Student Teachers, the Morale Curve & Reconciling Theory and Practice

Featured image courtesy of Alan Levine.  “I can tell you with confidence when these dips in the morale curve will occur: six weeks, twelve weeks, six months, twelve months…”  Kris Magnusson, paraphrased Of oughts and ises Six weeks into our yearlong teacher-education program, our student teachers have enjoyed a month’s honeymoon and visioning process on […]

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Pedagogy for the Oppressor: Cease to do Evil, then Learn to do Good

In an essay collected in Rethinking Freire: Globalization and the Environmental Crisis, Derek Rasmussen introduces Paulo Freire and those who would introduce his critical praxis to victims of oppression in foreign countries as “rescuers” attempting “to ameliorate the conditions of the oppressed.” This is, Rasmussen admits, “certainly a worthy aim.” However, the blind spot in this well-intentioned […]

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Blogs as Documents of Learning

I started blogging with the TALONS class (since expanded to two) a little more than four years ago. In that time I’ve learned a great deal about the capacity for such digital publishing tools to help realize aspects of the larger purpose of schooling; part of this has come through developing my own informal network […]

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