Conflict isn’t a bad thing, it’s a GREAT thing. Those who avoid conflict just create more and more conflict. Conflict avoidant people drive everybody around them crazy! Or as my professor would say, “Lean into the tension!” Change is how our muscles grow and how a community that is slowing caving in on itself is …
I didn’t want to go running today. I didn’t want to go as I changed into my running clothes. I didn’t want to go as I put up my hair. I didn’t want to go as I tied my shoes. I didn’t want to go. But I did. And as my body creaked and ached …
This teacher wasn’t the first to think that taking things apart and putting them back together might be the perfect way to keep students engage and to help them learn. John Dewey started his first school with the idea that “learning by doing” is really the only way that students take learning with them and …
There’s a limit. There’s a line. There’s an end. As teachers get less and less pay and less and less benefits, then inevitably they will start to seek out different positions and opportunities that do offer health benefits and a sense of security that they thought the public school system guaranteed. When that happens, there will …
Education isn’t about students anymore, it’s about money: Relentless fund-raising, be it for the annual fund, the spring benefit or the latest capital campaign, is as much a feature of private schools as small classes and diverse offerings. But with schools hitting the upper limits of what they can charge for tuition, consultants, parents and …
I am working with a student who is trying to get his GED because he has been told that is what he needs to get a good job and to succeed. What do I say? I am working with a student who is in the middle of standardized tests and has extreme test anxiety because …
When you buy into a system that you think is going to guarantee a new chance and a new opportunity and it doesn’t deliver, what happens next? This week, a judge dismissed a lawsuit against New York Law School filed by some of its own recent graduates. They claimed the school’s marketing misled them about …
I know budgets are tight and budget cuts are much more normal than raises, but if you have teachers who are teaching a class and half because budget cuts have eliminated a whole teaching position, then shouldn’t teacher raises be top priority in the coming fiscal year? “Teachers do deserve a raise,” said Spartanburg District 5 Superintendent …
It’s amazing as a teacher when you encounter a community of learners without noticeable barriers and boundaries between teachers and students. That’s what I saw today at Oakbrook. I saw teachers who were reflectively considering the way that technology would be used in their classrooms and who were thinking through theses decisions as their students …
Are students asking to use mobile devices in your class? Read More »
I’ve realized that I haven’t used this space to talk much about what I am doing day to day, so here we go! Yesterday, I worked with student who finished school in a non-degree program and he is working towards a GED. So I am desperately trying to connect GED vocabulary to experiences and sports …
