Back in 77 or so, I volunteered as an advisor to a human relations youth camp. The kids were all 16, about 120 of them, (Continue Reading)
Pat’s Polemics
On-going brilliance
Response to David’s post
09/08/2007 Pat Barrett Add CommentIn a message dated 9/8/2007 8:26:57 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time, pbarrett@COX.NET writes: David, the attack of 9/11 led to the attack on Afghanistan, not on (Continue Reading)
Response to Godfrey’s post re multiculturalism
09/08/2007 Pat Barrett Add CommentHere is Godfrey’s post: So it seems you are saying that informing American students about other people and their cultures will not have a strong (Continue Reading)
Ebonics Redux
09/01/2007 Pat Barrett Add CommentHere it is again. The Houston Police Department has put out an oh so clever “ghetto dictionary of Ebonics”. Just as we saw in 1994, (Continue Reading)
Two Days in Middle School
08/31/2007 Pat Barrett Add CommentI had to throw over my job teaching Sp at a charter school so I’m subbing now, 2 days at a Middle School, and how (Continue Reading)
Reply to Godfrey
08/25/2007 Pat Barrett Add CommentI don’t have the room here to demonstrate how languages balance themselves when some form is “lost” i.e. becomes moribund and eventually dies out. I’m (Continue Reading)
Adding new words
08/25/2007 Pat Barrett Add CommentTwo examples from my own speech of how words can be misinterpreted. About 45 years ago I made a friend (he’s still a very close (Continue Reading)
Reply to Alex’ post – what is communicative teaching?
08/23/2007 Pat Barrett Add CommentTalk about Pandora’s box!! It’s like asking a politician what he’ll do for us. OK, communicative approach…. With a teaching certificate, you must have taken (Continue Reading)
similarities between teaching and psychotherapy
08/20/2007 Pat Barrett Add CommentTrue confession time: I’m a bit of a mystic. Not in the sense that I believe in things unseen but in the sense that I (Continue Reading)
To consider
08/19/2007 Pat Barrett Add CommentJust off the top of my head, an example of folk etymology on my part. I thought “sleight of hand” was spelled “slight”. Altho both (Continue Reading)
How People Slide Around in Arguments
07/28/2007 Pat Barrett Add CommentIn a recent long and heated exchange on a listserv I saw something over and over which seems to be inherent in human thought processes. (Continue Reading)
Proficiency and Mastery
07/27/2007 Pat Barrett Add CommentMy own take on them is that proficiency is a term from SLA (second language acquisition) and refers to what a student can do with (Continue Reading)
How Much To Practice – a post
07/26/2007 Pat Barrett Add CommentHere are some examples to add to my response to Amy Pento’s response to Mary Young re: practice. Go to the flteach list and read (Continue Reading)
Now We Know What It’s Like….
07/23/2007 Pat Barrett Add CommentJosh Rushing, reading from his book, Mission Al-Jazeera, tells of operating out of Washington, D.C. for the English-language service of Al-Jazeera, the Middle Eastern news (Continue Reading)
Good Old Timothy Mason
07/22/2007 Pat Barrett Add CommentBack in the 90s, Timothy Mason was a frequent contributor to flteach. He has a series of responses to the battle between Krashen and Ron (Continue Reading)
The Cuban Healthcare System
07/22/2007 Pat Barrett Add CommentIn a post today, June 22, to flteach, a New York teacher cited a documentary film on the Cuban healthcare system in response to posts (Continue Reading)
Warm Fuzzies
07/21/2007 Pat Barrett Add CommentKristy Placido put a message out on moretprs thanking everyone and acknowledging the honor of receiving an award at NTPRS. She made it very clear (Continue Reading)
Please look at the dates
07/21/2007 Pat Barrett Add CommentLook at the dates of the “assignments” listed here (this is from a List I am on that deals with slavery): The court records of (Continue Reading)
Old South/New South
07/21/2007 Pat Barrett Add CommentToday there was a piece on npr about the Jackson (Mississippi) Advocate, a newspaper renowned for its strong civil rights stand. What is germane to (Continue Reading)
Sicko
07/20/2007 Pat Barrett Add CommentSome of the posts on flteach are addressing the movie Sicko because it deals with the health care system in countries like Canada, France and (Continue Reading)
Response to What’s Interesting About Grammar
07/02/2007 Pat Barrett Add CommentAfter the initial responses on this thread, I stopped responding to individual posts and printed out all the subsequent posts up to the point where (Continue Reading)
Well, here then, take it!!!
07/02/2007 Pat Barrett Add CommentAs we received news of the Supreme Court’s decision in school integration cases, there was something about the term ’color blind’ that tickled my memory. (Continue Reading)
Signs of the times – linguistically
07/01/2007 Pat Barrett Add CommentDespite being a modest sort, I am forced to admit that I live in a tony, up-scale neighborhood. I found it interesting that one of (Continue Reading)