Public education had no vision for harnessing the use of cellphones in the classroom. Our age-old response to children and cellphones was to prohibit what we could not control. Just like chewing gum in the 1950s. Now, I fear, it is déjà vu time for missing the boat on AI. Continue reading
Will AI Be a Repeat of Cellphone Mistakes?
We Get Lower Achievement Because We Accept Lower Achievement
No child starts school with the desire to be less than successful. All children look to their teacher with the anticipation of “I can do this.” As soon as we start accepting less than successful from a child, we say to that child “Less than successful is okay for you.” This is wrong. We create a learned habit of unproficiency. When we stop accepting less than successful schoolwork, children will need to be successful every day. Continue reading
Teachers And Co-Conspiratorial Smiles
He had a smile that could melt a glacier. It began in his eyes, rose in his cheeks, and lifted a grin to ear-to-ear. He never knew just how golden his “smiling for/with you” because it was his natural personality. The child in him never got in the way of his connecting with the child in each child. Continue reading
It Is Time to Emulate Others
There was a time when America’s public education system was a model the world emulated. However, that time has passed. America’s future will not be improved by recreating our past but in our capacity to create a new future. There are systems that are excelling in educating their youth to be productive adults and contribute to the future of their communities and nation. These nations have become beacons for our emulation. We must adapt or die. Continue reading
The Art of Teaching Requires Teachers
If “a spoon full of sugar makes the medicine go down,” providing students with meaning and context makes a lesson learnable. We have many homilies for this. “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink” seems most apt. AI can present a student with a sound strategy for learning, but it comes up short in providing the necessary meaningful context for learning that a teacher can provide. AI is masterful in the science of teaching but fails in the art of teaching. Continue reading
When Self-evident Truths Fail, Teacher Role Modeling Matters
If individuals mimic self-interested rather than self-evident truths, that is what individuals, then families, then communities become. Values beget intentions and intentions beget actions and actions create outcomes and outcomes reinforce values and on it goes. Our children and grandchildren deserve and need adults in their world who believe in and value self-evident truths. Role modeling matters and teachers can be role models for a better future for all children. Continue reading
Slow Down, Enjoy the Aha Moments
In all successful learning there is a moment of insight when the brain understands a resolution of a problem or a question. It is not simply that the child got to a right answer. It is the reality that she knows the process of getting there and can repeat it with confidence. It is “AHA!” Continue reading
The Value and Power of the Teacher’s Lane
What they do not or cannot understand is that our professional lane is not to teach a particular point of view but to teach all children to understand point of view, to think about and evaluate point of view, and to establish their own informed point of view. We use teaching strategies based upon pure inquiry not biased inquiry. Life and its events will shape a child’s thinking and perspective. Our mission is met when children know how to apply thinking skills not in ensuring the prescribed results of their thinking. Those who would constrain public teaching try to constrain public thinking. Continue reading
When Civics and Life Are Dissonant
Government of the people, by the people, and for the people can become fixated on wielding governmental power and forget the rights of the people. History is replete with leaders who twisted their popularity into a personal pedestal of perceived power. That is when humble and correct teaching is required to remind the next generation of voters that the right to lead is a responsibility not a privilege and the first responsibility of leadership is to guarantee the freedoms that have defined our nation. Continue reading
Theory into Practice: Feedback Feeds Teaching and Learning
Feedback is part of a teacher’s total instructional design. Once a teacher launches a lesson, the teacher is not an impartial observer. As a shepherd herds sheep toward home, a teacher uses feedback to ensure that all children reach their learning destination successfully. Every child engaged in the process of a lesson can profit from a teacher’s feedback, not just the lost sheep. Some feedback causes a child to succeed in the lesson and other feedback causes a child to really succeed – all children can use a teacher’s good feedback. Continue reading