teacher blaming – Blue Cereal Education

In Loco Parentis

Blue Cereal — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 04:54:16 +0000

Let’s start by addressing the gaslighting elephant in the room:

I have no interest in parenting your children.

Relationships (Repost)

Blue Cereal — Tue, 08 Mar 2022 19:00:20 +0000

Good morning. Welcome to our first back-to-school faculty meeting. We have several important items on the agenda today, then we’re going to fill the afternoon with pointless activities we found online because the district says we have to professionally develop until at least 3:00 whether we need it or not. As some of you know, we … Continue reading

Teacher Evaluations (Hammers & Nails)

Blue Cereal — Fri, 25 Feb 2022 19:08:31 +0000

There’s a difference between caring how well you’re actually doing your job and caring how well you do on official evaluations. Ideally, the two at least overlap – like a Venn Diagram or pop and hip-hop. That’s not always a given, however. In practice, it’s often more like the relationship between reality and reality TV. I … Continue reading

Very Fine People On Both Sides

Blue Cereal — Thu, 20 Jan 2022 05:49:46 +0000

Yes, the Nazis were bad. But adding an “unless you’re talking about the Nazis” provision to the bill doesn’t solve anything. Wrestling with the relative “good” and “bad” of various economic systems, political beliefs, lifestyles, attitudes, behaviors, and the like, is one of the primary functions of secondary education. Yes, we’d like them to be employable. Yes, we aspire to see them happy and personally fulfilled. But somewhere in the mix is this crazy hope that they’ll be informed, rational citizens, capable of weighing complex ideas and understanding multiple points of view.

Unlike, for example, the folks pushing this legislation.

Teacher Evaluations (Hammers & Nails)

Blue Cereal — Sat, 01 May 2021 11:20:17 +0000

There’s a difference between caring how well you’re actually doing your job and caring how well you do on official evaluations. Ideally, the two at least overlap - like a Venn Diagram or pop and hip-hop. That’s not always a given, however. In practice, it’s often more like the relationship between reality and reality TV.

Better Than You Think

Blue Cereal — Fri, 20 Dec 2019 17:07:34 +0000

Let’s face it – no one carries around a pervading sense of guilt and inadequacy like teachers. They care deeply, feel strongly, and give muchly – often to a fault. Many of us are able to be professionally developed, pedagogically creative, and politically active, all while scoring way too high on any clinical assessment of personal dysfunctions.

I think it actually goes together – the passion for learning, the tolerance for teenagers, and the emotional mess most of us manage to be. Two sides of the same smashed penny.

Stop Saving History

Blue Cereal — Tue, 04 Jun 2019 20:13:33 +0000

In the same way your memory of an event will gradually evolve to fit the way you tell it over the years, I respectfully suggest we’ve been told the same few lies about public schools – then as much as now – often enough that we’ve started to buy into the clichés. Unless we stop and question it, at least with ourselves, we become one more purveyor of the same sort of shibboleth – thoughtless, foundationless folderol of the sort we mock when we recognize it from others.

Just Teach The Curriculum (Leave That Other Stuff At Home)

Blue Cereal — Sat, 16 Apr 2016 14:15:29 +0000

There’s a cliché in education about teaching the child, not merely the subject. The more annoying version is that students don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. I’m not in love with either platitude, but like most things with unfortunate sticking power, they’re not entirely wrong. Why don’t teachers … Continue reading

May I Please See?

Blue Cereal — Fri, 15 Jan 2016 15:57:56 +0000

Teachers can be a stubborn lot. To be fair, in this profession, we kinda have to be. Trying to steer 34 teenagers at a time into meaningful learning while trapped in a concrete box an hour at a time against their will requires, well… a certain amount of stubbornness. Sometimes it works, other times – … Continue reading

Um… There Are These Kids We Call ‘Students’?

Blue Cereal — Sun, 03 Jan 2016 02:49:40 +0000

It probably seems to non-educators that teachers are a whiney lot. Every time the state or some money-loaded national organization starts talking about assessment or accountability, we seem to lose our collective minds. And #EdReform advocates are all too happy to fixate on what we’re doing wrong NOW, what’s we’re overlooking, neglecting, or misimplementing THIS … Continue reading