Teachers need a variety of tools in their instructional toolboxes. Suspending reality, as in PBL, is a good tool for engaging children in unusual thinking while ensuring they learn academic curricula. Continue reading
Suspending Reality Can Cause Learning.
When you ask a question what do you really want to know?
Every teacher engages children with questions. Most questions are in the form of a two-way conversation to ascertain if the children understand important facts. But if that is not all a teacher wants to know, better investigative questioning is required. Continue reading
Kindness Is As Kindness Does
Kindness is not a school subject or curriculum. While we do not teach kindness, we can and should model it for children and celebrate it when we see it. We can grow kindness even though we do not teach it. Continue reading
Should I Know or Just Google It?
I know it and I know what it means are two different levels of knowledge and understanding. In the age of Internet, schools are increasingly essential for the development of contemporary understanding of information. Continue reading
Gone: Three-sport Athletes and Bench Jockeys
Specialization and elitism have made being a three-sport athlete or a bench jockey very difficult in high school athletics. When so many athletes and families seek a competitive advantage, they crowd all others from the team bench. Continue reading
Being Taught By an Unprepared Teacher Is a Mathematical Certainty
Professional teacher preparation can no longer by assumed by a license to teach. Political pressure to put an adult in every classroom does not mean a prepared teacher in every classroom. Continue reading
Teach Less, Teach Better, Teach It Again and Again
We forget more than we remember is a fact of life. Using motivation theory, teaching essential and enduring content and skills, and using retention theory better assures that students will remember what they are taught. Continue reading
Are You Volunteering for an AI Dope Slap?
Generative AI is here; it is not going away. Educators can either dig into understanding and using it or get dope slapped as Luddites. Continue reading
Because Transparency Has Become Opaque Require Integrity
The patina of transparency no longer matters because it has lost its clarity and become opaque. Instead of transparency require integrity. The facts, please, not the lies. Continue reading
Learning Loss – Yesterday is gone, let it go!
It is time to let go of lost or missed pandemic learning. Children grow best in strengths-based education, not deficit-based. Stop worrying about the past and build the future. Continue reading