BlogHer - education - Comments

Technology in the classroom

Vered — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 19:32:01 -0600

How can anyone object to it? Technology is not just the present, it's also the future. I wish they had more technology when I was a kid. I was bored to death at school 80% of the time and I'm sure technology would have helped.

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Update

Leslie Madsen Brooks — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 10:51:22 -0600

Since I wrote this post, the Center for American Progress has released a report on the leaky pipeline for women in science.

Leslie

BlogHer Contributing Editor, Research and Academia
My blogs: The Clutter Museum, Museum Blogging, and The Multicultural Toybox

I think the lack of

Placings — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:45:38 -0600

I think the lack of effective communication skills is not just in our scientists but our graduates in general :) I was traveling through Europe last year for over 3 months (via Eurail pass) and I asked a professor sitting next to me why the quality of graduates in Europe seem to be so high and their research and rapid advancement so prominent and he replied by telling me Americans are still winning Nobel Prizes, lol.

Go figure.

Women and the Great Depression

dkdanielson — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 10:15:38 -0600

Hi Suzanne - Thanks for including us in this. Glad to see people discussing the topic and not assuming it has "gone away." Your comments made me think back to some of my historical research about women in the Great Depression. Here's actually a good summary of how the women's movement stalled during the Great Depression, yet there are some parallels to what is going on now. http://www.novelguide.com/a/discover/egd_02/egd_02_00550.html.

P.S. I'm with you on the more male caregivers being a big deal. It's an interesting twist. Especially because more people miss work for elder care than child care and it's going to be am even bigger issue. I'm thinking that maybe it's son's out of work? having to move back home? or Single/Divorced? Also, I note that my brother will have the responsibility because he lives near my parents. So, it may be a geographic thing.

Diane K. Danielson ceo, DowntownWomensClub.com

Women and the Great Depression

dkdanielson — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 09:46:13 -0600

Diane K. Danielson ceo, DowntownWomensClub.com

Wonderful!

Britt Bravo — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 13:30:25 -0500

Thanks so much for sharing your post, Anna (:

Posted!

PositivelyAnna — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 21:16:06 -0500

I enjoyed writing that! Thanks for the suggestion.

Anna B

http://positivelyanna.blogspot.com/

The Golden Rule is missing

Beverly Flaxington — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 15:18:09 -0500

I don't claim to have answers to school violence, but I do notice a disturbing trend generally among children. The "Golden Rule" seems to have all but disappeared from the lexicon. Instead of treating others as you'd like to be treated, it seems most kids are ready to "put 'em up" everytime someone else upsets them. This goes on even with the so-called "good kids" who may have a stay-at-home mom, or a working mom but be generally financially healthy. I hear it in the teen gossip and read it on the Facebook pages of my own kids and their friends. I don't know if it is lack of spiritual direction, or lack of being in touch with something Greater than they are, but generally both the boys and girls seem ready with a chip on their shoulders looking for a fight. The Counselor at the grammar school says she has to start now with the Kindergarten kids when it used to be the 5th grade where it began. Maybe in each of our homes if we could watch our language and try to be a bit "kinder" toward others, kids would hear that message. Even in "good homes" we're often so harried and stressed, some days it is hard to be nice. It's possible that our kids feel this stress and don't know what to do with it, so just act it out in many different negative ways. I also think we don't teach kids, at least in public school, good coping skills -- how to communicate effectively, how to deal with emotion, or how to deal with stress and as such, it all builds up and for some kids, they don't know what to do except explode. Getting away from standardized testing and putting an emphasis on life skills might be one good place to start.

Beverly Flaxington

Blog: Dealing with Difficult People

Book: Understanding Other People: The Five Secrets

Abby, Thanks for your

Leslie Madsen Brooks — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 13:07:58 -0500

Abby, Thanks for your comment. I didn't say it's only the poor kids beating up on people--see all the cases I cited, as well as my comments about cliques, bullying, and suburban ennui.

There's more than one kind of poverty. If parents are working so hard to pay the bills that they can't spend time with their children, that strikes me as a particular form of poverty as well, a living-on-the-edge sort of poverty where the choice is between working/paying bills and spending time with the kids.

Leslie

BlogHer Contributing Editor, Research and Academia
My blogs: The Clutter Museum, Museum Blogging, and The Multicultural Toybox

School violence

Abby Winters — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 08:43:10 -0500

There are a great number of things that could be causing school violence. I do not believe poverty is one of them. It is not always the poor kids who are beating up people. I honestly think that one of the biggest causes can be the way we all live our lives. Parents are so busy working to pay all the bills that they may not have the time to see that their child may be headed for trouble. blagues

Cincinnati Is Excited

Mommy Bits — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 09:38:36 -0500

Where you'll find me:
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Cincinnati Women Bloggers
Family Friendly Cincinnati

Great!

Britt Bravo — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 15:47:19 -0500

I'm looking forward to reading about it.

Would be happy to!

PositivelyAnna — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 15:17:15 -0500

I'll post it this weekend!

Anna B

http://positivelyanna.blogspot.com/

Important and thought-provoking

Candelaria Silva — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 08:51:12 -0500

I love your phrase: "being a conduit not a critic." I feel your frustration, anger, dismay. I am doing a gig at a place that teaches ESOL, GED, High School, ABE classes. My frustration is not with immigrants. Most of them are working truly hard. I am frustrated, dismayed and often near tears at my American-born students who at 18 or 22 or 30 don't have the skills they need...some don't have emails or use computers! In 2009! Computer centers with free access are easy to find in the Boston area. Getting them to follow-up, follow-through, read the application with me while I help them fill them out. I try to teach them so they can do things on their own but there's a lot of shut-down.

Then I have friends and acquaintances who are educated but wouldn't read a book (of any type) if their life depended on it and don't use computers to do much at all.

However, I am an America, and there are millions of us who are on the other side and we will persevere. Or at least that's what I tell myself.

http://blog.candelarisilva.com

Good and plenty!

Gena, from my experience... the kids rub off on the parents...

micrimas — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 07:26:10 -0500

I will give you an example.

In Homework Club, the same PCs we used Rosetta Stone English for the kids,,, we gave gratis classes for their parents, after school. The classes were packed. The parents were eager to learn English. They were using the pcs. I imagine that small attempt towards gaining literacy in a new world, totally different from the world they left... helped them.

I know it did. One of my mentee's mom attending English classes and uses the PC now... she arrived from a refugee camp, with quite a few children, and a husband killed in tribal warfare. She could not speak a word of English. Now she is relatively fluent and she's pretty great at using Skype and the PC!

I don't know about American literacy all that much,,,, just about the refugee population. At one point I volunteered to teach at Project Literacy, which helps all adults with their literacy, but I was diagnosed with cancer and could not start teaching. So I don't have a frame of reference with regard to illiterate American-born adults.

The only frame of reference I do have is a former coworker whose work I depended on, who was illiterate. And he was moved around in the company, for to let him go, the company risked a lawsuit. They had no idea when they hired him that he was functionally illiterate. He was a great guy. I ended up giving him lessons in punctuation and English during our breaks. But I depended on his literacy to do my job and I ended up doing double the work. He got paid... and moved around... as soon as people caught on to his inability to form proper sentences, they gave him a grace period and he was moved elsewhere. No one bothered to try and push him towards classes to advance his writing skills, which were essential in our field of work.

Half of a Duo, Raising a Duo

http://micrimas.blogspot.com