Extra Credit Reading: Wednesday, November 29, 2006

The Wanker of the Day Award has got to go to school bus driver David Stack, who was pulled-over by the police and arrested for drunk driving while on the job. Stack allegedly had just one request to make before the cops ran him in: "Can I finish my run, at least to drop these kids off?" (TipWonk'd by KauaiMark of Just a Substitute Teacher Blog.....)

From The T.F.A. Trenches, we have a reflexive post that shows us what teacher-blogging should be all about. Here's a sample:

Yet B---‘s story is a cautionary tale of how willing even a very idealistic teacher can be to perform educational triage and how false our diagnoses can be. With all of the focus and time I pour into thinking about them, with all of the importance that we ascribe to their success, and with all of the gravity of their problems, our kids can swell in my minds. They become characters titanic enough to share a stage with their poverty, their prior miseducation, and their untapped potential and in that enormity, they develop personalities that seem too huge to reform. It might seem silly, but I think I must remember that they are just kids. And I must remember that, even when I'm not helping and sometimes even when I'm not watching, kids can change.

Read the whole thing.

For Reading Wednesday, we have this timely story about the California-based charity that uses technology in order to enable parents serving in our military overseas to read aloud works of literature to their children here at home. (Be prepared to have your heartstings well-tugged...)

If it's Wednesday, it's Carnival of Education Day! Check-out the 95th midway, hosted by A History Teacher.

For those teachers who really like putting in long hours but would like to get well paid to do so, (unlike classroom teaching) we have someone we'd like you to meet: say "hello" to the Extreme Job.

Today's Non Sequitur: As fanatically frantic fans of the 70s-80s supergroup ABBA, we here at the 'Wonks simply had to make this our website of the day! Be sure to check out the free video which changes daily... (And yes, we've seen Mamma Mia! over in Las Vegas; we loved it.) -----------------------------See our latest EduPosts here and yesterday's Extra Credit Reading there.