An archived stack of papers: 'education'
What I Won’t Do This Year
In a stack of papers called Reform.
- Aug
- 15
- 2009
Collect writing and then ignore it for a month. Expect study questions answered every night. Give daily reading check quizzes worth tons of points. Skip grading blogs on a Saturday morning. Wait until April to institute a classroom after-school writing lab. Circle every single grammatical error on a given page. Assign just one piece of writing that involves student conferencing and that happens to be... read more
Dear You
In a stack of papers called Reform.
- Aug
- 09
- 2009
Dear Students:
Hi. Welcome to a new year and a new day! This is going to be the one when you do all those great things you’ve always wanted to do, when you’ll prove everyone wrong, when all your teachers will help instead of hinder you, when you’ll become an interesting person by being interested in lots of things, when you’ll realize that you have more control over your... read more
Is It Time Yet?
In a stack of papers called Instruction.
- Aug
- 04
- 2008
I hesitated to flip the calendar last Friday. Four days in, now there’s no denying it: August arrived early. I swear I was cheated out of a few weeks last month.
What have you started planning? Any ideas for the first week? How about for the first day? Decided on any new policies (homework, late work, attendance, behavior, etc.)? I’ve written about it already, but the ideas that have... read more
As Seen On The Web
In a stack of papers called Connections.
- Apr
- 26
- 2008
For a variety of reasons, I found myself back on Dan Cederholm’s site SimpleBits. I used to visit that site all the time, but the frequency has dropped off in the last few years. Glancing at the home page, Dan includes several quotations from folks high up in the Web design world. Thing is, most of the... read more
Don’t Call Home
In a stack of papers called Instruction.
- Dec
- 14
- 2006
It is December 14th. We start Winter Holiday tomorrow at 1:15. When we get back from break, there are only 2 weeks before semester finals. That means that, even though it’s a month away on the calendar, there are only 2 weeks left in this semester.
And this is the week that parents start to call or email teachers about their child who is failing or in danger of failing a course. Why are... read more
Pay More Attention
In a stack of papers called Instruction.
- Oct
- 12
- 2006
Today was a professional development day and, while it wasn’t perfect, it was far better than just about any other training session I’ve been to. We covered ways to teach Macbeth to English Language Learners (ELL) and several ideas are ones that can be used with just about any complex text.
The Wrong Focus
But the part that bothers me is the rationale for why the... read more
Same Is The New Different
In a stack of papers called Instruction.
- Sep
- 13
- 2006
My internet service provider (Earthlink) blocked sites from one specific Web hosting company (Lunarpages). It just so happens that this site, along with a few others I work on, is hosted by that one company so I couldn’t get on to this site from home for the past week. That should explain my absence.
Apart from some comments I had to delete from the classroom, the site has kept up... read more
Under Attack
In a stack of papers called Reform.
- May
- 05
- 2006
After a moderately heated exchange of rhetoric in a recent staff inservice session, another teacher questioned my professionalism. Here’s the line of thinking that lead to that declaration.
My Ideas
As an educational community, we should be open to folks coming into our classrooms and offering suggestions about how we might do something better. An additional perspective is... read more
Start Writing Now
In a stack of papers called Writing.
- Apr
- 15
- 2006
I leave for Japan tomorrow. I’ll be in Kyoto for a few days, Izumo for a few more, spend the night in Osaka, then head for home. It should be fun, but it means that I’ll be away from my girlfriend, my cat, and my blog.
As I get ready to spend my Spring Break, not relaxing and reading, but running through train stations and lugging around baggage, you need to start writing... read more
The Great Chain Of Being… Educated
In a stack of papers called Instruction.
- Mar
- 29
- 2006
Siddhartha speaks of the interconnectedness of everything. At one point in the novel, Siddhartha sits down with the Buddha to point out that the possibility to transcend everything and reach enlightenment signifies a break in the chain. If someone’s in nirvana, that person isn’t connected to the rest of us. An ideology can’t preach the connections between everything on the one... read more