While preparing for my next class session, I re-read John Taylor Gatto’s 1990 “New York City Teacher of the Year” acceptance speech. It’s worth re-reading regularly. It angers, frustrates, depresses, and inspires me. It scares me, too … scared for myself, for our students, for our future. I think we [...]

While I disagree with the way NCLB has been conceived and enforced, I agree with this approach from teachers to students:
We decided it was our duty to do everything we could to help our students beat this test—everything, that is, except give up powerful, purposeful instruction.
I’ve also found that an “outside enemy” (like a standardized [...]

My girlfriend and I were a little restless yesterday, so we took a drive out to a local “urban legend” hot spot: Bunny Man Bridge. The legends that collect around this site vary widely, attributing the origin to an escaped convict, a murderous teen, or perhaps just a local nut-job upset about trespassers.

[It's the [...]

October’s issue of Realms of Fantasy magazine has an article by Terri Windling called “Lost and Found: The Orphaned Hero in Myth, Folklore, and Fantasy.” In it, Windling traces the archetype through mythology, fairy tales, fiction, and history.1 She also offers some explanations for the continued interest in these tales, such as the [...]

Scott McCleod pointed to Richard F. Elmore’s UCEA conference presentation a few days ago and hosted the mp3 on his site. I gave it a listen. (His presentation is a bit dry, but substantive … and McCleod’s list of examples of misalignment are also helpful.) Elmore provides data and studies that [...]

The end of the year can be a trying time for teachers, particularly teachers of seniors. The concept of “one more month” translates roughly into “school’s over” (or, if they’re trying to be considerate, “school’s practically over”). If it wasn’t there already, a hatred of school grows quickly during this final month like [...]

For many students, the last month of school is a time of new understanding: the poor choices of the last eight months really do add up. This is the time many students come looking for “extra credit” or some other way to change their grades.
Recently, in West Virginia, a student sued for a grade [...]

[In an effort to get more specific and address more of the what, why, and how of my teaching practice, I'd like to outline how I begin to move students away from the five-paragraph essay and toward a more sophisticated understanding of writing. This is a long post because I want to be specific. [...]

Questions about what, why, and how I teach are constant preoccupations of mine. I want to attempt to make my thoughts about these questions more explicit, in part due to recent conversations I’ve been having with others (online and off), and in part because one of the most important things teachers can do in [...]

A comment on an earlier post asking if anyone had information about tteach led me to Peter Rock’s blog entry. There, he says of tteach:
Paying teachers through advertising revenue is unwise pedagogy. The site says that “tteach is essentially School 2.0″. Apparently, School 2.0 is really about placing profit over students. gnuosphere: School 2.0 [...]