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Exploring Equity Grading
As education evolves, so too does the way we assess student performance. One such evolution is equity grading, a concept sparking debate among educators and parents alike. What exactly is equity grading, and should it raise concerns? Over the past century, grading systems have morphed from the absence of grades to the conventional A-F scale. In today’s educational landscape, where grades wield considerable influence in high-stakes college admissions, the assessment of student learning methods holds paramount importanceEquity grading, the latest trend, shifts focus from traditional letter grades to assessing students’ mastery of specific skills or standards. This approach attempts to provide a more accurate depiction of students’ understanding by emphasizing…
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Free Online Parent Drop-In: Youth Mental Health
The Center for Child and Adolescent Mental Health offers free Parent Drop-Ins, 1-hour sessions where parents can seek guidance from experts specializing in specific youth mental health disorders. Parents can also connect with others facing similar challenges. Each Zoom session is hosted by expert clinical psychologists who specialize in anxiety, depression, eating disorders, substance use, suicidality, and psychotropic medication. Parent Drop-Ins are held on the last Wednesday of every month at 5:30 pm. Register to receive the Zoom link, and submit questions ahead of time. Upcoming Parent Drop-Ins: Wednesday, June 26, 2024 from 5:30-6:30 pm PST – on Zoom Wednesday, July 31, 2024 from from 5:30-6:30 pm PST – on…
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Want Free Childcare in Your Home?
If you’ve got a toddler or preschooler, finding quality childcare is probably an ongoing concern. Today, millennials spend more time with their children than any previous generation, and with their flexible work schedules, they need childcare that works for them. When I was in your shoes (many moons ago), I stressed out about how to give my girls an enriching experience while I worked during the day. I didn’t want them to sit in front of a TV, and today, I wouldn’t want them to be glued to a smartphone. After checking out preschools and daycare programs to no avail, I set up childcare in my home so I could…
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Trick Your Family Into Spring Cleaning!
Okay, I know this sounds impossible, but I actually got my kids (and husband!) to VOLUNTEER to spring clean my house! No, I didn’t bribe them, or threaten them. So here’s how I did it: I made a list of all of the things that needed spring cleaning: organizing closets, rearranging gardening supplies, cleaning out the fridge, cleaning windows – you get the idea. Spring cleaning can feel daunting because there is so much that can be done, so pick 3-4 things that are your top priorities for each room. The rest you can do in another spring cleaning day later or even next year. By listing specific tasks for my…
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Cigs, Vapes and Now Zyn
Do you know what Zyn is? Have you heard of the “upper-decky lip pillow? If you have tween or teen children or grandchildren, hang on because you need to be in the know. Zyn is the smokeless alternative to vapes, and vapes was the less-noticeable form of smoking cigarettes. Zyn is a nicotine pouch that is placed under your lip like chewing tobacco or tobacco dip. It is less visible than vapes because there are no cartridges or battery pens, and certainly inconspicuous next to cigarettes and smoke. Zyn comes in 2 strengths: 3- and 6-milligram pouches. The nicotine ingredient is very addictive – especially for young tweens. First-time users…
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Can You Trust College Rankings When Choosing Where to Apply?
Ever wonder how the US News and World Report select which university is the best in the nation? You would hope that the researchers would create algorhythms to consider a wide range of factors to fairly determine this elite ranking. But no. Critics in the past two decades have exposed just how ratings can be easily manipulated by the colleges themselves. In order to boost their rankings, colleges simply increase the volume of students who apply. To do this, many colleges target applicants who are unqualified students and entice them with free application fees. Stanford University, Reed College, and others have openly criticized ranking colleges based on the fact that…
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Why Grades May Not Reflect Academic Skills
Many parents mistakenly believe their children are functioning at or above grade level for several reasons. Grades Reflect More Than Just Academic Performance: Class grades are not solely based on academic abilities. They often include factors like attendance, class participation, homework completion, behavior, quizzes, and tests. This means that a student can earn good grades even if they haven’t mastered the actual material. Grade Improvement Opportunities: Many teachers provide opportunities for students to improve their grades through late homework submissions, extra credit assignments, retaking quizzes or tests, and doing test corrections. This practice can inflate a student’s final grade, making it seem like they are performing better academically than they…
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8 Easy Steps to Build Strong Study Skills
Now that students are back in school, let’s set them up to build strong study skills. I’m teaching these skills to students of all ages – even my high school seniors – to improve their grades and to reduce their stress. To start, they’ll need to get organized so they don’t stress out when facing their long lists of things to do. By using Google Calendar (GCal), they’ll see how and when each homework, paper, or test prep will be done. I like GCal because it’s easy to use and it’s right on their cell phones so they have it with them all the time. Here are the 8 steps…
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How Can We Make Colleges Accessible to All Students?
In my previous article last month, I addressed how affirmative action really affects college admissions by creating substandard classes and dumbing down our best universities. Instead of giving free passes to students who meet ethnic and socioeconomic numbers, let’s level the playing field so all students have similar opportunities to compete for admission based on merit. We need to start teaching academic skills in preschool and offer cutting-edge courses in K-12. Remember there are over 4,000 colleges in the United States, and most will accept all applicants. For the sake of this article, we are only addressing the super selective colleges with acceptance rates below 10%. Academic preschool for all…
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Ramifications of Affirmative Action Ban in College
Who benefits from Affirmative Action? Affirmative action policies were designed to address historical and ongoing inequalities by providing preferential opportunities to Black and Hispanic students that have been marginalized or disadvantaged. These policies were aimed to promote diversity, inclusion, and equal representation in education. Who is targeted by Affirmative Action? Critics of affirmative action argue that it is unfair to Asians and Whites who may be denied admission to as a result of these policies. They believe that affirmative action can result in reverse discrimination by favoring individuals based on their race or gender, rather than their individual merit. It undermines the principles of fairness and equality; students should be…
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Why Are Students Taking So Many AP Classes?
Parents and students mistakenly believe that taking AP classes is equivalent to taking college courses, and that taking a full load of them will improve their chances of getting into selective colleges. People hear rumors and spread inaccurate information. Here is the real scoop on AP courses and how to get into top colleges: Problem with AP Courses:AP Classes are NOT college-level:Some students believe that by taking AP classes in high school they will be able to skip the same subject introductory courses in college. While this may sound good, AP classes only cover about a third or a half of what is taught in college classes. When entering freshmen…
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Tiny Turtles Tell Tales
A friend of mine who used to be a student called me from college the other day. He asked me to look at his astronomy homework. I thought it was perfect, and he told me he called because he didn’t do it. In fact, none of his classmates were doing any of their homework. They were using Artificial Intelligence (AI).He felt conflicted about it. In high school, he and I had long conversations about why students cheat, and he really needed to talk to an adult about this. I was honored, I said, and I wasn’t all that worried, in terms of the future of education. I told him that…
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Explore and Expand
Ordinary creativity is extraordinarily important– Dr. James Catterall Devote your child’s summer to creativity. Yesterday, a news story I was watching in my living room showed the town less than a mile from my spot on the couch, and it looked like New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. Half houses and half cars poking up from a flat and endless expanse of mud brown. A motionless lake as far as the drone could photograph, sitting there waiting. They said it might be a year or more before residents could return. Right after Hurricane Katrina, I was teaching AP Environmental Science, and we spent time looking at how architects and civil engineers…
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Do Smartphones Help or Hinder Students in the Classroom?
Smartphones are facing scrutiny in classrooms from K-12 to college. Some teachers prohibit cell phones inside the classroom because their alerts, text messages, and social media updates are a distraction to the students. Other teachers allow them because students need easy access to information, assignments and calendars. Are smartphones interfering with academic productivity and learning? While students are clicking on messages and checking out images of their friends, these interactions on their smartphones often trigger anxiety, and FoMo (fear of missing out) when they see that their friends are engaged in exciting activities while they’re stuck in a classroom or their bedrooms. Although the students may physically be in the…
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Caramel, Beige and Pink
Race is a mirage but one that humanity has organized itself around in very real ways. – Ibram X. Kendi My son asked me the other day about our different skin colors. He’s six, and something that might have been affecting him for several years is suddenly something he can put into words: “What color am I Mama?” “You have absolutely beautiful, caramel-colored skin,” I said. “What color are you?” he asked. I thought for a moment. “Pink and spotty,” I said. I’m an aging surfer, and this was the most accurate description I could come up with. I wondered if I had been correct in how this conversation went.…
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The Excavators on the Playground
I spent three years involved in writing and defending the California Preschool Foundations. State-sponsored preschool is a marvelous concept, and there were hundreds of well-intentioned people who needed to have a say in what the curriculum ought to be. The meetings required microphones and convention centers to accommodate everyone who knew about preschool. I was proud of the results, and very happy that all preschoolers in my state would have strong art, science, physical education and SEL (social-emotional learning). Years later, specialists in our county were making a learning plan for my preschool daughter with special needs. They pulled out the books I helped write to decide what her goals…
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Teach Peace
Teach Peace By Lisa Catterall One exercise we had to do was to use a long list of “invisible privileges” to rate ourselves and our own privilege. It was painful on an empathetic level, and for me, as a woman, and as a person who identifies as bisexual, on a very direct level as well. Many of the privileges on the list are ones that I didn’t have due to one or both of those statuses in my own life. Imagine there’s no countries, it isn’t hard to do… nothing to kill or die for –John Lennon At the beginning of this year, our administration announced that the school would…
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School Begins
Rocks By Lisa Catterall Today, I finally remembered the rocks. Then I looked at my classroom and the way I had suddenly made my messy creative space neat as a pin, and I reflected on how I’d never stressed neatness so much with my students as I had in these first few days. This world’s anguish is no different from the love we insist on holding back.-Aberjhani Getting my classroom ready It’s almost there; the posters are up and supplies organized, but there is one thing I haven’t done yet. Do you know what it is? I haven’t placed a basket of fist-sized rocks in the front by where I…
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A Glimpse Through the Keyhole
A Glimpse Through the Keyhole Fake News, Free Press and Education By Lisa Catterall …the only path to lasting global peace will be education, of the unbiased sort that provides a scaffolding for the soul, a habit of critical thought, a passion for truth, and the humility to keep on learning for a lifetime. With guns you can kill terrorists. With education you can kill terrorism.– Malala Yousafzai Yesterday a friend of mine showed me an image of a train station in Poland that had baby strollers lined up across the station platform. The strollers were loaded with bottles, blankets, diapers, and supplies. Mothers in the town in Poland knew…
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Teacher’s Desk
Roots and Wings By Lisa Catterall Children make your life important. — Erma Bombeck I’m staring at a dresser covered with dirty glasses. They have rings of dried and yellowed milk, encrusted smoothie droplets, and they are sitting on top of a stack of plates, some with pizza crusts hanging out. All that goes through my mind this time is a meme my best friend sent me. It said “If you don’t like their messy room, wait until their room is empty…” My best friend has always been one academic year ahead of me in the parenting game, from the time our kids met at age nine months (mine) and…
