Tuesday, July 13

Well, the Netherlands lost

And honestly, Spain played better. So it goes.

Nothing new to report. Still in Maine. It's foggy.

I'm (supposed to be) writing a paper about equity in education. I think my mom was surprised to find out I don't believe American education is equitable. I battle often with the feeling that I've sold out by teaching overseas. I know I am a much better teacher now than when I started. And it'd be nice to be applying these skills where I might make a difference. As it is, the students I teach now, they're most likely to succeed with or without me. The difference I offer, for the most part, is that I can help show the girls that it's ok to love and be good at math and to show all of them an alternative (generally more liberal) way of thinking about things. But in US public schools, well, for most of the students I also might not make a difference, but to those I did impact, the influence is likely to be far greater.

I'm a firm believer that the path to change is to create schools that are diverse socio-economically. However, I read a NYT article today about the attempt to do that in San Francisco and how it's almost impossible because all the middle/upper class students have been pulled out of public schools. Ack! What do we do then??

2 comments:

minniemoocher@gmail.com said...

you might be interested in this essay on Frre Range Kids:
http://freerangekids.wordpress.com/2010/07/07/how-to-make-a-struggling-school-good-maybe-even-great/

Mickey said...

Yeah, education is one area where I know we have big problems, but I have no idea how to fix them. Proper funding would be a start, though.