I love this story from last week’s Minneapolis Star-Tribune about North High students presenting research on social issues at a recent University of Minnesota symposium. One student presented his research on police brutality. Another her work on disparate maternal mortality rates for black women. Other topics included domestic abuse, poverty and immigration. The students surveyed…
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Teaching writing is everyone’s job
Nothing is more difficult to teach — at least at the K-12 level — than writing. You can teach kids vocabulary terms and math formulas and scientific principles all sorts of ways, both good and bad. You can lecture, assign reading, assign videos, hand out worksheets, develop experiments, create matching games. But no one can…
Read MoreMoving to PBL is a challenging (but worthy) task for teachers
Changing the way we teach is hard. At times, almost overwhelmingly hard. I was reminded of this yesterday, when I was invited to sit in with a terrific group of New Richmond, Wisconsin, teachers who are using my book (Beat Boredom) for a book study. The 20 teachers in the book study are meeting for…
Read MoreLet’s stop teaching like it’s 1899
Have you seen the picture? You know, the sepia-toned one with all of the kids sitting in desks in straight rows, representing American public schools 100 years ago? Or the newer version, the stock photo that got many of us riled up at Education Secretary Betsy DeVos? Because no, of course we don’t teach like…
Read MoreLet’s get real about financial literacy
11% of 18- to 25-year-olds have more than 10 checking account overdrafts per year. 40% of Americans spend more than they earn. Nearly 20% of African-American and Latino households are “unbanked” — meaning they’re not part of the formal financial system in this country. Are you surprised by these stats (from The Unbanking…
Read MoreFor students, doing beats listening
A few weeks ago, I wrote about launching my experiment with “no lecture” AP Macroeconomics this spring. I should note — I didn’t start this experiment because my students were performing poorly. 61 of my 65 students passed the AP test last year, and nearly all of them were freshmen. It was a pretty successful…
Read MoreTeamwork: Annoying AND essential
Should high school students work in teams — or solo? When I was a student, we did about 90 percent of our work alone. With the exception of lab work in science and the occasional English group project, we were expected to learn independently, so we would be prepared for individual success later. Back then,…
Read MoreFirst, don’t embarrass anyone
One of my former students, now a sophomore, visited the other day and reminisced about last year’s econ class. It was a hard class for him, but he pulled through with a B-. Out of the blue, he said: “I wasn’t afraid of you.” I was a little taken aback. “What do you mean?” I…
Read MoreLetting go of lecture
AP Macroeconomics is the most traditional class I teach. Still too teacher-directed, still too organized around lecture-practice-homework. I know better — yes, I’ve written an entire book on active learning strategies — but it’s been hard to let go. Macro is a difficult subject, and it’s a lot of content for high school kids to…
Read MoreNot giving up on homework yet
When I first started teaching in 1994, assigning homework was a no-brainer. It was part of the Madeline Hunter model — “independent practice” — and part of preparing high school students for independent learning in college. It’s also how I was taught. In high school in the ’80s, I spent hours each night doing math…
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