I’m going to start with a digression (a pregression?). I get poems stuck in my head, just like music. Two frequent culprits are from Kurt Vonneget’s novel, Cat’s Cradle: Lion gotta hunt, Bird gotta fly, Man gotta sit and wonder, Why?
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Why Do I Teach?
On the third day of school I asked students, “Besides money, what is the one thing that you personally have to get from a job?” I thought it was a good question to begin our unit on career explorations. I
Read MoreThe Common Core Assessment: One Year In
Last August, shortly after we celebrated the 45th anniversary of the Apollo 11’s moon landing, I wrote The Common Core: Are We Talking about Apollo 11 or Healthnet.gov? on my Digressive Discourse blog. The piece was inspired by The Key to Successful Tech
Read MoreTeacher Eval: Liberace or the Kid Next Door?
A quality evaluation is a beginning; a useless one, an end. That’s the conclusion I draw from a quote by the legendary Madeline Hunter in a recent Ed Week article by David Finley: “If you hear someone playing the piano,
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Every Piece Fits Perfectly by Elizabeth Rushton
Elizabeth Rusthon is an instructional specialist for the Humbolt School District in Prescott, Arizona. In that role she supports all teachers in their daily planning and assessments. She also supports data dialogues and data interpretation. Every Piece Fits Perfectly I
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Individualized Learning Doesn’t Have to Be Lonely
In Learning Should NEVER Be Lonely his recent Tempered Radical post, Bill Ferriter says he cannot come to grips with “personalized learning.” He admits that he maybe paranoid but is literally frightened. (He created the image above which is used with his permission.) He
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Lacking Vision? There’s a Window Nearby
My colleague Kate and I are always on the same wavelength. Our PLC is focused like a laser on assessment data. My school’s administration in transparent; my district’s sometimes opaque. The lens through which we view an issue determines what we see. Have you noticed recently how
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Dear A+ Student
The following is based on an actual letter I gave to a student. I’ve changed the names and particulars to protect identities. Dear Estrella, I’m writing because frankly I think that if we had this conversation in person you would
Read MoreShould We Still Teach Analog Clocks?
On Friday, my colleague Steve Andre wrote in a staff wide email that he was considering teaching how to tell time on an analog clock to his seventh grade computer students because they can’t read the one on his wall
Read MoreGuest Teaching as Civic Duty
Like jurors, substitute teachers should be drawn from the public as part of one’s civic duty, at least according to a colleague. Among other things, pulling subs from the public could create more awareness of life in our public schools, get
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