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Lesson Plans


Re: anyone in charter schools?

From: L Skeen (lpskeen@living-tree.net)
Date: Thu Jan 13 2000 - 20:58:10 PST

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    dulcius wrote:

    > I have recently read "The Schools our Children Deserve", by Alfie Kohn, and "Education on the Edge of Possibility" by Renate and Geoffrey Caine, and was extremely impressed. I reccomend them to anyone interested in moving beyond the traditional educational model!
    > Is your school a charter school? I hear that the charter movement is fairly strong in Michigan.

    Dulcius,
    I worked for a charter school in NC whose home office is in MI. When we were hired, all the teachers were told how fabulous the schools were, how we were going to be pioneer-like, using new methods of teaching because of course the Old Ways (ie: public school ways) were out of date and not working (see: society as a whole as an example). The arts were going to be cross curricular. We were going to have great budgets and lots of support. No
    BS tolerated from students, and parental involvement to help control bad behaviour. They flew all of the NC teachers to MI for a big cheerleading session the week before school started. It sounded great. It was a load of crap. The only 'new' thing they were doing is using curriculum resources I'd never heard of before, and building their buildings with wood and drywall instead of steel and concrete block. One of the NC principals told the
    art teacher in his school that the only reason the company even had 'specials' in the first place was to give the regular classroom teacher a planning period; otherwise they wouldn't waste the money.

    I certainly hope your experience w/ a charter school is better.

    L 

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