I am currently attending the KIPP Summit 2006 in New Orleans, attended by all the KIPP schools as well as other excellent charter schools and charter school networks (for example, Uncommon Schools and Achievement First). It is awesome. Compare some of the AERA presentations I talked about yesterday with these, presented over the last few days here in New Orleans:
–“Basics on Advising College-Bound Students”
–“Analyzing Test Scores”
–“Activities and Questioning with Bloom’s Taxonomy”
–“Informal Assessment of Reading Difficulties”
–“Overview of Expository Writing, Parts I and II”
–“A Typical Day in Math 8”
–“Developing Number Sense”
These sound a little more practicable and useful than a session on Taiwanese mail-order brides, don’t you think? Yesterday I learned a ton of great strategies for creating a safe, calm, effective learning environment and how to deal with students with difficult behavior. Today in 1.5 hours I learned exactly how to teach my kids to write summaries from fiction or non-fiction and how to highlight text effectively (college, hello!). THIS IS WHAT I ALWAYS WANTED from grad school and NEVER GOT. And was so sad about that I had to write an angry blog full of tirades. It’s $30,000 worth of tragic.
–Guest blogger Newoldschoolteacher