On Labor, Compensation, and Ding Dongs
Shawna Coppola Shawna Coppola

On Labor, Compensation, and Ding Dongs

Thinking and talking about compensation, in general, is challenging. Fair compensation is not merely about the completion of a simple transaction (i.e., a sum of cash given to someone for the work they did). As many of us are all too aware, equitable pay is all tangled up in things like race, gender, class, education, documentation status, dis/ability, physical appearance, and on and on and on.

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Expecting Too Much (and Too Little?) of Literacy Teachers (Reposted from My Medium Blog)
Shawna Coppola Shawna Coppola

Expecting Too Much (and Too Little?) of Literacy Teachers (Reposted from My Medium Blog)

I was reading a professional text fairly recently that, in many ways, moved me to nod my head so frequently as I read that I resembled one of those bobble head turtles that you find at craft fairs and flea markets. There was so much I loved about what the authors had to say about our collective practice as teachers. But the deeper I got into the book, the less I nodded my head and the more I started to cringe at the expectations these authors had laid out for classroom teachers — at the range and the number of teaching practices they insisted were essential cogs in the instructional literacy wheel. This wasn’t the first time I’d felt this way; as a matter of fact, I often develop that same cringe-y feeling when reading professional texts — particularly those that, in recent years, have become the most popular or sought-after among literacy educators.

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