Summer Reading List

My mother (an English teacher) and I are sitting down together, brainstorming some reading list ideas for rising eighth graders over the summer. Here are a few we are thinking of:

Pre-Revolutionary War America
Moon of Two Dark Horses - shows the friendship between a white settler and a Native American


Revolutionary War
Johnny Tremain - great background on the Revolutionary War, specifically Lexington & Concord and the Sons of Liberty.
My Brother Sam is Dead
The Secret of Sarah Revere

Industrial Revolution
Lyddie - Catherine Patterson - about a girl who works in a cloth factory in 1840's New England

Civil War
March Toward Thunder - about a Native American boy who joins the Union army in New York
Amelia's War -




Rising 7th grade book list
-A Girl Named Disaster -
-Bloomability -
-Esperanza Rising -
-Ash Road (Australia)
-The Breadwinner - by Deboarah Ellis (Afghanistan)
-A Single Shard (set in Korea)
-When my name was Keoko (set in Korea during Japanese occupation)
-Chasing Vermeer (? plot looks interesting but need to look into)
-

2003 article on performance-based pay in a computer company

Just came across this Harvard study on performance-based pay in the business world. I do believe that this tenet of RTT was based on its perceived "success" in the business world.

I don't want to go into long analysis of this because quite frankly the concept of merit pay really concerns me. So here are some interesting points:

*For the first six months, everyone loved the new system.Then the complaints began.

*The teams were frustrated that factors out of their control, such as the delivery of parts, affected their work.

*Financial rewards in a fast-changing business environment could undermine a company's ability to build trust and commitment unless management and employees have an honest discussion about their mutual expectations, they added. This is "very difficult to do."

*Going forward, Beer suggested that managers recognize pay-for-performance programs not just in instrumental terms--as a carrot, perhaps--but as a larger exercise in fairness and justice within the organization. "Do not proceed until both sides understand what they are getting into."

As always let me point out that I will respect the choices of our Dept. of Ed and my school district as we transition to Race to the top. But, like this article suggests, I feel it's crucial that I as a stakeholder stay informed about the caveats of merit-based pay. So much of what I love about teaching is rooted in collaboration with my colleagues, trust between my students and me, and the sense of community our building shares and develops throughout the year. But when our individual bottomline within our classroom will determine what we take home, I wonder how much of those qualities will remain.

Backchanneling video