LANGUAGE ARTS-NEW MEXICO

The Job Market

Here's a piece from The Washington Post about a looming teacher shortage.  In New Mexico, the picture seems mixed.  For middle school and high school language arts, the market  appears to be in a state of equilibrium--about as many jobs as teachers looking for jobs--but other subjects such as math, science, special education, and bilingual education have been in suffering shortages for a long time. What's the job market like in your community?  Are you having difficulty filling a language arts position at your school?  Or are there people standing in line to apply? 

Schools  Pinched  In Hiring

Teacher Shortage Looms As Law Raises Bar and Boomer Women Retire

By Michael Alison Chandler

Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, June 24, 2007;  Page A01

 

As hundreds of thousands of baby boomers retire and the No Child Left Behind law raises standards for new teachers, school systems across the country are facing a growing scarcity of qualified recruits.

A labor force that for generations cushioned teacher shortages and kept salaries relatively low is disappearing. Three-quarters of the nation's more than 3 million public school teachers are women, a figure that has changed little over four decades. But in that time, women have become more educated, with more career choices than ever. So far, schools are not faring well on the open market.

More here.

Forty Years of One Hundred Years

If you're one of the many fans of Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude, you'll enjoy this appreciation of the book and its author (from The Chronicle of Higher Education):

García Márquez's 'Total' Novel

By ILAN STAVANS

Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude celebrates its 40th birthday this year. This is also the author's 80th birthday, and the 25th anniversary of his Nobel Prize for Literature. Maybe it's the coincidence of numbers, but Gabo, as García Márquez is known among friends, has never been so popular. Celebrations are occurring in his native Colombia and elsewhere in the Hispanic world. And an inexpensive anniversary edition of his epic novel, overseen by the author and published under the aegis of the Real Academia Española, with a first printing of a million, is on sale throughout the Spanish-speaking world.

Read the rest here.

Media Education Moves Forward

The Alliance for a Media Literate America has published a set of "Core Principles of Media Literacy Education" which are intended "to articulate a common ground around which media literacy educators and advocates can coalesce."  If you include media literacy in your curriculum, this document is a good resource.  At last American media educators seem to be moving away from their protectionist, "TV rots your brain' stance," toward a focus on critical thinking and analysis (which has been part of the work of British media educators such as David Buckingham and Andrew Goodwyn for years).

Macbeth: Penned by a Scottish Monk?

The fascination with what Shakespeare did or didn't write seems endless.  Here's the latest theory, from The Scotsman:

Hubble, bubble Shakespeare's in trouble with history experts

EBEN HARRELL

IT IS known by superstitious actors as "the Scottish play", but a pair of historians are now questioning how much William Shakespeare's Macbeth actually belonged to England's most famous playwright.

In a radio programme to be aired today, Scots historian Fiona Watson and literary expert Molly Rourke claim the story of Macbeth was penned by a Scottish monk on St Serf's Island in the middle of Loch Leven 400 years before William Shakespeare even drew breath.

Read the rest here.

The Next Trend?

In Massachusetts, they're experimenting with adding hours to the school day.

Do longer hours equal more learning?

Pressured to produce better students, 10 Massachusetts public schools pack more hours into their schedules.

By Stacy Teicher Khadaroo          | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor       

Malden, Mass. - It's a typical "Wacky Wednesday" at Salemwood School in Malden, Mass. That's Principal Ron Eckel's affectionate and slightly exasperated term for a weekly cycle of enrichment classes. In the afternoon, various sets of teachers gather for collaborative planning while their colleagues and some community partners offer classes that combine fun hobbies and academic skills – everything from gymnastics to math games to stitching folk-art Penny rugs.

It's only possible because the 1,200 students at this K-8 school spend nearly two more hours a day here than they did last year. Salemwood is one of the pioneers in an unprecedented statewide initiative – and a nascent national trend – to extend the public school day.

The pressure for schools to boost student achievement has prompted increasing numbers of education reformers to eye longer          school days or years.

Read the rest here.
      

                                         

Diplomas and Soft Skills

Education Week's big new Diplomas Count report is out this week.  If you're interested in what your students need to know and do to be successful in college or the workplace, this publication is a good place to start.  One theme that runs through the report is that in the era of NCLB we haven't paid enough attention to developing students' "soft skills"--such things as being able "to work comfortably with people from other cultures, solve problems creatively, write and speak well, think in a multidisciplinary way, and evaluate information critically." 

Summer Reading

We have two new books to recommend today.  Speaking Volumes:  How to Get Students Discussing Books--And Much More by Barry Gilmore (Heinemann, 2006) includes numerous strategies for involving students in discussions as well as exercises to build discussion skills and even some attention to technology-based discussions.  One of the most difficult things for new teachers to do is have productive discussions that are more than just teacher-talk punctuated by an occasional student response.  Gilmore's books will get you started. 

In her new book The Reading Zone: How to Help Kids Become Skilled, Passionate, Habitual, Critical Readers (Scholastic, 2007) Nancie Atwell argues that we can't expect our students to become readers if we don't give them time to read, interesting things to read, and an environment that supports reading.  "This book is nothing less than a manifesto," Atwell writes.  "Here is my evidence, gathered over twenty years of working directly and successfully with all kinds of kids, that it's reading that makes readers."

New Holocaust Diary Published

If you teach The Diary of Anne Frank, you might be interested to know that the diary of a fourteen-year-old girl who lived under the Nazis in Poland has recently been published.  From The Guardian:

Diary of 'Polish Anne Frank' published 64 years on

Rory McCarthy in Jerusalem
Wednesday June      6, 2007

A teenage Jewish girl living under the Nazis in Poland during 1943 feared she was "turning into an animal waiting to die", according to her diary, which documents the final months before her death in the Auschwitz concentration camp.

Rutka Laskier, 14, the same age as the Dutch girl Anne Frank, wrote the 60-page diary over a four-month period in Bedzin, Poland. The diary, published by Israel's Holocaust museum, documents the steady collapse of the ghetto under the weight of the Nazi occupation and deportations, as well as the first loves, friendships and jealousies of an adolescent girl growing up during the war.

More here. 

Alfie Kohn on NCLB

In a recent USA Today op-ed, Alfie Kohn says No Child Left Behind needs to be put out of its misery:

Let's be clear: This law has nothing to do with improving learning. At best, it's about raising scores on multiple-choice exams. This law is not about discovering which schools need help; we already know. This law is not about narrowing the achievement gap; its main effect has been to sentence poor children to an endless regimen of test-preparation drills. Thus, even if the scores do rise, it's at the expense of a quality education. Affluent schools are better able to maintain good teaching - and retain good teachers - despite NCLB, so the gap widens.

Sure, it's senseless for Washington to impose requirements without adequate funding. But more money to implement a bad law isn't the answer.

Read the whole thing here.