School & District Management Blog

View From the Bronx: An Urban Teacher's Perspective

Ilana Garon (@IlanaGaron) is an English teacher at a public high school in the Bronx, N.Y., and holds masters degrees in both English education and fine arts. In the past 10 years, she has taught every level of high school English, including ESL and AP, SAT Prep, and even math in emergency situations. She is the author of “Why Do Only White People Get Abducted by Aliens?” Teaching Lessons from the Bronx. This blog is no longer being updated.

Education Opinion Tough Love: Can Discipline Be Leveraged to Help Students Learn?
Suspension, once the student's infractions have gone up the ladder of referral, seems to be the only "scary" enough punishment to serve as a disincentive to further misbehavior; while this can be useful for removing disruptive students so that others can learn, there is still the problem of educating these youngsters when they are removed (sometimes consistently) from class.
Ilana Garon, January 7, 2014
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3 min read
Education Opinion Simple Ideas, Big Impact: Providence Takes On the 'Word Gap'
According to a 1990 study of families all over the economic spectrum, which measured how many words (numerically) were spoken in these households, kids from low-income families were exposed to 30 million fewer words than their more affluent peers by age three.
Ilana Garon, December 31, 2013
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2 min read
Education Opinion Doing Trade Schools Right: Georgia's 'Pathway' Program Revitalizes CTE
The cost of a bachelor's degree is ever growing, while it's value in the job market continues to diminish; offering students more options and teaching new skills makes good sense academically and economically.
Ilana Garon, December 18, 2013
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2 min read
Education Opinion Poverty and the PISA: Aggregating for Economics
The strongest implications of PISA data are not about American achievement as a whole, but about the adverse effects of poverty on student achievement.
Ilana Garon, December 13, 2013
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1 min read
Education Opinion PISA Scores: What Do They Show?
According to scores on the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), which were released today, American students are lagging behind their global peers in science and math.
Ilana Garon, December 4, 2013
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2 min read
Education Opinion A Letter To My Students, Who Just Discovered My 'Secret Life'
This week a whole bunch of my students realized that there is a blog being kept and a book that has been written by someone who happens to look very much like their English teacher, and even has the same name.
Ilana Garon, November 26, 2013
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2 min read
Education Opinion The Tale of the Truth Locker: A 10th Grade Story
Every one in a while, our lives are changed by an event of such sweeping emotional power and intensity that we're left speechless. Maybe it's the ballet Swan Lake. Maybe it's the movie The Notebook. Or maybe it's the Truth Locker.
Ilana Garon, November 20, 2013
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3 min read
Education Opinion Is Literacy Fun-Damental? Teaching Reading for Pleasure
A source of constant bedevilment for me, and probably for most English teachers these days, is the fact that many kids will tell you they just don't "like" reading.
Ilana Garon, November 12, 2013
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3 min read
Education Opinion On Being a Teacher and a Runner
When I was training, I couldn't wait for the marathon to be over so that I wouldn't feel pressured to work 20-mile runs into my weekend, and then feel guilty if I only made it 17. But it also represented a terrific and unexpected way to bond with my students.
Ilana Garon, November 7, 2013
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1 min read
Education Opinion Too Many Tests, Too Little Time: CCSS, RTTT, and Test Corporations
As long as Common Core State Standards and Race to the Top are in place, state departments of education are a veritable cash machine to which test-making corporations like Pearson have all-too-easy access.
Ilana Garon, October 28, 2013
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2 min read
Education Opinion Lessons in Deception: A Decade After Implementation, NCLB 'Safety Net' Yields Fraud and Misuse
Schools labeled as "under-performing" were required by NCLB to set aside a portion of their federal funding to support outside tutoring services for economically disadvantaged students. However, with little to no oversight in how these federal monies were spent, tutoring companies at best failed to help students, and at worst committed outright fraud.
Ilana Garon, October 21, 2013
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3 min read
Education Opinion Blurred Lines: Are Plagiarizing Students Dishonest, Confused, or Both?
Do students fully understand the dishonesty involved in plagiarism?
Ilana Garon, October 16, 2013
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2 min read
Education Opinion Want to Improve Students' Educational Outcomes? Start with Their Parents.
On Tuesday, results of a study called the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies were released by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), bringing to light not altogether surprising information: American adults--not just kids--lag behind their global peers in math, reading, and problem-skills. The study findings "reinforced just how large the gap is between the nation's high- and low-skilled workers and how hard it is to move ahead when your parents haven't." Adults with college-educated parents were far more likely to have gone to college themselves, and to have higher skills and better wages as a result. Unfortunately, these results belie the prevalence of the iconic first-generation college student, who defeats all odds and lifts him or herself to a better station than that of the previous generation.
Ilana Garon, October 9, 2013
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3 min read
Illustration of hands cupped holding a big heart.
Andreus/iStock/Getty Images Plus
Teaching Opinion A Valentine to My Own 'Tough Teacher'
Ilana Garon shares the story of her own “toughest teacher.”
Ilana Garon, September 30, 2013
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4 min read
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