The Quest for a Quiet Mind

Its fourth period, about 10:45 in the morn­ing. I have been at school for about three and a half hours and taught three classes. I ease into my desk chair as the last of my stu­dents file out of the room and into the hall­way, with a mind for being as pro­duc­tive as pos­si­ble in the 40 min­utes I have More >

Teachers: Go Back to School, In Your Own Building!

In this golden age of global com­mu­ni­ca­tion and col­lab­o­ra­tion I some­times for­get that I teach in a very small dis­trict (except of course dur­ing gloomy bud­get meet­ings), with really great peo­ple. On Fri­day I did some­thing that I have been mean­ing to do for a long time, but have con­tin­ued to put off for one rea­son or another, I attended a class right More >

Maybe We Need to Cut Our Administrators Some Slack

I often bemoan, if not openly crit­i­cize the seem­ing slow­ness with which admin­is­tra­tors are lead­ing (or not lead­ing) the charge to trans­form our schools. From my per­spec­tive as a teacher, they are an easy tar­get, hav­ing vol­un­tar­ily placed them­selves squarely in the bull’s-eye after all. But just the other day I had a con­ver­sa­tion with my super­in­ten­dent that More >

Interactive White Boards: Engagement Is Not Interaction

Sum­mer break has ended; you are feel­ing refreshed and renewed, ready to tackle the New Year and all of its new chal­lenges. You enter your room after your morn­ing meet­ing to dis­cover an inter­ac­tive white­board (IWB) hung neatly in the front of the room where your white board used to be. The dis­trict is involved More >

Making Resolutions, Not Wishes

The end of any­thing is always a good time for reflec­tion, and the end of a year is the most obvi­ous time for these con­sid­er­a­tions. Every year I set goals in my per­sonal life, some I am able to meet, many I am not (mainly those asso­ci­ated with my expand­ing waist line). Curi­ously enough this is not a tra­di­tion that I have More >

Are Teachers Leaders?

The other day I read an post by Russ Goerend (@RussGoerend), which raised a ques­tion by mak­ing this state­ment: Teach­ers aren’t lead­ers [Self-fulfilling Prophe­cies]). Russ wrote this post in response to a con­ver­sa­tion he had with Scott Mcleod, where Dr. Mcleod stated that teach­ers are not “lead­ers and pol­i­cy­mak­ers who have influence/power.” This state­ment was in ref­er­ence to More >

A Letter From a Student About Filtering

On Mon­day I got into an impas­sioned argu­ment about the state of tech­nol­ogy adop­tion at our school and the heavy handed inter­net fil­ter­ing. A mem­ber of the stu­dent coun­cil hap­pened to be their to over­hear this con­ver­sa­tion. When I got home from school I had the fol­low­ing email in my inbox. I asked the stu­dent if I could share his email More >

Don’t Forget About Modeling: It’s Money!

I knew I would lure you in with that title, but I am not talk­ing about fash­ion week here. I am talk­ing about a tried and true teach­ing tech­nique that I some­times for­get — mod­el­ing. I had an expe­ri­ence this week that reminded me of its impor­tance.
We have been study­ing and writ­ing var­i­ous forms of poetry in my cre­ative writ­ing class. More >

Dear Mr. Patterson: Our Students Are Not a Special Interest Group

Gov­er­nor Pat­ter­son has uni­lat­er­ally decided to with­hold fund­ing for New York’s pub­lic schools, despite the legislature’s pas­sage of a deficit reduc­tion plan. This results in an effec­tive mid-year cut to school dis­tricts that are already hem­or­rhag­ing from last year’s trim­ming. I under­stand that New York is in the mid­dle of a very large finan­cial cri­sis, and that schools More >

Why Teachers Should Display Their Degrees

Teach­ers should be proud of the degrees and awards they have received and dis­play them in their classrooms.