I estimate that I have known 1,000+ teachers and 12,000+ school children. In quiet moments, they all come back to mind. So many and so varied. Pictures in yearbooks ignite memories and the events of years ago are as clear as my yesterday. Yet, there are two people who form my schoolhouse book ends. Completely different from each other, they touched and shaped my sense of friendships for all time. Continue reading
School Friendships and Life
I Inquire. Therefore, I am.
Inquisitiveness opens a sensitivity to these phenomena that removes their surprise at unintended or expected consequences. Continue reading
Knowing Matters; Don’t Be Intellectually Passive
The world of information is growing by the second these days. As it expands, our next generation needs improved tools to know it, understand it, and deal with it. Continue reading
Correctly Coloring our World Was Never More Important Than Now
Correctly coloring in public education means that teachers have non-partisan academic freedom to correctly color teaching and learning. They are not pressured to influence or bias what and how they teach, and what and how students learn. Teachers are accountable for creating a correctly color-informed next generation. Continue reading
Effective Study Habits Should Not Be a Mystery for Children.
Most children do not know how to study – how to make sense of what they have learned. I often ask children how they study. “I don’t study” is the most frequent answer. “Why don’t you study? I ask. Again, the most common response – “I don’t know what to do.” When a child tells me that they do study, I ask them who taught them. “No body. I Googled what to do” is the most common response from children who study. Continue reading
Can a President Be a Role Model for Children Today
Would we hang a likeness of our current President to serve as a role model for children today and tomorrow? This is not a partisan question. It is a question of character and if his character is a model for our children. Continue reading
New Leadership Is About Solid Outputs Not New Inputs
A principal’s primary focus should be on the effectiveness of the instruction, coaching, directing, and mentoring of students. To affect student achievement outcomes, new leaders must focus on what teachers, coaches, directors, and mentors do. To impact achievements, they need to improve professional performances that directly affect student outcomes. Continue reading
Will AI Be a Repeat of Cellphone Mistakes?
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
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