Total Failure in Rhode Island

An unidentified teacher at Central Falls High School in Rhode Island -- where he and all his colleagues were fired -- hung an effigy of President Barack Obama in his classroom. According to news reports, the effigy was found in the classroom by Superintendent Frances Gallo.

Gallo told CNN that the foot-tall Obama doll was found hung by its feet from a white board and was holding a sign that said "Fire Central Falls teachers." Obama has called the firings in Central Falls an example of holding failing schools accountable.

The Central Falls Teachers Union has been fighting the firings at the high school, one of Rhode Island’s worst-performing schools. Jane Sessums, president of the teachers union, said in a written statement that the teacher hung the doll "as part of what he described as a lesson plan."

Black History Month Lessons at Wadsworth Avenue Elementary

From THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Three Los Angeles elementary school teachers accused of giving children portraits of Dennis Rodman, RuPaul and O.J. Simpson to carry in a Black History Month parade have been removed from their classrooms, a school district spokeswoman said.


Children from other classes at the school displayed photos of more appropriate black role models, such as Nelson Mandela, Harriet Tubman and President Obama, Los Angeles Unified School District spokeswoman Gayle Pollard-Terry said.

The incident occurred Friday, [February 26] at Wadsworth Avenue Elementary School in South Los Angeles, where the student body is more than 90 percent Latino.

District Superintendent Ramon Cortines placed the teachers -- all white men who teach first, second and fourth grades -- on administrative leave while an investigation is conducted, Pollard-Terry said.

READ MORE . . .

Urban Techno Power Links

NoteMesh is a free service that allows students in the same class to share notes, thoughts and ideas with each other. It works by creating a wiki for individual classes that users can edit. Very useful and highly recommended!

Voo2do.com is a free, web-based, personal time management service. Beyond a simple "to do list" maker, this organization program empowers the user to track priority, due date and time estimates for each task.

Decision-Maker is a very simple and very effective tool to assist in making intelligent, informed decisions.

i-Prioritize is a free personal time management tool.

Mojo-Note is a free and fun organization tool of to-do lists.

Open CourseWare Consortium is a free and open digital publication of high quality university‐level educational materials. These materials are organized as courses, and often include course planning materials and evaluation tools as well as thematic content. OpenCourseWare are free and openly licensed, accessible to anyone, anytime via the internet.

Citation Machine helps students and professional researchers to properly credit the information that they use. Its primary goal is to make it easy for researchers to cite their information sources according to APA, MLA, Turabian or Chicago standards.