I have a reputation on campus as the “fun teacher” or the “loose teacher” or the rebel who doesn’t follow rules. I find this odd because my class is pretty quiet. There’s usually a gentle buzz while the students work.
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Collateral Damage: Preschool Joins the Wreckage
In the book Collateral Damage, Nichols & Berliner (2007) provide a solid argument that high-stakes testing corrupts schools, harms students, and reduces teacher instruction from dynamic, engaging content to noncomplex, basic skill drills that improve student test scores. I read
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What’s a Weekend For?
This weekend I drove with my kids to their cousin’s birthday party. Friday evening, my daughter’s Brownie troop had a swing dancing workshop, so we left Saturday morning, and drove the 4 ½ hours back today. We took the dog
Read MoreMy School is Special
Lately I have found it hard to put words to my emotions. I have not posted a blog the past few months. It’s been hard for me to craft a positive message, to see past the rhetoric and politics that defines the
Read MorePatricide and Choicetopia
In one characteristically gruesome Greek myth, the enchantress Medea tricks King Pelias’ daughters into killing, dismembering, and boiling him, on a promise that she will add a spell to the stew that will return the aged ruler to his youth. Unfortunately, their actions lead to nothing
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Carry Your Part or Get Out of the Way!
There is a crisis brewing in Arizona. And budgets are being cut to drastic levels. I have been teaching in Arizona for ten years. I haven’t seen a budget increase in 7 years. For seven years budgets have already been
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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
Read MoreWhere Are the Teacher Voices?
Last week, a group of connected educators met with the U.S. Department of Education in Washington D.C. I looked at the picture of the people standing around the table and noticed that there was not a single public school K-12
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College Is for Everyone
Eleven years ago, when my colleagues and I co-founded a small charter high school, we had a number of non-negotiables that we knew we would integrate into the school’s culture and curriculum: we would be kind to each other. students would
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