An educational blog post on educators with blogs

"My Island View," an educational blog by Tom Whitby, is artfully written with poise and precision that I find very appealing.  The blog has been ongoing since 2010, and has received several nominations from Edublog, a site that hosts close to 1.3 million blogs on education.  He's a 40-year veteran of the NYC public school system, and currently teaches Education at St. Joseph College.

Accolades aside, a running concern I have with the blog is a lack of citation in some of the key sections.  In a post about Education as a profession, he cites a district-wide ousting of every faculty member in a school in LA after two teachers were accused of molesting students; a cursory Google search found articles in the LA Times about the teachers, but nothing about the mass evictions of an entire school's faculty.  Granted, Tom Whitby does use hyperlinks on many occasions, but when you make claims of such magnitude it's important to make citations readily available.

Nonetheless, Tom's most popular postings are fantastic.  In "We don't need no stink'n textbooks," I was particularly interested in his approach to moving beyond traditional textbooks.  Although Tom is not as radical as Alfie Kohn when it comes to curriculum grounded in the textbook, he makes great points about the purpose of the curriculum; standard textbooks are stagnant, and new ones are necessary to be interactive in order to meet the real goals of learning.

Teaching the content is the process, getting students to use the content and independently obtaining, and continuing to evaluate and use more content should be the goal.  Tom Whitby.

 Tom also brings up engaging the multimillion (billion?) dollar textbook industry.  He makes reference to a conference held by Discovery Education, where educators and industry reps alike came to the same conclusions about the merits of mixing traditional textbooks with online interaction.

The thing that makes this blog great is an added mix of practicality.  At the end of his post Tom gave Twitter recommendations on the major players at the conference:

@rmbyrne, @courosa, @NMHS_principal, @bethstill, @teach42, @dwarlick, @dlaufenberg, @mbteach, @audreywatters, @shareski, @sciencegoddess, @wfryer, @imcguy, @djakes, @jonbecker, @principalspage, @joycevalenza, @lrougeux, @halldavidson, and of course @tomwhitby

There was also a fine post on how to use Twitter, which was very refreshing for someone just getting  started with the cyber social sensation.  His prime advice: the more you use it the more you will understand how to use it.  Again with the practical advice, Tom flags "teaching Tuesdays," as a great way to connect with educators and follow them on Twitter (another piece of advice: read profiles before following someone!) On Tuesdays use #tt, #TT or #teachtuesday, I'll def try it out this week!

I've already started using Twitter, downloaded the app on my beloved smartphone, and can't wait to leverage social media to the fullest.

Issues surrounding smartphones in the classroom are also fleshed out in a great posting by Tom.  Yes, they can be distracting if students use them to communicate by talking or texting, but so are PA system alerts, kids next door returning from a field trip, Test Days, lawn mowing, a nice beautiful day etc..  Smartphones, Tom maintains, should be embraced by teachers because they allow a greater degree of engagement and allow learning via Gardner's multiple intelligences; a student can record a lecture, take a photo of slides, check facts as the teacher lectures etc...

On the flip side, I've had a chance to speak with a few teachers, elementary school teachers, who have had problems with students watching porn in class.  Maybe I'll be able to suss out who is watching what once I get into the classroom, but the lack of control does give me the shivers- like, will I be held responsible as a teacher if a student is watching XXX movies when the class is working on multiplication tables?

I've been saving the best post for last, on the existential nature of teaching as a profession.  In "Teaching isn't really a profession," Tom picks apart the haters who deride teachers for having a union.  Case in point, Tom cites a Harvard Educational Review study that shows states with teacher's unions outperform non-union states.  Tom brings up the "rotten apple" argument regarding bad teachers, which is legit although I keep thinking about Tom as a teacher in NYC school system when that's also home of the "Rubber Rooms" (although the NYT reported that they were reformed two years ago).

This is my favorite quote in the whole blog so far, and certainly unions will be the topic of more of my future posts.

It is the very lack of respect for teaching as a profession that forced teachers into considering unionizing in the first place. Tom Whitby.

All things considered, the blog is great and I can certainly see why it has been nominated for several awards.  This is definitely a blog I will continue to follow.