(Part 2) Best educator biographies according to redditors

The standardized (American) school system was designed by something called the Committee of Ten, in the year 1892. They were a working group of educators led by the president of Harvard University, Charles William Eliot. Their goal was to provide an outline for curricular learning for subjects like mathematics, the sciences, English, Latin, Greek; and other more modern languages. They were the ones who designed the 8 years of elementary school and 4 years of high school.

The original school system was designed in Prussia during the 18th century. They were the first to provide a tax-funded, 8 year education to their citizens. They taught the basics, math, reading, and writing; along with strict lessons on ethics, discipline, and obedience. The goal to see who would be smart enough to continue their education and go to universities, and who would become the lower, working class. This foundation spread quickly across Europe, especially after the French Revolution.

I recommend Salman Khan's (Khan Academy) book, The One World Schoolhouse. It's a lot about what he wants to do to change education for the 21st century, but provides a better description of what I tried to explain. http://www.amazon.com/The-One-World-Schoolhouse-Reimagined/dp/1455508381

Edit: added the word 'year'
Edit 2: made a sentence more clear regarding the languages

It's currently ranked #2 in Education Policy and #4 in Educator Memoirs in the Kindle Store.

Cover art.

Synopsis:


Immediately after graduating from college in 2006, Dalton Jackson took a job as a high school Biology teacher in Cramer county, located in the rural southern United States. Over the course of the next two years, he shared his students’ triumphs, tragedies, joys, and frustrations. He got a behind the scenes look into how school systems and teachers function – and how they break. As the pressure built and the runaway train of his brief teaching career began to derail, Dalton came to understand why the education system can’t seem to recruit new teachers and why many of the teachers in the existing system aren’t doing their jobs.

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One person that believes passionately about a particular idea in order to help out a group of people.

If you want a good read on what it's like to start a nonprofit, read 'One Day, All Children' by Wendy Kopp who started Teach For America. It basically answers all your questions, and then some (What it's like to try and secure major donors, keep staff, etc). Short, but interesting read.

Please note that the French prefer British English over American English. Read Sorbonne Confidential

The licensure program. The four+ years of training and grunt work we must go through in order to get a teaching license and be allowed to teach in the greater united states. I'm not sure how the license program works anywhere else.

And as far as the other statement, I'm honestly not sure. I could quote Payne and say that "discussion of academic topics (among those in poverty) is generally not prized. There is little room for the abstract. Discussions center around people and relationships. A job is about making enough money to survive. A job is not about a career", but that's not direct evidence. However, this link popped up on reddit a few days ago that had an excellent quote that works here: "There was just one problem: If Neal took the book to the checkout counter, he was sure that the girls who worked on the counter would tell his friends. "Then my reputation would be down, because I was reading books," Neal said. "And I wanted them to know that all I could do was fight and cuss.""

I really like that story because it shows how one good teacher/librarian was able to reach a student stuck in that rut of wanting to learn but not wanting to look like they wanted to learn. In a country where only 39% of blacks graduate high school, it's nice to know that there are ways to reach them.

If you're interested in a first had account of a teacher's experience with poverty level students, I also suggest Educating Esme.

Unfortunately, even today, it very much depends upon the school, so my advice for her would be to wait and feel out what this school is like. I also don't know what the laws are around sexual orientation and employment in England (especially if the employer is a religious organization), but recommend that she check them out.

If she determines that her job wouldn't be at risk if she were out at school, it's still totally her decision. One factor to put on the side of coming out is that there are pretty much guaranteed to be LGBTQ students at her school, and many of them probably feel very alone. An openly lesbian teacher could be a role model that gives them hope for their futures, and she might be someone they could turn to for support and advice. By being out, she could also help kids who aren't gay gain an understanding that gay/lesbian people are still people.

Even if she doesn't come out, I encourage her (and all teachers, gay or straight) to explicitly require tolerance in their classrooms, mention important LGBT historical figures, crack down on "gay" as an insult, etc.

*Stealth edit: Oh, I recommend One Teacher in Ten, a 1994 collection of essays from LGBT teachers, or the 2005 second edition of new essays. They are incredibly moving.

I'm the Teacher, You're the Student

Submission statement:

Adam Carolla interviews Neil deGrasse Tyson. Tyson is promoting, Letters from an Astrophysicist, but they still make time for race cars.

P.S.: This is a great interview too.

If you could be more specific as to specifically what issues interest you most, that would be helpful.

But something I'm fairly passionate about is K-12 education. I would look into Sir Ken Robinson and look into the KIPP school programs. The creators of KIPP also wrote a book, Work hard. Be Nice.

My Freshman Year by Rebekah Nathan is a great text for students to get a feel for what an ethnographic study would be like. Since many have college on their minds at this point, it will also serve to give them a great inside look at what to expect.

> to really mean just most popular college football team.

No, I took it to mean total number of active fans of any sport, which is thoroughly dominated by football and men's basketball. But I certainly also count fans of the men's tennis teams, all 200 of them.

> VT used to be just a mid-size school of average-to-good academic stature like JMU, Radford, VCU, or ODU today. Like many other higher ed leaders and boards, they started putting money into the football program in the 80's which increased applications and enrollment. With the increased enrollment they were able to grow the school and be more selective in admissions.

I am surprise you managed to be 100% incorrect for this paragraph, though I applaud your success in getting a perfect 100%.

VT history is something of a hobby of mine. I'd say it never resembled JMU or Radford or VCU. Historically it was a senior military college which was overwhelmingly undergraduate focused and primarily concerned with STEM and agriculture. API (now Auburn) has the most similar origin, not a SMC but has a strong ROTC. VT changed in the late 1960s under the plans of T. Marshall Hahn who sought to become a comprehensive university with extensive graduate programs and multiple campuses with a flagship in Blacksburg. He intended to merge with the existing Virginia State University (Petersburg) and take the name, a move which was blocked in the General Assembly. Nevertheless, the school added numerous colleges, liberal arts, social sciences, a vet school. It also greatly expanded the graduate school, and enrollment in the corps of cadets fell drastically as a proportion. It then began to focus on sponsored research, becoming an R1 in the late 80s - that was all decades before any serious football success, which started in 1993. There's actually a fascinating book on this entire transition.

Aside from some major research institutes, the medical school in Roanoke is the only major addition to VT since Beamer's early successes, and I would argue the school is simply larger version of what existed in 1985. In fact, it has been the largest research university in the state for decades, and that income ($500m per year) dwarfs the income generated by football.

I have no idea where this nonsensical rumor that football made the university more selective or improved its academic rank came from. I love VT football, but we've been about as selective and about the same rank since I was in middle-school in the 1990s. I remember buying printed copies of the old US News rankings guide from the bookstore every year, and VT has always been about 15th in engineering, about 25-30 among public national universities. The overall rank fell from mid-60s to mid-70s due to US News' decision to move some high performing master's colleges from the regional to national rankings (e.g. Villanova was #1 NE region for a decade, now ~50s national).

If anything, I'd argue VT's research institute infrastructure has done more to change the nature of VT, which for the last 30 years (well before football success) has been a large R1 research university. JMU and Radford are undergraduate focused masters-colleges, VCU is an amalgam of an undergrad career institute and a fantastic medical school, which today is also an R1 but of a very different character. ODU is an R2 which historically was a satellite campus of W&M.

> Yes, VT football is more popular than UVA football, as it should be with all the money and support VT gives to it.

Actually not true, UVA has spent more on football over the last decade, including paying more for their coaches and assistant coaches. They also have a larger athletic budget. If this year is any indication, that may be paying off.

> But if you stop disregarding the bigger picture of their athletic programs, then UVA is more popular to the average sports fan.

Maybe, but I'd still be surprised if that were true given the substantially larger living alumni base and the popularity of football compared to non-revenue sports like lacrosse, volleyball and wrestling. UVA has probably closed the gap though given their incredible basketball success.

You said earlier, UVA students don't care as much because they're so much more engrossed in academics. I don't entirely buy this, but if true, then where are all these fans coming from? Are they just bandwagon fans in rural VA who really love the UVA men's soccer and golf teams???

> Like I said earlier, I don't have a dog in the VT/UVA fight. I went to art school.

Ironically, I am affiliated closely with both schools and currently work for UVA (went to VT obviously, hence the username). I'm well aware of how fantastic UVA is as a university and its history; we spent 80% of the faculty orientation discussing it.

Anyone read Chocky?

I really enjoyed The Midwich Cuckoos.

I couldn't really get into The Day of the Triffids.

ETA: Saw DuMaurier's short story collection there. Her "weirdest" novel is The House on the Strand which is ostensibly about time travel but is much more satisfying than most sci fi that tackles that subject.

Well... Bill Ayres is trying it: http://www.amazon.com/Teach-Journey-Comics-William-Ayers/dp/080775062X I'm a professor, and thinking of using this text in the fall term.

32 Third Graders and One Class Bunny: Life Lessons from Teaching https://www.amazon.com/dp/0743272404/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_k1btzbX4PRK1P

And anything by ron Clark ... light reading uplifting

You should check out Give Me Everything You Have by James Lasdun. It's a very interesting read about a professor's experience with being stalked by a former student.