I Speak of Dreams

England Chronicles #3: Rehearsal Dinner a Success

It turned out to be held at Pizza Express, which I thought might be dodgy, but I should have trusted Scholar Woman more...

While it is a chain, the room itself looked like the meeting room of a Victorian learned society, with subdued lighting, prints and busts of scholars, and white tablecloths.

Below the fold, a few photos

England Chronicles #2 Divided by a Common Language (Temporal Version)

I don't know if it is England, Cambridge, or just the various food venues we've visited, but something's chapping my hide.

The tempo of the restaurant service.

This morning, we sat down for breakfast.  The hostess person brought coffee cups over....but it was almost 15 minutes later before the carafe of coffee arrived.

Yesterday, we were seated for lunch, and the meals (nothing fancy, a ploughman's and two different types of salad) took 20 minutes from ordering to delivery.

It is just a different rhythm, I think, but it grates against my American training or expectations.  Jumper Girl and I decided that we'll be timing things, in the future, and see when we get impatient. 

Stand by for further anthropological details.

England Chronicles #1

Made it safely to Heathrow, found Jumper Girl, and made it to our coach from Heathrow to Cambridge.

Met Scholar Woman -- she is lovely and delightful.  I'm impressed with her ability to meet numerous new relations.

Off to the rehearsal dinner in a few minutes.

I may or may not be able to upload photographs from this connection.  But photos are indeed promised.

England Chronicles #0--Itinerary

This will serve as a summary of blog posts on our trip.

Aaaaand Ooooofffff We Go

Off to observe Scholar Man & Scholar Woman's Nuptials.   Maybe I'll blog while I'm gone, maybe I won't.

See you on the 21st.

When in Worry, When in Doubt

When in Worry, When in Doubt
Run in Circles
Scream and Shout

That is where I am in my travel preparations.

Do you know where my coral top is?  I don't.   Jettison that set of outfits.  Oh well. 

Jumper Girl and I at least know where to meet up at Heathrow day after tomorrow.

Teachers: Engage Your Students...Lose Your Job or Dumb Dumb Dumb Dumpty Dump

This is beyond dumb and "burning stupid".

Jim Piculas is a substitute teacher in Pasco County, Florida.  As part of his schtick to engage middle school students, he has a magic trick in which  a toothpick disappears then reappears.

Substitute teaching, especially in middle school, is hard.  You need schtick to get your possibly restive students into the learning and compliance mode.

Pinculas's reward for having playful substitute teaching chops? He lost his job.  Why? Practicing wizardry.

The wizardry?  A little sleight-of-hand trick involving a toothpick.

Well, that's what Piculas says.  The real story may be more complex -- you never know at this distance.  But the Pasco County School District is so hurting to subs that it hires instructional subs -- classroom teachers -- with "a minimum of a high school diploma or a GED".

Therapeutic Schools News: A Documentary and Two Sites New to Me

I haven't written about therapeutic schools and their abuses  for months.  This isn't for lack of interest -- just nothing sparking indignation has come across my desk recently.

Liam Scheff, a writer and journalist, evidently was an inmate at the "struggling teen" "emotional growth" program CEDU for part of his teen years (see here and here for more about CEDU).  He is making a documentary about CEDU. Here's a link to the video on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYWWe6MB3cc

Dr. Bush was a PhD candidate in psychology at the University of Washington in 2005 when she testified before Congress on unregulated "therapeutic" programs.  She was also quoted in the article, At Some Youth Treatment Facilities, Tough Love Takes Brutal Forms.  She is now a postdoctoral fellow at University of California, San Francisco in Health Psychology.

The second site new to me is Benchmark Young Adult School--Exposed, by Michael Crawford.

 

Unfounded Assumptions Lead To Bad Problem Solving: Teens, Online Behavior, Sex, and Age-Verification Technology

If your child is online--if your child uses social networking software such as MySpace--is he or she at great risk from being solicited for sex by a predatory adult? 

Some parents think so, but as Larry Magid reports

Drawing from several surveys and studies, all the researchers said the risk of a child being forced into sex from an online predator is almost non-existant.

It's in today's Digital Crossroads column, Larry reports on the recent meeting of the Internet Safety Technical Taskforce (ISTT), featuring  the research of  Michelle Ybarra, Janis Wolak, Amanda Lenhart, and Dana Boyd.  Please read Larry's whole column for a detailed and nuanced report on teens, sex, and online behavior.

The impetus behind the task force is to mandate age-verification for internet sites, to protect children from adult predators.  But if  the problem isn't that children are being approached by adults for sexual purposes--is that the appropriate response?

You should go read Larry's whole column

Reading First Interim Report: Hold Your Horses

On Monday, April 28, 2008, the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) released a study, the Reading First Impact Study: Interim Report.  I haven't yet found a copy of the study (it will be available for order from Recently Added Publications -- Publication ID: ED004243P.  (Reading First is hereafter abbreviated RF)

Searching the web for news on Reading First yields up variations on: "Bush's Expensive Plan Doesn't Work".

Not so fast with the conclusions, please.

Yes, the report says that the selection of schools studied in the report failed to show gains in reading comprehension,  but I think much finer-grained analysis of the contents of the report are warranted before announcing "Reading First Doesn't Work".