This semester, I taught an experimental Economics Concepts class. If you’re not sure what that means, it’s a modified version of our high school’s regular Econ class, designed to be more accessible to students who would probably struggle in that course. We teach Econ to freshmen here, and it’s typically one of the hardest courses…
Read More
“How do you build relationships with students?” A colleague asked me that yesterday, and I was stumped for a minute. I always struggle with that question and feel a little ashamed — because I don’t do many of the things experts say we are supposed to do. I do stand at the door when kids…
Read More
He’s a great teacher, but when he was explaining calculus, I really couldn’t understand it. He ran a good workshop, but when one of the teachers didn’t get something, he just explained it the same way again. Is anyone else confused? I heard both of these comments this summer — just part of casual backyard…
Read More
Were you the kind of high school student who always did your homework? Who always studied for tests? Who came to class prepared? Or were you kind who procrastinated? Who scraped by on what you could pick up in class? Who was too busy or distracted to pick up a book or notebook at home?…
Read More
I’m reading Tim Brown’s book Change by Design, part of my prep work for my job as Chief Educator-in-Residence at Quarter Zero, and I keep wondering: What if we used design thinking to tackle everyday problems in schools? For example, tardies. Tardies drive high school teachers and administrators crazy for so many reasons, but here…
Read More
The ACTs and state testing are just behind us, and AP tests, final projects and final exams are right around the corner. Remember what it felt like to be a high school student under that kind of stress? Even teenagers who don’t have a mental illness, like anxiety or depression, can feel overwhelmed and stressed…
Read More
Now that we can google every fact, formula, date, direction, definition and synonym, many of us deride memorization as a pointless exercise. Instead, we focus on building understanding, developing critical thinking and scaling Bloom’s Taxonomy. To a large extent, I agree with this shift. I think our students are far better served by learning to…
Read More
In February, I wrote a blog post about the difference between social justice and socialism. In it, I defined social justice as “the view that everyone deserves equal economic, political and social rights and opportunities.” One skeptical reader responded: “There is literally NO ONE that disagrees with that definition of social justice. Everyone wants equality…
Read More
In the past few weeks, two former students (both female) told me I had been a role model to them — but for different reasons. One, who had suffered academic bullying in high school, said I had shown her how to be a strong woman. She emailed to tell me how she had finally stood…
Read More
For teachers, parent nights and parent phone calls are often a deep source of stress. It’s never fun to be the bearer of bad news — and there will be some difficult conversations when students are struggling. We want to communicate with our students’ parents, but we don’t want to say the wrong thing, and…
Read More