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Monthly Archives: August 2007

Teaching to Inquire

Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Yesterday I talked to my students about the value of doing science – asking questions, predicting, observing, describing, measuring, classifying, generalizing, inferring, communicating – and I told them that I never did science in school. Science, for me, was reading the textbook and answering questions at the end of the chapter. We practiced none of [...]

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School Staff Turns Down State Bonuses

Friday, August 24, 2007

I don’t begrudge any teachers a little extra recognition. But the idea that it “will inspire and empower Alaska’s outstanding educators to use their expertise” is wrong. It won’t. So I was very pleased this morning to see this in the paper: Pearl Creek turns down state bonuses By Robinson Duffy rduffy@newsminer.com Published August 24, [...]

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Emergence

Friday, August 24, 2007

After a week with my new group of sixth graders, I want to get a handle on the basics of what some theorists call emergence. Teachers call it classroom management, which deceptively implies foreseeable results. Like other complex systems, the classroom is self-organizing, marked by numerous connections and unplanned interactions. These things, it seems to [...]

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Redrawing the Shape of Learning

Sunday, August 19, 2007

…the universe has come to be seen as “relentlessly nonlinear.”-Davis and Sumara Will Richardson’s recent posts about the future of schools and teachers leaves me an opening for a new “big idea” that I’ve been working on lately. I finished reading Complexity and Education, by Davis and Sumara, which has me thinking about complex systems [...]

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Clearing a Space to Think

Saturday, August 11, 2007

Before I became a homeowner I was a property owner. Beginning with a blank slate and building my own place has given me a large store of object lessons in starting from scratch. The first and most painful truth that I have to face any time I start something is the need to excavate – [...]

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Getting Past ‘Villains’ and ‘Fools’

Thursday, August 9, 2007

If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll end up somewhere else. -Yogi Berra Education historian, Sherman Dorn has a new book, Accountability Frankenstein, in which he explores the roots of test-based school accountability. Listen to the preface here (mp3). He compares the testing movement to Frankenstein’s monster, calling it “an obscene marriage of technocracy [...]

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Like Cranky Talk Show Hosts

Sunday, August 5, 2007

Responding to Chris Lehman’s post, All Children Can Learn, I share his questions. Chis asks, …what is important for all students to know? What is more important — demonstrating recall or demonstrating problem-solving skills? Immediate ability or the ability to produce over time? What are the schools we want? What are the schools we need? [...]

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Metablognition: Bits & Pieces

Sunday, August 5, 2007

I wrote a post last summer about blogging and identity construction with a similar title. This one is a little bit more about the blog in-use, it’s construction and maintenance. This post was prompted by some questions that Eric Hoefler asked. Eric is getting ready to change focus and hit the road, and he’s thinking [...]

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Fish on Board

Thursday, August 2, 2007

fish on board Been kinda’ busy lately. The blog will get back in gear soon. I still need to cut and stack several cords of firewood before school starts. In case anyone cares to look at some historic photos, these help to show how I got the fish. I’ve got about a week before I [...]

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