A Backward Glance at Remote, Pandemic Learning
Back on April 26, Education Week's Peter DeWitt found that, “Many teachers, students, and parents are proving to be remarkably resilient during this time when it comes to the effects of the pandemic on schools, education, and student learning. It is not easy to teach...
Pennsylvania’s Goes “Green,” But What Does That Mean?
It’s called the new-normal, but normal has nothing to do with it… Rulings come left and right, changing repeatedly and inconsistently as columnist Byron York noted in a recent commentary, saying: “As the country struggles to vanquish coronavirus, Americans are...
Our Amazing, Brainy Brains
In these “new normal” isolating, Zoom fatiguing, social distancing days, thought it time for a start-of-summer/Father’s Day weekend, feel-good reminder of the magic and potential that is in each of us… Our brains weigh weigh about three pounds and contain some 100...
A COVID Side Effect: Teacher Bashing Hits the Pause Button
Teacher bashing all but became a sport played by “reformers” who came up with such remedies as the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 under President Bush, followed by the Obama/Duncan team's $4.35 billion Race to the Top, Common Core Standards, related online...
Philly’s $25 Million “New Normal Budget Act:” Too Little? Too Late? or Just Right?
As across the country we move in colorful and numbered steps into a semi-locked down state, protesters have taken to Philly’s streets, as they have elsewhere, in the name of social justice, or, if you will, a level playing field, but where to begin? For Philadelphia...
The Pandemic Hitting Schooling Hard
Writing on a day like this is no easy task. As COVID-19 continues to circulate among us, it’s social distancing be damned as countless thousands across the country have taken to the streets in protests that have turned ugly with rioting, looting, and destroying. Oh,...
A Brief History of Memorial Day and the Poppy Lady, Too
We’re just a day away from the unofficial start of summer--and that’s all many of us care about. A few have headed to the shore or mountains, but most of us, locked down as we are thanks to COVID-19, have stayed put, heading outside from time to time for a bit of...
Education Week Analyzes Remote Learning across America
Education Week never lets us down, keeping pace with the ever-changing face of COVID-19 and its impact on our lives and education in particular. This time around, the organization “scanned all 50 states' publicly continuous learning directives and guidance documents,...
Distance Learning & Communicating: USC & the EdWeek Research Center Take the Pulse of Parents and Teachers
Both the University of Southern California and the EdWeek Research Center asked parents and teachers how satisfied they are with their schools’ distance learning offerings and communications—their concerns, too. They asked; Gabrielle Wanneh reported; I’m sharing…...
Teachers on the COVID Front Lines
Sight unseen, COVID-19 shuttered our nation’s schools, emptying classrooms and making homeschooling of sorts a matter of fact for all, harnessing teachers and students alike to screens. And, depending on a district’s choice of e-learning platform, often sight unseen....
Teacher Appreciation Week: Not Much More Than a Pat on the Back
Wow! This whole week set aside for teachers, with May 5th Teacher Appreciation Day, claimed by the National Education Association as “A day for honoring teachers and recognizing the lasting contributions they make to our lives.” So noble sounding and sentimental;...
Togethering Alone in the Time of COVID
What are you calling what we're doing nowadays days while thinking about all the things we can’t do? “Staying put?” “Hunkering down?” “Sheltering-in-place?” Whatever name you give it, with our lives are so upended, many of us don’t even know what day of the week it is...
Going Digital: Attendance Takes a Major Hit
Like an episode from Twilight Zone, along with distressing news briefs, masks and rubber gloves are now the order of the day, along with skyrocketing deliveries and plummeting gas prices. COVID-19 has shuttered much of our world, and that includes our nation’s...
Taking to the Streets and Beaches Amid Grim COVID Stats and Warnings
Will get back to school-wise news next time around, but for today am going with, “What the hell are they thinking?” and unsettling news, too. As USA Today’s Morgan Hines, reported, “People came faster than a flock of seagulls chasing a French fry when idle Florida...
From Columnist Christine Flowers: The Attack on Human Interaction
Some things you never get used to, even after weeks of practice. Case in point: Sheltering-in-place, staying put to stay safe and keeping at least six feet away from others when when venturing out--gloved and masked, of course. (What I wouldn't do for a hair...
Joel Westheimer to Parents: “Forget the Worksheets”
And just who is Joel Westheimer and to tell us to scrap all those worksheets coming into homes everywhere during these hunkered down, shuttered schools, Twilight Zone-like days? A man in the know, that’s who. Professor Westheimer is University Research Chair in...
A Timely Social Media Alert
Before COVID-19 became the grim story of the day, every day, Common Sense Media surveyed young people about social media and found that: 56% said tech and social media “are tearing us apart more than they are bringing people together." About 25% agreed that...
Education Week & the Quality Counts Education-Wise State Ratings: How’d Yours Do?
From the time before we closed our schools and hunkered down against COVID-19, fearful and cautious, this Quality Counts report card was published on how the states fare when it comes to schooling, rating them on three categories: Chance for Success School Finance...
Communities Take a Big COVID-19 Hit as Schools Close and Some Folks Flaunt the Guidelines
Stay put, we’re told, and practice social distancing, and yet… While in Miami and speaking to Reuters, Brady Sluder said, “If I get corona, I get corona. At the end of the day, I’m not going to let it stop me from partying.” And he is not alone in his cavalier,...
Schooling’s Piece of the $2.2 Trillion Coronavirus Stimulus Package: A Glimpse
The good news is that yesterday, in a bi-partisan move, senators passed the largest stimulus package in American history to the tune of $2.2 trillion, offering much-needed financial aid to health care systems, workers, and businesses—and that includes our nation’s...