One of the things I’ve struggled with in my pedagogy courses is the intensely personal nature of teaching. The ways in which a teacher creates an effective learning environment are directly dependent on the teacher’s personality. I would argue that some traits are necessary, i.e., consistency, humility, flexibility, but the ways in which instructors manifest these attributes will vary greatly.

How, then, do you ask students to be themselves if they have minimal self-awareness? What do you do if they understand “the personal nature of teaching” to mean “I’m doin’ it my way” ?

Reading some student papers, I’m struck by the difficulty of asking students to do genuine research when they don’t have access to a first-rate research library. Many of my students did the right thing — they did not use “google” as their primary mode of research — but often struggled to use lexis or eric well.

Furthermore, when they went to find monographs, the lack of titles severely limited their options. It’s not a question of blame; there are all too few great well-funded libraries at this point. Rather it’s a question of how I can work with students to generate lists of texts that they can order.

The Times presents an interesting study from ETS:

The E.T.S. researchers took four variables that are beyond the control of schools: The percentage of children living with one parent; the percentage of eighth graders absent from school at least three times a month; the percentage of children 5 or younger whose parents read to them daily, and the percentage of eighth graders who watch five or more hours of TV a day. Using just those four variables, the researchers were able to predict each state’s results on the federal eighth-grade reading test with impressive accuracy.

The actual study is here.

“If the Red Sox get Santana,” said an executive of one NL team that’s grateful to be in the other league, “they might be the best team in the history of the frigging universe.”

From ESPN.

So US News is challenging Newsweek for the right to rank high schools. Jay Matthews had put together one methodology premised solely upon AP/IB exams.

This approach is slightly different as it takes into account standardized test performance for all students.

L. and I just finished reading this trilogy together. Wonderful.

Powerful review by a feminist theologian, here.

This article offers a variety of answer to the question of how readers are made.