Near the end of the school year, one of my freshmen (I’ll call her Meg) complained to me about our school’s grading system. “Why does homework have to be 20% of my grade? If I can get As on tests without doing assignments, why does homework count against me?” We had a little post-AP test…
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I have been teaching high school for 26 years, and I cannot tolerate bored, disengaged teenagers. I've spent my entire career developing student engagement strategies that work and abandoning lessons that don't work. As a result, my students frequently comment that they are "never bored" in my class. I'm proud of that -- and of my students' outstanding performance.
I'll use this blog to talk about engagement strategies as well as other issues facing teachers, students and everyone who cares about education today. I hope you find it interesting.
So I was a little busy…
I try to post to this blog once a week, but sometimes I fall behind. Like the last three weeks. What happened? It’s not that I didn’t want to write, and it’s definitely not that I’d run out of things to say. I have opinions about nearly everything, and I’m constantly filing away ideas during…
Read MoreA cynical take on the value of school
Last week, a Slate.com article on a new technology to track mental engagement (Pay Attention!) raised the issue of boredom in school, quoting this stat: “82 percent of U.S. high school students report being sometimes or often bored in class.” Like me, the writer Mary Mann (also the author of Yawn: Adventures in Boredom) clearly…
Read MoreWhat do ‘experts’ have to offer us?
For the past few weeks, I’ve been going to physical therapy to deal with rotator cuff tendinitis in my right shoulder. At my intake appointment, I learned that I brought this problem on myself by doing what I thought was “the right thing.” For years, I thought I was helping my shoulders and preventing future…
Read MoreIf it’s interesting, they’ll listen
Which high school subject is most interesting to students? Economics Pre-calculus Physics English History The answer: None of the above. No subject is inherently the most interesting; what students find interesting depends on how we teach the material. I was reminded of this twice in the past week, thanks to my AP Psych students. First,…
Read MoreWhat I wish I knew starting out
This weekend, I was asked: What do you wish you had known when you first started teaching economics? Although there are plenty of economics concepts I wish I’d understood better back in 2002, like the relationship between bonds and interest rates, how to calculate terms of trade, what a liquidity trap is (I told kids…
Read MoreWhat makes history stick
When I was in high school, I found history pretty dull. We spent a lot of time listening to lectures, watching filmstrips, taking notes, and regurgitating facts onto tests. Only a small fraction of our time was spent debating historical questions (should we have dropped the bomb?) or participating in simulations (like a constitutional convention)…
Read MoreShow kids the possibilities
Silver Falls State Park, the site of the wedding Last weekend, I went to a former student’s wedding in Oregon. In high school, she was a journalism kid, a writer who was always interested in other people, especially the underdogs. She wrote a particularly compelling editorial — after a school shooting in rural Minnesota —…
Read MoreAre there good reasons to miss class?
No one likes it when students are out of class. Absenteeism is a big reason students fall behind (and fail), and it’s frustrating when students miss instruction, can’t grasp the material independently and then require our help outside of school hours. But what about when they are absent for a “good reason”? When I was…
Read MoreA perfect place to learn
Last week, I experienced the ideal learning environment. For five days, I learned Spanish at an adult immersion program in Samara Beach, Costa Rica. The fresh air, the warm sun, the sound of the ocean, the small classes (just six students with an instructor), and the motivated students were all big factors — and ones…
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MARTHA RUSH 