Skip to main content

What the H*** is Happening


 

Please excuse my thinly veiled attempt to cover my cursing. I realize that I should use my words better, but to be honest in this case the word is the most appropriate one I could think of this morning. This morning I woke up to this article.

https://bookriot.com/florida-teachers-remove-classroom-libraries/


The article discusses how teachers in Brevard Public Schools have been told that they cannot use their classroom libraries this year until they have been vetted by an expert. 

seriously

I thought teachers were the experts! I mean we did go to school for just such an occasion, but I digress. Let's get back to the real issue. 

I would be remiss if I just read one article, so I went a googling. Here are the other headlines that popped up. 

https://www.tampabay.com/news/education/2022/05/12/florida-schools-stirred-up-over-library-books-textbooks/

https://www.clickorlando.com/news/local/2022/04/15/brevard-schools-discuss-district-wide-library-book-policy-prepare-for-review-process/

 I will give you the gist if you don't want to spend the time getting angrier than you already are. A small group of people have submitted challenges against books they feel like shouldn't be read. Each of those challenges must be reviewed and the book must be vetted before it is allowed back on shelves. Here's the problem, a lot of small groups of people want to ban different books. Who would have thought? So because it is impossible to keep up with all of the issues that people outside of the classroom have with certain books, we just take them all away until we get to it.



Also, if one person (or a small group of people) get to decide what is appropriate for students to read, then aren't their voices the ones that will be heard? What makes it okay to allow a few people to dictate what you kid can read. This is a slippery slope folks and if we don't watch out...

Hang on folks, this is about to get bad!! It reminds me of this book I read, but I guess I can't talk about that until its been vetted.


Comments

  1. MAKES. ME. SICK. I'll go ahead and say, "I wish they would!!!" lol I just keep saying it about all these other counties. If Leon when down that road - I would be getting written up, because I would be putting ALL my books out for these children. Oh, and I AM WEARING RAINBOWS EVERY DAMN DAY. Psshhhft.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Oooooooooof. Every time I think they can't go lower, or be more restrictive than they already are, THEY FIND A WAY TO DO IT. So sorry those of y'all in classrooms are still dealing with this! What a waste of your tremendous energy and precious time to deal with this nonsense.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Think Big!!!

  Full transparency I thought this produsage assignment would be a piece of cake. After all this is what I do. I have written thousands of lesson plans over the past 27 years. What actually happened, I got a really good wake up call about how teaching and instructional design are not the same. Let me explain. Good teachers think small. They write lessons that are tailor made for the students who are sitting in front of them that year (or class period). The idea of knowing your kids and creating an assignment that is tailor made for them is the goal. The ideal.  When I started the produsage assignment I approached it from this direction. What will the sixth graders that I have in my class this year be able to do? What do I want to accomplish with them? What I have come to realize that instructional designers think BIG ! It's not about what you need for just a few kids who you see everyday. Instructional designers create lessons on a much larger scale. The lessons you create nee...

Social Media In Class! How Does That Work?

The Networked Knowledge Activities Framework (NKA) will be useful to educators who are trying to find ways to incorporate social media sites into the formal classroom environment. The framework outlines six activities that users participate in while they are participating in online activities. Online users collect, curate, share, broker, negotiate, and construct knowledge using the information they find on the internet. Collection refers to the process of saving a link for an item so it can be found and used later. Users curate information by creating organized collections of online artifacts. Users share informations that has been collected or curated in an online forum. These activities and their descriptions provide educators with a starting point when they are attempting to embed social networking sites into classroom activities. Brokers act as agents between networks of people. Learners negotiate to come up with shared meaning and understanding. Finally some learners ...

But I Want It Now!!

  I have been struggling with our upcoming knowledge sharing assignment. I think the problem is that I have too many big ideas. I want my students to all have access to the internet. I want my kids to all be fluent. I want them to know how to do all the things. In an ideal world, I would be able to go into my classroom on day one and incorporate every tool that we learned about in this class. I want all of these thing and I want them right now! Here's the problem. I have to do the work. If I want my big ideas to work, I have to start small. The problem is that small sometimes feels too small. I always want to put my spin on it, to try and make it my own. For me, curating and sharing the content of other people feels a little dishonest. Even when you give credit, someone is getting the idea from you and they might attribute it to you. I am much more comfortable sharing something verbally, than I am sharing something in a online space.  I am starting to understand that sharing c...