Keep 'em busy, or Issue a ticket

I always enjoy combinations of stories.  This time it concerns discipline.  In Austin Texas it has been deemed too strict, even racially biassed.  Shira Fishman, by contrast, keeps students busy from the moment they enter her geometry class, thus avoiding bouts of defiance or disruption.  I recognise the practical value of each approach: strict discipline removes the expression of distractions, and has driven up standards in many schools; by keeping students busy likewise, teachers can avoid the tedium, or boredom that sometimes leads to misbehaviour.  As a perennial dreamer, however, one who preferred to be off-task in school, I wonder if we are still trying to shoe-horn students into an unwanted place.  Maybe it is the system that is wrong, not the students' failure to go along with it at all times.

The State is responsible for choosing schools

Education Week looks at a case in Louisville, where the court judged that it is right that the state should choose the school that children attend.  This affects state or public schools only; and it means that students do not necessarily attend the school closest to them.  It is an interesting judgement, one than might avoid sink schools by catchment area.  It needs to be done well, however.

Teacher training is not just a UK issue

As an entrant to teaching I believed that teaching was the most important profession.  Whilst law and medicine might be said to correct our mistakes, teaching was helping to lay the foundation for healthy and well-balanced lives.  I can't say that twenty years of practice helped me to realise that potential; I was happy to leave.  It is interesting nonetheless to read that the same issues of qualification, training, support and consistency are evident in the US.  I write as an ex-English teacher, UK based.