Category Archive For "Education"
Greek to Me: Learning Math by Experience
I’ve spent some time this week with our Math teachers, who’re studying how to deploy a problem-based learning curriculum. It ended up not being too bad, since Math teachers tend to consider themselves a bit rogue and exceptional, which makes for a good atmosphere, I find. For the layperson, maybe a way to explain what …
in Education
Big Mistakes: A Stock Picker’s Education
Big Mistakes, a book about costly blunders committed by Wall Street investors, makes this much clear: for author Michael Batnick, school was a terrible place to go for an education. Batnick does deliver on the subtitle’s promise: “The Best Investors and Their Worst Investments,” with details on the worst trades by, for example, Benjamin Graham, …
Writing the Hero’s Journey
The outlines are in! After studying the phases of the hero’s journey and analyzing exemplars, tenth graders brainstormed the details of their own stories. In groups of four, each student shares their work to receive initial feedback. The teacher, crouching, listens to one group and then another, taking notes on the discussion and, on occasion, …
The Design Trap in Large-Scale Projects
Be wary, PBL teachers who embrace the opportunity to tackle global problems such as climate change, poverty, deforestation, and etc. It’s true: most students immediately grasp the authenticity and importance of these problems. Furthermore, mountains of freely available, high quality resources are just an internet search away. And on top of resource availability and the …
Assessment as Dialogue: Podcast Episode with Innovative Teacher
Traditional quantitative assessment methods can work at cross purposes with schools and teachers attempting to implement a John Dewey-inspired approach to school that consists of authentic experiences and reflection. Furthermore, traditional methods can exacerbate opportunity gaps and unduly punish those students who most deserve support and encouragement. Mark Poole, engineering teacher at High Tech High …
in Education
Three Pillars for Coaching Educators
Superintendents, school leaders, instructional coaches, and experienced teachers must support and develop talent to improve student experiences and outcomes. One avenue for addressing this need is to establish coaching partnerships. How might one create conditions for these learning partners to engage in productive and fertile processes that generate their own momentum? What follows are three …
Helping Teachers Decide What Products Students Should Create
A common challenge for teachers entrusted to design engaging projects for students is deciding on final products.
How to Help Educators Manage Their Time
PJ Caposey’s latest book, Manage Your Time or Time Will Manage You (ACSD, 2018), more-or-less delivers on its subtitle’s bold promise: “Strategies that work from an educator who’s been there.” The book opens with a self-assessment designed to help readers determine the root cause of their own clock management challenges. Are you work avoidant, a people …
Freshman Composition as a Window into College Prep
Freshman composition evolved from Harvard’s English 8—a course in which students read “great literature” and applied New Critical methods to analyze it. The course focused on close reading, Literature appreciation, and argument—though the last in only a very narrow sense, since it was argument restricted to the terms set forth in the piece of literature. The …
Learning Curves
How Differential Calculus and Reading Employ the Same Skill We build too many walls and not enough bridges. -Sir Isaac Newton It’s fairly widely known, and confirmed in an old NFL Films piece, that former Pittsburgh Steeler Lynn Swan studied ballet in the off-season. I’m sure some of his teammates who spent their free months …
Treating Classes Like Gatherings, Part Three: Ending Well(If you haven’t read part one, on establishing purpose, or part two, on facilitating well, I’d [keep reading...]
Treating Classes Like Gatherings, Part Two: Teaching With Generous Authority(If you haven’t read part one, about establishing purpose, consider starting there.) After [keep reading...]
Why Teachers Should Consider Their Classes “Gatherings”Priya Parker’s The Art of Gathering, a book that, as the subtitle suggests, takes up the subject of [keep reading...]