Cheerleading for the whole school . . . .

Hi all,

Today I'm at the Riverton Fair all day trying to convince families to send their kids to Classical Magnet.  I'm not sure why it's hard, but it shouldn't be.  People want their kids to get to ivy league schools, and we do that.  We also have nearly 100% college acceptance.

I'm seeking ideas - who knows how to do this well?




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Rising Cost of Innumeracy

As a math teacher in Hartford for 14 years, I have heard the following phrase over and over.  "I'm just bad at math.  No one in my family can do it, I'm just never going to get it."  My response is always that of course they can, but it is a cultural problem that is solvable with a little help from the other adults in the students' lives. When I was at Bates thinking about philosophy, one of the things that interested me was John Locke's tabula rasa (blank slate) philosophy.  To paraphrase, he is saying that we are all born blank slates and we can all learn to do anything.  This is powerful stuff, especially as it applies to my students above.  If they are truly blank slates, I can help them write numeracy on their mind's chalkboard in sharpie.  To this end, I run a seminar every year on the first day of class to discuss whether or not the blank slate is a real thing.  Then, my socratic questions become mathematical.  For instance, "do you think
Read more

Instead of suspensions, MORE oversight

Hi all, I'm going to propose a solution to the behavioral epidemic we have in the public school system in America.  We have been using suspensions, both inside and outside, to try to encourage students to behave better, since 14 years ago when I started teaching.  The problem with this solution is that students come to like inside, have days off where they are unsupervised at home when they have outside, and come back with no behavioral change.  Here's what I propose.  We need people who are trained as counselors, yoga instructors, philosophy, psychology, or some related field, one on one, to reflect and help students make behavioral goals before they can return to class.  It needs to be one on one, and it needs to be by very well qualified folks, because they are dealing with the most fragile, most difficult, and therefore most needy students we serve.  Few people want that job, so we have to pay better than a regular ed teacher.  Students would attend regular classes with t
Read more

What happens if we delay happiness? (Or, how to get students to problem solve persistently)

Hi all, We have a problem, in our society, about delay of gratification.  We want the answer now, the money now (just think of that commercial - it's MY MONEY AND I Want it NOW!), the degree now, the new job now, the new relationship . . . the list is endless.  The unfortunate side effect of this culture is that it creates people who want to just be rich and skip all the steps in between.  So we sue one another, we screw one another, we do anything we can to get ahead.  One of my friends is this way.  Let's call him Peter.  Peter has a construction business, a recording business, and he makes sure everyone sees him spending lots of cash on his workers.  People work for him, and he'll tell anyone who will listen how much money he has.  He wouldn't care too much about a degree because he's learned he doesn't need one.  Peter is just an example of a more systemic problem.  Our students, especially in math and science, have stopped being persistent.  They want
Read more