Christian. Wife. Mom. Teacher. Recovered from TBI and CCI by rewiring my brain. Obsessed with brain health. ✝️🇺🇸
Florida, USA
Joined January 2024
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High expectations and follow through on consequences is the simple formal for success in education. Don’t rob students of the lesson that the natural consequences of their actions will give them.
When I was placed in special education, the teacher was an amazingly kind woman whom I loved like a mother.
Problem was, I already had a mother. I didn't need another one who excused me from class whenever I wanted, who talked teachers into giving me more chances, who "advocated" for me even when I wasn't deserving of it.
What I needed was someone to draw a clear line and tell me what would happen if I crossed it and then to carry through with the consequence if I did.
I had a childhood which, in a lot of ways, was the stuff of sob stories that get kids excused from their entire education, lest their problems be exacerbated by the normal expectations of a classroom.
But what I didn't need, and what kids today don't need, is the permission to be their worst selves. The only way to make it out of a bad situation, and to make up for past bad decisions, is to begin making better choices. There is no cheat code into a good education.
The adults who are meant to help students with "special needs," like I had, need to understand that they can't make the decisions for these kids. They can help them to make good decisions themselves, but they can't do it for them, and the worst thing they can do is continue making excuses for the bad decisions and behaviors that kids like I was persist in all in the name of compassion.
It wasn't until I got out into the world and got my ass absolutely kicked by the vicissitudes of a world which was much less kind to me than my beloved teacher ever was that I began to find my way to normative and prosocial behaviors. But this took the better part of a decade, a decade that may have been avoided if I had learned the right lessons earlier in life, taught by the people who are supposed to care the most.
Christine retweeted
Dear President Kornbluth and Chairman Gorenberg,
Yesterday, as I am sure you are aware, a Boston jury unanimously found that @MIT professor Kristin Knouse defamed David Sabatini, falsely accused him of rape and sexual harassment, and tortuously interfered with his contractual arrangements including his tenure at MIT.
MIT and its tenure review committee relied on Professor Knouse’s statements when it took away David’s tenure and terminated him.
MIT's policies explicitly prohibit harassment, retaliation, and fabrication of claims. Falsely accusing a colleague of rape and sexual harassment and pushing for his termination under false pretenses are clearly violations of MIT policy.
In light of the unanimous findings of the jury after five years of discovery, many legal motions and countermotions by both parties, and a three-week trial in Suffolk County Superior Court in Boston:
Is MIT going to take away Knouse’s tenure and terminate her?
If not, why not?
Is MIT going to restore David’s tenure, and apologize for firing him?
If not, why not?
In light of what has transpired in this grave miscarriage of justice, MIT has the opportunity and the obligation to right a serious wrong here.
At a minimum, the public deserves transparency into what actions MIT is taking in this case as taxpayers are major funders of MIT.
Sincerely,
Bill Ackman
A civil jury ruled in favor of ex-MIT scientist David Sabatini, who was accused by a younger colleague of inappropriate sexual conduct in his Cambridge research lab, and awarded him $6 million in damages. trib.al/s3v9VIX
Our current public education system is not sustainable. Either it iterates or dies.
If nothing changes then educated, caring parents will take their smart, high achieving children out and place them in private schools in numbers that will dwarf what we are seeing right now. I’m talking full collapse.
Public Education must be able to accelerate kids at the pace they need. The technology is available to do this. But yes, this means eliminating grade levels and it also means some students will rip through levels at astonishing pace, while others will spend years struggling with the basics.
Denying this difference between kids’ ability does not make the denial a truth.
The practices schools adopt must scale.
And when we say “scale” we simultaneously acknowledge that practices which scale will, by definition, serve the majority kids but will leave some kids behind.
What scales?
Phonics.
Ability-level grouping.
Content-rich curriculum.
Direct instruction by qualified teachers. (“Qualified” is tricky, I’ll admit.)
Exclusion of chronically disruptive students (and/or specialized schools).
Everything else is just there to make adults with big feelings have fewer sads about the necessity of triage for the sake of a system that is meant to serve our nation by producing literate, numerate people capable of fulfilling the responsibilities of citizenship as laid out in the Constitution.
Absolutely true. Time and energy is finite. My boundaries are sharp and unrelenting. And my life experience has taught me that making “exceptions” or “compromising” on moral issues bears no good fruit. I will cut you off immediately and move on.
Christine retweeted
Teachers need more authority to remove chronically disruptive students from the classroom. Too many bleeding heart liberals in school administration think every kid from a troubled home can be saved with enough compassion and endless chances. But that's not reality and the rest of the class shouldn't have to pay the price.
The time has come to exclude problem students from public school. There are plenty of options for them to continue their education at home.
If you can’t behave in school you have no place in public school.
This is just the thing.
I argue often that a school will run much more smoothly if we exclude students who make classroom teaching and learning a near-impossibility.
Someone always asks, "what do we do with those kids then?"
Two answers:
1. That's really for the parents to decide. A school district does not have obligations for a child over and above those of the parent.
2. What Robert points out here. It should be possible with today's technology for a school to provide a student with an education without providing them a seat in the classroom.
If public schools are to be saved we must remove problem students from general population. Every single school, even the best ones, have a handful of problem students who ruin the education of those around them. Currently, schools cannot because of FAPE and IDEA and because of nonsense ratings that penalize schools for suspensions and disciplinary action.
We can change this by:
1. Removing the requirement for every child to attend school.
2. Writing new federal laws that supersede IDEA
3. Repealing IDEA
All are difficult pathways, but nonetheless necessary if we are to save our public school system.
If nothing is done every smart, good student will leave and go to a private school.
Some of my children’s least favorite teachers have been the most effective. One in particular would make my son constantly rewrite his work more neatly.
Of course I also enforced that at home and had him in OT, but this teacher absolutely had a huge positive difference in my son’s life. In the moment he hated her, now looking back just two years later he realizes what a blessing she was.
Adults need to remember to be in charge. Children do not know what they need to be prepared for the world; it is our job to set the standard and hold the line.
IQ matters and is very evident very early on. It of course isn’t fair that some students have the gift of a high IQ, but such is life. Denying the difference doesn’t make the lie a truth.
Christine retweeted
Our job is to teach, not to do whatever it takes to be loved.
I have a class this year that I can just sort of feel their dislike of me. It’s not a seething hatred, but I can tell I’m not exactly their cup of tea.
It’s okay. These things happen from time to time. I’m still going to teach them and be fair, etc.
I could spend the day trying to make them like me, and fill my class with fun activities, and worry about the missed opportunity to build relationships, but that’s really not what a teacher is for.
In a man in my forties in a room full of teenagers; we don’t have to be friends. You should be suspicious of anyone who thinks differently.
Christine retweeted
Parents,
If your kid comes home complaining a teacher of theirs is “too strict” or “mean,” take it seriously. Ask questions. Get specifics.
You may discover that your precious child has been asked to sit down and be quiet. Or worse, listen to the lesson.
If it turns out that this is the case, make sure to thank the teacher for keeping order in their classroom. It’s rarer than you may think.
Grass fed and standard pricing. Love it
We believe in simple, upfront pricing. Today, too many businesses are beginning to use data and personal tracking to charge people different prices for the exact same thing. We believe this practice is flat-out wrong.
At Steak n Shake, our focus is simple: delivering the highest-quality food at the best possible value. We honor your trust by following the basic principle of the Golden Rule. So we keep our prices completely transparent, and consistent within our respective markets.
Ed post “tell me how you’re going to ability group starting in Kindergarten”
I reply explaining the very simple process. Get blocked by poster.
If you are advocating for Ed reform and can’t handle feedback that logically answers your question, then respectfully perhaps you need to take a step back.
Christine retweeted
In 2005, Oneida shut the flatware factory in Sherrill, New York.
A town that had made silverware for MORE THAN 100 YEARS was supposed to be finished.
Two men refused to let that happen.
Their names are Matt Roberts and Greg Owens.
Roberts had managed that factory. Owens was another former Oneida manufacturing manager. When the company ended U.S. production, they bought the plant and the equipment and reopened it the NEXT DAY as Sherrill Manufacturing.
They did not have a giant rescue fund.
They did not have a Hollywood ending waiting.
They had a building, some machines, and a workforce that knew how to make forks, knives, and spoons.
At first they kept making product for Oneida.
Then Oneida pulled the remaining American work and sent it overseas.
That should have been the end.
It wasn’t.
They took government flatware contracts to keep the lights on. In 2010 they filed Chapter 11. They sold unused equipment. They sold space they could no longer fill. They leased back only the part of the factory they could still run.
They came out of bankruptcy in 2013.
Then they did the thing that saved the company.
They built their own brand: Liberty Tabletop.
They sold 18/10 stainless flatware straight to customers who wanted tableware MADE IN THE UNITED STATES.
Not through a department store that could drop them overnight.
Direct.
Today Liberty Tabletop is the only company still manufacturing stainless steel flatware in America.
Same town.
Same trade.
U.S. steel.
About 70 jobs.
They did not bring back 2,000 workers. Nobody did.
What they saved was the last line.
If you want American-made forks and spoons, this is the factory that still makes them.
Support Liberty Tabletop.
THIS is what keeping manufacturing in America actually looks like. 🇺🇸
Some children have brains that require 100x more repetitions than their peers. Schools cannot magically add more time to give these kids the repetitions they need without slowing down the other students pacing. It’s simply not possible. The common sense solution is to ability group for reading, writing, and math in elementary.
In college, one of my education professors lamented that we could identify a struggling student in kindergarten and predict, with great accuracy, that he’d still be struggling in sixth, ninth, and twelfth grade.
He spoke as though the prediction itself helped cause the failure. But recognizing a problem isn’t the same as creating it.
What is actually cruel is watching that prediction come true while insisting the child remain in classes that move faster than he can learn, year after year, as he falls further behind, all while we congratulate ourselves for including him.
At some point, he needs instruction at a pace and level that will actually help him catch up. If that requires a different classroom, then we should give him one.
We talk about inclusion in a classroom as somehow providing a student access to education, but there is nothing compassionate about giving a child a front-row seat to an education he cannot access because we refuse to acknowledge his limitations.
Christine retweeted
So many Chinese nationals at the Univ of Illinois…they broadcast the football games in Mandarin…
My doc 🎥
youtube.com/watch?v=2ykPKDdZ…
