BLOG 2.0

The Journal of the Colorado Education Association carried an article about this blog in the last issue. The article mentions that discussion has focused on moving the blog one step further forward by offering a community platform for members to help tell their stories about the daily classroom reality that we face as teachers and support staff from day to day. I also encourage members to comment on daily posts and make that a forum for discussion about particular topics.

Here is the original mission statement of the blog:

Our national dialog on education, and especially public education has taken a decidedly political turn over the last two decades. It also, for the most part, lacks the depth, complexity, and frankly reality, required for productive discussion. That reality of life and living inside the classroom, in concert with the larger issues, brings real meaning to the table. And there are immense stakes in the outcome of that discussion. What kind of culture are we? What are our political values? How is knowledge accountable to society? What is a citizen? What kind of people are we going to be? Is education a commodity? Do we believe in equal access, or what people can buy? Do we value teachers? We still struggle with segregation. We still deny the hard questions and grasp for simplistic answers.

I would like to thank the Colorado Education Association, which has kindly provided a forum for this kind of communication and dialog. To boldly blog and, well, see what happens. It is risky, innovative, and exciting. (It is worth repeating that the content here is solely my responsibility and does not necessarily reflect the views or policies of CEA.) This is the story and reflection of that surreal classroom where reality blends and jumbles with outside pressures, fads, ideology and power struggles. It is where I live almost every day. It's why I teach. The cast of characters includes students, teachers, staff, parents, guardians, professional associations, unions, politicians, school boards, corporations, huckters, and many, many surprises. I invite you to join me in that surreal class and, maybe, come to some answers for the hard questions. Nobody gets voted off the island, and there is no final exam; the final exam is what kind of public education--what kinds of schools--we choose to have.

In that spirit, I would like to invite the almost 40,000 members of the Colorado Education Association, and any other reader/teachers or support staff to submit your posts about the daily goings on and battles that we face daily in the classroom. The goal is to help us, and the public at large, understand the reality of the classroom and move beyond the simplistic view of public education as a "broken" problem. The reality most often counters well the inaccurate and error-ridden public media reports about education and education policy.

Please send your ideas, or a fully written post, focusing on events, personalities, issues, etc., that you deal with in the classroom. I will moderate the forum, and post whatever I can.

Thank you in advance for participating. Send to ceablogger@inbox.com