Moderately Radical Reason on Teaching and Learning.
According to the National Association of Independent Schools’ Commission on Accreditation, twenty-first century students are qualitatively different from all students before them:
Continue reading “Think You Know How Your Students Feel About Technology in School?”
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: Continue reading “On Being an Outsider”
Too long, didn’t read? Here’s a summary:
The American college admissions process has became a zero-sum, Hobbesian, juggernaut. Advanced Placement classes proliferate to serve the insatiable gods of Achievement and Rigor, and panic attacks, sleep deprivation, and depression are as common in high schools as iced lattes.
Then suddenly a few years ago, adults in and around education started talking about teaching kids “how to fail” and urging students to “embrace failure” as though the grade-obsessed, high-stakes lunacy that is secondary school culture in America is somehow the kids’ fault. Gosh, they’re just such perfectionists; I wonder why they can’t seem to relax?
The academic summer vacation is a long, tranquil mix of relaxation and productivity. Murder mysteries vie for attention with monographs, time with family alternates with professional development, and the active badgers the contemplative to get up and out, exploring and doing. Active, we’re nagged by a feeling of intellectual irresponsibility, while contemplative hours feel physically slothful. For three months we strike an easy balance, made all the more sweet for being finite. And each August announces the end of the idyll with an ivory-colored envelope containing the beginning-of-year faculty meeting agenda.
Continue reading “Becoming Better Together: Re-Thinking The Faculty In-Service”
A colleague recently mused about how much homework to assign his students over the winter holiday break. The only sensible reply, which I blurted loudly, was “GOOD GOD, MAN: NONE!”
I’ll do a bit of exam grading and planning over the break, but that’s my job; it’s why I get the big bucks and the red pens. I certainly hope that my students have a genuinely refreshing break from their schoolwork, and I think that time should be off-limits to school assignments. I hope students spend quality time with their families, get enough sleep, goof around, and relax. Of course there’s time for some useful and engaging stuff, too. One could easily sleep and loaf away two weeks in a glorious festival of sloth, and I wouldn’t judge anyone for napping lazily down that path. But abject sloth gets old surprisingly fast. Continue reading “Six Things To Do Over Winter Break Besides Schoolwork”
Anyone considering the role of Advanced Placement (AP) history in a school’s curriculum ought to begin with the following exercise:
