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Education

American Education Week: Creating Amazing Public Schools

Nov 14th, 2011
by Lily.
2 comments

Happy American Education Week. In honor of the week-long celebration, I was asked to focus my remarks this week on my “vision” for an amazing public school system. Oh my.

The last time I did that, I was accused of smoking something. Apparently there is a fine line between “vision” and “hallucination”. But I will repeat myself and tell you exactly what I want in my visionary, dreamy, hallucinogenic, utopian planet.

Aside from the obvious (that you would never have to go down to Staples and buy your own reams of paper because there wasn’t enough in the District budget for such exotic baubles), I would be in charge.

I’m pushy that way. In my system, classroom teachers would be in charge.

There would never be a Non-Teacher who would hand us a script to read to our students or give us a ridiculous goal (100% of your kids WILL be above average) or a ridiculous prize (and if they ARE then you get more pay) or a ridiculous punishment (and if you don’t achieve a statistical impossibility, which could only be accomplished by cheating, you get fired.)

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That’s so Fargo

Jul 13th, 2011
by Lily.
1 comment

I went to Fargo, North Dakota, and someone actually gave me a book with the title, “That’s so Fargo.”

I plan on reading it. Because if Fargo kids are an example of “So Fargo”, there’s something for us to learn there. teachers have class

I visited a 6th grade and taught them my favorite Barry Polisar song; the touching classic, “Don’t Stick Your Finger Up Your Nose ‘Cause Your Nose Knows It’s Not The Place It Goes.” It is a song that has moved a generation. Moved them to what, I’m not actually sure, but I see smiles, so I keep singing.

Then we had a talk. I asked them, “What does a good teacher look like?” I asked them, “Give me a word that describes a good teacher.”

Hands shot up.
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Lily & Thom Hartmann Talk Education @ Netroots

Jun 18th, 2011
by LilysBlackboard.
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“Children are 100 percent of our future”…Thom Hartmann talks to Lily Esklsen at the Netroots Nation Conference in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

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Three Main Things that Always Fail in Education

Jun 1st, 2011
by Lily.
3 comments

I’ve just finished one more article on what essentially becomes “The Three Main Things” that we need to do to improve our schools. They aren’t bad things. Well, sometimes they are. But, basically they sound essentially reasonable.

And I hate, hate, hate to argue with something that sounds reasonable because it puts you in the position of sounding unreasonable when you question what often seems like pure common sense, so I hate, hate, hate to say this, but…
school vocabulary
Three Main Things will always fail. Three Main Things are doomed. They are doomed when you are trying to fix a system.

It doesn’t matter if you are trying to fix the toughest problems in our toughest schools or the easiest problems in our easiest schools. They are doomed because a system is not like furnishing my living room.

Stay with me. When I was a young, married kid, we couldn’t afford much in the way of furniture unless it consisted of an overturned milk crate that I could pretend was an end table. We were putting ourselves through college. I wasn’t able to go out and buy a perfect Home Beautiful room. So I picked the Three Main Things. (more…)

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