I followed a Twitter thread and kept following, trying to understand the criticism. It led down a rabbit-hole, but it was an interesting one. Then I read this, so I wrote this: Sam Shelley asks: “Would it not be slightly improved by asking why Europeans believed it was their right to steal a country from … Continue reading Friendly Fire
An Interview on Experiential Education
My school said some nice things about me. Click the title above and then go here for the interview.
Tech Hype: The Thing I Miss Least About Teaching
I’ve been out of the classroom for just over two months now* and I still teach online as an adjunct. I’m certainly not anti-technology; in fact, technological connectivity is what has allowed me to move to a rural area and pursue my dual passions of outdoor recreation and teaching. But as I’m occupied with the … Continue reading Tech Hype: The Thing I Miss Least About Teaching
On Being and Seeming
(Following is the text of a little chapel talk I was asked to give to an upper school community). First, a translation: Esse quam videri means “to be, rather than to seem.” We might also say, “To be rather than to appear to be,” or “value the authentic over the superficial”. It’s a great motto … Continue reading On Being and Seeming
Empathy and Time Management
Watching a time-management TED talk recently, I had the opportunity to reflect on the overlap between the speaker’s perspective and some challenges I've noticed in the classroom this autumn, in particular our culture's seemingly diminishing capacity to engage in empathetic understanding and how best to encourage that understanding in students. The TED speaker was Laura … Continue reading Empathy and Time Management
On Being an Outsider
I was asked to contribute a little talk to a school assembly on the theme of being an outsider, so this is what I said: One late-summer Saturday when I was about twenty-two years old, I found myself standing at the checkout counter of a grocery store in rural Missouri, feeling very suddenly and … Continue reading On Being an Outsider
Six Things To Do Over Winter Break Besides Schoolwork
A colleague recently mused aloud about how much homework to assign his students over the winter holiday break. I blurted out the only sensible reply that came to mind: “Good heavens: none!" I will likely do a bit of grading and planning over the break, but that’s my job; it’s why I get the big bucks … Continue reading Six Things To Do Over Winter Break Besides Schoolwork
AP History: The Wrong Kind of Rigor
Anyone evaluating the role of Advanced Placement (AP) history in a high school curriculum ought to consider the following questions: What are the central aims of a good history class? What sort of history class would you want to take? What should the promotion of critical thinking and intellectual rigor look like in a history … Continue reading AP History: The Wrong Kind of Rigor
Detecting Baloney about “Schools of the Future”
As part of a brief project before our study of the Scientific Revolution, I recently had my sophomore high school students read Carl Sagan’s “The Fine Art of Baloney Detection,” from his 1995 book The Demon-Haunted World. The aim of this mini-unit was to provide students with some tools with which to sharpen their critical … Continue reading Detecting Baloney about “Schools of the Future”
Fending off the Barbarians of Educational Technology
As I took my seat in a high-school auditorium recently, I noted with surprise and a bit of subversive pleasure that our speaker, a prominent author and professor of creative writing, had requested only a podium and an ancient, Little House on the Prairie-looking chalkboard as his stage setup. For the next forty minutes, this … Continue reading Fending off the Barbarians of Educational Technology
