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	<title>Teaching The Outsiders (and more) &#187; Middle-L Listserv</title>
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	<description>Middle school teaching: Five shows a day, 180 days a year.</description>
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		<title>Guest Artist: Advice for Teaching Middle School</title>
		<link>http://teachingtheoutsiders.com/guest-artist-advice-for-teaching-middle-school/</link>
		<comments>http://teachingtheoutsiders.com/guest-artist-advice-for-teaching-middle-school/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 29 Aug 2010 04:17:34 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>mrC</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Middle-L Listserv]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Tips]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://teachingtheoutsiders.com/?p=2028</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Here&#8217;s another plug for the Middle-L e-mail listserv. As I have said before, I am a big fan. I have also previously posted some great op-ed pieces written by Marion Brady, who is a big contributor to the list. Go subscribe now, I&#8217;ll wait. OK. This is an example of the kind of great stuff you can find on Middle-L. A new subscriber wrote asking for advice on teaching middle school. She was showered with great ideas. One of my fave responses came from Megan Jones. She has some great advice, that is so in line with my own philosophies of teaching junior high (sorry, middle school), that I had to reprint it here. Thanks, Megan. (Of course, being the know-it-all that I am, I have to offer my own commentary.) I teach middle school language arts (grades 6 and 7) and absolutely love it! Middle schoolers are a tough, but rewarding group to work with.  Some tips that have been helpful for teaching Middle school age students (learned from other teachers and trial and error) are the following: 1. Be real and yourself: students at that age are extremely self conscious and a person who is comfortable with who they are is an [...]]]></description>
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		<title>Guest Artist: Marion Brady</title>
		<link>http://teachingtheoutsiders.com/guest-artist-marion-brady/</link>
		<comments>http://teachingtheoutsiders.com/guest-artist-marion-brady/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 26 Apr 2010 02:45:03 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>mrC</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[education]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Marion Brady]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Middle-L Listserv]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://teachingtheoutsiders.com/?p=1938</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Here I go again, beating the drum for joining the Middle-L listserv. And once more, I&#8217;m linking to a Marion Brady article. I&#8217;ve also talked about Marion before. Here&#8217;s his latest article, at Truthout.org, about this whole &#8220;accountability&#8221;  issue that&#8217;s become the central feature of our educational system. He makes the point that today&#8217;s standardized tests that supposedly hold us teachers accountable really just test short term memory and &#8220;second-hand knowledge.&#8221; We seem to be over a barrel. To maintain educational quality, we need to monitor and measure performance. But learner qualities and capabilities most deserving of being evaluated are far too complex for our crude tests to monitor. Fortunately, the barrel is of our own making, and can be rolled aside. Philosopher and mathematician Alfred North Whitehead, in his 1916 Presidential Address to the Mathematical Association of England, pointed the way. &#8220;The secondhandedness of the learned world,&#8221; he said, &#8220;is the secret of its mediocrity.&#8221; When kids are merely trying to remember something read in a textbook or heard in teacher talk, they&#8217;re in the secondhand-knowledge business. When they&#8217;re figuring out how to make sense of something complicated and important that can be seen and touched, they&#8217;re in the [...]]]></description>
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		<title>Guest Speaker: False Assumptions</title>
		<link>http://teachingtheoutsiders.com/guest-speaker-false-assumptions/</link>
		<comments>http://teachingtheoutsiders.com/guest-speaker-false-assumptions/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 25 Oct 2009 04:08:09 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>mrC</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Guest artist]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Marion Brady]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Middle-L Listserv]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[School Reform]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://teachingtheoutsiders.com/?p=1496</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Previously I have posted about the Middle-L e-mail listserv. I am again recommending it, especially for newer teachers, and those interested in education policy and the &#8220;big picture.&#8221; As I said before, sometimes you&#8217;ll go days without seeing anything new, but all you have to do is introduce yourself, and ask questions, and you&#8217;ll get answers and suggestions from some pretty intelligent and talented people. One of those people is Marion Brady. In fact, he&#8217;s the main reason I&#8217;m still a subscriber. Just Google &#8220;Marion Brady&#8221; and you&#8217;ll see why. He just had a column printed in the Washington Post that, as usual, hits the nail(s) on the head. I won&#8217;t reprint the whole thing here (even though Marion wouldn&#8217;t mind &#8211; he just wants the ideas out there), because I think you should also read the commentary after. Here are some choice excerpts. False Assumption 1: America’s teachers deserve most of the blame for decades of flat school performance. Other factors affecting learning—language problems, hunger, stress, mass media exposure, transience, cultural differences, a sense of hopelessness, and so on and on—are minor and can be overcome by well-qualified teachers. To teacher protests that they’re scapegoats taking the blame for [...]]]></description>
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		<title>Hey Kid! (Guest Speaker)</title>
		<link>http://teachingtheoutsiders.com/hey-kid-guest-speaker/</link>
		<comments>http://teachingtheoutsiders.com/hey-kid-guest-speaker/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 17 Aug 2009 20:38:57 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>mrC</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Guest artist]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Marion Brady]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Middle-L Listserv]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[School Reform]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://teachingtheoutsiders.com/?p=1316</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[OK. We&#8217;re down to 9 days. We start in the middle of the week because our district is moving to &#8211; after two union-wide votes &#8211; a two-week spring break. I voted against it for just this starting-too-early-in-August-shtuff (among other reasons), but truth be told, I&#8217;m sort of itching to get back to work. It keeps me out of trouble. Though I am quite enjoying all the sleeping in. But ouch. Nine days. As I have said, I&#8217;ve been getting e-mails with questions, and over the next week or so, I&#8217;ll be covering more of those topics (600 words, more KBAR, grading essays). This will get me in the groove for the rapidly approaching school year, and that&#8217;s a necessary thing. Meanwhile, here&#8217;s a presentation from a guest speaker whom I respect very much. I &#8220;met&#8221; him through an e-mail listserv. Old school, I know. I signed up for the Middle-L listserv about 4 or 5 years ago as part of one of the requirements for the EETT grant we got back then. I&#8217;ve stuck around ever since. The list might go days or weeks with any action, but I&#8217;ve enjoyed reading almost everything that gets posted. My fave contributor [...]]]></description>
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