I realise it has been some time since my last post, but I would like to make up for that by offering 10 new resources that both students and teachers will find very useful. These are items I have created and used with real students in real classrooms, so I can be confident in sharing them with you.
Just go to my Home page and you will see them listed under "Updates".
Please enjoy them. Greg.

I sent this email today to respond to a posting about a principal who threatened a family with serious consequences if they stood in the way of their son completing a standardised test. The original post is here:http://theinnovativeeducator.blogspot.com/2012/04/tell-bully-principal-how-you-feel.html 


I hope you will look at the case and consider taking some action too.
"Dear Principal,
Sadly what your vision statement lacks is the same respect, acceptance, celebration or valuing of parents. In fact it doesn't even mention parents.
You can hide behind rules if you like - I suppose your job depends on it to some degree - but it is more fundamental to recognise that parents, not legislators, have the primary responsibility for the education of their children, and for the choices of how and where that will happen.
So, I do not agree with your approach to student Joseph. It will do nothing for your attempts at forging a school-home partnership, especially if your approach is that the school is right and parents are wrong. This is an unequal partnership at best, and sounds quite hollow given your threats of intervention.
Sure, you have the 'discretion' to contact CPS, but equally you have the choice not to. If you want to work with parents, I would respectfully suggest that such an approach would be counterproductive.
More fundamentally, you are violating both the rights of Joseph and his parents. I refer you to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (a much higher authority than you quoted in your email). In particular, I would highlight:
(1) governments should respect the rights of parents in guiding their children (you do not)
(2) governments are to assist families in nurturing their children (you are trying to separate them)
(3) when making decisions, children have the right to say what they think should happen and have their opinion taken into account (did you even talk to Joseph?)
(4) children have a particular responsibility to respect the rights their parents, and education should aim to develop respect for the values and culture of their parents (if you don't respect their values, how much less will Joseph do so by following your example?)
I suggest you should re-consider your position, apologise to Joseph, his family, any other students and families you have abused, and, finally you should act as an advocate for families rather than their adversary by lobbying for them with legislators in your State who obviously are disregarding rights accepted by the US government on behalf of the country.
Greg.

Principled Possibilities - Ideas for Teaching is a unique publication representing the summation of four years of graduate study, and my own experiences, discoveries, experiments and successes over eight years of teaching throughout Asia and the Pacific. Uniquely the book includes: - a wide selection of academic papers, conference and training presentations, and curriculum and planning documents, - links to websites and other resources for exploring the topics further and contacting the author, - ideas ranging from working with absolute young beginners to adult and upper-intermediate level students, - discussions of current challenges and controversies in teaching, - approaches to online and computer-assisted learning, and - suggestions in the field of English language teaching.  


Here is the full introduction to give you some more details:My transition from office work to education was a late one, and came about more by accident than design.

Having successfully trained as a classical musician, I realised that performance opportunities would be limited at my age, so it seemed that music education would be the most logical progression. Having successfully trained as a teacher, I discovered that music teaching opportunities would also be scarce, apart from those occasionally arising in outback Australia.

At the suggestion of a friend I decided to dip my toes into the field of English language teaching by working at a winter camp in Shanghai, China. It was the joy of that experience which sparked my desire to work and travel further.

Several training courses later I began my new career, at first in Australia with children and later with adults from Europe, South America and Asia. From there I have experienced life in the Sultanate of Brunei, Malaysia, South Korea and Taiwan, where I am presently located.

While there is much material available in the field of EFL (English as a Foreign Language), I feel that my own experiences, discoveries, experiments, successes and failures over the last eight years in a variety of settings, with children to adults, and with absolute beginners to upper-intermediate students, are worth sharing with others.

The present book, therefore, includes academic papers, conference and training presentations, and curriculum and planning papers to assist fellow educators. Many of these were developed in the context of formal tertiary training in Queensland, Australia, and refer to issues and cases from that location. Nevertheless, they are equally relevant in other English-speaking contexts.

There are also links to my Internet-based materials and websites where electronic versions of many resources included here may be found for the reader’s convenience and further exploration.

I don’t look on this publication as the final authority on all matters of English language teaching, but as part of the ongoing professional support and discussion so vital to our dynamically evolving and collaborative field. This is why I encourage readers to continue the conversation with me and others using the links given throughout.

How can you get this book? Click on the Lulu link on my home page, or go directly here.

In the field in which I work, EFL (teaching English as a foreign language), high-stakes standardized tests are alive and well.

Unfortunately a significant number of students in Korea, Japan, China and Taiwan are not. Why? Because they chose suicide rather than continue their miserable lives as students preparing for these tests.

How can we slow the death rate? We have to cut off the demand for the results of such tests.

Where is the demand coming from? Well, if you look at these excerpts from the sites of the three major language tests – IELTS, TOEIC and TOEFL – you’ll see that just about every government, educational institution, company and organisation in the Western world (and up to 190 countries) demands these tests. So these are the people that need to be convinced of the need to stop.

“IELTS is accepted by most Australian, British, Canadian, Irish, New Zealand and South African academic institutions, over 2,000 academic institutions in the United States, and various professional organisations. It is also a requirement for immigration to Australia and Canada.”

“Today TOEIC® test scores are used by more than 9,000 companies, government agencies and English language learning programs in more than 90 countries, and more than 5 million TOEIC tests were administered last year.”

“The TOEFL® test (Test of English as a Foreign Language™) is the most widely respected English-language test in the world, recognized by more than 7,500 colleges, universities and agencies in more than 130 countries.”

I doubt if the proponents of these tests publish suicide data. Perhaps someone should ask them if they are even aware of, let alone care about, the effects their examinations are having on the lives of so many millions of students. Clearly they are making considerable amounts of money selling these products, but how much of that are they putting back into student counselling and health education? When does turning a blind eye become impossible any longer?

While the questioning of standardized tests on the basis of our growing research base into assessment reliability and validity is well and good, and we can waggle our fingers at those bold enough to attempt cheating, I think there are larger issues at play in using them as the sole or major criterion for making life (and death) decisions.

I can only hope that the discussion will broaden and become part of the mainstream dialogue of those working in this massive educational industry.

Posted today at http://coopcatalyst.wordpress.com/2010/06/22/undoing-the-damage-of-high-stakes-testing/#comment-1189