If Student Test Results Determine Your Future

Is a student best summarized by a test score? I would give you a minute to think about that, but I know I don’t have to. You answered right away. Whether you’ve taught for just a year or you’re on the verge of retirement after a long and fulfilling career in the classroom, you know…

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End-of-June Randomness

It’s tough to write a blog for teachers in the final days of June. Some of you have been done with your 2012-2013 school year for almost a month. Some of you are looking at your last few days. Retailers are blatantly guilty of starting their back-to-school promotions. And we will not give you even…

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Common Core Outcomes Giveaway

Your time at the end of the school year is valuable. So this will be a short and, hopefully, sweet blog post. Roughly 97 ideas crossed paths in my brain at one point this morning (not unusual, really), and I was left with the following questions that I want to ask you: Did you incorporate…

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Time Out for Test Prep

You learn some interesting things sitting in the bleachers at a little league baseball field. While your children practice the fundamentals and intricacies of baseball, you get to commiserate with other parents about all kinds of things. This weekend, for example, a number of parents chatted about EOGs—the universal End of Grade tests administered in…

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To Code or Not to Code

One of the most beautiful things in the world is the IBM Selectric typewriter. It looks like a work of Mondrian, sounds like a tango, smells like the future, and responds like a thoroughbred beneath one’s fingertips. (That covers four out of five senses. I’ve never tasted a Selectric.) When I was quite young, I…

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I Am a Daydream Believer, and You Should Be Too

We sure do make life hard on ourselves, don’t we? For example: the afternoon nap. Ah, glorious afternoon nap, how I miss you! Oh, sure, it’s a good and important thing for preschool children, and it’s excusable when it’s Grandma Madeline in her La-Z-Boy. But for the rest of us? Sorry, no. And daydreaming? Whether…

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How Fast Is the Future Arriving?

Mix tapes. They were the best. I used to spend hours and hours putting together what I consider to be some of the world’s best music mixes ever. Ever. Without dispute. I was to the mix tape what a modern deejay like Deadmau5 is to electronic dance music. The advent of the recordable CD (or…

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Blinded by Science Standards?

The only things I love more than science itself might be mad scientists and evil geniuses. Dr. Emilio Lizardo, Dr. Moreau, Dr. Frankenstein (that’s Frahnk-uhn-steen), Dr. Joyce Brothers, Dr. Scholl’s, Dr. Strangelove. Mad, I tell you! But if none of these villains have done the job of motivating more young people to take an interest…

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