Well, I missed my second deadline in a row and can't claim to have been too busy. Truth be told, I haven't been able to string together enough complete thoughts on a single topic to hit our 600 – 800
Read MoreParents: Please Look Beyond the Snapshots to Look at the Core
In the past many months, I’m sure many of you who are on social media have noticed a certain brand of posts related to the Common Core. Most of them begin with a photo of a third-grader’s math homework. Usually,
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Ed Solutions Are A Breath Away!
It’s natural to think that the answers to today’s education questions lie somewhere on a continuum between two extremes: How much autonomy should students have – all or none? Hmmmm…. probably somewhere in the middle. Where should curriculum decisions be made –
Read MoreTaming Godzilla, Preemptively?
Amethyst and Sandy Merz fail to truly disagree, but succeed in uncovering some compelling possibilities for Common Core Standards implementation.
Read MoreThe Changing Face of Inattention
A student who had been absent in algebra came in to make up work. She needed to create a reference sheet that showed the graphs of different kinds of functions. She was logged in and asked where to find the
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Standardized Tests and Monty Hall
I was proctoring my students during the standardized tests last week and thinking of how we try to train them to try to eliminate a couple of obvious wrong answers before guessing. Then I remembered the Monty Hall Problem. You
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Teacher Eval: Hunger Games Style
Yes, the geeky-English teacher that I am has jumped all over The Hunger Games craze. Yes, I’ve coerced all of my students into buying the book to use in class, most of us have seen the movie, plan to blog
Read MoreValue Added Part III
Tests are easy to graph. I’d like to find a psychometrician who can take the camping, the PB&J, and the Pacific Ocean and show how THOSE things have forever impacted the sophomores on their four-day trip.
Read MoreSo Few Students; So Much Time
Every single student, all 190 of them, have a 30-minute long, midyear conference to which they invite parents, guardians, peers, teachers, and other staff members. They share work from their portfolios, talk about their accomplishments and struggles, reflect on their growth in the Habits of Heart and Mind, and set goals for the short and long term. The advisor facilitates each conference, but the student is truly in the driver’s seat. It’s not strictly a time to show off, although that happens sometimes. The roundtable conference is a time for honest reflection and hard conversations too.
Read MoreSymptoms of Failure
It’s a farce, and kids know it. When students ask in math class, “When am I ever going to use this?” let’s stop answering with references to calculating bank interest, prices per pound, and the cost of a sale item.
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