Posts By : “Paul Forehand”

Parent-teacher conferences were this week. Usually, it’s a parade of star students with doting parents walking from teacher to teacher to receive their accolades – or the opposite: students with single digit grades, their parents droning, threatening cell phones, video

“A man sees in the world what he carries in his heart.” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe; Faust “Let them have a laugh at their passions, because what they think is some grand emotional energy is in reality just their souls scraping against

One of the greatest cruelties of capitalism is its view of utility. All too often, and in almost every sphere of activity, we are conditioned to produce. We no longer recognize any significance in the ding an sich – Kant’s

It is with incredible frequency that I hear the axiom that a teacher should be a “guide on the side, not a sage on a stage”. It has been so often repeated that it is rarely even questioned; which means

In nearly every teacher-led meeting I’ve ever attended, the conversation tends to revolve around the same issues: test scores, grades, curriculum, standards alignment, and how these relate to vaguely defined “student achievement”. I can count on one hand the PLCs

Last year we played the Hokey Pokey on a district scale. We took the kids out. We put the kids in. We took half the kids out and put the other half in. There was absolutely no consistency to the

I have had the same personal email account since 2006. During that time I attended two universities — each with their own email — and lived without internet for 27 months in a yurt in Mongolia. These events, coupled with

I really doubt that anyone would argue with me if I were to say that we are in a crisis. The problem though, is one of definition. “Crisis” originally comes from the Greek krinein – To Decide. A crisis does not necessarily

It’s the end of August, 2020. I sit in my office (it’s only a classroom if students are in it). The glare of the computer screen casts pale blue. Bleary-eyed from lesson planning, navigating folders, grading too-little and obviously phoned-in