I’ve been working with my 4th graders on fractions during the last week or so. They LIKE fractions. The reason they feel this way is that I started them off with a game that they made themselves out of paper that they tore into halves, fourths, eighths, and sixteenths. It always surprises and delights me [...]
This morning when I opened my email at work I found a message from the school district’s tech director informing all of us that there were two polls online that we were being asked to complete. This is the first time that we have ever been asked to respond electronically to a poll. I liked [...]
There was an article in the News Miner today about the public employees retirement system. (PRS/TRS) It’s messed up, apparently. And Rep. Kelly wants to try to fix it.
The problem: The fund is about 5 billion dollars in the red! Fairbanks alone owes its teachers over 230 million. The state wants our school disctrict [...]
William Gass is my current read. I’ve been slowly wandering through his 2002 collection of essays, Tests of Time. He’s kind of hard to follow in many places because he seems to consider himself a writer’s writer and makes way too many references to things that I’ve not (and probably never will) read. But [...]
This little desktop blogging tool, Ecto, just became a magic wand for me. It’s funny how you can have a tool sitting around for a while and not quite see all the things it can do. I think about how Harry Potter and his pals learned to use their magic wands. Their initial efforts are [...]
Yesterday the principal came on the horn for the morning announcements. Along with all of the usual business such as the lunch menu, schedules for choir, and so on, he ended the session with a warning about taking food onto school buses. He reminded the students that there is a rule against food on [...]
Wednesday, March 23, 2005
I am continually amazed at the passivity of certain learners. Today I asked the group to use cursive handwriting to copy some words off of a spelling list. I gave them fine-point markers and a list that I copied with the copy machine so that they would have a model to work from. The task [...]
Some new things have happened to me since I started keeping this blog. I think it’s changed me a little bit. I suppose that every new venture we try has that power.
The first thing that I notice is that I’ve been writing more. I’ve tried to keep journals, but they always get lost or [...]
[I need to say goodbye to a friend. If this seems too sentimental, skip it. It's personal.]
You had a rough go your whole life. I’m sorry about that.. We did our best, and it wasn’t good enough. The whole way driving down to Anchorage last week, I thought about what I would [...]
It is the final day of my spring break. I am sitting at the desk with my attendance records, going over the official copy and justifying it with the record that I keep in my grade book. It’s a simple chore. Profoundly unrewarding. I have been doing it for many hours because I don’t stick [...]
