I meant to reblog this several days ago. It is topical with the suspension of a high school teacher in Edmonton for giving zeros. Marks are a currency and abstract, therefore when given do serious damage to children. Alberta has 1/4 of its students leave school. What role did marks play in there exodus? What about the students who stay? Who makes the decisions? It is certainly not the classroom teacher. It is bureaucrats, technocrats, and politicians who form committees. The last time God used a committee was to design the camel. That was a long time ago. If I am a professional, treat me like one. When you ask my opinion, I do not offer as an expert. I offer it as a classroom teacher who sees the impact of poor policies on students every day.

elketeaches's avatarelketeaches

Major debate regarding giving zeroes to students in Canada right now.  Joe Bower gives great reasons NOT to do this here….

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About ivonprefontaine

In keeping with bell hooks and Noam Chomsky, I consider myself a public and dissident intellectual. Part of my work is to move beyond (transcend) institutional dogmas that bind me to defend freedom, raising my voice to be heard on behalf of those who seek equity and justice in all their forms. I completed my PhD in Philosophy of Leadership Studies at Gonzaga University, Spokane, WA. My dissertation and research was how teachers experience becoming teachers and their role as leaders. I focus on leading, communicating, and innovating in organizations. This includes mindfuful servant-leadership, World Cafe events, Appreciative Inquiry, and expressing one's self through creativity. I offer retreats, workshops, and presentations that can be tailored to your organzations specific needs. I published peer reviewed articles about schools as learning organizations, currere as an ethical pursuit, and hope as an essential element of adult eductaion. I published three poems and am currently preparing my poetry to publish as an anthology of poetry. I present on mindful leadership, servant leadership, schools as learning organizations, how teachers experience becoming teachers, assessement, and critical thinking. I facilitate mindfulness, hospitality retreats. and World Cafe Events using Appreciative Inquiry. I am writing and researching about various forms of leadership, how teachers inform and form their identity as a particular teacher, schools as learning organizations, hope, nonviolence and its anticipatory relationship with the future, as essential elements to teaching and learning. Academic publications can be found at Ivon Gile Prefontaine on ResearchGate

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