CSCOPE chart Glenn Beck doesn’t want you to see

April 2, 2013

. . . because he screwed it up.

Thanks to Morgan Freeberg over at House of Eratosthenes — shows he’s a fair player (I doubt he’s got much sympathy with the CSCOPE project).

Here’s the chart Glenn Beck, or perhaps his partner-in-calumny David Barton, appears to have mis-identified, the one that no one else who joined his witch-hunt bandwagon bothered to read:

CSCOPE chart on economics

CSCOPE chart on rise of economic systems in the 19th century that critics claim, erroneously, promotes socialism and Marxism. This is copyrighted material, posted here in the interests of correcting false claims. Will CSCOPE complain?

I’m not sure which episode of “The Blaze” this appeared on in the fuzzy version in my earlier post (anyone know?); but it’s clear that it’s been grotesquely mischaracterized by CSCOPE critics.  Think about a Texas high school kid; the readings say communism prohibits private property ownership.  Given that, how do you think a Texas high school student — generally a sophomore for  world history —  would answer the questions in the “Communism” box:

What about Private Property?

How much government control?

(Say it ain’t so, Glenn Beck:  Did David Barton really complain that Texas’s curriculum puts the family at the the foundation of our culture, and our government?  (Yes, he did.)  He fought to get that in; is Barton on drugs, or depressed, or drunk?  If so, get him help.  If not, he’s corrupt.)

More, from the rational world:

More from the irrational world, the Wall of Shameful reporting:

English: Cropped from a photo of a group of pr...

Cropped from a photo of a group of predominantly anti-Glenn Beck protesters holding home-made placards in Beck’s hometown of Mt. Vernon, Washington, outside the venue where Beck received the ceremonial key to the town. Even his home town people don’t believe him. Photo via Wikipedia

4 Comments | CSCOPE, Curricula, Economics, Education, History, Political Smear, Politics, Teachers, Teaching | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

More unintentional humor from Texas conservatives: Can’t read charts on economic systems

April 1, 2013

Mural in Adams Building of Library of Congress, Jefferson on Education

Mural in the Adams Building of the Library of Congress,m with Thomas Jefferson’s views on education, and education’s importance to liberty. (Click for larger version)

Under the standards for social studies the Texas State Board of Education promulgates, Texas high school kids must learn to read charts and extract information from them.

In the criticism of the small-school curriculum planning system, CSCOPE, conservative critics demonstrate both that they are not as smart as a Texas high school kid, OR they don’t know feces in economics.

Note the chart; it’s a fuzzy picture, but it shows an arrow indicating which economic systems have more government involvement, or control, or “interference” in Texas conservative talk; and note the comments:

So, in other words, the conservatives worry because a chart shows that socialism and communism have “more government control and planning,” and the conservatives come unglued.  They read the chart incorrectly; generally conservatives can be counted on to favor less government control in economic matters, which this chart shows is a virtue of free market economics systems.

Let me repeat:  They read the chart incorrectly.

Worse, there’s a guy who professes to teach economics in a California college who says he doesn’t teach this stuff.

What do they want, what does he teach?  That communism offers more economic freedom from government regulation than free enterprise?

Clearly they didn’t bother to read the chart.  These critics are the epitome of knee-jerk reactionaries:  If there is a word about something they don’t like, they assume the entire piece is tainted and biased against them.  If you said, “We say the Pledge of Allegiance every day as a defense against communism,” they’d claim you’re teaching communism.

BUT, this sort of criticism got Texas Sen. Dan Patrick, R-Mars, to call for an investigation, a witch-hunt, of the group that works to provide curriculum helps especially to smaller districts who don’t have curriculum planning staffs; SBOE and the directors of the Regional Education Centers agreed.  Directors of the Regional Education Centers have bent over backwards to be open about what goes into CSCOPE, and how each lesson and each unit, and each test is aligned with Texas standards, Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS).

Yeah, I know:  The chart could have been done differently.  But this is EXACTLY the sort of stuff the Texas Education Agency favors on standardized tests students must pass to advance and graduate, to make sure students read the questions, and the charts.

Are you as smart as a Texas high school student?  Then you’re smarter than the critics of CSCOPE, at least in this case.

Still, CSCOPE, in an well-intentioned effort to be open about the curriculum materials they provide, and whether there is any bias in them, released this statement on their support of free enterprise:

CSCOPE Response to Lesson Regarding Economic Systems

CSCOPE strongly believes in the greatness of the free enterprise system and how it has helped build our country into the envy of all other nations. Free markets are a critical part of our American way of life. It is important to note that the activity in question is in a high school course and not in a grade 6 lesson. This twenty-minute activity is part of a six-day lesson on various economic systems at the high school level that are state required teaching standards set forth by the State Board of Education. The State Board of Education requires students to learn the following economic systems in World History:

  • WH.18: Economics. The student understands the historical origins of contemporary economic systems and the benefits of free enterprise in world history. The student is expected to:
    • WH.18A: Identify the historical origins and characteristics of the free enterprise system, including the contributions of Adam Smith, especially the influence of his ideas found in The Wealth of Nations.
    • WH.18B: Identify the historic origins and characteristics of communism, including the influences of Karl Marx.
    • WH.18C: Identify the historical origins and characteristics of socialism.

Furthermore, the State Board of Education establishes student expectations that focus on social studies skills. For the World History unit referenced above, the following social studies skills are included:

  • WH.30: Economics: The student communicates in written, oral, and visual forms. The student is expected to:
  • WH.30C: Interpret and create written, oral, and visual presentations of social studies information.

The goal of this activity is to address the content and skills standards that have been adopted by the State Board of Education, and it is absolutely not promoting a way of life contrary to what we value as Americans. In this activity, students examine four different flags, beginning with the US flag, and analyze the colors, the design, and the graphics as symbols of each country’s characteristics and economic systems. Students then design a flag to demonstrate their understanding of the characteristics of socialism, as the standard requires (WH.18C).

CSCOPE has a significant emphasis on the free enterprise system. The other economic systems are only addressed as required by State Board of Education. Additionally, every lesson and activity in our system is customizable. The teacher in the classroom is the final authority on whether or not the lesson should be customized for his or her students and community.

CSCOPE would also like to reassure parents and community members that there is a comparable activity in the lesson that focuses on free markets where students are asked to read about characteristics of free enterprise in The Wealth of Nations, complete an analysis chart, and discuss with their classmates the characteristics and benefits of the free enterprise system. In addition, in Texas History, World History, US History, and US Government courses, students are engaged extensively in studying the principles of the US free enterprise system and the role it plays in American society. Furthermore, Texas graduation requirements specify that students take an economics course, and this course focuses entirely on the American free market system.

CSCOPE staff takes great pride in helping educators teach the standards established by the State Board of Education. This dedicated staff works each day to ensure that teachers have the best resources available to help Texas school children succeed, and they continually focus on improving the system for the districts they serve. We are committed to helping every parent and community member better understand CSCOPE. Please contact CSCOPE through the http://www.cscope.us site if you have further questions or concerns.

The exercise with flag making is pretty lame, to me — with no note of irony that CSCOPE nor their critics would notice, it offers the grand opportunity to read all sorts of symbolism into the U.S. flag that was never intended by the flag’s designers, nor by any tradition.  That’s a pro-free enterprise bias if it occurs, however, and not a pro-communist or socialist bias.

One may wonder if the references to Adam Smith and Wealth of Nations threw the critics; more than once I’ve been confronted by a yahoo at a meeting in Texas who argues that we in the U.S. don’t need any foreign influences in our laws or economy, like that “socialist” Adam Smith!  (To be fair, he published in England . . .)

The charges from “Sharon” can’t help but remind you of that famous political smear campaign against then-U.S. Sen. Claude Pepper, of Florida, in which his opponent called him “Red” Pepper, and accused him of ::GASP!!:: matriculating while a student in college — and not just matriculating, but matriculating in public!

Yes, this is an attempted political smear of CSCOPE, Texas teachers, and Texas education.

P.S.:  I’d love to have a copy of that chart in a readable form; if you have access to the chart, especially to information that indicates where it really comes from (it looks like CSCOPE, but it’s fuzzy here), please send me a copy.  Thanks.

More:

Comments from people and groups who appear not as smart as a Texas high  school student:

And the original?  Screen shot from Glenn Beck’s show:

8 Comments | Adam Smith, CSCOPE, Curricula, Education, History, Lesson plans, Political Smear, Politics, Rampant stupidity, Teachers, Teaching | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

No more than 3 points in your presentation!

February 28, 2013

Interesting video from Ethos3, a company that works on presentations and helping others make better presentations.

Um, no, I don’t think they aim at teachers and educators — it’s a for-profit group, not a charity.

That’s also one of my concerns.  Here’s one of a series of short videos Ethos3 prepared, to help you with your next presentation or, you hope, the woman or man who will be making that presentation you have to watch next Wednesday morning at Rotary Club, or at Scout leader training next Saturday, or kicking off the budget planning exercise next Monday (at 7:00 — coffee provided so don’t be late!):

98 views

Generally, I’d agree.

But what about teachers, who have to slog through 150 specific items for the state test?

Observations:

365 Project - Day 29 - I *hate* Powerpoint

Borrowed caption: “365 Project – Day 29 – I *hate* Powerpoint (Photo credit: mike_zellers)”

  1. Teachers could benefit greatly from learning presentation secrets, and making their in-class presentations much more effective.
  2. No school district in America, public, charter, parochial, or homeschool, will give you time to put together such an effective presentation.
  3. Most teachers get no coaching on presentation effectiveness, and their students lose out.
  4. Just because the administrators won’t cut you slack to do it, doesn’t mean a teacher shouldn’t learn about effective presentation techniques, and use them.

In a world of bad bosses, it’s almost impossible to get a really great principal at a school.  Teachers gotta slog on anyway.

You won’t have the time to do the presentation your students deserve, but you should try, anyway.

Dreaming for a minute:  I wish I could get a team like this to help out with designing a curriculum, figuring out where presentation work, how to give them real punch, and where not to use them at all.

What do you think?  Can you tell your story in just three points?  Can you reduce a lecture to three key points that would be memorable, and that spurs students to learn what they need to learn?

More:

Leave a Comment » | Business, Death by PowerPoint, Education, Presentations, Teaching, Technology, Technology in the classroom | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Darrell’s corollaries of education + technology: No good work goes unpunished, most opportunities missed

January 27, 2013

Aristotle, and his pupil Alexander
Does this 19th century engraving show the perfect learning situation? Alexander had no iPhone, no laptop; Aristotle used no PowerPoint, no grading machines, not even a chalkboard. Have we come a long way, or is this a measure of how far we’ve fallen? “Aristotle and his pupil, Alexander (c. 340 BCE)” (original source?)

David Warlick‘s blog serves up a lot of stuff to make teachers think (cynically, I wonder whether education administrators can be shoved into thinking at all . . . but I digress).

David Warlick
David Warlick, formerly pictured in a taxi in Shanghai, probably off at some education conference or other, until that photo went away from the internet.

Recently he pondered his own son’s use of several different kinds of media at once.  In a longer discussion that would be worth your while, someone asked, “Has the nature of information influenced the emerging ‘appropriate technologies’ like the digital learning object called an iBook?”  David responded:

My knee-jerk response is, “Not nearly enough.” This current push toward digital textbooks, urged on by our Secretary of Education, concerns me. I worry that we’re engaged in a race to modernize schooling, rather than a sober and thoughtful imagining and designing of learning materials and practices that are more relevant to today’s learners (ourselves include), today’s information landscape and a future that has lost the comforts of certainty, but become rich with wondrous opportunities.

What I enjoyed, though, about my experience in publishing an iBook was learning to hack some features into the book that were not part of Apples general instructions for using their publishing tool. This is the ultimate opportunity of digital learning objects and environments, that they can be hacked into new and better learning experiences by information artisans who see what’s there and what it can become.

In a cynical mood, I commented on an earlier statement Warlick made, about how technology has changed the education landscape:

“… we live in a time of no unanswered questions.”

BUT:

1.  The internet and especially portable devices have exponentially increased the probability that difficult questions will be answered incorrectly.

2.  For teachers, no longer is it possible to ask a simple, factual question as a teaser to get students to search for the answer, and thereby learn something deeper along the way.  Portable computer devices present one more non-print medium in which education appears to be abdicating its duties, and the war.  (We missed radio, film, television, recorded television, and desk-top computing; now we’re missing portable devices.)

English: Cropped picture of Jaime Escalante
Legendary AP calculus teacher Jaime Escalante; pencil, paper, chalkboard and chalk, maybe a slide rule, made up his technology kit. Photo: Wikipedia

3.  No question goes unanswered, but what is really rare is a question that is worth answering; even more rare, that good question that can be answered well from free internet sources.

Darrell’s Education Technology Corollary:  When administrators and policy makers tell educators (especially teachers) they wish to utilize “new technology,” they mean they want new ways to figure out ways to fire teachers, because they don’t have a clue how technology can be used in education, nor have they thought broadly enough about what education is.

Darrell’s Education Technology Corollary Corollary: When a teacher effectively uses technology in a classroom, it will be at the teacher’s instigation, the teacher’s expense, and administrators will get revenge on the teacher for having done so.

I’ve wondered whether I wasn’t too cynical; David offered a solid response.

A couple of weeks later, my cynicism is growing.  I’m warning you, teachers, you adopt new technologies at your risk, often — especially in some school districts like Dallas ISD.

It’s a caution only.  Teachers, being teachers, will continue to push the envelopes, as Fionna Larcom related at Warlick’s blog.  Good on ’em.  One out of 500,000 will get accolades outside the education system, like Jaime Escalante did.  Many others will face reprimand.

But if education is to improve, this experimentation by teachers must continue.  So teachers slog on, under-appreciated and often opposed in their attempts to fix things.

Someday a school system will figure out how to unlock teachers’ creativity, knowledge and skills.  Not soon enough.

Teacher in primary school in northern Laos
Teacher in primary school in northern Laos.  Photo: Wikipedia

(Can someone explain to me how Warlick’s blog, with much better stuff than I do here, gets fewer hits?  Teachers, not enough of you are reading broadly enough.)

More, not necessarily the opinion of this blog:

7 Comments | Education, History, Learning, Teachers, Teaching, Technology, Technology in the classroom | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Hey! Geography teachers, especially Texas geography teachers

January 4, 2013

News from the Texas Alliance for Geography Education — read the whole newsletter, I’ve copied it all without cutting:

TAGE Blast for 4 January 2013
http://www.geo.txstate.edu/tage/

Overview

  • New Teacher Resources
  • How to Track a Bill
  • Upcoming Workshops and TAGE Events
  • Webinar Series on Southeast Asia
  • TAGE Awarded Two New Grants

*********************************************
To read more, visit http://www.geo.txstate.edu/tage/

New Teacher Resources

Thanks to generous support from the National Geographic Education Foundation, TAGE has created new resources for geography teachers. A huge thank you to Dr. Brock Brown, Dr. Jeff Lash, Linda Hammon, and our Teacher Consultants for their help with creating these resources. Visit our new Teacher Materials page at  http://www.geo.txstate.edu/tage/resources/teacher-materials.html, for videos, podcasts, new eoc sample questions, teaching handbooks, and lesson plans.

83rd Texas Legislature – How to Track a Bill

You can create a personal bill list and receive e-mail notification as the status changes on bills you chose to watch.

Visit http://www.capitol.state.tx.us/MnuMyTLO.aspx and create a log-in.

After you have logged-in, you can either choose Bill Lists or Alerts, and add the bill to track. For example, “HB 85” and click Add Bill.

Read more about HB 85 in the December newsletter.

TAGE will continue to track education legislation, and work in support of geographic education in Texas.

Upcoming Workshops

January 26, Region 4, 6th Annual Social Studies Conference, 8:30-3:30 pm, http://www.esc4.net/default.aspx?name=ss.events
February 7-8, Huntsville, Geography Conference: Bridging World Geography, http://www.escweb.net/tx_esc_06/catalog/calendar.aspx?date=2/1/2013
April 6, San Marcos, The Geography of Southeast Asia, more information coming soon on the TAGE website

June 11-13, San Marcos, Social Studies Supervisors Summer Institute: Teaching Geography Concepts, more information coming soon on the TAGE website

Webinar Series on Southeast Asia

Did you know that Southeast Asia has a population over 600 milion? This culturally diverse region encompasses a pivotal position in the world economy. Join Dr. Frederick Day in exploring various geographic issues related to Southeast Asia in TAGE’s new, free webinar series featuring this interesting and diverse region.

February 5th, 4:15-4:45: Physical Geography of Southeast Asia

February 12th, 4:15-4:45: Economic Development in Southeast Asia

February 26th, 4:15-4:45: Environmental Degradation in Southeast Asia

TAGE Awarded Two New Grants
TAGE is pleased to announce that we have recently received two grants to create a World Geography curricula unit focusing on Southeast Asia. Grants have been awarded by the National Geographic Education Foundation and a second grant by Humanities Texas. TAGE will create an online teaching unit complemented by videos and professional development webinars. Keep an eye on our calendar to learn more about the new and exciting opportunities related to teaching geography and Southeast Asia in the coming months.

2013 Grosvenor Teacher Fellow program – Deadline January 8th
National Geographic Education Programs and Lindblad Expeditions are pleased to announce the 2013 Grosvenor Teacher Fellow program. This professional development opportunity is named in honor of Gilbert M. Grosvenor, Chairman Emeritus National Geographic Society and Education Foundation. The program is designed to give current K-12 classroom teachers and informal educators from the 50 U.S. states, Canada, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico the opportunity to extend Grosvenor’s legacy of excellence in geographic education. Selected educators will travel aboard the ship National Geographic Explorer in June, July or August 2013 to Norway, Arctic Svalbard, Iceland, Greenland or the Canadian High Arctic. While aboard, Fellows will share the importance of geo-literacy with fellow travelers, develop activities to bring back to their classrooms, and have an adventure of a lifetime. Prior to the expedition, all 2013 Grosvenor Teacher Fellows will travel to Washington, D.C. on April 25-28th with all expenses covered to participate in a pre-trip workshop sponsored by Google, National Geographic, and Lindblad Expeditions. Check out the Grosvenor Teacher Fellow Program application, which is now live on our website:
http://education.nationalgeographic.com/education/program/grosvenor-teacher-fellow/?ar_a=1.

Worried about the World and U.S. History STAAR™ Exams?
Refresh your content knowledge of World and U.S. History … in 15 Minutes!

15 Minute History is a FREE podcast—with supplementary resources and primary documents—about World and U.S. History. 15 Minute History is a collaboration between Hemispheres, the international outreach consortium at the University of Texas at Austin, and Not Even Past, an outreach project of the Department of History at the University of Texas at Austin.

Featuring the minds and talent of the award-winning faculty and graduate students of the University of Texas at Austin, the topic of each episode is drawn directly from the World History and U.S. History TEKS, and contains background information and a quick primer on the subject.

Each episode is accompanied by primary documents to analyze with your students, and suggested resources for further reading and research. In just 15 minutes, you can refresh your knowledge of World and U.S. History—for FREE!

Children’s Map Competition Opportunity – Deadline February 15
Entries in the U.S. are not due until February 15, but it might be a good holiday-time project for classrooms to get started on. All of the instructions for participation can be accessed in this post from the NG Education blog.

NGS: New AP Human Geography Portal
National Geographic Education has created a portal on the NatGeoEd.org website for AP Human Geography teachers to visit for teaching and learning resources, including classroom activities, videos, maps, background reading material, and more. The new portal organizes content from National Geographic Education by each of the major topics taught in the AP Human Geography course. The collection will grow over time as new content aligning to the course topics is published online.

Click here to view: AP Human Geography Portal

If you teach social studies in Texas, you really ought to subscribe to this newsletter.

Texas Alliance for Geographic Education
Department of Geography
Texas State University
601 University Drive
San Marcos, TX 78666
http://www.geo.txstate.edu/tage/

 

Leave a Comment » | Education, Teachers, Teaching, Teaching Resources, Texas | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Education, unions, guns and Superman: A few random thoughts

December 18, 2012

Here, I’ve been quiet for a few days on these issues.  I like to have more facts before forming opinions.  Others don’t feel so constricted, though, and one of the key lessons of life we must learn over and over is that too often we must act without knowing all the facts we’d wish to know.

Ryan Houck, Broken Pencil for Bach

Borrowed art: A Broken Pencil for Bach, drawing by Ryan Houck

This is one of those times.  In Michigan, the governor has been presented bills which he has signed which take away rights of teachers to stand up for themselves, part of a long-standing GOP war on education and teachers.  He has other bills intended to legalize carrying guns in schools, which he has not yet signed.   In several states, legislatures gear up for sessions starting early next year, with pre-filed bills to put the screws to teachers, cut back education spending, take money from public schools and give it to private groups under a pretext of improving education (I say pretext because all research indicates the public schools perform better, but I digress).  In Congress, the GOP demands cuts to health care, mental health care, education, roads, aid to any workers, employed, under-employed or unemployed, and especially in payments to people in poverty or otherwise in economic distress (“no pain to others, no GOP gain”).

Highlighting the intentional sloth the GOP insists on in government, Hurricane/Tropical Storm Sandy hammered one of our nation’s largest cities and most important regions for technology, manufacturing, business, finance and news, and the GOP opposes federal aid to speed up recovery; and in Newtown, Connecticut, a man with learning difficulties and/or behavioral issues broke into an elementary school over-armed with human-killling automatic and semi-automatic weapons legally purchased and legally owned, with which he had legally trained, and murdered 26 people, including 20 children.

My few random thoughts:

  • The unions demonized in Michigan, Texas and Wisconsin, saved children’s lives in Newtown.  (Yes, teachers; cops and firefighters, too.)
  • The teachers who “don’t deserve the pay they get,” according to many speakers in the public fora, laid down their lives in Newtown.
  • Teachers who ask for parental support, chaperones for a trip to the art gallery, a working copier, a full set of books for the students, a working grading machine, enough pencils so every kid can write, a working projector and ten minutes to set it up — and too often don’t get any of that, let alone ten minutes for a body break — now are asked by the crazy gun lobby to arm themselves and take on other beneficiaries of crazy gun lobbyists in the halls of the schools.
  • “Waiting for Superman” was a film about how teachers are animals, teachers unions are monsters.  Turns out Superman was already teaching first grade, in Newtown, but is demonized by the filmmakers as someone or something else.
  • Maybe we should rethink who are the monsters, who is Superman, and who deserves our support.  Superman’s already in our schools — what are we waiting for?  Somehow I doubt that Superman’s merely showing up will be enough to resolve the issues and “fix” our schools.

What are your thoughts?

More, and related material:

2 Comments | Citizenship, Civil Rights, Education, Education quality, History, Second Amendment, Teachers, Teaching | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Teacher video: No, Texas can’t secede

December 11, 2012

Another video from super teacher CGPGrey, right up our Texas alley, on the issue of Texas secession:

Minor error:  No provision I can find in any Texas Constitution to allow Texas to split.  Language to allow a territory to split into as many as five states was pretty standard for new U.S. territories organized during the 19th century; but that didn’t carry over to the Texas Constitution approved by Congress, not in a unilateral way.  One needs to recall that when Texas entered the Union, it carried with it lands that eventually became parts of New Mexico, Colorado, Oklahoma and Wyoming — which was part of the scruff with Mexico, which led to the U.S.-Mexico war of 1846 to 1848.

Still a teacher from another state demonstrates a much clearer conception of Texas history and state and federal law than some of the nutcases in Texas.  That so many Texans hold so many false perceptions of law and Texas history is an indictment of Texas education, and Texas’s governor and legislature.

You also should check out:

And, while we’re thinking about it, did you ever comment on the Digital Aristotle concept, which first introduced this blog to Mr. Grey?

More:

2 Comments | Classroom technology, Education, History, Politics, Teaching, Texas, Texas history, Video and film | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Practice, even with failure, more important than talent – update

October 25, 2012

WordCrafter.net links to this story from an excellent page on picking a topic for an essay — English teachers, social studies teachers, you should probably make this page a part of your syllabus for essays, really.  A few teachers use the page, and when they assign essays this post starts rising in the hit count.

But that was five years ago.  There’s more information, and even an update at Stanford Magazine.  So, we’ll update here, too:

Carol Dweck, author of Mindset

Carol Dweck, Stanford University

Every teacher needs to get familiar with the work of Carol Dweck. She’s a Stanford psychologist who is advising the Blackburn Rovers from England’s Premier League, on how to win, and how to develop winning ways.

Your students need you to have this stuff.

A 60-year-old academic psychologist might seem an unlikely sports motivation guru. But Dweck’s expertise—and her recent book, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success—bear directly on the sort of problem facing the Rovers. Through more than three decades of systematic research, she has been figuring out answers to why some people achieve their potential while equally talented others don’t—why some become Muhammad Ali and others Mike Tyson. The key, she found, isn’t ability; it’s whether you look at ability as something inherent that needs to be demonstrated or as something that can be developed.

What’s more, Dweck has shown that people can learn to adopt the latter belief and make dramatic strides in performance. These days, she’s sought out wherever motivation and achievement matter, from education and parenting to business management and personal development. [emphasis added]

I can’t do justice here, in short form, to Dweck’s work described by Marina Krakovsky.  See this story in Stanford Magazine [2007].

Update from Stanford Magazine:

Psychology professor Carol Dweck has spent her career figuring out why some people give up in the face of failure while others are motivated to learn from their mistakes and improve. It’s all about fixed mindsets versus growth mindsets (“The Effort Effect,” March/April 2007)

Now Dweck has formed Mindset Works, which “helps human beings reach their full potential.” Its signature product is Brainology, software developed by Dweck and educational researcher Lisa S. Blackwell and now available at www.brainology.us following successful pilots in the United States and abroad. The program aims to motivate middle school and high school students to do better in all their subjects by teaching them how the brain works and how to boost their intelligence.

Also, no discussion of this topic can be complete without at least a mention of Malcolm Gladwell‘s work.  In a recent book, Outliers, Gladwell notes what has come to be called the “10,000 hour rule.”  Gladwell observed that most experts were made by practice at a skill, rather than talent — and that mastery was achieved after about 10,000 hours of practice.  Wikipedia describes the idea Gladwell outlines:

A common theme that appears throughout Outliers is the “10,000-Hour Rule”, based on a study by Anders Ericsson. Gladwell claims that greatness requires enormous time, using the source of The Beatles’ musical talents and Gates’ computer savvy as examples.[3] The Beatles performed live in Hamburg, Germany over 1,200 times from 1960 to 1964, amassing more than 10,000 hours of playing time, therefore meeting the 10,000-Hour Rule. Gladwell asserts that all of the time The Beatles spent performing shaped their talent, and quotes Beatles’ biographer Philip Norman as saying, “So by the time they returned to England from Hamburg, Germany, ‘they sounded like no one else. It was the making of them.'”[3] Gates met the 10,000-Hour Rule when he gained access to a high school computer in 1968 at the age of 13, and spent 10,000 hours programming on it.[3]

Does Gladwell mention Dweck’s work?  Is Dweck’s work confirmed by Ericsson’s?  There’s a lot of room for discussion there, especially in an essay.

For writing, for writing essays, practice provides dramatic improvement for students — that much is certain.

More:

2 Comments | Brain development, Brain learning, Classroom management, Education, Education success, Learning, Pedagogy, psychology, Teaching | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Seats still open for “In Their Own Voices” teacher workshop on racism, at Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site

October 16, 2012

E-mail from the Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site, with a training opportunity for teachers:

In Their Own Voices workshop

October 20-21, 2012

Arkansas Dept. of Education professional development workshop at Little Rock Central High School NHS

Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site invites Arkansas educators and community advocates to participate in a two day workshop focusing on challenging racism prevalent in and out of the classroom and the community. This program, an approved ADE professional development workshop, will bring participants together for an open reflection and dialogue on the effects of racism and the diversity of our own self-understanding. The overarching goal for our In Their Own Voices workshop is to afford our participants an opportunity to identify their own biases and feel comfortable in their space to approach such issues as race, bullying, tolerance and other-isms in the classroom and the community. To apply, please click attachment below and send to Agnolia Gay at agnolia.gay@gmail.com

Registration for workshop

Move quickly! (That’s this weekend.)  If anyone from Dallas is headed up, please let me know.

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Little Rock Central High School

Little Rock Central High School, National Historical Site Visitors Center –  (Photo credit: bigskyred)

1 Comment | Civil Rights, History, Little Rock Nine, professional development, Racism, Teaching, Teaching Resources | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Powerful teacher unions make good schools

October 12, 2012

From a column by Washington Post writer Matt Miller, “Romney vs. teachers unions:  The inconvenient truth”:

That reality is this: The top performing school systems in the world have strong teachers unions at the heart of their education establishment. This fact is rarely discussed (or even noted) in reform circles. Yet anyone who’s intellectually honest and cares about improving our schools has to acknowledge it. The United States is an outlier in having such deeply adversarial, dysfunctional labor-management relations in schooling.

Why is this?

My hypothesis runs as follows: The chief educational strategy of top-performing nations such as Finland, Singapore and South Korea is to recruit talent from the top third of the academic cohort into the teaching profession and to train them in selective, prestigious institutions to succeed on the job. In the United States, by contrast, we recruit teachers mostly from the middle and (especially for poor schools) bottom third and train them mostly in open-enrollment institutions that by all accounts do shoddy work.

As a result, American reformers and superintendents have developed a fetish for evaluating teachers and dismissing poor performers, because there are, in fact, too many. Unions dig in to protect their members because . . . that’s what unions do.

When you talk to senior officials in Finland, Singapore and South Korea, it’s as if they’re on another planet. The question of how they deal with low-performing teachers is basically a non-issue, because they just don’t have many of them. Why would they when their whole system is set up to recruit, train and retain outstanding talent for the profession? [emphasis added here]

Whose approach sounds more effective to you?

Miller suggests, among other things, raising starting pay for teachers — $65,000 to $150,000 — and greatly boosting the rigor of training for teachers.

Any such hopes for effective reform could not occur under the “austerity budgets” proposed in Utah, Wisconsin, Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and the U.S. Congress.

More:

3 Comments | Education, Education assessment, Education quality, Education reform, Labor and unions, Public education, Quality, Teacher Evaluation, Teacher Pay, Teachers, Teaching | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

PBS resources for teachers . . . (history, especially)

October 10, 2012

Too often I fear the conservative War on Public Broadcasting is really just an extension of their War on Education and War on Science.

PBS and NPR have the facts, and tell ’em, straight.  Poll after poll, year after year, PBS comes up as the “most trusted” news source in America, with NPR right up there.

Why would conservatives want to go after such a fine, accurate and useful institution?  They know the history, and they tell that, too.

Comes an e-mail today:

Invite your students to explore the challenges and triumphs of the U.S. Presidents with a collection of digital resources from PBS LearningMedia! Choose from thousands of free classroom-ready tools including videos, lesson plans, interactive games, and primary source documents. For anytime/anywhere access to social studies content and more – sign up today – it’s free!

Digital Resources

Tap into the excitement and energy of election season with PBS LearningMedia! Use these targeted resources to punctuate your lesson plan, instigate dialogue in the classroom, and expand your students’ awareness of the U.S. presidents and the institution of the Presidency. Register today on PBS LearningMedia for instant- access to thousands of additional classroom-ready, contextualized resources.

President for a Day
Grades 3-8 | Interactive with Support Materials
This activity puts your students in the Oval Office and invites them to make decisions about meeting Cabinet members, making speeches to the public, and how to handle a foreign crisis.

Documenting the President
Grades 3-9, 11-13+ + | Video
A photographer can preserve a moment, and be a silent participant. Give your class a brief history of the power held and captured by presidential photographers from Lincoln to Kennedy and beyond.

Documenting Key Presidential Decisions
Grades 6-13+ | Interactive
Challenge your students to examine primary source documents and match them to key presidential decisions. Documents include a letter from the secretary of war (1945), remarks at Brandenberg Gate (1987), the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and annotated notes and letters from various moments in history.

FDR: New Deal Program
Grades 9-12 | Video + Support Materials
Give your students a view of the enormous hurdles faced by President Roosevelt during the Great Depression. See how the New Deal transformed the relationship between government and economy.

Abraham Lincoln, Attorney at Law
Grades 1-12 | Video + Support Materials
Invite your class to consider how an early career as a “prairie” lawyer prepared Lincoln for his presidential role as he developed his confidence, sense of fairness, and social skills.

LBJ and the Great Society
Grades 9-12
Using newsreel footage, archival photos, and interviews, offer our students the opportunity to explore the rich legacy of President Johnson’s “Great Society.”

They’ve got professional development courses for teachers:

Professional Development

Explore these timely professional development resources in PBS LearningMedia:

Effective Media-Rich Lessons
Grades 13+ | Video + Discussion Questions
Join Katelin Corbett and Evan Feldman, two physics teachers in New York City, as they discuss the benefits of using digital media in the classroom, model best practices, and share guidelines for effective use of media in the physics classroom.

Build a Bridge Between Disciplines
Grades 6-8, 13+ | Interactive
Build a bridge between two disciplines by identifying a connecting concept, or idea that has value in both disciplines. Complete the structure by adding instructional activities that build students’ understanding of the concept, within and across disciplines.

Close Reading of Text: MLK “Letter from Birmingham Jail”
Grades 13+ | Video + Support Materials
Join David Coleman, a contributing author to the Common Core State Standards, as he models a close reading of Martin Luther King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail.

This Week’s Featured Courses:

NEW Bridging World History: A Special Collection from the Annenberg Foundation (SOST502)
Grades 9-12 | Syllabus | Sign Up | Course Catalog

NEW America’s History in the Making: A Special Collection from the Annenberg Foundation (SOST507)
Grades 6-12 | Syllabus | Sign Up | Course Catalog

Fall Term II Begins October 24 – enroll today!
Visit pbsteacherline.org or call 800-572-6386 for more information.

And here’s what’s new:

New & Noteworthy

Common Core Support
Let PBS LearningMedia enhance your efforts to better-understand the CCSSI with professional development video clips, and classroom resources tied to the Standards. Register for full access – anytime, anywhere.

The Election Collection
The PBS LearningMedia Election 2012 Collection is an aggregation of curated and contextualized election-related resources for K-12 classrooms with a primary focus on middle and high school. Jump into the collection by clicking here – or search under the keyword, Election.

PBS Teacher Innovator Awards
PBS LearningMedia and The Henry Ford are proud to bring you the third annual Teacher Innovator Awards in recognition of innovative PreK-12 classroom educators, media specialists, technology coordinators, and homeschool educators who use digital media to enhance student learning. To enter, tell us how you have innovated with digital media to enhance student learning. Submissions are now being accepted – click here to enter!

 

2 Comments | History, Public Broadcasting, Teachers, Teaching, Teaching Resources | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Box office slaps Hollywood: ‘Don’t talk jive smack against teachers’

October 3, 2012

Teacher and education blogs were all atwitter — and Twitter was all ablog, I suppose you could say — about the opening this past weekend of the movie “Won’t Back Down.”

“Parent trigger” laws bubble up in discussion a lot recently — laws that allow a group of parents to petition a school district, or the state, and say that they want to take over a local school.  Conservatives and other anti-teacher groups promote these laws as a means of education reform.  Generally, in the few cases in which a school is taken over by parents, teachers and local administrators are fired, and the school operates much like a charter school.

“Won’t Back Down” professes to be “based on a true story.”  I am reminded that both “Psycho” and “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” also professed to be based on a true story — the same story, in fact.  I’ve written about this before — based on a true story, except not in Texas, no chainsaw, no massacre, nor was there a hotel and a shower.  The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is more carefully based on a true story — there is a Mississippi River; or The Bald Soprano — there are bald people, and there are sopranos.  But I digress.

The film has a cast of some great star power — Maggie Gyllenhaal, Viola Davis and Holly Hunter.  It was produced by the documentary group that also produced Al Gore‘s “Inconvenient Truth,” and then moved to the popular but wildly polemical “Waiting for Superman,” another hit on teachers.  They should have stopped with that one, instead of raising the ante (raising the “anti?”).

Audiences don’t like films that cast teachers as villains, it would appear.

Stephanie Simon of Reuters wrote:

(Reuters) – Education reform film “Won’t Back Down” opened Friday to terrible reviews – and high hopes from activists who expect the movie to inspire parents everywhere to demand big changes in public schools.

The drama stars Maggie Gyllenhaal as a spirited mother who teams up with a passionate teacher to seize control of their failing neighborhood school, over the opposition of a self-serving teachers union.

Reviewers called it trite and dull, but education reformers on both the left and right have hailed the film as a potential game-changer that could aid their fight to weaken teachers’ unions and inject more competition into public education.

Yahoo!’s Movie Talk got to the point:

Even an Oscar-caliber leading cast couldn’t save this one. Maggie Gyllenhaal’s latest film “Won’t Back Down,” also starring Viola Davis and Holly Hunter, set the record this past weekend for the worst opening of a film that appeared in more than 2,500 theaters, making a mere $2.6 million [via Box Office Mojo].

Yes, all three of these former Oscar nominees — Hunter having won a golden statuette in 1994 for “The Piano” — now have a pretty bad blemish on their resume. But they aren’t to blame, say industry watchers, who are reacting to the film with a resounding face palm. “‘Won’t Back Down’ wore the dunce cap last weekend, mostly because its marketing was almost non-existent,” says Jeff Bock, box office analyst for Exhibitor Relations.

“Record for the worst opening?”  Ouch.

Back to the “based on a true story” issue:  We may understand why the screenwriter and director of the first Texas Chainsaw movie, Tobe Hooper took the liberties he did to add elements to the story.  He knew the original story of a disturbed man in Wisconsin who was jailed for corpse mutilation.  He knew that was the foundation for Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho.”  How to update it, to make the story bankable from the box office?  Move it to Texas, add a chainsaw with all its terrifying whine, and add in the standard teenager murder story elements; maybe put a mask on the villain/evil beast, to make it more terrifying — there is great terror in being pursued by nameless, faceless folk as Orwell showed us.  Both Hitchcock and Hooper fully understood that the real, dull story, wasn’t something people would pay to sit through while eating grossly-overpriced popcorn.

“Won’t Back Down” suffered from sticking too close to the facts.  If you’re going to claim the antagonist is psycho, you have to give them a big butcher’s knife or a chainsaw, and a costume, in order to make really, really scary.

Teachers just are not that scary in real life.  Teachers are not the villains, in real life.

More (from various viewpoints):

8 Comments | Education, Education quality, Education reform, History, Politics, Teachers, Teaching, Video and film | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

How to get things done in Dallas schools

September 28, 2012

Interesting.  Troubling?  I think so.  Matthew Haag blogs at the Dallas Morning News site:

This time of the year, we often hear from parents and Dallas ISD teachers that their schools are stifling hot. The district has lots of older campuses, where air-conditioning units are on their last legs and the chillers don’t operate fully.

That was the case for a few hours yesterday at Harry Stone Montessori in East Oak Cliff. And a father of a Stone student took a different route to get the AC fixed. He messaged DISD Superintendent Mike Miles on Twitter, which he rebooted six weeks ago. (His Twitter account, I should add, is managed by his special assistant, Miguel Solis, who is rarely more than a few feet from Miles all day.)

@MMilesDISD Hard to study when the A/C is broken w 90 degree heat @harry Stone…you wants results and so do Let’s Fix it. @matthewhaag

Four hours later, Miles responded.

We are on it @ChrisSuprun: Hard to study when the A/C is broken w 90 degree heat @harry Stone…you want results and so do Let’s Fix it.

And about two hours later, the AC was fixed.

Feel like we should time it: “@MMilesDISD We are on it @ChrisSuprun: Hard to study when the A/C is broken w 90 degree heat @harry Stone.”

@RobertWilonsky@ChrisSuprun Crew is telling me we are fixed now Thx to facilities, HS Staff, and community involved with this

Obviously, the moral of this story is that if you need something fixed in your school, message Miles on Twitter.

It’s interesting that the new Superintendent, Mike Miles, responded quickly.  On one hand that suggests things may have already changed in Dallas.  On the other hand, people who study organizations understand that a calm surface can hide a lot of turmoil in the deep water.  It was a parent who Tweeted. What if it had been a teacher who got to Miles?  What happened to the teacher and principal at Harry Stone?  What happened to the HVAC guy nominally responsible?

What happened to the students?

My experience in Dallas ISD is that almost everyone in administration will claim they cannot control classroom temperatures.  My last classroom regularly hit 85°, and often enough climbed into the 90s.  Meanwhile, my colleague across the hall had to wear jackets.  Our thermometers regularly had the temperatures in her room in the 60s.  One week it dropped further.  I bought a laser-pointer thermometer to check the answers we got from the HVAC guys who would come into the classroom, usually in the middle of a presentation, point the thing around and tell us that the temperature was where it should be, or moving that way. (Then they’d disappear.)   We recorded several days of temperatures in her room below 60°, as low as 52°.  Eventually the solution was to cover the air vents coming into that classroom, and take out the thermostat.

I am not kidding.

I wonder what the HVAC people in Dallas ISD would say about the ultimate solution at Harry Stone Montessori?  From the Superintendent’s office, did he chalk this off to a great anomaly, or did he check deeper to see whether there might be a deeper problem?

Unnecessary cooling is a huge energy waster in schools.  Unnecessary heating wastes energy, too.   Dallas’s fraud and abuse hotline claimed not to have jurisdiction over these issues . . . when an organization is hemorrhaging money, as all Texas school districts are after the Lege took so many potshots at them over the past six years, good management could be lifesaver.

So, to get action, teachers only need to Tweet their problems to the Superintendent?  Want to bet how happy that makes principals?  Want to take bets on how this shakes out?

Leave a Comment » | Classroom management, Classroom technology, Dallas, Education, Teachers, Teaching | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Shutting teachers out of the education conversations, a national pathology – can Dallas avoid it?

September 26, 2012

 

Have you noticed, and has it bothered you, that many of the major discussions about what to do to help education shut out teachers?

This is nothing new.  As Director of Information Services at the old Office of Educational Research and Improvement, I occasionally got tagged to go speak to education groups meeting in and around Washington, D.C.  One or our projects was a reboot of the Educational Resources Information Centers, or ERIC Library System.

At every public function where I spoke, or where I attended and was identified as an ED employee, teachers would seek me out, and ask how long I spent in the classroom as a teacher.  Then they’d tell me teaching college doesn’t count, and they’d complain that education policy makers at all levels ignore teachers.  They didn’t appreciate people making policy for them who didn’t know their situation from having been on the ground with them, as one of them, or at least listening to what they had to say.

It’s a key principle of leadership, to understand what the frontline employee faces, to know what the workers on the shop floor see, to feel the heat from the open hearth, to know the discomfort of hitting Omaha Beach and be pinned down by gunfire while wet and sandy and weighed down with 80 pounds.  It’s one of the keys to understanding how Harry Truman, who saw action in Belgium at the Western Front and who lived in the trenches, could decide against a land invasion as a first option for forcing Japan to surrender at the end of World War II.  It’s why his troops thought so much of Patton, as he stood shoulder to shoulder with them at the front as bullets whizzed by, why Soichiro Honda’s workers listened when he stripped down and stripped an engine to find a problem.

A couple of days ago the president of the Dallas ISD School Board, Lew Blackburn, Tweeted his gratitude for help from Leadership Dallas for a “dine and discuss” session with DISD leaders.  It’s good that Blackburn Tweets.  He has good intentions, most likely — and he’s trying to let people know what’s going on.

What’s the topic?  How to improve education in Dallas, of course.

What ONE group of key stakeholders is left out of these discussions?  Teachers.

It’s a bugaboo for me.  Education discussion sponsored by the New York Times, but no teachers.  Secretary of Education Arne Duncan buses across America — school kids show up to sing welcomes, but teachers appear to be left out of discussions along the route.

So I Tweeted back — what’s up with that?  In the past few months, I’ve gotten Tweets back from writers, scientists, friends, and Tom Peters, the management guru.  I was happy Blackburn responded.  it puts him in good company.

https://twitter.com/EdDarrell/status/250814639330447360

https://twitter.com/EdDarrell/status/251057680322539521

It’s not like this once teachers were left out, due to scheduling conflicts.  The process design pointedly includes stakeholders other than teachers.  Trained facilitators — professionals? paid? — are brought in, a touch that suggests these meetings are formal efforts whose products will be used for some formal policy-making purpose.  Invitees include “diverse” community members.

Listen. Learn. Dialogue.

Dallas ISD Dining & Dialogue is a pilot initiative in partnership with Dallas ISD and Leadership Dallas Alumni with support from the Dallas Regional Chamber.  The purpose is to encourage frequent communication over a meal between members of the community and Dallas ISD that address practical solutions to improve education in our community.  The roundtable-style dining events bring together small groups of individuals with diverse backgrounds to foster community-wide dialogue about Dallas ISD in an effort to gain understanding, share ideas, and increase diverse investment in education for the benefit of our region.

The FREE dining events are held quarterly at various sites within the Dallas metroplex. Discussions are led by trained facilitators who guide participants through questions designed to elicit thoughts and opinions on issues facing Dallas ISD.  This dining and dialogue framework is patterned after Dallas Dinner Table, a popular, highly-regarded community event founded by Leadership Dallas alumni, and DeSoto Dining and Dialogue.
Dialogues will include school board members and other important school voices along with community stakeholders such as business leaders, parents, neighborhood associations, nonprofits and members of the Dallas ISD Teen Board.

Picture

I still get some notifications from DISD, but none on this.

Should we be concerned  about any biases of Leadership Dallas, intentional or unconscious?  Leadership Dallas draws its inspiration from Leadership Atlanta, the formal effort to create a band of leaders to lead Atlanta after so many leaders died in a tragic airplane crash years ago.  Alas, the assumption is that educators cannot be leaders.  The course work is scheduled in a way that makes it difficult for any professional to participate, but almost impossible for any hourly worker, or teacher.

Looking through the records, I see very few people participating who have much to do with education, and especially no teachers.  Gross oversight.  There are no garbage collectors, either —  that may be a bigger problem in a place like Memphis with a different history on garbage collectors — or any other workers without graduate degrees.  Small business owners don’t get great representation, either.

Hmmm.  NEA?  AFT? We’ll check with them later.

So, Lew Blackburn — you’re the leader of this bunch, in some cases more than Superintendent Mike Miles (he may not be paying attention to this, either, let alone to the opinions of mere teachers, who make 17% of what he earns.  It’s up to you, I think.  You need to make sure teachers are a part of this dialogue, to be sure it doesn’t become a monologue.

Get some teachers involved in this process.  Get some principals involved, and some other school administrators.  Counselors might have a good, and different view.  Do you still have librarians enough in DISD to get a couple involved?  Libraries should be a key focus point for education in the 21st century, and many Dallasi ISD libraries have librarians who work harder and more effectively than the district has a right to expect (they don’t get paid for what they do, heaven knows).  And, keep records of these dinners.  These meetings are in the gray area of the Texas public meetings laws — but you want to be certain you have an open process that is not open to petty challenges due to bureaucratic miscues.  If any policy comes out of these meetings, you’ll need to be certain they were open for public meetings rules.

Gee, any reporters invited?

Are these sessions designed to improve education in Dallas, or to find new ways to flog teachers? Make sure the actions speak louder than words on these things.

Mr. Blackburn, you’ve made a couple of good moves here — including Tweeting about what’s going on.  Keep these processes going, and improve them.  Make sure teachers are not left behind.

More:

2 Comments | Education, Education reform, Leadership, Teachers, Teaching, Teaching Resources | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Teacher and student resources for Hispanic Heritage Month, from the cultural agencies of the federal government

September 16, 2012

Resources listed at the Hispanic Heritage Month site:

September 15 to October 15 is National Hispanic Heritage Month 2012

The Library of Congress, National Archives and Records Administration, National Endowment for the Humanities, National Gallery of Art, National Park Service, Smithsonian Institution and United States Holocaust Memorial Museum join in paying tribute to the generations of Hispanic Americans who have positively influenced and enriched our nation and society.

Read More »

Children of the Plumed Serpent: the Legacy of Quetzalcoatl in Ancient Mexico

Pectoral with Calendrical Notations (AD 700–1300), Children of the Plumed Serpent exhibit


Unknown, Pectoral with Calendrical Notations (AD 700–1300), gold, 4 ½ x 1/16 in (11.5 x 2 cm), 3.93 ounces (112 grams), Museuo de las Culturas de Oaxaca. Photo © Instituto Nacional de Antropologia e Historia (CONACULTA-INAH-MEX), from the exhibition Children of the Plumed Serpent: The Legacy of Quetzalcoatl in Ancient Mexico at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California.
Courtesy, Los Angeles County Museum of Art. http://www.lacma.org

The culture-hero and deity, Quetzalcoatl was believed to be the human incarnation of the spiritual forces of wind and rain. Quetzalcoatl was typically portrayed in art as a plumed serpent. This exhibition was organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and made possible by the National Endowment for the Humanities.

More about the exhibition »

Department of Interior’s American Latino Heritage Initiative

Department of Interior's American Latino Heritage InitiativeNumerous projects are being undertaken to increase the opportunities for historic places associated with American Latino history to be documented, preserved, and interpreted and for the public to better understand and appreciate the role of American Latinos in the development of the United States.

Status of current projects »

U.S. National Archives on Flickr

Eloy District, Pinal County, Arizona. Mexican irrigator. He came from Mexico 12 years ago...11/1940 - Library of Congress image

Sample of works available at the Flickr site:  Original Caption:  “Eloy District, Pinal County, Arizona. Mexican irrigator. He came from Mexico 12 years ago, works the year round on this large-scale farm. These fields are being prepared for flax; have never had a crop before.”
U.S. National Archives’ Local Identifier: 83-G-44021
From:: Photographic Prints Documenting Programs and Activities of the Bureau of Agricultural Economics and Predecessor Agencies, compiled ca. 1922 – ca. 1947, documenting the period ca. 1911 – ca. 1947
Created By:: Department of Agriculture. Bureau of Agricultural Economics. Division of Economic Information. (ca. 1922 – ca. 1953)
Production Date: 11/1940

Photos from the U.S. National Archives that relate to Hispanic Heritage on the photosharing site Flickr.

View the Images

Hispanic American Veterans

Staff Sgt. Ernesto E. Gallego, Gulfport, MS; World War II Veteran - Stories from the Veterans Project, Library of Congress image

Portrait of World War II veteran, Staff Sgt. Ernesto E. Gallego in bomber jacket, inscribed “To the sweetest girl I know…Ernest.” Gulfport, Mississippi; Stories from the Veterans Project, Library of Congress

Asked to serve their country in time of war, Hispanic Americans displayed courage and valor in the face of adversity. Familiar with discrimination back home, many saw their service as affirming the ideals of democracy. In this presentation, the Veterans History Project recounts their inspirational stories.

Read More about Hispanic American Veterans »

Teaching Hispanic Heritage

paintingPut the power of primary sources to work in the classroom. Browse lesson plans, student activities, collection guides and research aids from:

The Library of Congress

National Archives Experience — DocsTeach —

National Archives — Teacher’s Resources

National Endowment for the Humanities

National Gallery of Art

National Park Service

Smithsonian Institution

1 Comment | Hispanic Heritage Month, Library of Congress, National Archives, Teachers, Teaching | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

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