“Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths pure theatre.” — Gail Godwin What’s your style of lesson planning? Detailed plans with standards references and time span or a loose idea filled with improv… I have learned that there are two basic camps of lesson plans. And which one you choose as a teacher defines your [...]
Being an unemployed teacher, where do I find myself on a daily basis? The local coffeehouse of course! As I am now addicted to this place, it got me thinking about the idea of coffeehouses, the Socratic method, and teaching. What if we radically changed our approach to the classroom? Instead of the teacher lecturing [...]
Almost every Sunday our local newspaper has had an editorial about control of schools. It’s become a huge debate… and one that I have some conflicting feelings about. When the United States decided to create a public school system, we decided that local entities were the best to control the curriculum and general operations of [...]
I have a love/hate relationship with parents, and the scary things is that I am a parent. How do teachers deal with parents and then how do parents deal with teachers? It seems we have arrived at an impasse in the relationship. Let’s start with parents…. What is our job in the education [...]
What’s the best way to get information to the needed parties: parents, students, teachers, etc? Definitely not through meetings… that’s what I learned through 3 years of pointless communication. We (humans) are horrible about paying attention when other people are talking. Either we get distracted, like squirrels and shiny objects or are thinking about [...]