An educated mind is an opened mind. An opened mind is a liberal mind. Teachers don't have to intend to create liberals, it happens naturally. |
On the inside:
- Out of Habit (an essay)
- Links to other education-related stories.
- As always, the topics will be whatever you want to discuss and there will be good community.
It's not for teachers only.
Door's Open...
Out of Habit
Habit took over again on Thursday.
For no apparent reason other than it has been done for the past 120 weeks in a row, I started preparing another Teacher's Lounge. I started gathering links. Unlike most weeks, however, I read few of the diaries at those links beyond the point of determining their subject matter. I suppose that means some of them may be misplaced. Truth is that my threshold of caring has drastically diminished.
And that's not a good state of mind to be in. It is not conducive to a job well done. I care greatly about education, but most of the DKos membership seems to only care about it in fits and starts. There was concern expressed for a day about an effeminate student in California being murdered because he was perceived to be gay (it was interesting to me that the diarist, who spoke in vehement opposition to transgender inclusion in ENDA did not even use the term transgender in his diary, even though the stated reason for the murder concerned gender expression, but that's another matter, I suppose). Of course, a school shooting is always good for drawing some interest towards education...but it takes a mass murder to hold it for more than a day. And we managed to have that...with the attendant gun control debate hijacking the subject as usual. There were also several articles about the college presidency at William and Mary...but they didn't seem to have much connection with the actual educational programs at William and Mary. Nor do the diaries about the student loan situation speak much about education as anything other than a comodity.
And don't get me started on the candidate diaries which are ostensibly about education. Rarely is there any grist in those mills. And I've sworn them off. You have all managed to totally extinguish my interest in politics for the foreseeable future.
If it weren't for teacherken and sometimes Ruben Salazar and a few others providing us with a few gems once in a while, I'd mostly be providing people with all chaff and no wheat.
For what purpose? The original purpose for this feature was to provide a place for people with an interest in education to participate in conversations on that subject. I assumed that would be teachers and students. The latter rarely show up anymore. And there are fewer of the former.
Doing this week after week seems to have become an exercise in fetishism. And it is a distraction from my work (see The Task at Hand for more on that). Increasingly that part is getting left behind because Saturday is taken up with Teacher's Lounge and very few people read something of that nature on Friday night at Daily Kos. When I can get more response...sometimes twice as much participation...at Docudharma from it's 1200 members than I can get from Daily Kos with its 150,000, shouldn't something change?
Something has to give. It might as well be this. Maybe.
I have not made any firm decisions. It may be that one week...maybe even next week...there won't be a Teacher's Lounge anymore. That would make me sad for awhile, but I would get over it. Being able to do things on a Saturday besides blog all day would probably be a pleasure. How would I know? I've been doing Teacher's Lounge for two and a third years.
Of course, as I have said from the beginning, I'd be more than happy to have someone take this over and do it better than I have. Nobody has ever stepped forward to accept that burden.
If only one person is willing to do a job, maybe that job is not all that much worth doing.
--Robyn Elaine Serven
--Bloomfield College, NJ
Education Round-up: I've categorized.
For examples of People Teaching, please visitPhilosophy and PoliticsStories: Ourselves and OthersFreedom and Justice on CampusNCLB/Department of Education/Standardized Testing/AssessmentMoneyAction, Advocacy and InformationSpecial addition: Northern Illinois University |
I'll be hanging around most of the day, actively waiting for your comments (actually, I'll be working in another program, but I'm close by), so at least one person will be here to discuss whatever anyone wants to discuss.
The Not-so-many Rules
- No general bashing of administrators, politicians, etc, just on general principles. If you want to bash them, have a point and a plan.
- No bitching about students unless you're talking about what you are going to do to alleviate the problems you think the students have.
- Introductions are encouraged, but not essential.
- I have no investment in hosting the Teacher's Lounge. If someone else thinks they can and wants to do it better, cool. I just want the space. And not for teachers only, but respecting the general theme of teaching and learning.
- Teacher's Lounge can be "slow blogging" if you want it to be. You don't get quality writing if you demand velocity. It doesn't have to be the case that something posted today is dead by tomorrow. I would like it to eventually be up and active 24/7, but that may have to wait until I have developed an independent blog site.
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Every Saturday I'll post a clean slate, around 12 noon EST.