Apply Now For A BW Blog Training In August

Bellwether is planning to host another blog training, Saturday August 11, in Washington D.C.  This seminar is geared specifically for current or aspiring teacher bloggers.  You can learn more and apply via this link. Applications are on a rolling basis, deadline is July 9, and we had a 5-1 applicant to slot ratio last time so apply early. There is no charge and stipends for travel are available.

Here’s what teachers had to say about the last training:

“The Bellwether Better Blogging conference was a great opportunity to meet influential professionals engaged in promoting their voices and perspectives online, and to learn from them how to better promote and refine my own classroom-based perspectives on education reform. From those sessions, I gained the confidence and vision to start a new blog and establish my voice as an advocate and teacher. The insights I gained and the people I met at the conference continue to enrich my work.” – Mark Anderson, Gotham Schools

“The Better Blogging seminar greatly improved my writing. I am blogging more concise, poignant pieces and my voice as a teacher has gained greater confidence. I am now starting to network online and build a loyal readership.”
– Marilyn Rhames, Charting My Own Course

6 Replies to “Apply Now For A BW Blog Training In August”

  1. Hi bloggers,

    What does edu-reform blogging have to do with students learning Newton’s three laws or the laws of thermodynamics? What does your blogging have to do with their learning matrix singularity or orthogonality?

    This is all about student learning, and not developing YOUR career. Read my lips. Teach content. Stop the reform babble, or parents like me will have you fired.

  2. Well, Bill, these edubloggers want to be like Wendy Kopp or Andrew.
    Here’s the recent take from Wendy Kopp:
    Luv ‘n Haight
    by Wendy Kopp

    There’s a divide, and it’s getting bigger, between the builders and the critics, between the fighters and the spectators. When you turn on the news or venture into the blogosphere, what you see is that the naysayers have the power while the people who are on the front lines charting a new course or working to make things better weather constant criticism.

    To put it in layman’s terms, there are a lot of haters out there.

    You will find that it is almost always more comfortable to sit on the sidelines and critique the builders from afar, but at the end of the day, the people who make a difference, the people who shape history, are not the haters.

    I think we call this projection.

  3. Wendy is right: The builders, or the “doers” are the people who will get things done. In education that means parents and teachers.

  4. Projection is spot-on with Kopp.

    And, here’s Wendy’s full graduation speech at Dartmouth (what a surprise) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/wendy-kopp/class-of-2012-be-builders_b_1587756.html Read it at your own peril.

    In it, she yammers on about exporting TFA to the world. Metastasizing, would be more like it. Evidently she has never had a close acquaintance with hubris. Still, she did admit, “I had been rejected from all the other jobs I’d applied to.”

    But not to worry, for Wendy had her very own Ayn Rand super-duper tower of power goin’ for her: “Now it probably seems easy for me to stand up here and exhort you to brave risks and be builders.” Calling Howard Roark, anybody?

    “In October, the group announced a partnership with Goldman Sachs, in which TFA recruits are guaranteed jobs at the investment bank directly following their two years in the classroom.” http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/01/25/wendy-kopp-on-her-new-book-and-teach-for-americas-record.html Criminy Jeebus.

    Why do so many TFA grads teach in KIPP schools? http://foundationcenter.org/pnd/newsmakers/nwsmkr.jhtml?id=263400002

    Ironically, this historian suggests TFA and KIPP while ostensibly liberal by some measures, hide their true agenda–that of maintaining the current social order. http://jacobinmag.com/winter-2012/teach-for-america/

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