Wednesday's Extra Credit Reading

Iraq has had a long hot summer with little to cheer about. But at least millions of Iraqi children have (fianlly) returned to school.

It appears as though the nearly 800 teachers in the Chicago suburb of Palatine may soon go out on strike. As is almost always the case, the bones of contention appear to be pay increases, health insurance, and retirement benefits. The district had offered a 9.25% increase over three years...

Teachers take note: Polksi3 shows us how bad it can be when certain district administrators (who usually spend their days sitting behind office desks and attending conferences) decide to drop-in for a "short visit" to an actual teacher's classroom.

Our Knucklehead of the Day Award goes to the Salinas, Kansas high school science teacher who got himself suspended for allowing 50 students to share the same lancet when piercing their fingers to draw blood for an experiment.

Over at the Education Intelligence Agency's Intercepts, Mike Anotonucci takes a brief break from keeping an eye on the teachers unions in order to give us a first class look at some of the background surrounding recent controversial remarks by Pope Benedict XVI. A must read for those who are interested in how A Historical Event can have an impact in today's current events.

I guess if one gets tired of This Teaching Life but still wants to be involved in Education, one could always petition Ringling Brothers Barnum & Bailey Circus to re-open their much missed Clown College. (Would that be a case of real-life imitating Art or vice-versa?)

Yet another sudy has found that American students rank near the bottom of industrialized (are we still industrialized?) countries when it comes to math. Now the state of Florida is thinking about tinkering with the Math Standards while out west in Arizona, the complaint is that there are already too many Math Standards to count cover!

California teacher Coach Brown lets us take a peek inside his classroom. Among other things, he is fighting the Good Fight against both cell phones and i-Pods on campus. But it was our heart-strings that got tugged when we learned that his student from war-torn Afghanistan moved away...

I wasn't sure if I should laugh or simply shake my head in disbelief when I read about the New York School District that had to apologize for a rather embarrassing type font that was used on a third-grade spelling handout:

School officials apologized after an X-rated font was used on a third-grade spelling packet handed out to parents. The font showed male and female stick figures in provocative poses to form the letters of the alphabet.

Officials with the Monroe-Woodbury School District in Orange County apologized last week after parents at Pine Tree Elementary School were given the spelling packet at an open house.

Administrators said the teacher did not use the font intentionally.

Monroe is about 45 miles northwest of New York City.

This gang of cretins was convicted of stealing more than 11 million dollars from a Long Island New York school district. Pamela Gluckin, who was the chief thief as well as the former business manager of the Roslyn School District, admitted to personally stealing some $4.3 million dollars alone. (Who was it that said, "If you're going to steal...steal big? I guess that didn't work out in this case.) --------------------------------See our latest EduPosts right here. Visit today's edition of The Carnival of Education, hosted by The Median Sib, over there.