One of the most difficult tasks a teacher faces is motivating students to learn. While some students have a natural love of learning, others arrive at a class under protest ...
Education Policy
On a road to nowhere
The popularity of international student assessments, especially the Programme for International Student ...
Paradoxes of the Finland Phenomenon
Have you noticed there’s a lot of hullabaloo about Finland’s education system ...
Occupy Wall Street: The Education Edition (Part 1)
I am very happy to say that I spent my weekend occupying ...
Educational Reform: A Starting Point (Perhaps)
We’ve heard the studies and statistics. Today’s students will likely change jobs ...
Warring learning theories. Choose yours.
The rich philanthropists, hedge fund managers, state governors, big-city mayors, and syndicated ...
Recent Posts
How to Maximize the Classroom Learning Environment
How to Achieve the Optimal Learning Environment in the Classroom While many theories exist for how the classroom environment directly attributes to student success, there are common threads that you can use in your classroom practice no matter what level of learner you teach. Whether you are influenced by the historical lab school movement of [...]
When an adult took standardized test forced on kids
A longtime friend on the school board of one of the largest school systems in America did something that few public servants are willing to do. He took versions of his state’s high-stakes standardized math and reading tests for 10th graders, and said he’d make his scores public. By any reasonable measure, my friend is a success. [...]
How Bill Gates can be an education hero
A couple of days ago I watched and read the transcript of Fareed Zakaria’s CNN primetime special, “Restoring the American Dream: Fixing Education.” Zakaria talks to Bill Gates, whose five-billion-plus investment in schools has bought him a seat at the head table of education reformers. If I’d gotten any response from my previous attempts to correspond with [...]
Repurposed Military Technology Solves Education Problems!
If you’re a teacher or have ever been a teacher, you know you’ve thought it. We all have, at some point. “If they spent half as much on education as they do on the military . . .” Well, what if we had our cake and ate it too? Why not keep the military spending [...]
Four Challenges of Online Education
Universities everywhere are jumping on the distance learning bandwagon. Each year more and more courses are becoming available online. Even some high schools are beginning to offer online classes. On the surface, this sounds like a wonderful idea, but before pursuing an online degree, one must consider the limitations of the online format. 1. Major [...]
Not Just for Field Trips Any More: 7 Ways to Ignite Learning at the Art Museum
When we, as educators, think back to our own school field trips to art museums, we tend to remember being paraded around the galleries, being talked at and given a lot of information, and … well, tuning out. And let’s face it, this has not changed dramatically for most students today, who may still find [...]
Pulling Yourself Up By Your Bootstraps: Is it Enough?
The legacy ingrained in the collective history of our country is one of individual agency. In order to succeed in the U.S. you must “pull yourself up by the bootstraps” and succeed despite any odds set against you. We tend to view education as an equalizer, a means of succeeding in spite of circumstance. We’ve [...]
Emerging Trend: Educating for Humanity
In a faculty meeting this week, a colleague shared the following Holocaust survivor letter with us. Dear Teacher, I am a survivor of a concentration camp. My eyes saw what no man should witness: Gas chambers built by learned engineers. Children poisoned by educated physicians. Infants killed by trained nurses. Women and babies shot and [...]
Improvising is Good Teaching
In Larry Cuban’s recent blog post Jazz, Basketball, and Teacher Decision-Making, he serves up two excellent analogies to help readers understand the complex nature of teaching. In the midst of a jazz improvisation or a sporting event, an individual makes one decision after another, each one a reaction to the moment. On one level, that might [...]
Taking on Big Coal’s Curriculum
For years dirty energy corporations have created education materials marketed to young children in an attempt to shape the discussion around environmental issues. After the Exxon Valdez oil spill, Exxon created a lesson plan “about the healthy, flourishing wildlife in Prince William Sound, Alaska, which showed beautiful eagles, frolicking sea otters, and sea birds in their [...]
Teaching with a No-Technology Day
Technology is a dominating force in education, but twenty-five years ago, most classrooms didn’t even have a single computer, let alone a roomful. With today’s students the most plugged-in generation to ever walk the earth, the value of technology is often taken for granted. More than that, overexposure to technology can actually change how the [...]
Enduring Trend: Blissful (Environmental) Ignorance
We can talk about merit pay, accountability and tenure. We can debate (endlessly it seems) students first, testing, failing schools, poverty and unions. We can go toe to toe over the value of choice, charters and vouchers. PISA, Finland, Arne and Rhee. Ravitch, Race to the Top and common core. All worthwhile conversations. And necessary. [...]
The Service of Democratic Education
The following address was given by renowned Stanford professor, Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond, at the commencement ceremony for Columbia University’s Teachers College when she received the college’s Distinguished Service Award on May 18, 2011. I could not be more honored than to be awarded this recognition from Teachers College, one of the places of all those [...]
Wisdom: A Missing Focus
You’ve likely heard the chatter. Educational reform seems to be to be the obsession of the moment in Educaburgh. Testing’s good! Testing’s bad! Take this acronym and call us in the morning! Here comes our superhero! No, it’s just a guy with an eraser that can change standardized test answers in a single swipe. Join [...]
The 10 Poorest School Districts in America
School districts across America are struggling to keep it all together, as teachers, parents and students want access to competitive technology and arts and college prep programs, while government budgets and local funding are wiped out. Certain parts of the country have it especially rough, from border towns to Indian reservations to coal mining communities [...]
10 Reasons Merit Pay Sucks
I am not a lazy teacher. I do not have low expectations. My students aren’t failing the standardized tests. However, I don’t want my value as a teacher to be determined by a merit pay system. Here’s why: Ambiguity: It’s too hard to measure “quality teaching” in a quantifiable measuring system. Sure, we can create [...]
Disaster Schooling in Detroit
Since this article was written, the Michigan Education Association has begun to conduct strike authorization votes in every Michigan local. A statewide teacher strike in Michigan, where public employee strikes are illegal, would be an unprecedented action with enormous implications for both the labor movement and the movement to defend public education. Focusing on Detroit, [...]
Reading between the lines: What Arne Duncan was (maybe) thinking in his letter to teachers
As part of Teacher Appreciation Week, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan published an open letter to America’s teachers. Perhaps Secretary Duncan writes his own speeches—but the fact that the U.S. Department of Education lists 124 employees for the Office of Communications and Outreach suggests otherwise. Perhaps the secretary’s mind wanders as he reads the texts prepared for [...]
How to Support Teachers
Below is an infographic illustrating what teachers feel is most important toward improving instruction. (Click on the image for a closer look.) Its data is telling to be sure. At a minimum it can serve to illustrate the gap between merit pay proponents and educators themselves. Perhaps we should look at this graph and wonder: [...]
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A Teacher’s Field Guide to Parents
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Open Letter to the Teacher Who Said “I Hate Technology.”
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Reviewing Cathy Vatterott’s “Rethinking Homework”
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Words that Ignite Learning
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10 Principles for the Future of Learning
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The Folly of Rubrics and Grades
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Emerging Trend: Collaborative Curve
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Ed Reformers: Champions of the Wrong Theory of Learning
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NBC Hosting Education Summit: Can we stop bashing education?
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Teaching as Competitive or Cooperative?
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Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic. The Challenge of Motivation.
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Review of Bill Sterrett’s Book, “Insights into Action”
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Promoting Discussion and Participation in the Classroom
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How to Maximize the Classroom Learning Environment
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When an adult took standardized test forced on kids
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How Bill Gates can be an education hero
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Duncan vs. Duncan
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Repurposed Military Technology Solves Education Problems!
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Four Challenges of Online Education
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On a road to nowhere
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Satyapande: For example, a student who wants to be an astronau...
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