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Thoughts on Parenting from an Unparent

Posted on Dec 17, 2009 - 05:10 PM by Tanya Reza in Op-Education

I'm not a parent. My heart goes out to all of you who are, and I am at a point in my life where I can greatly (albeit not completely) appreciate the tough job you all have. To my own parents, thank you. I know you did your best.

However, as I have been diving deeper into the world of democratic education and childrearing, I'm coming to realize that Mom and Dad, as well as many moms and dads out there, did exactly the opposite of what many of these books and articles tell you to do. Of course, such critical analysis of Mom and Dad inevitably leads to the same of oneself. I found myself better understanding why I was the way I was, and also asking, how do I picture raising my own children...

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Re-hired and It Feels So Good

Posted on Feb 21, 2010 - 10:16 PM by Ammerah Saidi in The Learning Curve

On January 29th, I received my official letter of termination. Our district has lost more than a million dollars in funding and any new teachers were immediately cut. On February 1st, I received my official letter of re-assignment. This story has a happy beginning.

Title I funding was used to bring me back (me in all my un-tenured glory) as a literacy intervention teacher. I have a class size cap of 10 students and the freedom to build this course from the ground up.

First assignment: I had students watch this video clip:



A video on how to teach a dog to roll over using operant conditioning. Students were utterly confused, wondering what sort of class they were put in, and I...

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Lessons from Piano Lessons:  Musings on Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivators

Posted on Mar 10, 2010 - 11:17 AM by Kristan Morrison in democracy.edu

I am going to deviate this month in my blog from my usual teacher perspective and instead discuss things from a student perspective. Why? Because I have recently been inhabiting the role of a student and it is making me re-examine some assumptions I have had about motivation to learn; specifically - are extrinsic motivators wholly bad (as somewhat suggested by Alfie Kohn in his book Punished By Rewards)?

I have always wanted to play the piano - especially after seeing the movie The Piano (don't get me started on Harvey Keitel - hubba hubba, rrrrhrahwrrr). I finally told my spouse that for a holiday gift I would like piano lessons. So, he bought me ten lessons with a local teacher. I...

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Raining on My Students’ Parades

Posted on Apr 12, 2010 - 09:31 AM by Kristan Morrison in democracy.edu

My graduate students tell me that I am depressing them - that I am the unfunny version of Saturday Night Live's Debbie Downer . Well, they didn't actually call me that, but that's sometimes how I feel. I teach the foundations of education course at my university. This is the class where American education is looked at through a critical lens - comparing the historical, Jeffersonian democratic citizenship purpose of education to the social mobility purposes that seem most paramount in schools today. We explore and critique different philosophies of education, deconstruct our society's current politicization of education, examine the injustices of our education system's funding practices,...

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Alfie Kohn: “It’s bad news if students are motivated to get A’s”

Posted on Mar 30, 2011 - 06:15 PM by Shawn Strader in Resources

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