In sports, an unrestricted free agent is an athlete whose contract with a team has come to an end. Consequently, the player has no ties to any previous team he has played for, and is free to sign a contract with another. Over the last few weeks, Lebron James, high school basketball phenom turned NBA superstar, has been described as the most sought after free agent in the world. Tonight, after being courted by several teams, he held a highly publicized and eagerly anticipated conference to share his decision about what team he would be joining in he upcoming NBA season.
 

The phrase from the frying pan into the fire is used to describe situations that go from bad to worse. It is an expression that denotes an uncomfortable present situation that is followed by a more painful future one. Its use is a marker of a regression in progress, and when it is heard, it signifies the outcomes of a terrible decision. In many instances, moving from frying pan to the fire means that there are genuine efforts to ameliorate a bad situation that despite good intentions, fails miserably because it harms others. The term is certainly appropriate in the current educational climate and the increased visibility of current educational research focused on paying students, particularly students of color in urban settings to learn.
 

I returned from a recent trip out of the country to hear the News stations in an uproar over the comments made by Senator Harry Reid about President Obama.
 

Full participation in the classroom is a significant, yet under-focused upon, component of teaching and learning. However, educators often inhibit students from enacting practices that support participation. They do this while concurrently supporting practices that indicate peripheral or superficial involvement in what is going on in the classroom. Teachers view participation as a students' spending a significant amount of time being quiet, looking interested in the lesson, or even raising their hands to answer questions. In reality, these practices do not truly indicate participation.

 This blog entry is a patchwork of my experiences and reflections on the days after the election and inauguration of President Obama and the implications of these historic events on students in urban schools. This entry concurrently provides a window into the way I have seen the world in the last few weeks and provides some insight into how students in schools are seeing this election. It is what I have seen and what I see… a reflection on students realities and my thoughts on their possibilities. 

A while ago, I engaged in a written dialogue (metalogue) with two 11th grade students in a school where I conducted research. I got an opportunity to publish the piece as an addendum to an article I had written.

Unfortunately, the metalogue got lost in the initial document and did not get the space it deserved as a stand alone piece. I thought would be a great space to share a piece of my discussion with the students because it follows the theme of my first two entries and raises a lot of important issues that need to be addressed about urban science education.