I recently read Gary Rubinstein’s post entitled: “The Silence of the (Sacrificial) Lambs” and immediately thought back to the classic Paula Cole hit, “Where Have All the Cowboys Gone?” In the past month, his post has generated nearly 100 comments, many from defensive or offended corps members; some of the more insightful comments come from seemingly jaded first years. Interestingly, it appears no one pointed out the obvious: competitive dilution and active discouragement.
Haven’t they heard of Pass The Chalk and Teacher Pop!?
Obviously, Teach For Us has been sidestepped.
Although many thoughtful TFAers shared their stories on this site, Gary clearly drove the majority of traffic to the site (as he pointed out a number of times). A combination of his location (NYC), frequency, depth of content, and allies (e.g. Diane Ravitch, Anthony Cody) amplified his arguably anti-TFA message, effectively broadcasting his views to incoming and current corps members. The thought of having…
Disclaimer: this has NOTHING to do with education. Unless you make the case that Blitzen would have received due justice had he been represented by the Reindeer’s Union (led by Reinde R. Wintergarden). It’s the story of Blitzen, Santa’s head reindeer. One day at the North Pole, Blitzen decides that he’s had enough of the…
read more »Some sticky situations arose this week and I’m not talking about waffle syrup. If you are wondering why we still have violence and education crises in modern day America, look no further than the grown folks making decisions and mouthing platitudes from their soapboxes. We see this pseudo-argumentation about the fiscal cliff (here and here),…
read more »Due in part to the maddening flurry of education reform related articles in the past two month, I had essentially sworn off blogging. While in the groove of seeing real change happening on the ground every day in my work with City Year, I felt increasingly removed from the debate between older folk being played…
read more »Please read the following article about the fires of racial tensions being rekindled due to a lack of thoughtfulness and financial equality around revised public transit plans. Aren’t we in 2012? Why do forced relocation, crowding out, and disregard for minority, low-income communities remain issues in this enlightened age? Yet, pundits question why poverty still exists?…
read more »There’s a well-known saying that goes like this: “be careful what you wish for because you just might get it.” I noticed last night that citizens in Chicago voted to have an elected school board instead of one appointed by the mayor. While this referendum didn’t actually change city law, the 86% of votes in…
read more »Not much to say here. Mississippi once again makes a fool of itself. After President Obama was reelected, a group of students at Mississippi’s largest university, “Ole Miss” decided to protest on campus employing the use of numerous racial slurs best left in the 60s. It’s worth noting that the University of Mississippi has an…
read more »Lately, I feel like I begin every blog post with a disclaimer about how I “haven’t been blogging much recently.” In summary, things are great! I’m enjoying my job (it’s been really busy as of late), it’s nice to have college friends around, and I’m close to home. So, minus Hurricane Sandy, things are good.…
read more »This summer, I was happy to blog about my experience at the MS Department of Education to share my source of hope for the state as I packed up to move back to Massachusetts. Since then, I haven’t really heard much good news: there’s been firings, and scandals, tornados, etc. Fortunately, my friends and former…
read more »Today, the Opportunity Nation campaign focused on measuring opportunity. As we know, The American Dream remains unfulfilled for a large population of US citizens, but such an ideal can be difficult to quantify. Thankfully, we now have a useful metric called the Opportunity Index; this tool can help assess where opportunities are lacking in the…
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