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…
Technology
The Tipping Point
At some point in a teacher’s summer, one’s thoughts turn to the coming school year. Instead of hitting the snooze button 47 times in a row, you hit it 32 times one day, then 18 times soon after, until you’re finally down to just twice. You find yourself glancing longingly at your local teacher store…
What Would a Teacher Do?
Sometimes I can go on a tear and have something that I want to write about here at the Exchange just about every single day. Then we have a stretch like this recent one, where I go missing for a week and a half. What’s brought me back is another number. The number is 15,800,000,000….
Do Small Groups Work?
Whether back in the Stone Age when I was a student or in that other millennium when I was a teacher, the small-group thing never quite worked for me. As a student, unless I was in a small group with kids who were not my close friends, it was always too easy to spend too…
The Unknown Future of Hand-Generated Communication, part 2
I thought for sure that there’d be a bit more debate in the wake of my most recent post about the future of cursive writing. You know, that writing “they” have now decided should be called hand-generated communication. Since we last exchanged ideas, I have read some of the information that was presented at Handwriting…
The Unknown Future of Hand-Generated Communication
My invitation must have gotten lost in the mail. Monday, January 23, 2012, was the date and Washington, DC, was the place where I was supposed to be. Clearly. Yet my invitation to the conference Handwriting in the 21st Century? An Educational Summit never arrived. Clearly an oversight I do not expect to see happen…
The Sky Is Not Falling Currently
The sky fell last week. Or didn’t you notice? Or maybe you realized exactly why the sky fell and you reacted appropriately—with either a “You go, democracy!” or a “Well, it’s time to find a work-around.” The sky to which I am referring is not the actual sky, that blue blanket across our heads that…
Clinging to the Lost Art?
While I was getting all misty-eyed about my years at Chapman Elementary School the other day, I stumbled across another interesting piece of debris in the jumbled, cobwebbed recesses of my memory. Sentence diagrams. There were a few diagrammed sentences sticking out of the boxes where my fourth and fifth grade remembrances are kept. Those…
Avocado Is to Stainless Steel as School Library Is to…
Well, here we go again. Your humble Upper Grades Exchange host has a memory to share. It is a memory that comes from a time when “avocado” was a color found on kitchen appliances and not a food item essential for delicious, home-cooked Mexican dinners. I’m talking about the 1970s, when “avocado” was to kitchens…
An Invitation From the Upper Grades Exchange
When looking back over the year of Upper Grades Exchange posts I wrote in 2011 for a “year in review” post I never finished, it was not difficult to see that you—my readers—are most likely to react and comment on topics that involve some amount of controversy. Technology in the classroom, education reform, class sizes,…