Democracy, the rule of law and fair play have long been upheld as American virtues. However, the former president brought into open a cancer inflicted modern conservatism causing many of its leaders to eschew these virtues. Their MAGA philosophy venerates political power above all and makes them more akin to radicals than conservatives.
Read MoreIf the state was doing its job and looking after kids instead of giving handouts to wealthy oligarchs, you and I wouldn’t feel as much pain in our wallets.
Read MoreEvery time we have nothing left for Our own kids when we get home...A piece of our love for teaching dies and a bit of our heart goes with it, too. What if we say that enough is enough and finally decide to give it all up? If we throw in the towel and say that we’re through, Have you really Considered, What will you do?
Read MoreI will teach the facts of American history, including the topics of: systemic racism, slavery, misogyny, xenophobia, antisemitism, homophobia and the genocide of our native people. Because those who do not learn from the mistakes of history allow those atrocities to become law.
Read MoreIn 2017, the new President of the United States was explicit in his intention to end public education. He appointed a dominionist as secretary of education and regularly invoked the libertarian inspired pejorative “government schools” when referring to public schools. He loudly supported a movement to end public education which started in earnest five decades before he took office.
Read MoreGrumpy Old Teacher (GOT) can think of no better analogy to describe the thinking of state legislators as they write new laws to control what teachers can do and say in the classroom.
Read MoreAs your child’s teacher, I have reason to be concerned about the appropriateness of what your child is learning outside of school. Because children spend only 33 hours out of 168 each week in school, your child’s life at home and outside of school has much more influence on the person that your child will grow up to be than anything that happens in school.
Read MoreStudent feedback after all was done: they thought the reading part was helpful, but the math part was awful. Let’s go back to the scene.
Read MoreThe Chat. Several schools and GOT estimates hundreds of students with access to chat … the presenter was doing the traditional thing, trying to answer questions and prompting responses in the chat to maintain the interactive nature of the session, but the students were having none of that.
Read MoreMastery Prep is the moniker masquerading as a boot camp for high school students about to take the ACT, one of the two mainstay standardized college entrance exams that students have taken for decades.
Read MoreParents want a year’s worth of lesson plans up front? Ok. Here’s what I want:
Read MoreBut now there’s a strict algorithm that determines what you get to see on your page. And if it says you’re invisible, then POOF! You’re gone and the people who would most enjoy your writing and want to pass it on don’t get the chance.
Read MoreWhen the well-paid accountants arrive and show a slide comparing Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) to other districts of similar enrollments/socio-economic status (SES), and make the simplistic assumption that OUSD has too many schools compared to the others and that we have to be just the same,
Read MoreYou need to be impartial at first but then you listen to the evidence and decide who was at fault. Either South Side Beaver players used hate speech against Steel Valley players or not. Either they intentionally injured Steel Valley’s star player or not.
The billionaire spending has resulted in 39 charter schools operating in Oakland today. Nine were authorized by the county, one by the state of California and 29 by OUSD. Using data from the California Department of Education, it can be shown that 31% of the publicly supported k-12 students in Oakland attend privatized charter schools.
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The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s 2020 hate crime statistics showed not only that hate crimes were up for all minority groups, but crimes targeting Jewish people made up 54.9% of all religious bias crimes.
So, while I personally may not be scared of Big Brother, I am concerned about all the “Little Brothers” (and Sisters) who now have the ability to monitor the school accounts of our children. And the hackers who could cause a security breach similar to what happened to Pupil Path last month. Are we as parents and educators prepared to hand over the keys to this Pandora’s Box to anyone who has access to a GoGuardian account?
Read MoreWhen you take away our planning periods, we can’t do our best for our students. And that’s why we’re here! To give our best!
But these aren’t normal circumstances. And until cases come under control and we take adequate precautions to ensure everyone’s safety, they won’t be normal circumstances. My students get that.
