Tag: poverty

#titleiconf draws to a close

Wow. I did quite a bit of thinking, pondering, and reflecting at the National Title I Conference the past few days in Seattle. I sat down tonight ready to share some of the things I learned / was frustrated with, but my brain seems to be dried up.

I will point out that Twitter was basically my savior for the conference. I Tweeted a whole bunch, and I met some pretty rad people in person.

My brief overall impressions? The keynotes were excellent, progressive, compelling, and frankly more radical than I thought the Title I folks would be. The sessions I attended were largely awful and overpopulated by people straight-up selling a product. The people I met were pretty cool, and the colleagues I attended with were infinitely inspiring.

More to come. I’m slinking off to bed to finish It’s Like This, Cat.

Privilege and Entitlement

We’ve spent a good amount of time having conversations about poverty, racism, and teachers’ contribution to the achievement gap this year. This is partly because we’re a reflective bunch, and partly because we’re in the second year of NCLB sanctions, so we need to figure out how to be more responsive to our students’ needs POSTHASTE.

Anyway, all the talk about privilege made me think of this extremely thoughtful, eloquent speech from the quarterback at my alma mater, Michigan State. It covers a lot of the same ground we did in our discussions of race, SES status, and poverty, but in a different context.

I’m proud to be a Spartan.