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"Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day…" - 5 new articles
Dolores Huerta Has Died – Here Are Related Teaching & Learning Resources
Dolores Huerta’s death today hits hard. I got my start in social justice work in the 1970’s working on the UFW grape boycott. You can find a number of useful resources about her at The Best Sites For Learning About Farm Workers, The United Farm Workers Union & California Farmworker Day.      Sentences Of The Week geralt / Pixabay
I thought readers might, or might not, find this new regular post useful. Each week, I highlight several sentences, with links to their sources, that I find interesting/concerning/useful. And they may, or may not, be directly connected to education. I may also include my own comments or related links. This regular post will join my other regular ones on teaching ELLs, education policy, Artificial Intelligence, infographics, and Pinterest highlights, not to mention sharing of my regular Education Week posts. Here are this week’s sentences: There is evidence, for example, that solutions are less likely to be rejected when we explain the problem first, that showing unbridled enthusiasm can prevent people from taking us seriously and that we’re sometimes more likely to be heard when we highlight the limitations as well as the strengths of our pet projects. In the film, Musk’s former girlfriend sums up the matter concisely: “Elon is a nuke,” she says—a human of mass destruction. “If you don’t like public executions just don’t watch it” says the crowd trying to ban drag shows Blaming screens is a convenient way to avoid harder, deeper issues: inadequate mental health care and a system that chronically underfunds treatment. Policymakers and health system leaders instead must focus on providing the therapy, medication and support that troubled kids and families need. We need to make the problem and the solution bigger to help both sides…. A “both sides” diagnosis obscures the asymmetry between a faction seeking to reverse social progress and those resisting it. See Every Teacher Who Has Ever Felt Pressured To Present “Both Sides” Of An Event Or Belief Should Read This Article Guide on the side or sage on the stage? How about a guide who is knowledgeable enough to periodically stop and deliver some sage advice, and who is wise enough to know when to lead and when to get out of the way? But reality of everyday life is a tad more complex; not everything is a win or loss–there is an in-between: the middle range, the typical, the average. The concept of being in the middle—“average”–has in the U.S. segued into “mediocrity,” a linguistic euphemism for inferior quality applied to student, teacher, and school performance. It’s important to call bullshit on the idea that these people are “futurists.” They’re not futurists. They’re building unbelievably interesting machines, thrilling marvels, but their political and economic ideas are the worst failed, most discredited ideas of the 20th century. Why we should look to them for political and economic leadership is baffling to me. I don’t actually need to ask Claude what to cook for dinner or how to tell my vet that it’s time for my dog to be put down. I have people for those things. The more that we ask machines to tell us those things that we use people for, the more we surrender our humanity. Getting a ride in a driverless car is convenient and fast, and if you don’t like talking to a driver or jostling with other people on the bus or the subway, it’ll seem preferable. But every time you take that ride, you’re missing out on encountering other people and, over time, you risk becoming more isolated, and lonelier, and less able to work with other people or, really, to even handle being with them. “Large language models,” Hook argues, “are the Waymo of intellectual life.” The mural was intended to reinforce the school’s motto, “a ball and a book can change the world,” coined by Silver’s predecessor, David Stern. Multiple administrators told me that they are already considering rolling back their one-to-one device policies because of RAMaggedon, and the challenges for schools are poised to mount.
 A Look Back: Intriguing Research Suggests Relatively Simple Exercise With Teachers Might Reduce Student SuspensionsFor the next several months, each week I’ll be republishing posts from the past that I think readers might still find useful. This post first appeared in 2022.
A scalable empathic-mindset intervention reduces group disparities in school suspensions is a new not-behind-a-paywall study that could offer an intervention schools might want to considering trying out. It’s written by JASON A. OKONOFUA and his colleagues. Basically, middle school math teachers spent a little more than an hour reading about research highlighting the value of thinking about – and listening to – students’ perspectives and the importance of relationship-building, along with reading short essays by students sharing how individual teachers had made an impact on their lives. Then, teachers were asked to share ideas on how they now develop relationships with students and what they could do in the future. That’s a very rudimentary description, but you can read more at the paper, and also see excerpts from the materials the researchers shared with teachers here. If found that here. In addition to the excerpt at the top of this post, I was particularly struck by this line in the abstract: …reductions persisted through the next year when students interacted with different teachers, suggesting that empathic treatment with even one teacher in a critical period can improve students’ trajectories through school.
I can’t see anything negative coming from a professional development session like this, and it certainly would be more valuable than what a lot of us have to deal with when it comes to district-dictated PD. I’m adding this info to The Best Resources On The Importance Of Building Positive Relationships With Students.
 The Best Resources For Learning About Youth Participatory Action Research Mohamed_hassan / Pixabay
I’ve written a lot about Teacher Action Research – see The Best Resources For Learning About Teacher Action Research – Help Me Find More. But, for some reason, I had never heard about Youth Participatory Action Research until relatively recently. That’s particularly disappointing to me because if I had known about it while I was teaching, it’s likely I would have encouraged students to participate more systematically. Certainly, during my teaching career we did similar projects that involved students surveying friends and community members about their concerns, and then organized subsequent action projects, but I suspect they might have gone more smoothly knowing about YPAR. It appears to often be done in conjunction with mentoring programs (The Best Resources On The Value & Practice Of Having Older Students Mentoring Younger Ones). Here are some resources about it: From AI-Supported ESL Writing to Co-Researchers: Empowering Refugee Youth Through Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) is from FLT Magazine. Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) Guide is from The University of Minnesota. Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) is from UC Berkeley. A Brief Primer on Youth Participatory Action Research for Mentoring Programs is from The Office of Juvenile Justice. Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) is from The University of Virginia. Best Practices for Youth-Led Participatory Research Projects is from The Annie E. Casey Foundation.  Youth Participatory Action Research: A Guidebook and Curriculum is from Knowledge Works. The Mentoring Program’s Guide To Youth Participatory Action Research Why Youth Participatory Action Research? is from NYU. Centering Youth in the Healing Process Through Participatory Action Research: A Systematic Review Designing Research With Youth: What it Takes to Do it Well is from AIR.  This Week’s “Round-Up” Of Useful Posts & Articles On Ed Policy Issues
Here are some recent useful posts and articles on educational policy issues (You might also be interested in seeing all my “Best” lists related to education policy here): Can the new federal voucher program help public schools? Democrats are torn is from NPR.
State takeovers of struggling Texas school districts come at a high cost, with little evidence of success is from The Conversation. I’m adding this post to The Best Resources For Learning About The Student Protests In France:
Don’t Be Fooled by Claims That Tax-Credit Scholarships Can Help Public Education is from Ed Week.
I’m adding this post to The Best Sites For Learning That Money Does Matter For Schools:
For undocumented students, the path from high school to college is shrinking is from Chalkbeat. I’m adding it to The Best Sites For Encouraging ELL’s To Attend College. Direct Instruction is the American Default is by Michael Pershan.
Want to Improve Attendance? Start With Relationships is from Ed Week. The best strategies to improve chronic absenteeism, per new research is from Ed Source. They’re both summaries of the same recent report. I’m adding them to The Best Resources On Student Absenteeism.  More Recent Articles |
