"The Writing Revolution"
Peg Tyre, Atlantic Magazine, October 2012

"For years, nothing seemed capable of turning around New Dorp High School’s dismal performance—not firing bad teachers, not flashy education technology, not after-school programs. So, faced with closure, the school’s principal went all-in on a very specific curriculum reform, placing an overwhelming focus on teaching the basics of analytic writing, every day, in virtually every class. What followed was an extraordinary blossoming of student potential, across nearly every subject—one that has made New Dorp a model for educational reform."
"...
"...  And so the school’s principal, Deirdre DeAngelis, began a detailed investigation into why, ultimately, New Dorp’s students were failing.
"...
"According to the Nation’s Report Card, in 2007, the latest year for which this data is available, only 1 percent of all 12th-graders nationwide could write a sophisticated, well-­organized essay. Other research has shown that 70 to 75 percent of students in grades four through 12 write poorly. Over the past 30 years, as knowledge-based work has come to dominate the economy, American high schools have raised achievement rates in mathematics by providing more­-extensive and higher-level instruction. But high schools are still graduating large numbers of students whose writing skills better equip them to work on farms or in factories than in offices; for decades, achievement rates in writing have remained low.
"Although New Dorp teachers had observed students failing for years, they never connected that failure to specific flaws in their own teaching. ...
"... Some teachers wanted to know how this could happen. “We spent a lot of time wondering how our students had been taught,” said English teacher Stevie D’Arbanville. “How could they get passed along and end up in high school without understanding how to use the word although?”
"...
"Back on Staten Island, more New Dorp teachers were growing uncomfortably aware of their students’ profound deficiencies—and their own. “At teachers college, you read a lot of theory, like Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, but don’t learn how to teach writing,” said Fran Simmons. ...
"... Teachers stopped giving fluffy assignments such as “Write a postcard to a friend describing life in the trenches of World War I” and instead demanded that students fashion an expository essay describing three major causes of the conflict."

"Follow a Career Passion? Let It Follow You"
Cal Newport, New York Times, September 29, 2012

"IN the spring of 2004, during my senior year of college, I faced a hard decision about my future career. I had a job offer from Microsoft and an acceptance letter from the computer science doctoral program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. I had also just handed in the manuscript for my first nonfiction book, which opened the option of becoming a full-time writer. These are three strikingly different career paths, and I had to choose which one was right for me.

"For many of my peers, this decision would have been fraught with anxiety. Growing up, we were told by guidance counselors, career advice books, the news media and others to “follow our passion.” This advice assumes that we all have a pre-existing passion waiting to be discovered. If we have the courage to discover this calling and to match it to our livelihood, the thinking goes, we’ll end up happy. If we lack this courage, we’ll end up bored and unfulfilled — or, worse, in law school.

"To a small group of people, this advice makes sense, because they have a clear passion. Maybe they’ve always wanted to be doctors, writers, musicians and so on, and can’t imagine being anything else.

"But this philosophy puts a lot of pressure on the rest of us — and demands long deliberation. If we’re not careful, it tells us, we may end up missing our true calling. And even after we make a choice, we’re still not free from its effects. Every time our work becomes hard, we are pushed toward an existential crisis, centered on what for many is an obnoxiously unanswerable question: “Is this what I’m really meant to be doing?” This constant doubt generates anxiety and chronic job-hopping.


"As I considered my options during my senior year of college, I knew all about this Cult of Passion and its demands. But I chose to ignore it. The alternative career philosophy that drove me is based on this simple premise: The traits that lead people to love their work are general and have little to do with a job’s specifics. These traits include a sense of autonomy and the feeling that you’re good at what you do and are having an impact on the world. Decades of research on workplace motivation back this up. (Daniel Pink’s book “Drive” offers a nice summary of this literature.)"

So Many Hands to Hold in the Classroom
Lynda C. Lambert, The Chronicle of Higher Education, September 17, 2012

"Over the 17 years I've taught writing at the college level, I used to occasionally have a student who was afraid to choose a topic for an essay, or even to ask a question, because she didn't know what was "right." One young man chose not to turn in an assignment at all, because he didn't understand the instructions and was afraid to say so. Now, instead of the occasional student in this condition, I'm getting classrooms full.

"So many of them are so unused to thinking on their own that they cannot formulate an opinion without being told what opinion they are supposed to have. And if someone shares his opinion, he is obviously—as far as many students are concerned—trying to foist it on others rather than offering them an opportunity to challenge that opinion and debate it.
...
"This should not be a surprise, of course. The types of assignments they became accustomed to in elementary and secondary schools were not subjectively graded but were rooted in a behaviorist system that, intentionally, does not challenge students to think or be creative. Instead it tells them what result they should have and then offers them the map to it.

"Unfortunately, following a map may teach them how to navigate, but it does not teach them how to drive. Few students seem to be able to find their way through their courses anymore without that map. And, interestingly, they hold the instructor responsible for their lack of learning if she does not provide GPS coordinates."

"Pathways to research: Problem-solving"
Daniel Strain, Science News for Kids, September 9, 2012

"Young researchers can become local heroes for taking on projects that help their friends and neighbors"

"Many young researchers get their start by trying to solve a problem or fulfill a need in their own communities. When students dedicate themselves to finding a solution that may benefit their community, “a passion is ignited,” says Wendy Hawkins, executive director of the Intel Foundation, which sponsors Intel ISEF. “Finding that passion and fostering it can be the key to many students’ future success,” she says."

Why Can’t School Be More Like Summer?
BARBARA ROWLEY, New York Times, September 6, 2012

"From their perspective, the worst thing that happens to my two daughters at the conclusion of each summer is that they have to leave their friends and their joyous days of exploration at their mountain summer camp and come home. The next worst thing that happens to them is that they have to immediately start an experience — school — that feels almost exactly the opposite. The onset of camp-sickness is immediate.
...
"Happiness is embedded in the summer camp business plan, and is central to what they do. If children  aren’t happy; they won’t come back. Many camps report annual return rates of 75 percent or more. Not every child is happy at camp, and it goes without saying that not every child’s family can afford camp, or wants to send them. But schools could learn a lot about student retention and achievement by taking a page from the summer camp happiness playbook.

"This is especially true right now. Driven by a culture, which, rightly or wrongly, too often fails to recognize teachers with respect and economic rewards, teacher unhappiness seems more prevalent than ever. Yet in all the talk about education reform, happiness rarely seems to make the list, even though there’s plenty of evidence out there about what an improved school environment might mean for learning and test scores, not to mention student attitudes and drop-out rates.

"Put simply, nobody likes working for an unhappy boss. Schools can’t be enjoyable for kids if teachers aren’t happy. For schools to be more like camp — to be more fun — our education establishment has to put emphasis on hiring positive-minded staff and preaching the importance of exuding happiness in the classroom as well as making the necessary changes in the work environment that will make their happiness genuine.
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"I realize that fun may sound like a frivolous goal in the face of the education crisis we face in our public schools, and happiness an extra we can’t afford given our middling rankings among global competitors. But as I grudgingly send my girls back to school this week, I can’t help wishing — just as they do — that school would learn just a little from summer."

"Making the Connection: Incorporate The Arts Into Every Subject"
Ann Whittemore, Lesson Planet, September 5, 2012

Why should you incorporate the arts into your curriculum? The arts are a fantastic vehicle for housing any subject, from literature to science. They provide an opportunity for learners to express or engage in what they know in a multi-sensory way. They fully engage multiple parts of the brain at one time and can also facilitate learning for a variety of intelligences. Art therapy or art mediums have been used in Special Education for years and are so versatile that they needn’t be isolated from everyday curriculum, but fully incorporated. "

Visual Arts ... 
Music and Movement ... 
Drama ... 

Read the full article to find a ton of great ideas!

'Children Succeed' With Character, Not Test Scores
NPR Staff, NPR.org, September 4, 2012

"A child's success can't be measured in IQ scores, standardized tests or vocabulary quizzes, says author Paul Tough. Success, he argues, is about how young people build character. Tough explores this idea in his new book, How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity and the Hidden Power of Character.

"On how schools are focused on scores rather than noncognitive skills

""Right now we've got an education system that really doesn't pay attention to [noncognitive] skills at all. ... I think schools just aren't set up right now to try to develop things like grit, and perseverance and curiosity. ... Especially in a world where we are more and more focused on standardized tests that measure a pretty narrow range of cognitive skills, teachers are less incentivized to think about how to develop those skills in kids. So it's a conversation that's really absent I think in a lot of schools, to the detriment of a lot of students.""

"Using Graphic Novels and Comics in the Classroom"
Andrew Miller, Edutopia, January 11, 2012

"Here are some specific strategies to ponder as you select a graphic novel or comic to read, or as you consider how students might create their own. Thinking about them will help you focus your purpose in your instruction. All of them are useful, as long as the purpose is clear to the teacher and the learner.
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"1) A Tool to Differentiate Instruction
"Graphic novels and comics can be a great way to differentiate instruction for learners in terms of reading and also in terms of assessment. 
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"3) Assess Student Learning
"PBL calls for the creation of authentic products that are useful and credible to the group. You can have students create comics or graphic novels, or components of them, as a useful formative assessment tool to check for understanding of important content. If used as a summative assessment, the comic could be made to combat bullying, such as the suggestion Suzie Boss made in an earlier post. Make the graphic novel or comic a product that students create to meet a need. Don't just make it a regurgitation of knowledge. Instead, give it an authentic purpose.
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"There are many other purposes for graphic novels in the classroom, from looking at different cultures and backgrounds to utilizing technology in authentic ways. Just make sure you select the graphic novel or comic with a clear purpose in mind. Perhaps you have multiple purposes, as there are many instructionally sound purposes out there."

"I will leave you with some favorite graphic novels and comics that I've used in my classroom! Trust me, I have read plenty more than this list!

• "Persepolis, a memoir of a girl growing up during the Islamic revolution in Iran, was recently made into a motion picture.
• "Maus, a top favorite for many, explores themes of the Holocaust through a memoir characterized by mice and cats.
• "American Born Chinese is the tale of three characters: Jin Wang, the only Chinese-American in the neighborhood; Chin-Kee, the ultimate Chinese stereotype; and the Monkey King, ancient fable character."