MR (not Michelle Rhee) is an older student still taking 10th-grade English. Part of why he, at age 17, is in the class is that he doesn’t engage in school: he rarely shows up and, when he does, he stares off into space in the back of the room, no matter how often a teacher…
read more »Despite the steady downpour, the people came in droves. A sea of umbrellas stretched over the entire soggy expanse. Assembled together on the Mall, thousands of bibliophiles milled about at the 2009 National Book Festival. I had the opportunity to catch the tail-end of the magnificent day for book lovers all over. And I was…
read more »Earlier, I thought that girls had a better fashion sense than boys. But a recent conversation with a male student shows me that boys consciously think about style, too. CG, a tall, lanky student with spiky hair, asked me a question out of the blue: “Mr. K, can I give you a haircut?” I couldn’t…
read more »The controversy in DCPS is coming to a head. A September 18 memo to principals with instructions on how to carry out the reduction in force (RIF) was leaked to the web yesterday. Today, Michelle Rhee declared that the cutbacks were caused neither by mismanagement nor malice. This afternoon, a teacher rally was staged outside…
read more »It appears as though girls have a keener sense of fashion than boys. At least, this is the conclusion I’ve drawn after today. Here’s why: During second period, as I was moving around the back of the classroom, MW blurted out, “Mr. K, you not matching.” Made curious by her comment, I looked at her…
read more »(The theme song for this post is here. Listen to it.) At the moment, the DC Public Schools are in trouble. After a hiring spree that on-boarded over 900 teachers this summer (bringing the number of teachers to about 4,000), DCPS has discovered that it needs to cut up to $40 million out of its…
read more »“Froward” is my current favorite word. Essentially it is a Middle English synonym for “intractable”. The word is uttered often by the domineering male protagonists in reference to their wives in Shakespeare’s “The Taming of the Shrew” (thanks to the generosity of Ward 1 Councilmember Jim Graham, I was able to secure tickets to this…
read more »Only yesterday, I was lamenting the fact that I was still unplaced. Well, it turns out the wait is over: I will be reporting to a high school tomorrow morning. The 5 weeks and 5 days that I’ve spent in DC waiting for a placement has finally come to an end. Hopefully, what that means…
read more »First, a little placement update. I’m one of three DC CMs still unplaced. Although I should expect to be in a co-teaching situation by the end of this week, there is a possibility that I will not be in a permanent teaching position until well after October 1st, which is when the official DCPS…
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