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Monthly Archives: July 2007

Ground Rush Kicking In

Tuesday, July 24, 2007

An exploit during my first year of college (1971) that seems worthy of recall right now was jumping from an airplane for gym credit. In those days, in Eugene, Oregon, there was an alternative menu of courses for students interested in nontraditional ways to meet the general requirements for graduation. I decided, What the heck, [...]

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Salvaging What’s Good

Saturday, July 21, 2007

This is my attempt to make sense of what “school 2.0″ might mean, using a couple of education reform classics I just finished reading. For what it’s worth, I hate speculating about the future, and am more comfortable building with whatever I’m given to work with, if I can see any use. I found Neil [...]

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Resistant, Clueless, Indifferent, or Just Defensive?

Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Responding to a distributed blues riff on teacher resistance to systemic change (Will Richardson, Artichoke, Chris Sessums, and Terry Elliot – here and here again). I have a quick story. We were working on a mission statement for our school. At the end of what had been a drawn-out process in which an experienced mission [...]

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My Sicko Turn

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

I saw Sicko mostly because of this article: … the theater was in chaos. The entire Sicko audience had somehow formed an impromptu town hall meeting in front of the ladies room. I’ve never seen anything like it. This is Texas goddammit, not France or some liberal college campus. But here these people were, complete [...]

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Soldiers, on Politics and the War in Iraq

Monday, July 9, 2007

Washington Monthly has a series of articles written by soldiers that address the question, What can Democrats do to win over military voters? The question was prompted by a Military Times poll that shows only 46% of military voters identify themselves as Republican, down from 60% three years ago. Phillip Carter’s assessment of the shift: [...]

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Raising Bars and Stumbling Blocks

Sunday, July 8, 2007

The idea of using market principles to formulate education policy is the core assumption behind NCLB, testing, accountability, and competitiveness. The idea is that if we “raise the bar,” and set expectations high enough, teachers and students will endeavor to excel. Achievement gains will naturally follow, and our society will continue on it’s path of [...]

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Teaching Rocks

Saturday, July 7, 2007

Since Sarah Puglisi is thinking about rocks and Dada today, this might be the time to drop this one into the pool. For fun. As Sarah said, I hadn’t expected Dada, but then, one can’t expect Dada. I like to read Bird Baylor’s Everybody Needs a Rock to my students. After we get the “rules” [...]

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What’s going on

Saturday, July 7, 2007

Back from a trip Outside (outside Alaska) to visit family – there was the predictable backlog of messages, blog posts and news items waiting for me when I got back. Between the vacation and the news, it’s kind of hard to figure out where the real world starts and ends. But that’s how it is [...]

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