Parenthetical.net

1. No Brownies at Bake Sales, but Doritos May Be O.K. raised my blood pressure way more than a whole plate of brownies (mmm… brownies):

Nine months after effectively banning most fund-raising food sales in city schools, a city panel will vote Wednesday on an amended regulation that will allow student groups to sell items [...]

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Following up on last week’s post about books in libraries… the NYTimes Room for Debate blog posted some of the comments from students. Most didn’t say much new, but here are a couple of thoughts I liked:
One signed just “a thought”:

Also, books (or any other printed material) cannot be changed by any means without [...]

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I think Kristin recommended this one to me, in which case, props to you! Loved it. I finished it over a dinner shift at work and was totally sobbing in the library kitchen. But don’t worry; it’s not just a sad book — there’s plenty of funny, romantic, and hopeful in there [...]

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If you write, or care about writing, or teach students who write, you must read “Writing English as a Second Language”. It’s a talk William Zinsser gave to new international students at the Columbia Graduate School for Journalism, and it’s so brilliant it made me choke up a little.
It helped me understand the writing [...]

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This summarizes every movie about urban public school teachers ever:
Nice White Lady.

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What I didn’t want to announce when I read the first Bartimaeus (because it was still in the works) was that I read it in preparation for a school visit from its author! He was here yesterday, signing loads of books and talking to my middle schoolers about the writing process.
He read [...]

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This morning I checked out a digital camera to a middle schooler. The only one we had left was one of the old ones that stores the pictures on a floppy disk. I explained this to my student. Her friend overheard and asked, “What’s a floppy?”
The first student’s answer? “It’s like [...]

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Via my dear friend Eric at The Oyster’s Garter:
Who would win in a fight, Capt. Picard or Darth Vader?

I showed my 8th graders the tree octopus page today, by way of teaching website evaluation in a way that didn’t make them start snoring and drooling on their computers. “Why would anyone make a page [...]

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