Archive for September 4th, 2006

Well, after years of holding out and refusing to buy an ipod, I finally broke down and got one.  Once I went through all those rounds of trouble with the iriver, I decided I didn’t really have any choice.  It was just better to go with the industry leader so if I lose a part, I can easily get a replacement instead of having to hunt and wait and hunt and wait ust to get an integral component.   That’s pretty much it. 

Of course now, I’m gonna be spending the next couple days and nights converting all these WMAs to itunes format.  Can’t pretend that I’m looking forward to that at all.

We’ll see what happens, though.  Maybe I’ll like it as much as everybody else seems to.

Troglodyte - Jimmy Castor Bunch

Ill Street Blues - Kool G Rap

Brother Rapp - James Brown

Respect Yourself  - Staples Singers

Testify - Common

Memphis Soul Stew - Wilson Pickett

Spread Love - Take 6

Honeysuckle Rose - Oscar Peterson Trio

Eye Patch - De La Soul

Best of My Love - The Emotions

Elevators (Me and You) - Outkast

Verses From the Abstract - A Tribe Called Quest

Where Do We Go From Here? - Leaders of the New School

Bitties in the BK Lounge - De La Soul

Sweet Lorraine - Chet Baker

Shape of My Heart - Sting

On the Sunny Side of the Street - Oscar Peterson

Upon This Rock - Joe Farrell

I Love You - Mary J. Blige

Let’s Play House - Parliament

 

Black America Web reports some early findings on a study done by Thomas Dee, an economics professor at Swarthmore, that seem to suggest that the gender of the teacher can have some influence on the performance of the student. At first glance, this makes sense. Not necessarily a whole, whole lot of sense, as in this is the missing explanatory link explaining why children aren’t performing, but I don’t think there’s any question that some students learn better from a teacher of the same gender. Just like some students learn better from teachers of the same race.

Professor Dee is quick to point out that he is not trying to legitimize segregation by gender, but I don’t think that’s necessarily the best move. That is to say, given the state of public education, nothing should be completely off the table. I mean yeah, any potential solution has to be politically feasible, but the incremental movements that are politically feasible are generally not nearly sweeping enough to get down to the nitty-gritty of what the problem is. In the cases where public education is failing, it’s gonna take a radical change to make something happen. Granted, I don’t think that making schools single-gender (completely single gender, with all male teachers for boys and all female teachers for girls) will cause the type of change that I’m thinking about, but the fact that we’re not used to doing things a certain way doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t consider it.

Likewise in DC, where school Superintendent Janey is considering adding up to 20 days to the school schedules at five low-performing schools. Some groups oppose the move, saying that it doesn’t allow children to have down time. Like the kids need more down time. Especially in DC. The Chief of Police just put us on a crime emergency because of all the down time. I’ll put it like this: it’s all about time on task. If the students are getting and doing the work during the traditional 9-month school year, then that’s fine. If they’re not getting it done in that time frame, then they should by all means go throughout the rest of the year. Make sure they have some air conditioning in the summer and keep it moving. Cuz for real-for real, what reason is there for not having more school now? Because we’re used to the 9-10 month calendar. Most kids don’t get out in the summer to work in the fields and help the family.

Speaking as a teacher, do I like the idea of having summers off? Absolutely. But the needs of the kids come first. If some students need to be in school more, I’m all for that. If some students need to be in single-gender settings, I’m all for that too. One of the catchphrases in education is differentiated instruction. That is, as a teacher, I should do what I can to make sure that learners with different styles have equal access to the material. Well, my thinking that differentiation shouldn’t just start inside the classroom. There should be structural differentiation as well.