When do you stop learning? At the end of the day, when you’ve left your classroom and set aside the last papers to be graded, are you done learning? Or maybe you consider yourself an autodidact—a self-taught person forever searching out new things to learn, new things to know, new concepts to understand, new philosophies…
Student-Directed Learning
Invoking Curiosity
This may be the last place on the Internet to get around to mentioning the amazing feat that NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) pulled off in landing Curiosity on Mars. JPL engineers have become celebrities. Ridiculously amazing and stupendously glorious photos have been beamed back from the red planet by Curiosity. A tricky, nail-biter of…
And that’s the way it was…
The evening news. Growing up in my house, watching it was part of the day’s rituals. Despite whatever was happening in the world—including Vietnam, Watergate, and long gas lines—watching Walter Cronkite was how my father spent his time digesting dinner. As someone who idolized his father, I watched and listened to Cronkite too. A few…
Ten Ideas for a Classroom That Fosters Thinking
I like to read people’s ideas. Sometimes, it doesn’t even matter what the topic is, except perhaps for such things as Internet marketing analytics and reality shows about people who don’t seem to ever actually work. Ever. Here are ten ideas about teaching from Bertrand Russell (1872-1970), the late British philosopher, mathematician, historian, and social…
Inducing Anxiety
You could probably wield even your most rudimentary Psychology 101 skills to write a 400-page case study of me when I tell you that the last six weeks of the school year filled me with dread and anxiety. A Teacher’s Plan Book stuffed full of notes, remarks, reminders, failures, and successes took center stage on…
I Wash My Hands of Responsibility
By now you’ve no doubt received all of your National Hand Washing Awareness Week greeting cards from friends, relatives, and secret admirers. It happens this time every year, our mailboxes stuffed with sincere or humorous cards reminding us to wash our hands to fight off the never-ending assault of germs and bacteria. There’s always that…
Making Real-World Connections
My students sometimes accused me of torture. If you know me, you know how funny that is. Maybe I did torture my students, but it was justifiable in the war on classroom boredom. It served the greater good of learning! More than a few times, I have mentioned Jack London’s story “To Build a Fire”…
Seven Faces Lighting Up in the Dark
Perhaps this is the most wonderful thing about teaching: seeing the wonder and amazement on a child’s face as she learns something new. It’s the eyes brightening and a brow rising as a young girl makes the connection between something she has read in a book and now experienced in another lesson, in a hands-on…
The Shoes of a Marathoner
Writing an inspiring blog post is sometimes like trying to capture lightning in a bottle. In other words, it’s a piece of cake. Obviously. Spending a productive day in the classroom is the same thing. It’s easy to stay inspired and find creative solutions to classroom challenges whenever they arise. People think teaching is hard,…
Let the Students Lead?
I’ve just finished reading a thought-provoking newspaper op-ed about a small experiment at a high school in western Massachusetts. A local writer followed a group of high school students (including two kids on the verge of dropping out) as they spent an entire school year planning, writing, and following their own curriculum. The students acted…