teach from 8:35 until 2:35 (I didn’t usually sit for lunch because I was copying homework or giving extra help or mediating arguments or meting out punishments) continue prepping until they kicked me out of the building at 6, eat dinner then work on responding to journals and grading work from 8 till 11 while trying to watch a little TV. Even my husband got roped in-- he’d help me cut out cards for math or word games and exercises.
There are many more kids with special needs in Boston than the district has funds to provide services for. This means teachers have to serve special needs kids in regular ed. classrooms along with the expected range of levels. In my 2nd grade class I had kids reading at a kindergarten level and kids reading at a 4th grade level and everything in between.
Kids today have more discipline problems. Many have little experience sitting and listening or following rules. Because of the standards, we are asking them to do more sitting and listening when they are younger and younger. This is a recipe for frustration for everybody involved. Kids get turned off of school and teachers struggle to create an environment in which all 23+ children can learn.
Dealing with parents is harder because half of them think you aren’t challenging their kids enough and half of them think you are too hard on their kids. The era when parents respected teachers and parents and teachers presented a united front is over. I’ve had many parents question me in front of their children. I’ve even seen parents swear at principals in front of many children in the hallway or office.
And despite all our passion and caring and hard work, research shows that the school achievement of children is highly correlated with their parents’ wealth and level of school achievement (link to an American Educator article that cites this research below). Much of a child’s education takes place at home. We have read to my son almost every day since he was born. At five months, he would turn the pages of a book– an important behavior teachers note on the road to reading readiness. Some families can’t afford books and don’t have time to go to the library because they work several jobs. Some parents didn’t have a good educational experience themselves or don’t know it’s important to model reading. Kids from these homes may come to school at 5, never having seen a book. They may be average or even above-average kids and they will learn, but they start 5 years behind some others. No matter how good the teaching methods, they may not meet the standards at the same time others do.
Bush and his brethren (armchair educators all-- except maybe Laura Bush) talk about how important it is to attract high quality people to teaching. As if the people already in teaching aren’t the salt of the earth. I’m here to tell you that the bigger problem is retention. By pretty much any measure, I am one of those high quality, highly educated, capable people who could do something else and make plenty money and I chose teaching. I taught for 5 very rewarding but very draining years. I’ve left because I find it to be a nearly impossible, thankless and maddening job. I need some time to myself, I need some peace, I need some energy left to raise my own kid and I need to feel like someone appreciates all my hard work and my and my students’ little victories. Not all my students met all the standards– maybe not even most– but they all made progress.
I’m not the only smart young person who has lasted only 5 years– it’s an epidemic. We don’t need to use tests to prove our teachers are failing and then punish them, we need to support teachers and students to start from where they are and grow.
Here’s what we should do:
1.) Use innovative professional development to support our teachers in their never ending quest to do better
2.) Continue to innovate in instruction
3.) Allow and encourage teachers to capitalize on kids’ interests and curiosities. We need standards but every classroom shouldn’t be exactly the same because all kids are not exactly the same.
4.) Offer parents more guidance in child rearing from the time their kids are young
5.) Decrease class size to about 15 or put a second teacher or smart, well-educated paraprofessional in every room
6.) Increase parent and community participation in schools
7.) Increase special ed services to meet the need
8.) Stop teaching to the test– it is not education If the test doesn’t measure kids’ progress in what we are teaching day to day, then it is the wrong test. One test is not an accurate indicator of how kids or teachers are doing. We need various ways of assessing, including formative assessments (basically work that students are already doing which the teacher is using formally to determine their levels of achievement) and observations of classrooms.
9.) Show teachers some respect with better pay and a more professional work environment (if we need to raise taxes it will be worth the investment; this is our future, after all)
10.) Phase in new curricula and tests. It’s not fair to institute, as Boston did, a totally new math curriculum system-wide when students are in 9th grade and then require those same students to pass the high stakes test aligned with the new curriculum before they graduate high school. The requirement should begin with the students who had the new curriculum from kindergarten.
source: "...How to Make AYP Work...", American Educator Magazine
http://www.aft.org/pubs-reports/american_educator/issues/
spring05/aypquotes.htm
We have to have statewide standardized tests that are so difficult and which are given so much weight that we literally have kids in tears or staying home sick because they can’t deal with the pressure. And we have to teach to these tests rather than just teaching. We have to have standards and schedules and everybody teaching the same material in lock step with no room to utilize the teachable moment or capitalize on kids’ interests and curiosities. We have to have federally-dictated yearly progress goals which are, if the truth is told, random numbers, and because the goals keep increasing no matter how much progress is made, unreachable. We have to have punitive measures for not reaching these goals which include schools being taken over by state bureaucrats (how’s that going to help?). We have to have all this because people do not trust that teachers know how to teach or care enough or work hard enough.
Unlike the armchair experts, teachers are not people who just know about school from having gone themselves or from sending their own kids.
Like experts in any other field, teachers have earned degrees (in Massachusetts most teachers have a Master’s or more) They continually undergo professional development (probably more than in any other field). They know kids because they work with many kids over many years. They know better than any law or policy what is best for their particular kids in a particular year because they spend 5-6 hours a day, for 185 days, teaching them. In general, it is not the teachers who are the problem. The problem is what they are up against.
Not that teaching isn’t rewarding. It is, but it's also just damn hard, and getting harder. A teacher spends most of her time as the lone adult in a room full of kids-- it’s lonely and exhausting. At the elementary level a teacher is standing before her class teaching for about 5 hours a day. Imagine giving a presentation that lasts 5 hours! Imagine doing it every day. Imagine how long it would take to prepare for it.
We are not reading a few paragraphs out of teacher’s manual, mind you. In Boston, where education reform has brought instruction a long way, a teacher is creating reading lessons tailored to small groups of students at the same reading level (she may have 7 or 8 different groups in a class) and based on trade books (a new one everyday in the lower levels) which she has chosen for their fit with students and the teaching point. And that’s just one subject of 5!
I used to work from 5:30 - 6:30 in the morning over breakfast, then get to school at 7 to do more prep, teach from 8:35 until 2:35 (I didn’t usually sit for lunch because I was copying homework or giving extra help or mediating arguments or meting out punishments) continue prepping until they kicked me out of the building at 6, eat dinner then work on responding to journals and grading work from 8 till 11 while trying to watch a little TV. Even my husband got roped in-- he’d help me cut out cards for math or word games and exercises.
There are many more kids with special needs in Boston than the district has funds to provide services for. This means teachers have to serve special needs kids in regular ed. classrooms along with the expected range of levels. In my 2nd grade class I had kids reading at a kindergarten level and kids reading at a 4th grade level and everything in between.
Kids today have more discipline problems. Many have little experience sitting and listening or following rules. Because of the standards, we are asking them to do more sitting and listening when they are younger and younger. This is a recipe for frustration for everybody involved. Kids get turned off of school and teachers struggle to create an environment in which all 23+ children can learn.
Dealing with parents is harder because half of them think you aren’t challenging their kids enough and half of them think you are too hard on their kids. The era when parents respected teachers and parents and teachers presented a united front is over. I’ve had many parents question me in front of their children. I’ve even seen parents swear at principals in front of many children in the hallway or office.
And despite all our passion and caring and hard work, research shows that the school achievement of children is highly correlated with their parents’ wealth and level of school achievement (link to an American Educator article that cites this research below). Much of a child’s education takes place at home. We have read to my son almost every day since he was born. At five months, he would turn the pages of a book– an important behavior teachers note on the road to reading readiness. Some families can’t afford books and don’t have time to go to the library because they work several jobs. Some parents didn’t have a good educational experience themselves or don’t know it’s important to model reading. Kids from these homes may come to school at 5, never having seen a book. They may be average or even above-average kids and they will learn, but they start 5 years behind some others. No matter how good the teaching methods, they may not meet the standards at the same time others do.
Bush and his brethren (armchair educators all-- except maybe Laura Bush) talk about how important it is to attract high quality people to teaching. As if the people already in teaching aren’t the salt of the earth. I’m here to tell you that the bigger problem is retention. By pretty much any measure, I am one of those high quality, highly educated, capable people who could do something else and make plenty money and I chose teaching. I taught for 5 very rewarding but very draining years. I’ve left because I find it to be a nearly impossible, thankless and maddening job. I need some time to myself, I need some peace, I need some energy left to raise my own kid and I need to feel like someone appreciates all my hard work and my and my students’ little victories. Not all my students met all the standards– maybe not even most– but they all made progress.
I’m not the only smart young person who has lasted only 5 years– it’s an epidemic. We don’t need to use tests to prove our teachers are failing and then punish them, we need to support teachers and students to start from where they are and grow.
Here’s what we should do:
1.) Use innovative professional development to support our teachers in their never ending quest to do better
2.) Continue to innovate in instruction
3.) Allow and encourage teachers to capitalize on kids’ interests and curiosities. We need standards but every classroom shouldn’t be exactly the same because all kids are not exactly the same.
4.) Offer parents more guidance in child rearing from the time their kids are young
5.) Decrease class size to about 15 or put a second teacher or smart, well-educated paraprofessional in every room
6.) Increase parent and community participation in schools
7.) Increase special ed services to meet the need
8.) Stop teaching to the test– it is not education If the test doesn’t measure kids’ progress in what we are teaching day to day, then it is the wrong test. One test is not an accurate indicator of how kids or teachers are doing. We need various ways of assessing, including formative assessments (basically work that students are already doing which the teacher is using formally to determine their levels of achievement) and observations of classrooms.
9.) Show teachers some respect with better pay and a more professional work environment (if we need to raise taxes it will be worth the investment; this is our future, after all)
10.) Phase in new curricula and tests. It’s not fair to institute, as Boston did, a totally new math curriculum system-wide when students are in 9th grade and then require those same students to pass the high stakes test aligned with the new curriculum before they graduate high school. The requirement should begin with the students who had the new curriculum from kindergarten.
source: "...How to Make AYP Work...", American Educator Magazine
http://www.aft.org/pubs-reports/american_educator/issues/
spring05/aypquotes.htm
Sunday, January 21, 2007
On banning tag:
Recently there was a story on WBUR's Here and Now about schools in Massachusetts banning tag at recess because it caused so much conflict among students.
Click on the link below to listen to the story.
Here & Now Story : "Schoolyard Game Banned" 10/20/2006
http://www.here-now.org/shows/2006/10/20061020_13.asp
Click on the link below to listen to the story.
Tag has been around for as long as anyone can remember and never had to be banned before. I think the problem today lies not with the game but with the schools and parents who provide only organized, supervised activities.
I am a 2nd Grade Teacher in the Boston Public Schools (currently on maternity leave). Unfortunately schools today are (under extreme pressure from the government) pushing harder and harder on academics with the youngest kids at the expense of free play. From my teacher education in child development I know that free play is how children learn to set and follow rules, to be fair, to treat others as they wish to be treated-- literally how to get along. There's no better way to teach them than through play since they learn by their own experience in a context that matters to them. In fact there may be no other way. When kids miss opportunities for free play in their pre-school, kindergarten and elementary years, they can become the agressive, "hyper" bullies who are causing schools to ban tag.
Here & Now Story : "Schoolyard Game Banned" 10/20/2006
http://www.here-now.org/shows/2006/10/20061020_13.asp
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