Blog – Page 7 – Sam Chaltain

What White People Need to Understand

Posted on April 23, 2018 | by Sam | 2 Comments

Last night, I listened to David Remnick’s New Yorker podcast interview with James Comey to hear what he had to say about our 45th President, but what disturbed me more was what he had to say (at ~13:30) about the phrase “mass incarceration.”

“It connotes an intentionality,” Comey explained, “but there’s nothing mass about it. Everybody was charged individually, represented individually, and everybody appeared in front of a judge. I think you can talk about those systemic problems without making it sound like there was an intentionality where law enforcement decided it was going to round up huge numbers of black men.”

Riiiiiiiiiiight. . .

Public Schools Are Not Failing . . . They’re Starving

Posted on March 14, 2018 | by Sam | 1 Comment

Did you see that Betsy Devos interview on 60 Minutes this weekend? Did you see that President Trump appointed her to chair a yearlong commission on school safety? Are you ready to gouge your own eyes out in apoplexy? Over a year ago, a group of parents and students from Detroit tried to warn the […]

To Reimagine Public School, Just (Ignore) The Facts, Ma’am

Posted on December 13, 2017 | by Sam

Is it possible for people to change the story we tell ourselves (and one another) about public education?

I spend a lot of time thinking about this question. And some recent studies all suggest that if the answer is ever going to be “yes,” we have some serious work to do.

This is what it looks like when a community designs its own school

Posted on December 7, 2017 | by Sam | 1 Comment

At its best, nothing is more unifying and vital to a community’s civic health than a high-quality neighborhood school. Why, then, do all notions of “school choice” end up being about either charter or private schools?

Enter Oakland SOL, a new dual-immersion middle school in the Flatlands section of Oakland, California — and the city school district’s first new school in more than a decade.

To reimagine learning, we must reimagine the physical space of “school” — but how?

Posted on November 8, 2017 | by Sam

For more than a century, the physical layout of American schools has been as consistent as any feature in American public life. Although the world around us has been in a constant state of flux, we have always been able to depend on a familiar set of symbols in our schools: neat, orderly rows of student desks; teachers delivering lessons to an entire group of children; lockers in the hallways; bell schedules — the list could go on.

But what if those timeworn structures of schooling are actually preventing us from reimagining education for a changing world? What if, in fact, the physical environment is — after parents and peers — the “third teacher” of our sons and daughters?

180: Mississippi Rising

Posted on October 21, 2017 | by Sam

Of our fifty states, I can think of no other whose local history — for better and for worse — captures the essence of the larger American story.

In a sense, we are all Mississippians.

How to Design the Ideal Early Childhood Center

Posted on October 17, 2017 | by Sam | 4 Comments

What would you do if you could design the ideal early childhood center?

At WONDER, we just got that opportunity — but we need your help.

The Age of the Individual is Upon Us

Posted on October 12, 2017 | by Sam | 12 Comments

One year, early in my teaching career, I got reprimanded for giving too many “A’s.”

“You can’t give everyone the same grade,” I was instructed. “Give a few A’s and F’s, and a lot of B’s and C’s. Otherwise, everyone will know that your class is either too easy or too hard.”

This was unremarkable advice; indeed, it was as close to the educational Gospel as you could find. It was human nature in action.

And, apparently, it was completely wrong.

Before he says anything else about the Pledge of Allegiance, @RealDonaldTrump should read this . . .

Posted on October 11, 2017 | by Sam

Of course, we know he won’t — but that doesn’t mean the rest of us shouldn’t brush up on the actual history of the Pledge, and the actual meaning of the flag. When we do, there can be no room for alternative facts — only a history that, based on how we define patriotism, either puts us on the side of some courageous young schoolchildren of a generation ago, or on the side of totalitarianism. . .

To Measure Success in America’s Schools, Count the Flamingos

Posted on September 4, 2017 | by Sam

As an educator, I can’t think of a more important, elusive, and agonizing question than this doozy: How do you measure success?

So you can imagine my surprise when I discovered a new source of inspiration for how we should answer it, by way of a 27,000-acre fish farm at the tip of the Guadalquivir river in Southern Spain.