Harvard Study shows Hot Classrooms affect learning. Lawmakers need to provide funding for air conditioning. If your lawmakers don't support learning in our schools #RememberInNovember & VOTE them OUT. https://t.co/ZSzMeRpvNE #TBATs @BadassTeachersA #WeChoose pic.twitter.com/TFFOT9r6Ld
— Michigan BATS (@MIBATS) September 20, 2018
Monthly Archives: September 2018
CURMUDGUCATION: Stop Calling It Philanthropy
Last week, Matt Barnum and Sarah Darville ran a piece about “Chan Zuckerberg’s $300 million push to reshape schools.” The piece qualifies as newsy because they had an actual number for how much Mark Zuckerberg and his wife had pumped through their initiative (CZI); Barnum and Darville were almost able to report on where about a third of that money went.
Almost 4K nurses authorize strike at University of Michigan
A nurses’ union announced on Monday that nurses at Michigan Medicine, the medical arm of the University of Michigan, have voted to authorize a three-day strike “to protest ongoing and continuous violations of their workplace rights.”
The union has yet to set a date for the strike, which will go ahead “if University officials fail to remedy their ongoing unfair labor practices,” the union said in a statement.
The University of Michigan Professional Nurses Council represents 5,700 nurses at U-M hospitals and other health care facilities. More than 4,000 people voted last week with 94 percent voting in favor of a strike.
Source: Almost 4K nurses authorize strike at University of Michigan
Wisconsin school districts ban cellphones in classroom | MPR News
School districts across Wisconsin are banning cellphones in the classroom in an effort to reduce distractions during class time.
The Portage Community School District approved adopting such a policy last year, Wisconsin Public Radio reported .
Teachers previously had the ability to shape their classroom’s cellphone policy, said Portage High School Principal Robin Kvalo. The new standardized policy has been effective because teachers and administrators are consistent with discipline, she said.
“They are not distracted anymore,” Kvalo said. “The phones are not their preoccupation. They know they can’t have the phones in the classroom.”
Source: Wisconsin school districts ban cellphones in classroom | MPR News
Red For Ed – NEA Today
Join millions of voices fighting for our nation’s public school students and educators.
Source: Red For Ed – NEA Today
‘It’s Like Amazon, But for Preschool’
A year ago, the richest man in the world asked Twitter for suggestions on how he should most efficiently and charitably spend his wealth. And today, Jeff Bezos unveiled a few details about his plans – other than funding space travel, that is. His new philanthropic effort, The Day 1 Fund, will finance two initiatives: the Families Fund will work with existing organizations to address homelessness and hunger; and the Academies fund “will launch an operate a network of high-quality, full-scholarship, Montessori-inspired preschools in underserved communities.”
“We’ll use the same set of principles that have driven Amazon,” Bezos wrote in a note posted to Twitter. “Most important among these will be genuine intense customer obsession. The child will be the customer.”
The child will be the customer.
Bezos then went on to cite a phrase that is so often misquoted and misattributed in those shiny, happy motivational PowerPoint slides – you know the ones – that people like to post to social media: “Education is not the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire.” W. B. Yeats never said this, for the record, but words get so easily twisted, history so easily co-opted.