Some readers may wonder where the walking man has been these days. I have been collaborating with others to grow the fight against those people who are bent on reducing public school learning to teaching to the test. Linda Hall, Jonathan Pelto, with Dianne deVries, and I worked on bulding a real Save Our Schools Connecticut Chapter. We formed alliances with Defending Public Education Cradle to College, with AUUP, Hartford AFT, and CT AFT, and with CCSU Student Government Assocation, and other local groups. As Chair of the Literacy Essentails Conference I worked with Connecticut After School Programs to bring Antonia Darder's turth to Connecticut.
http://www.darder.org/ She shared her view that RTTT Ed Reforms are attempts at Language Assination for second langauge learners, and cultural killers. In between all of that I drove down to DC to support my Opt Out Brothers and sisters as they occuiped the United States Department of Education in April.
While I may stop blogging for a while, I never stop marching against those reformers who want to reduce public education to teaching to the test. Fighting those that want to reduce reading and writing to inpersonal repsonses to mandated texts is an every day event, on my walks, in my classroom, and every where else I go for me. Like Muhammad Ali said "I float like a butterfly and sting like a bee" against their insane vision of that "The Brave New World" committed to the production of perfect little worker bees. You know perfect little Bill Gates clones.
So readers I am still fighting wind mills, still feeling strong, and still strongly believing that good will beat evil in the end. Here is my lastest venture "Taking the Fight Local:
https://www.facebook.com/events/159038687593865/
Defending Public Education Cradle to college: A free one-day conference
addressing issues that cut across all levels of public education,
including fighting back against assessment and addressing inequities in
public education. We have great speakers lined up, including Jonathan
Pelto, Roberto Cotto, and Ceresta Smith.
Spread the word Connecticut has joined the battle to save our public schools.
Why, why, oh why fight this battle.....
Why I am going to Defending Public Education: Cradle to College this Sunday?
Ever since NCLB started testing children every year from grades 3-8, elementary schools have become houses of detention where teachers are force to teach to the test, and children suffer.
Teaching should be more than testing,
Childhood is more than filling in their bubble sheets.
Child hood is a gift,
A time of wonder,
A time for play,
A time for reading anything your heart feels like reading,
Imagining new worlds,
Journeying through old ones,
A time for art,
For music,
For dancing,
For running and jumping,
A place where teachers open imaginations, not imprisoning them into objective little Common Core Close Reading boxes,
Where science, history, literature are not experiments in mind control, but in celebrating the liberation of young minds,
Where our seeds of democracy are nurtured not ignored,
A place where friendships are grown,
A place where failure is a mere side step on the jounrney to smart,
Where you fall often, but get up time and time again with the help of teachers, families, and friends,
Where Laughter sings,
Where giants and dragons live,
Where school buses take you to museums, historic places, and on safaris,
Child hood should not be a prisoning of the mind,
Schools should not have armed guards at their doors,
Police officers should not patrol our school halls,
Testing should be meaningful for personal learning,
Testing should not be a sorting, a weighing, and measuring of young minds for corporate futures,
I am going to the Defending Public Education: Cradle to College conference on Sunday, because childhood is a gift not a race,
Education should be a never-ending journey that does not end in bankruptcy for our children,
Most of all I am going because I care enough not to become apathetic and silent while our policy makers and politicians crush young minds,
Jesse The Walking Man Turner
If you are wondering what the Walking is listening to on his walks lately:
"Preacher man, don't tell me,
Heaven is under the earth.
I know you don't know
What life is really worth.
It's not all that glitters is gold;
'Alf the story has never been told:
So now you see the light, eh!
Stand up for your rights. come on!
Get up, stand up: stand up for your rights!
Get up, stand up: don't give up the fight!
Get up, stand up: stand up for your rights!
Get up, stand up: don't give up the fight! "
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