Metaphors!

I actually had something to do today! Amazing!

I was teaching upper-level ESL children about quotation marks, mixed numbers, and the Underground Railroad. The first two they found to be fairly straight forward. But the Underground Railroad was confusing as hell for them. Granted, it was confusing for me when I was in middle school and actually spoke the language well.

We read a short passage about the Underground Railroad, and then they had to answer fairly sophisticated questions about the passage, one of them being why the Underground Railroad was called the Underground Railroad. Even though the passage stated it was a way escaped slaves went from safe house to safe house until they got far enough north to be free, almost all of them were picturing an actual track underground. Although, luckily, they all knew enough not to think it was an actual railroad. Why must history be so complicated?

In other news, this article about standardized tests is fantastic. I know, I post a lot of these, but this one calls out specific, concise reasons why we should have other methods of testing knowledge.

Here's another article in a completely different vein, about how much power one student can have, and about the idiocy regarding science that is prevalent throughout the Bible belt. Haaaaaaaalelujah!