Teach Like Your Hair's On Fire: Methods and Madness Inside Room 56

This is truly the best kind of "best practice" book, because the methods are tied to the real stories of real classrooms. Room 56 especially highlights the success immigrants and ELLs can achieve when they receive the right instruction.

Back in town

Autumn in Boston has come and gone since my last post. Where did the season go? Among the many new skills acquired, creating balance has been the most difficult skill to master. Definitely not there yet, but things are looking up.

I'm more pumped about teaching now than I was when I arrived. Along with my colleagues and scholars, I've been sponging up whatever I can from master educators such as Rafe Esquith and Ron Clark.

Class Warfare: Inside the Fight to Fix America's Schools

Whitney Tilson's, blog is currently one of my favorites. Possibly because he floods my inbox with articles, youtube videos, interviews, and all things ed reform. Last week he told everyone to read Brills' new book and offered to send a free copy to anyone who couldn't afford to purchase it. I'm in! Yay for pleasure reading that is relevant to everything I'm doing as an educator.

Here's an excerpt from the WSJ review by Joel Klein:

"Class Warfare," by Steven Brill, is an extremely well-reported survey of the modern reform movement that is likely to have a big impact and will appeal to a wide audience. "Special Interest," by Terry M. Moe, is a carefully researched analysis of the power dynamics underlying today's policy disputes. Mr. Brill, a celebrated media entrepreneur and longtime journalist, takes us on a breezy journey through the education-reform landscape, written with a storyteller's page-turning magic; Mr. Moe, a political scientist, offers a painstaking study, also compelling if less fast-paced.

Mr. Brill opens with a quick visit to the Oval Office early in the Obama administration, where the new president commits himself to an aggressive reform agenda. "Just make sure," he says to his advisers, "that we don't poke the unions in the eye with this." The bulk of "Class Warfare" is a series of vignettes of reformers and traditionalists, and of struggling schools they are fighting to save.

Read the indignant response from education historian and ed reform opponent Dr. Diane Ravitch to Simon and Schuster Inc. Their response to her accusations can be found here.

The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson

This friend and neighbor of Bronson Alcott was also a fellow Transcendentalist.  Emerson is one of America's most beloved philosophers.

Walden; or Life in the Woods

Henry David Thoreau's take on nature and independence. This naturalist philosopher was another study-buddy of Bronson Alcott's.

An Old Fashioned Girl

Polly leaves her quiet country home to explore the foreign world of city life. While her wealthy cousins the Shaws welcome her into their existence, Polly wrestles to find the balance between the simplicity of her heritage and the new opportunities her cousins offer.

Rose in Bloom

Rose and Uncle Alex are back from their tour abroad. But the littler girl that her seven "cousins"  remember is gone forever. A winsome young woman has taken her place. Rose does not know what to do with the new attention she is receiving from her dear friends turned suitors.