I listen to National Public Radio each morning, and today, Maanvi Singh's story caught my attention. From it, I will predict a new psychological buzzword that could come to the field of education if some consultant or other picks up on it: flow. While I have profound concerns about the NPR segment's framing of flow [...]
I understand well the lament of teachers that this entity or that does not support classroom learning. Parents range from indifferent to supportive to hostile to meddling; administrators can lead, but they can also find themselves overworked or torn between competing priorities. Then, we have society, whose emphasis on diversion, consumption, and intensity hardly foster [...]
If you fail to learn the differenceBetween a gerund and a participle,Your prospects for college and careerWill not perish in a pit of oblivion.If you do not take an interestIn Shakespeare or Dickinson, Austen or Frost,You will still make your way in life,And provide for yourselves and your families.Your learning and growthWill not bring you [...]
I’ve written about this before, but I enjoy crowing about not hating Mondays. I certainly enjoy my weekends, and I make much of them in terms of the things I enjoy doing: crossword puzzles, walks, cooking, reading, and listening to music. But I enjoy Mondays, too, in large part because I enjoy working with the [...]
The relevance of curricular topics is rarely lost on teachers, but we have some trouble in making it clear to students. We see this tendency most clearly as adolescence begins. Students learn some important things in sixth, seventh, and eighth grade; regrettably, typical American middle-school students merely learn odd fragments of units, they take three [...]
I love reading aloud to my students. I do this with every reading assignment they receive. Too many students would not comply if left to read outside of class. Plus, with many middle-school students, a little mediation between the text and them can be helpful. I enjoy doing voice characterizations in the dialogue we read. [...]
Away from other spearmen of the camp,He heeded chanting voices in the fire.In solitude, he wandered through the dampIntoning secret songs the rains inspire.Another, painted, sidled through the bush,An arrow drawn in stalking of the game.Two moons before, in battle's bloody push,He wrested ground in mighty chieftain's name.In ancient days, they fed the striving tribeAnd [...]
Taxpayers in the United States spend roughly $16,000 per pupil per year on public education. This reflects a total of over $794 billion, according to the Education Data Initiative, contributed by federal, state, and local governments–divided by 49.4 million students in our public schools, as reported by the National Center for Education Statistics. In terms [...]
School starts next week for my school district, and dozens of September orientations have shown me the excitement and energy that teachers bring to the beginning of a school year. I have also seen the sober resignation that settles on many of my colleagues by the time the leaves begin to fall. For this reason, [...]
As students in my state took the New Jersey Student Learning Assessment (NJSLA) last month, I made my yearly mental observation that these tests can measure a variety of things to varying degrees of accuracy. Most accurately, however, they will measure mere compliance with the task of performing the assessment itself. Particularly on the math [...]
Real Teaching 