Sammy Mack is the Miami-based education reporter for StateImpact Florida. Sammy previously was a digital editor and health care policy reporter for WLRN - Miami Herald News. She is a St. Petersburg native and a product of Florida public schools. She even took the first FCAT.
One of the responses came from Neyda Borges, a teacher at Miami Lakes Educational Center. She wrote this essay about what she learned in school this year:
It’s family literacy night at Holmes Elementary School in Liberty City, and first grader Adam Redding is reading a poem about plants while he absentmindedly tips dirt out of a plastic cup and onto a laptop.
Sammy Mack / StateImpact
In this classroom, dirt on a keyboard is okay. The green and white computer is a rugged little machine from One Laptop Per Child, the organization best known for trying to put an inexpensive computer into the hands of every child in the developing world. Adam’s cup of dirt is part of a lesson plan that involves researching plants on the laptop, reading a poem, and seeding a corn kernel in a cup.
Welcome to the one-to-one classroom. One computer for every student. Continue Reading →
Tell us the story of your biggest lesson, most surprising realization or proudest classroom accomplishment.
Are you a teacher who learned to love the Common Core? Did a professor help you understand a subject better? Or maybe your biggest lesson was how to navigate lunchroom politics. We want to hear from teachers, parents, faculty and students.
Governor Rick Scott signed a broad-ranging education bill this session that—among many changes—establishes an entirely online bachelor’s degree program through the University of Florida.
Marin / freedigitalphotos.net
The University of Florida will offer bachelors degrees that can be completed entirely online.
UF already has experience offering online courses and degree programs that allow students to finish the last two years of a bachelor’s degree online. But this is the first time a Florida university—or any state school in the country—will offer an entirely digital degree.
Still, there are models for what this new online institution at UF might look like. Models like Western Governors University—a private, not-for-profit university with more than 40,000 students in 50 states.
WGU president Robert Mendenhall has been with the school since 1999. He spoke with StateImpact Florida about lessons learned and what UF administrators and students can expect of online degree programs.
That’s the tone in a series of exasperated editorials aimed at critics of new education standards known as Common Core.
David Castillo Dominici / freedigitalphotos.net
Supporters of the Common Core have taken an exasperated tone with critics.
Florida has been leading the consortium of 45 states who are developing Common Core standards for education. In the past few weeks, objections to the new national benchmarks—and the new standardized tests that will accompany them—have been getting louder.
Last week, students in New York sat for the state’s first standardized tests tied to Common Core. The New York Times was among the publications that reported on complaints: Tearful students, not enough time to finish the exams, parents who didn’t want their kids to be guinea pigs for the latest in standardized testing.
As the spring semester winds down around the country, one teacher, Gerald Conti, is not going quietly.
flickr / griffithchris
Gerald Conti's resignation letter is making waves with critics of the Common Core.
Conti is retiring from Westhill High School in Syracuse, NY at the end of this school year and his resignation letter has become a manifesto for critics of the Common Core.
In his letter — which he posted in full on Facebook — Conti laments that the push towards standardized testing and the Common Core has fundamentally changed teaching:
“STEM rules the day and “data driven” education seeks only conformity, standardization, testing and a zombie-like adherence to the shallow and generic Common Core, along with a lockstep of oversimplified so-called Essential Learnings. … My profession is being demeaned by a pervasive atmosphere of distrust, dictating that teachers cannot be permitted to develop and administer their own quizzes and tests (now titled as generic “assessments”) or grade their own students’ examinations.“
According to a profile of Conti from The Post Standard, the retiring teacher sent the letter in February, but it blew up on the web after he posted it to Facebook in March. More than 2,500 people have shared the letter since March 29th.
“For the last decade or so, I have had two signs hanging above the blackboard at the front of my classroom, they read, “Words Matter” and “Ideas Matter”. While I still believe these simple statements to be true, I don’t feel that those currently driving public education have any inkling of what they mean.“
What do you make of the letter? Leave us a note in the comments.
Hi, StateImpact Florida audience. I’m Sammy. Nice to meet you.
I’m thrilled to be the newest addition to the StateImpact Florida team—working closely with John O’Connor to bring you stories about the impact of education policies.
Sammy Mack is the Miami-based StateImpact reporter.
I’m based out of the WLRN – Miami Herald Newsroom, where I’ve been working as an editor and health care policy reporter for the past few years.
In a way, StateImpact Florida is a return for me. I’m a product of Florida education. I grew up in St. Petersburg. I’m a graduate of St. Petersburg Senior High School (go Green Devils!). I took the first FCAT. And before that, I sat for its predecessor, Florida Writes.
Fun side note: My first education assignment was to report on Tamagotchi policies in 1997. This was when I was a teen writer for the St. Petersburg Times (now Tampa Bay Times) Monday morning kids’ section. I got a notebook and monitored the halls of Seminole Middle School (where I was an 8th grader) for signs of the utterly annoying, oddly compelling digital pet craze that was allegedly sweeping the nation.
What I observed? “Day 1: No sightings. Day 2: An announcement was made that all virtual pets at school will be confiscated. No sightings. Day 3: No sightings.”
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