Taylor the Teacher

If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!of Julia Louis Dreyfus. Funny. Natural. Womanly. Perfect.

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People sometimes say to me, “I don’t know how you can do it.”
Sometimes I act like I don’t know what they mean and make them say it. “Work in the public schools. Those kids.”
And I agree.
But when I agree, I’m thinking, “I don’t know how I put up with all the political/educational/institutional bullshit that you […]

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I’m not even going to bother linking to anyone else on this because I don’t have time. I’m busy so many hours a day trying to work with teenagers and fulfill all the paperwork requirements put on me by this politicized school system just to enable me to continue to work with these young adults […]

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Just a curiosity — can anyone explain to me why the shirt I bought this weekend had a tag that said, “Hecho in India?” It was made in India, but the tag is written in Spanish?

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I hear so much about the achievement gap, which is real and serious. But what I don’t hear anyone talking about are the gaping gaps that underlie the achievement gap such as these:
1. The growing gap between the rich and the poor.
2. The gap between the average household spending on technology and schools’ spending on technology.
3. The […]

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What an exhausting day! Got up at 5:30, am still working. In addition to Long Range Plans, Syllabi, and Emergency Lesson Plans that were due today, it seems that somebody forgot I am supposed to be teaching my classes.

The school year is one week old, and we already had our open house. Turnout was as disappointing […]

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What if school wasn’t compulsory?
What if kids could come if they wanted to learn, and do something else if they didn’t?
What if students could choose their own curriculum?
What if my brother, who loved to take apart electronic gadgets the day after he got them, had been offered a course in electronics? Would he have stayed […]

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It’s like I am standing at the edge of the pool trying to decide whether or not to jump in. Two years ago, I was afraid of the bathtub. (Started several blogs, but was paralyzed that someone would find out I’m a teacher who drinks wine and cusses.) Back then, the pool was out of the question.  Now […]

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The current state of our broadcasting equipment.

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Message from the superintendent of our district today at faculty meeting: “our district is on the cutting edge of technology.” Yet, in this cutting edge school, I am teaching two sections of Broadcast Journalism with zero digital cameras, two analog cameras, ancient editing equipment (that’s in a pile on shelves in the media center), and […]

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