Erica Coker Jeikowski

Excited to be back home!😁🐆

Megan Rapinoe says the Olympics requiring women’s sports to be played by women is “hateful” and has no basis in science. Sue Bird agrees. Retired women’s athletes supporting their own erasure from sports is wild to see.

When grades are rising simultaneous to literacy rates dropping, it says a few things about our schools: 1. We don’t competently teach reading. 2. We’re afraid to let students and parents find this out. 3. We’re willing to lie to make sure they won’t.

I will likely elaborate later on this, but here we go: I think elementary- and middle-school attitudes have crept into high-school, and that is a very bad thing.

Heard by every teacher ever attempting to give a suggestion to their administration. 🙄

There is something so SO profoundly wrong about one of the fittest, most dominant athletes of all time advertising weight-loss drugs during one of the most watched events on earth. Bleak doesn’t even cover it. What a crying shame.

In the last 50years, special education has shifted from “despite my child’s severe disability, he has a right to an education” to “my little boy struggles to focus sometimes so I demand that he gets double time on tests and no penalties for late work”

So, we take kids who are struggling academically and lock them into a legally binding document (IEP) which focuses on accommodations that lower standards instead of remediate. This makes efforts by teachers at increasing rigor in order to truly push these kids a risky proposition, triggering compliance issues and threats of litigation. Great idea!

Paying kids $5 million dollars when the whole point of nil was to get paid from jersey sales, video games, and their own ads.

If the goal is 100% graduation regardless of effort, we should just hand the diplomas out at freshman orientation. At least then the kids who don't want to be there could leave, and the teachers could get back to the students who actually do.

"Timmy, how do you think Jonathan felt when you shoved him off his chair? Can we find a shared way forward?" The absurdity of "restorative conversations" is the assumption that the child is a sociopath who never learned that some behavior is bad. We act as if Timmy needs an explanation of human empathy, rather than a kid who knew exactly what he was doing. Timmy knows he shouldn’t have shoved Jonathan. He just didn't care, because he knew the "consequence" would be a fifteen-minute chat where an adult explains the obvious to him while he waits for lunch.

I just sat through a staff meeting pretending I don't know why a teacher "retired." She recorded a colleague doing math work for a student, who turned it in as their own. When she took it to admin, she was told to retire or be reported to HR for recording staff. The "retired" teacher is considering going to the media because she has a lot to share. There's so much the public doesn't know about what goes on in schools.

I always hear “but students are asking about it!” as a justification for teachers addressing political or explicit topics in class Not a good reason “Ask your parents. Today we’re talking about polynomial,” is a great response

@BryIsTheGuy @jliemandt This is a real trend. Teachers are leaving or being fired because they refuse to inflate grades. The school admin doesn't want to deal with the parents. It's like all accountability and ethics are out the window.

“Credit recovery” is extra credit for neglect.

We stopped just teaching kids things and started burying knowledge inside projects and group work, then slapped the label “inquiry” on it. But you can’t expect a student to discover something they don’t yet have the words or background even to notice.

When a school preaches community but administration refuses to support teachers in matters of discipline, it undermines the whole endeavor. Once students know order is optional, there is no community building, no matter how many posters about respect you hang in the hallways.

The Abby Zwerner case needs to be talked about in teacher circles. This teacher and other professionals were ignored when they raised concern about a student. This is happening far too often.

In today’s schools, the teacher who holds the line—on deadlines, behavior, grades, standards—faces pushback from every direction: students, parents, administrators, and SPED. The teacher who holds them to nothing? Nary a word about it. You get the behaviors you incentivize.

Students can say they hate school and refuse to do any work and still have counselors begging teachers to pass them. It's asinine.

Parents, don't trust the grades that your child's school gives to be an accurate representation It behooves them to give everyone As and Bs because good grades cause no problems Look at their test scores. Ask them to read out loud or a few basic questions about history.