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Love and Affection. Learning. Report Cards. Fritz Redl
But what is real learning? It's learning beyond the test. Learning beyond the classroom.
blogs and wikis: a teacher’s perspective
Steve Ransom pointed me towards this video of a grade 1 teacher and how she uses blogs and wikis in her classroom. There is also some parent and student commentary. Her advice is to start small, with a blog for your classroom, and let yourself grow with it. I’d like to hear her principal’s perspective [...]
Just whose achievement gap is it, anyway?
Image: found on the Internet Ray Tracing Competition website Found this, love it. We must reject the ideology of the “achievement gap” that absolves adults of their responsibility and implies student culpability in continued under-performance. The student achievement gap is merely the effect of a much larger and more debilitating chasm: The Educator Achievement Gap. We must erase the distance between [...]
The tao of teaching in ambiguity
image: Shadowed Crones by Rudha’an, found on flickr and offered under a creative commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 license. What I love about keeping a blog is the insight I glean from those in my blogging community. The other day I published a post called Understanding the Machine and in one of Christopher’s comments I found a [...]
Preparing the waters for change.
Image: photo of the St Lawrence River taken by me, available on flickr. mrsdurff introduced me to Class 2.0 in a recent comment on Understanding the Machine. I love the idea behind this site, and behind different workshops that places like LEARN in Quebec offer teachers. How do we negotiate the space between resources on the one [...]
the essence of it all
The Power of Personal RelationshipsBy Thomas S. Mawhinney and Laura L. SaganPhi Delta Kappan, March 2007 The essence, the very essence, of what I believe as an educator is summed up in this understanding: We now understand that higher-level thinking is more likely to occur in the brain of a student who is emotionally secure than in [...]
a special place closes
Private Weston School closes after 90 years RYAN BERGEN, The Gazette Published: Friday, June 22, 2007 I worked at Weston for 5 years – almost 4 as their high school resource coordinator and teacher, and about 1.5 as a substitute teacher when I was back in school myself. It was a special place where everyone strived for excellence in one [...]
differentiating by gender
Image from Julianne F.‘S reflections on gender and communication. When Good Marks are Not Enough by Rosalind Wiseman The success in educating girls, many say, has come from recognising their specific learning styles as well as their emotional development and the impact of friendships. Teaching Physics to students – or Teaching to Girls and Boys by Prof. Dr. hannelore Schwedes For [...]
To middle school or not to middle school?
“…some middle school experts argue that school reconfiguration is a costly distraction from what adolescents really need: smaller classes, an engaging curriculum, personalized attention and well-prepared teachers.” I agree! Instead of looking at complicated school reconfigurations, I would take a much more grass-roots approach. No matter where they are, children in middle-school need classes tailored to their needs – as [...]