Are you drowning in paperwork?

If you are a first year teacher , at this  point in the school year  you may already be overwhelmed and exasperated  by the volume of paperwork that crosses your desk. You may also have come to the realization that it is extremely important to be organized. Paperwork management may have been something that was not taught or even discussed in your teacher preparation program in college. So now you need to take the initiative to unclutter your desk, create files and complete your fall cleaning.

You may wish to separate your work into these categories.

1)      Student Work. It is important to return papers to students in a timely manner. They need to receive feedback as soon as possible to learn how they performed on assignments and tests.  If you are saving certain papers for parent conferences or student work samples for their folders, etc. be sure to file them in a manner that will be easily retrievable.

2)      Professional Development. This may be a file of articles from professional magazines or notes from workshops and conferences. If you work in a state has a professional development requirement for promotions or pay increments, be sure to keep an accurate account of hours completed or keep transcripts from any graduate courses you may have taken.

3)      Committees. As a new teacher (or even a veteran educator) you will be most likely be assigned to serve on several committees. You may have also volunteered to serve as a club sponsor or coach. It is important to keep accurate notes and records of these projects so that you can refer to them and create action plans for those items you need to address.

4)      Letters from parents or guardians. Be sure to keep these in a safe place should you need to refer to them or to follow up on parents requests. Accurate communication with parents is a crucial trait for any successful teacher.

5)      Teacher observations and evaluations.  These are very important documents. You will need to refer to them so it is important to have them readily available and secure.

I am sure that that I did not think of every category but at least this is a start. Be certain to secure personal student information files and IEPs of your special needs students. You should keep these documents in a locked filing cabinet. I hope that these suggestions help to clear your desk.

c. J. Margolis

Malala Yousufazai- Teacher and Heroine

 How far would you go to defend your right to an education? What would you be willing to do so that you would not be threatened for reading a book or attend school? A fourteen year old girl in Pakistan was willing to risk her life to be able to learn. Malala Yousufazai was the victim of assassination attempt by the Taliban in Peshawar Province in Pakistan. She was shot in the head last week while on a school bus for the crime of trying to teach other Pakistani girls. Her father is a former school administrator whose school had been shut down by the Taliban. Malala had been running a blog under a false identity. Yousufazai was airlifted to a hospital in Birmingham, England for long term treatment for her head injury.

You may recall the efforts of Greg Mortinsen to educate young girls in the region in his bestselling books, Three Cups of Tea and Stones into Schools. It has been difficult to effect a change in the thinking of the role of women and their desire to obtain an education. In additional to the cultural issues that have prevented many Muslim women from going to school, there is the political desire of the Taliban to maintain their stronghold by keeping the female population subservient and in the dark.

This is a current events news items with a message. While the American education system in not perfect and it can often be prone to politicization, all 50 states and the District of Columbia have compulsory education laws and they apply to both girls as well as boys. While the issue of the glass ceiling for women executives has been a presidential debate topic, American women are not denied the opportunity to achieve in the classroom and in the business world. The role of educated women is critical to success of a democracy and thus we as a nation must continue to encourage young women to further their education, become entrepreneurs, engage in the political process, and encourage other women to do the same. The courage of Malala has become a teachable moment where you point out to your students that in the USA the role of women is far different than the roles of women in Pakistan or other Muslim countries.  We continue to hope for her recovery and to encourage her and others like her to raise their voices to extol the virtues of an education for women and how it can serve to help their country.

c .J. Margolis 2012

The Middle East- Rhetoric and Reality

The Middle East- Rhetoric and Reality

When I first started teaching, it was during the height of the Vietnam War. Many of my students had relatives in the army and they were complaining about the war and were taking notice of the growing anti- war movement. Looking for a teachable moment one day I pulled down the wall map of the world and asked students to show me where Vietnam was. None of them could find it.

If you are a teacher of social studies, current events, or geography, the current environment regarding the Middle East is a vast teachable moment for a wide variety of reasons.

One obvious reason is the upcoming presidential election. Both candidates are trying to position themselves as Pro- Israel and strong on combating terrorism. Even though the final debate on foreign policy is more than a week away, you can access each candidate’s position from their web sites.  (Although their views may change during the campaign.)

Other hot issues ripe for discussion include whether Iran is on the verge of developing nuclear weapons capability and whether or not they would use it. With regards to Israel, it seems that many nations are deferring to either the US or Israel (or both) to “handle” the Iranian crisis. It should be noted that the Israeli government has never acknowledged whether they in fact have nuclear weaponry but most governments believe that they do. Read this document from George Washington University regarding the Dimona nuclear site.(http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/israel/documents/reveal/index.html)

Another front and center issue is Syria. Assad is waging a civil war to maintain power and it looks like the “Arab Spring” has not been as successful there as it has been in Egypt.

Of course there is the ongoing war in Afghanistan and  the  US military presence in Iraq.

For divergent media coverage of Middle Eastern affairs, have your student view the Jerusalem Post (www.jpost.com) and AL Jazeera (www.Aljazeera.com).

The Council on Foreign Relations also often covers items pertinent to Middle Eastern events ( www.cfr.org). Recent articles include a story about Turkish- Syrian Relations and a piece by Foreign Minister Salehi about Iranian foreign relations.

The library of the University of Chicago has excellent lesson plans and activities for high school teachers looking for resources about the Middle East.

(http://teachmiddleeast.lib.uchicago.edu/foundations/middle-east-exporter-of-religion/classroom-connections/MiddleEastReligion-Lesson-01.pdf)

The Best of History web site, prepared by Canadian educators, also has useful materials. (http://www.besthistorysites.net/index.php/modern-history/middle-east-conflict)

The web site of the United Nation may also, from time to time, have material to aid in the student’s exploration about the current conflicts throughout the Middle East. http://www.un.org/en/

Please do not hesitate to recommend other relevant web sites to  this blog and your colleagues.

c. 2012 j. margolis

Is a College Education Worth it?

When the “Greatest Generation” returned home from World War II, the federal government offered veterans the opportunity to attend college under the GI Bill. Many of these returning soldiers, sailors, and pilots were sons of immigrant parents and this bill gave them the opportunity to attend universities that had heretofore been out of their financial reach. This paradigm shift created an educated and skilled workforce that catapulted the American economy and led to significant advances in science, medicine and technology. The children of these veterans were forever to become known as the “Baby Boomers.” For many of them, going to college was a foregone conclusion. For this group too, the undergraduate degree was the golden ticket that created the path to a job (or an entire career) and the security and advancement opportunities that went along with it.  We now fast forward to the twenty-first century, where this nation has been mired in a major recession with high unemployment. The golden ticket has become a bit tarnished as a college education is no longer a guarantee at all for a job upon graduation. And for those students saddled with astronomical college loans that require payment commencing with graduation, the college education does not look like a good investment at by any means.

According to an Associated Press analysis of data from 2011, 53.6 percent of college graduates under the age of 25 were unemployed or, if they were lucky, merely underemployed, which means they were in jobs for which their degrees weren’t necessary.

So what message are you going to give your students? In years past have you found yourself chiding your students that “you’re going to need this for college?” The new message has a bit of a twist. "Going to college and getting a bachelor's degree is important, but the major that you take is more important than that," Anthony Carnevale, director of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce, remarked to ABC News recently. "If what they are interested in is money, they should go directly to engineering, computer science, the hard sciences or business."  Where does that leave the English major, the theatre major, or the liberal arts major? College is not merely something you do after high school. As educators we need to share today’s realities with our students. We cannot predict how this will all play out and what the future will hold. We encourage students to maximize their potential and encourage them to pursue their dreams and aspirations. But we are also obliged to provide the requisite dose of reality.

c.J. Margolis 2012