Recommendations are listed in chronological order with the most recent at the top. 

June 19 – Former Colleagues Day. Recently, Andy Riemer suggested Bruce Lech’s Why Won’t You Just Tell Us the Answer? to the history department. Andy says “It’s a really interesting and thought-provoking look at reinventing the history classroom – moving away from content and towards more skill-based instruction.” Also, Andy Arcand – former colleague/alumnus/former student – recently tweeted the link to this Edutopia post about effective feedback. The post is aimed at teachers of writing, but many of the principles would apply in other disciplines.

May 24 – Wondering what to read over the upcoming break? NAIS has helpfully posted a summer reading list developed by Richard Barbieri, who spent 40 years in independent schools. It is NOT a school-related list full of professional development potential, but it IS a list of readings that will likely make you think. May 18 – Our students would not like this article, which citing the conclusions of a Welsh professor’s 2010 study, reports that listening to music while studying is bad for comprehension. May 17 – NAIS recently sent out this video of Susan Cain, the introvert advocate who spoke at the 2017 Annual Conference. Long time readers will know I have posted about Cain’s message before and have included a link to her TED Talk. May 15 – So, how do we feel about “fidget spinners”?  Here is NPR’s take on these toys that some say help with focus but seem like a distraction to others. Feeling a little busy these days? Here is an article suggesting that busyness is an impediment to creativity. Saying “We need to find ways to give our brains a break,” the author goes on to propose four ways of doing just that, the first of which is to take a long walk every day and to leave your phone behind. In this post, the authors suggests we think more about metacognition (thinking about thinking) than learning styles, and they suggest five reflective practices, such as “think-pair-share,” that get students thinking about their learning. May 10 – Here is a thoughtful piece called “Student Rights and the Role of the Faculty,” which is worth a look as it grapples with the question of what students should be able to expect of the courses – and teachers – they take. It is intended for a college audience, but most of it applies equally well to secondary school (though perhaps not the question of whether students should be allowed to consider attending class a choice). May 2 – Here is a blog post on the benefits and liabilities of using points-based grading systems. The author does not argue for or against such systems, but she gives us ample reason to reflect on what system we use and why we use it.

April 25 – Believe it or not, this article made me think of Mrs. Riddle. The premise of the article is that in schools we are currently focused on “doing the wrong things right” when we need to focus on doing the right things. For a sense of what the author means, ponder a few of the questions he poses at the beginning:

• Do kids learn better when we separate out the content into different subjects, or is it just easier for us?
• Do kids learn better when we have every one of them pretty much go through the same curriculum in the same way, or is it just easier for us?
• Do kids learn better when we have them turn off all of their technology in school, or is it just easier for us?

The article feature a ten minute video of an interview with former Wharton professor Russell Ackoff, who actually utters the words “teaching is an impediment to learning” while explaining the need for systemic change in the education system. I thought of Mrs. Riddle because I am certain she would have agreed with the author of the article (and with Ackoff); I was reminded in particular of her notion that students not use textbooks. Her vision was of students in a class all using different sources to get at the same information.

If you want to be challenged to look at things – including our work – differently, read this piece and watch the video!

March 22 – Take this Learning Myths Quiz from NPR!  It consists of seven questions related to research on learning (and the persistent myths that research debunks), and the accompanying article also links to this report on a survey that suggests that most people are mistaken if they feel they have a good understanding of what constitutes effective teaching.

March 16 – Here is another Edutopia post; this one is on “Bell Work,” which is brief exercises for the beginning of class to get the students’ minds working.

February 15 – This short Edutopia post  called “5 Highly Effective Teaching Practices” is worth a look. The short version is that they are teacher clarity, classroom discussion, feedback, formative assessment and metacognitive strategies, but read the post for more direction.

February 8 – I ran across this great Edutopia post about the three questions one campus community asks itself all the time: What should we stop doing? What should we keep doing?, and What should we start doing? I love these questions and think them well worth asking. I also like the author’s answers; this short post is well worth the read.

January 29 – Here is a quick-read blog post on the Growth Mindset (& Innovator’s Mindset). A glance at the two charts can be very informative! January 19 – (wow) This is a useful article about practicing Mindfulness at work. Here is an article on the value of “interleaving.” Some know this as a study practice in which the student studies different disciplines for shorter periods of time rather than studying one discipline at great length. For the teacher, “interleaving” means doing the same thing with our own material – mixing material from different units into one review, or even mixing review material into the presentation of new material.

October 5 – Here is an interesting article that ponders the analogy between the teacher and the midwife. Enjoy!

September 8 – In the context of our developing Mindfulness program, two articles; one is from today’s New York Times. It is called Tips to help Your Child Have A Successful School Year, and the first tip involves Mindfulness (there is much more, including consideration of sleep, the value of homework, and how to study. The second article is from Tricycle, which is a Buddhist magazine; called Meditate – Don’t Annihilate, it concerns the creation of a new video game in which players  must pursue non-violent responses to violent situations. What a concept!  September 7 – Here is a worthwhile article about note-taking strategies. The two takeaways are: 1) the notion of having a (alternating) designated note-taker for each class, with the notes shared to a document available to all, and 2) more research suggesting that people who take notes by hand learn more than people who take notes on a computer. The rationale for designated note-takers includes students taking better notes when they know they have an audience, poor note-takers deriving benefit from examples of better work, students’ ability to compare their own notes with others’, etc. It is an interesting idea, to be sure. I will try it and report my experience. The research about taking notes by hand as opposed to on computer is not new; while I ask my students to bring devices to class, I do not allow their use for note taking.

June 29 – For those who use Flubaroo, Brian Cugell passed along this article, which compares Flubaroo with Google Forms new quiz feature. If you do not have any idea what I am talking about, click the link anyway for a quick introduction to the idea of having online quizzes graded automatically. Thanks Brian! June 11 – Apropos of our Mindfulness initiative at Avon, here is an article about Meditation in education.

May 17 – Read this piece by Will Richardson about the realities of school change. His sixteen bullet points are well worth our careful consideration. Here is a 2011 TED Ed Talk by Richardson, in which he argues that the system that may have been “good enough” for us is definitely not “good enough” for our children. May 5 – Here an Edutopia post called “12 Choices to help You Step Back From Burnout.”

April 26 – Here is Edutopia‘s list of the top 15 education research highlights of 2015. They range from science of learning studies to why we should let ADHD students fidget in our classes to the impact of Mindfulness on math scores. Have a look.

March 30 –  The New York Times’ Frank Bruni has an amusing, tongue-in-cheek look at how ridiculous the college admissions world has become. March 3 – This article in The Atlantic is called Students Aren’t Getting Enough Sleep – School Starts Too Early; it was published in the fall of 2014 and discusses what was then a new report from the American Academy of Pediatrics. Worth a look. March 2 – Here is an interesting piece advocating more thoroughly clarifying our expectations for class discussion/participation: Clear Criteria: A Good Way to Improve Participation.

February 25 – Here is an article from The Guardian called Four Neuromyths That Are Still Prevalent in Schools – Debunked. The “neuromyths” are: learning styles, only using 10% of the brain, right v left brain, and the value of “brain games.” Here are the musings of Peter Gow as he prepares for the NAIS Conference. I recommend anything and everything from Peter Gow, who is something of an independent school guru. He is, at the same time, the quintessential “school man” and a visionary dedicated to helping independent schools remain vital in these changing times. He is also executive director the of Independent Curriculum Group; the Teaching Collaborative and I are pondering their Principles of Independent Curriculum; let me know if you would like a copy. Google for Educators: The Best Features for Busy Teachers February 17 – This is an article with the title “20 Signs You Are Actually Making a Difference as aTeacher.” It is worth a look; my favorite sign may be the first: “Your students are asking questions, not just giving answers.” February 11 – Here is a TeachThought post on Four Things Innovative Schools Have in Common. Have a look at this NPR interview called What Kids Need From Grown-Ups (But Aren’t Getting). On its face, it does not initially seem appropriate, inasmuch as it deals with pre-schoolers and kindergarteners. Read on. I think much of it translates very well for our students; I was struck in particular by this quotation: “We’re underestimating kids in terms of their enormous capacity to be thoughtful and reflective, and, I would argue, that’s because we’re not giving them enough time to play and to be in relationships with others.” I think much of what is discussed here applies directly to programs such as Intersession, with its emphasis on experiential learning, making, and student-directed planning. Another aspect article is that the interviewee is Erika Christakis, who was at the center of the Halloween costume firestorm at Yale last Fall; it is interesting to get her perspective on those events. February 10 – Here is a thought-provoking blog post called “Things I Wish My Department Chair Would Say About Teaching.” Well worth a read – even if you are not a department chair. February 3 – The latest addition to the Clark Room Teaching & Learning Library is The Little Orange Book – Short Lessons in Excellent Teaching. The book is published by the University of Texas System’s Academy of Distinguished Teachers, and it consists of a series of short vignettes by teachers about teaching. The lessons range from the philosophical – “Elevate Your Audience” – to the purely practical – “Buy a Green Pen” – though the bulk seem to fall closer to the latter category. I have not finished it yet, but I find The Orange Book to be worth a look. The stories are short enough that one can pick the book up for a couple of minutes between tasks and still encounter something quite useful. Give it a try; it is in the Clark Room, and it is a little orange book. February 2 – Want to know how education reformer Alfie Kohn feels about calling on students who have not raised their hands? Read this piece. (Hint: he is not a fan!) The article ends with a discussion of ways to make classroom discussions more student-centered.

January 28 – Atlantic has a couple of articles about how current trends toward collaboration, group work, project-based learning and the like are affecting introverts (see post from long ago). One article is focused on students; the other is focused on teachers. They are worth a look if this topic interests you. Here is a post from TeachThought called Coverage Teaching is a Kind of Blindness. In it, Grant Wiggins takes us through a unit in which he uses an Essential Question to foster real understanding of several texts. It takes longer than simply “covering” the texts in a lecture-discussion format, but, he says, the results are worth it. January 25 – Many of us use Google Docs quite a bit; here is an article about things we might not realize Google Docs can do – voice typing and website embeds to name just two. January 18 – Given the nature of my latest post, I found this headline intriguing: How Measurement Fails Doctors and Teachers. January 14 – I was intrigued by the headline of this article – Give Teachers a Physics Test From a Woman and They’ll Give Her Worse Grades. Obviously, this specific issue is not a problem at our school, but it raises the question of how our expectations of students might be coloring our evaluation of their work. In the rest of life, we tend to see what we expect to see; can we seriously tell ourselves that is not true when we evaluate student work? What is to be done? One small measure is to find ways to disguise the author on the work itself. My own students share their writing with me on Google Docs, so I ask them not to put their names on the actual documents. Of course, I know the author because I found the essay in his folder, but at least I do not begin my reading with a reminder of whose work it is. For in-class work such as a test, I am wondering about assigning each student a random number – different each time – and having them identify their tests with that number rather than their names. Your thoughts? January 4 – We start the new year with another news story about the potentially toxic levels of stress our students face. Could a Mindfulness program be part of the solution, along with some of the changes – homework limits, schedule change, creative assessment – mentioned in the last paragraph?

December – The festive period can be filled with retrospective pieces. This is a Faculty Focus look back at their Best 15 Teaching and Learning articles of 2015. The article itself contains links to the fifteen full articles and a one or two sentence synopsis of each. Have a look. If you are interested in using voice recognition technology with Google Docs, here is an article that tells you how.

November 30 – The latest issue of Educational Leadership has arrived, and its theme – Co-Teaching, Making It Work – is certainly appropriate for a faculty about to embark on an Intersession program for the first time, inasmuch as Intersession is, among other things, an exercise in co-teaching for many of us. Come to the Clark Room and check out articles such as To Clone or Not to Clone?, Co-Teaching to Reach Every Learner, and Teaching in Tandem: A Reflection. November 17 – I frequently recoil from modern society’s attempts to quantify that which cannot (should not?) be quantified, but of course grading essays can be an exercise in exactly that. In this piece called “An Objective Approach to Grading,” a professor of English describes her system for making essay grading more objective. Is this system better than designing and using a rubric?  November 16 – Call me biased, but I’d argue this New York Times article about the call for teaching social and emotional learning in elementary schools presents a powerful argument for mindfulness programs. November 13 – Here is an article called “The American High School is Obsolete. Lets Do Something About It.” It is an interesting piece about an actual effort to redesign the American High School, and it contains reminders that the “if it was good enough for …” argument really does not hold water any more. Here is an Edutopia post – 10 Fun-Filled Formative Assessment Ideas. It is what it says it is. My guess is each of us will dismiss some of these immediately (but will we all dismiss the same ones?), while others will seem like a great idea. I like the last three – Exit Slip, Misconception Check, and Top Ten List – the most. Do you like data? The most recent issue of Educational Leadership has arrived, and it is devoted to data and its most effective use. Come to the Clark Room to check it out. There you will also find past issues of Educational Leadership and Independent School, along with the books on the recommended reading shelf. November 11 – Though he is guilty of cherry-picking his data in at least one instance, the author of this Washington Post piece presents a compelling case for re-imagining school along with a rather dire forecast of our kids’ future if we fail to do so.

October 29 – Here is an interesting blog post called What Happens to Empathy Deferred? October 14 – This article in Forbes points out that our education system is not set up to create/encourage innovators. It quotes Tony Wagner, who wrote “Creating Innovators: The Making of Young People Who Will Change The World,” who lists five ways American education undercuts innovation: 1. students focus almost entirely on individual achievement, while innovation is generally a team sport, 2. we continue to work in our discipline silos, while innovation is usually a cross-disciplinary affair, 3. we make failure a pariah, but innovation often comes through failure, 4. we encourage passive learning, while innovation is about creating, and 5. we emphasize extrinsic motivation (carrots and sticks) while innovators are generally intrinsically motivated. Food for thought. October 13 – In keeping with the Mindfulness theme, here is an article from Forbes on The “New” Benefits of Mindfulness. October 10 – Researchers detect a 40% decline in empathy among college students. What is to blame? Cell phones, essentially. I have seen this reported in a few places, the most recent of which is this article in the New York Times. October 8 – Come to the Clark Room and borrow the summer 2015 issue of Independent School. Many of the articles are really intriguing. I will endeavor to provide synopses, but if you would like to read, for example, Relational Strategies to Engage Boys, by Michael Reichert, come on by. I should add that the fall 2015 issue has arrived as well; its theme is “Education and the Brain,” and I am anxious to read Rethinking Learning Potential, among others.

September 18 – Here is an article Luddites will celebrate; it discusses two studies that suggest students taught using computers perform worse on tests than those “taught using more low tech methods.” The overall conclusion is a bit more nuanced than that – schools invest in technology without considering how best to use it. September 15 – This is a blog post on Teaching Digital Citizenship by our former colleague Nate Green. It is a thoughtful piece. September 9 – My friend Scott MacClintic posted this article to his Scoopit Page. It (the article) points out that our students’ being “digital natives” is not translating into their having an ability to use technology to solve problems and goes on to suggest “Three Steps Faculty Can Take to help Today’s Students.” They are: 1) ask students to solve real-world problems as part of your class curriculum, 2) make your students’ learning as active (as opposed to passive) as possible, and 3) push STEM. It is a short piece and worth a look. And here is a blog post on The Advantages of Rubrics which concludes that part of the goal “should be students who don’t need teacher-constructed rubrics.”

(Summer)

May 28 – Here is a blog post called “5 of the Biggest Mistakes I Made as a New Teacher.” It is worth a look. May 15 – Thanks to Brad Carpenter for sharing this NPR story about research demonstrating that, for some students, movement and fidgeting actually helps them learn. As Bard points out, this conclusion seems on the self-evident side, at least for those of us who work with adolescent boys all day. On the other hand, as the article mentions, this understanding is far from universal among teachers and education reformers. For those who do not “do digital” in the classroom, here is a blog post that lists five reasons why you should “do digital.” In short, they are: it is a new way to reach learners, it can be more engaging, it can boost students’ “employability,” it supports your own professional development, and it is more sustainable. May 12 – For those who do not subscribe, you can find the latest issue of Independent Teacher here. It has a number of compelling articles about our work; I would call your attention in particular to one called The Costs of Paying Attention, The Value of Reflection, which includes the line “… illustrates the need for educators to find more opportunities to make reflection part of a student’s life at school, especially amidst the incessant bombardment of distractions from cyberspace.” Fair warning: this will be a theme of mine next year. May 11 – Here is an interesting video (10 minutes) in which Mark Barnes argues for feedback without grades and explains his “four simple words” approach. May 7 – I am currently taking an online course on teaching online courses, and another student recommended this video about “gamifying” education. It is well worth the ten minutes, as it discusses different ways to motivate/inspire students, many of which do not require coding skills. May 5 – Recommended viewing: here is an NAIS video featuring Sarah Lewis discussing the notion of being a “deliberate amateur.” She talks about Nobel Prize-winning physicists whose advances have come from their regularly scheduled “play” time. It is well worth the two minutes.

April 24 – Here is an article called “Four Common Sense Tenets of Brain-Based Learning.“ The first two – “Minds learn best when children feel intellectually and emotionally safe” and “Minds learn best when students feel empowered” – seem largely self-evident. The third tenet – “Minds learn best when bodies get to move” – is one we understand but do not always put into practice. Most days, I set a timer to ring halfway through my classes; when it goes off, students know to stand up, circle the table at least once, and take a seat other than the one they just left. Rather than disrupting class, it gives me a new “first few minutes” when their levels of energy and focus are high. The fourth tenet is “Minds learn best when learners appreciate the value of confusion,” which can seem counterintuitive at first, but it speaks to the idea of the growth mindset. Confusion can be a roadblock to the student who gives up at the first sign of challenge, but it serves to motivate the student who believes he can and will, by dint of effort, get past it. April 16 – Today I added a new blog – ericafterschool – to the blog roll at right. It is maintained by a #TABSchat friend, Eric Wolarsky, and I was drawn to it initially to read his posts about his school’s Adaptability Project, which is thinking about many of the same issues I am charged with pondering here. For more on the Adaptability Project, start with this post; it isn’t the first on the project, but you’ll get a sense of it, and you’ll read the segment in which he quotes Eric Shinseki as saying “If you dislike change, you are going to dislike irrelevance even more.” April 14 – In March, Rob Jenkins wrote a Chronicle of Higher Education piece called The Four Properties of Powerful Teachers, which he lists as personality, presence, preparation and passion; this month, he has followed up with The Seven Fundamental Conditions of Learning, which he sees as awareness, interest, motivation, relevance, engagement, reinforcement and support. He writes from the perspective of a community college professor, but what he says will resonate with secondary teachers as well. April 13 – Brad Carpenter recently sent this short New York Times piece to his department for their consideration. In it, Daniel Goldman lists four “competencies” for people seeking to exercise emotionally intelligent leadership. It is intended for folks involved in business leadership, but these four “competencies” are also crucial for teachers. April 9 – In connection with the post about tinkering, here is a piece on turning any classroom into a makerspace.  Many of the projects mentioned are not inexpensive (3D Printers come into play more than once), but the articles makes a good case for hands-on learning, particularly in technology. April 2 – Watch this short (2 min) thoughtful and thought-provoking video – NAIS passed it along – about student engagement. In the spirit of our discussion on relational learning and being a relational school, I offer this post to The Answer Sheet; it is about what Americans like most about their favorite teachers.

March 31 – Here is yet another Edutopia piece; this one is about the virtues of allowing students to stand during class. The students in the article actually helped create some stand up desks for their classroom. Many of our rooms do not have room for that luxury, but most would allow for a quick stand-up-and-move break. I frequently (once per class) invite my students to stand up and move around the room before taking a seat other than the one they have left.  Here is an Edutopia piece called 7-Step Prep: Make a Weekly Plan for You. It is an article about planning one’s time (not planning one’s classes, practices, etc.), and I offer it here because I am always intrigued by others’ attempts at organization (since my own have proven so futile to this point).  The day’s third Edutopia piece came to me via Brad Carpenter. It asks the rhetorical question: “When is it OK to humiliate students?” and answers “never.” Not all of the 12 Ways to Avoid Student Humiliation would work well in our setting, but the basic point is a very important one.  March 9 – Here is an Edutopia article entitled “How Student-Centered Is Your Classroom?”  March 8 – My brother passed along this Boston Globe article called “7 Things Every Kid Should Master.” It is worth a look.  March 5 – Scott MacClintic’s Scoop.it page led me to this article about homework and thus to the Edunators site. The article – 10 Ways to Improve Your Homework – includes suggestions that are obvious (Make It Meaningful), theoretical (Don’t Assign Homework, Inspire Homework), and practical (Have the Students Do the Lesson-Planning). It is well worth a look, as is the site generally.  March 3 – Given our on-going conversation about grades, it should come as no surprise that I was attracted to a Forbes article called “Throwing Out Grades Is Good For Learning.” For those familiar with the arguments against grades as we currently use them, there is not much new here, though I was not aware of a movement in the U.K. called “Assessment Without Levels.” Those not familiar with this ground should read this article; if you find it intriguing, get a copy of Tim Quinn’s On Grades and Grading from me in Eagle 32.

February 26 – This Washington Post article is about a younger boy (he is 8), but it serves to remind us that the way we “do” school frequently does not mesh with boys’ predilections. February 24 – This article is about how a third grade teacher created student-led “Parent-Teacher” Conferences. Why would I recommend it to secondary school teachers? I think some of it applies directly to us; one “takeaway” is implicit in the article’s title. Increase Rigor By Relinquishing Control. The teacher was surprised how much her students could accomplish when they were in charge of the conferences. Second, classroom discipline improved, in part because of the “authentic audience” the parents represent. I’ve recently added a number of articles to my Scoop.it page, mostly having to do with technology. They include tips on use of Gmail, Twitter, and poster-making tools in education. February 16 – Here are two articles on homework. One is a very short TeachThought post which consists mostly of a chart listing some alternatives to traditional homework. The other is a blog post from a 7th Grade teacher who recounts what her students wish their teachers knew about homework. I suspect our students would agree with most or all of the list. (The comments that follow provide a cautionary tale about glibly painting a large group with the same brush.) Here are two articles/posts with lists. The first is a TeachThought post called 20 Fundamentals: What Every Teacher Should Know About Learning. Some of this is, as the author observes, “obnoxiously obvious,” and you might find you disagree with some of it, but a scan of the 20 headings should prove interesting. The second list, also from TeachThought, is called The Neuroscience of Learning: 41 Terms Every Teacher Should Know. 41 is a daunting number; I include this one because it is by Judy Willis, a learning and the brain guru. Follow the link if you are interested in the science of learning and have a bit of time. Valentine’s Day – Here is a provocative post – What Practices Have No Place in Today’s Classroom – which I found on Scott MacClintic’s ScoopIt page. Friday the 13th(!) – This TeachThought post is called “50 Free Animation Tools and Resources for Digital Learners.” February 12 – Here is an article in The Guardian about schools that dare to break the mold. February 10 – This article in TIME appealed to my interest in the benefits of mindfulness, but I had no idea mindfulness training could have a tangible impact on math scores! Apropos the post entitled “What Do You Expect,” here is a TeachThought post about failure. Also apropos, here (again?) is Carol Dweck’s TED talk on the Power of Yet. This post from Brimmer and May’s David Cutler came via NAIS. Salient quotation: “Only when I began to consider myself as more of a coach, and less of a teacher-authoritarian, did I notice drastic improvement in my students’ performance.”

January 27 – Luddites and Digital Technology skeptics will want to read Mike Vachow’s The Teaching Life column in the Winter 2015 edition of Independent School. Vachow, head of Forsyth School in Missouri, does not advocate smashing all the machines; indeed his faculty use iPads and interactive white boards, among other things. He does, though, strongly question the notion that a digital experience can match a genuine one. A quotation: Would watching various films of MacBeth and then creating interactive Prezi reports be more personally and intellectually rewarding than bringing Shakespeare’s language alive through their own mouths and bodies on stage before a live audience? To choose the former would be a pedagogical felony. [p. 14]  (It may be unfair to suggest that anyone – even the most devoted advocate for technology in education – would choose the former, but you get his point.) Appropriately, I cannot share a link to the article; you will have to read it on the printed page. It is available in Eagle 32. Remember Nate Green, recently of our history department? He has a blog on the use of social media in education. January 25 – My thanks to Michelle Custer, who passed along this Mind/Shift post, which incorporates much of what I have been reading and thinking about of late, including brain research, and mindfulness, with a concept new to me called “unschooling. Here is a popular Edublog post that deals with “gamification” in education. Inasmuch as our intersession courses will likely have a project-based component, the title of this Edutopia post, What the Heck Is Project-Based Learning Anyway?, caught my eye. January 20 – Here is another TED Talk on the Growth Mindset; Carol Dweck on The Power of Yet. January 19 – This TeachThought post is about ways to get students moving during class. Do not be put off by the picture of elementary school students; several of the suggestions would work for / are geared toward secondary school students. The above post contains a link to this Washington Post article, which in turn contains a piece I have posted here before – it is by a teacher who followed two students through their days and reflects on how she would teach differently as a result. The “gist:” have students stretch and/or move around every day, use an egg timer to limit “sit and git” sessions, adopt a public “no sarcasm” policy, precede every test (etc.) with a five minute reading period during which students may ask questions. (These are only highlights; there is more in the article.) January 13 – In the course of pondering how best to apply problem- or project-based learning to a history survey course, I came across the concept of an EdCafe, which is essentially like creating an EdCamp for a class. Katrina Kennett seems to be a bit of an EdCafe guru; she has a website and a YouTube video in which she explains both how to create an EdCafe and why you would want to do so. Enjoy.

Christmas – Enjoy this video about Christmas Truce. It was made by UEFA in celebration of soccer played between the lines 100 years ago. December 22 – Here is an article that contributes to our on-going conversation about grades and grading. Festive Season – During the holidays, I will be suggesting fewer articles, posts, etc. in this space, in part because I will be relaxing, and in part because I hope you will be reading for pleasure more than professionally. I will, though, continue to add recommendations to my Scoopit page on a regular basis. December 15 – In my reading this morning, I came across two posts which refer to Visual Communication Guy.  One suggests a periodic table for figures of speech, and the other presents a chart designed to help students determine whether they have plagiarized and how serious their violation might be. December 12 – Mindful of the continuing grades conversation, I offer this EdWeek blog post about extra credit. At first blush, this blog post seems to be arguing for a return to “chalk and talk.” Actually, its argument is more nuanced than that, but it does see a place for the old-school pedagogies that reformers attack. Of course, it also sets up China’s education system (more to point, China’s PISA scores) as a model, and I know someone who moved out of China specifically so his children would not be educated there. A reminder that Samantha Jensen shared this article on learning differences. Brad Carpenter sent along this NPR piece about Elizabeth Green, author of Building A Better Teacher. December 2 – I thought you would enjoy this post entitled “Everything I know About Education I Learned from Watching The Princess Bride.” Interested in learning more about formative assessments? Start here. Thanks, Larry Ferlazzo! December 1 – This New York Times article piqued my interest in mindfulness in schools. Brad Carpenter passed along this Edutopia post on five questions teachers should ask themselves about homework. Green spent six years looking at teaching practices in Japan and the U.S., and she makes some interesting comparisons. Here is an interesting blog post about note-taking. If you have been wondering which education-related twitter chats happen on which days, you can find that here.

November 19 – In case you missed it, the fall issue of Independent Teacher is here. November 13 – This is the comment I just left on the “Grading Discussions” post.  The same issue of Ed Leadership has an article by Elizabeth City, in which she mentions two interesting “Discussion Protocols.” In “Save the Last Word,” students who have read a particular text read a quotation they find striking or significant. The other students have a minute or so each to respond before the original student gets two or three minutes to sum things up. In “Four ‘A’s,” students read a text with four questions in mind: What do you agree with? What do you want to argue with? What assumptions does the author make? What parts do you aspire to? November 10 – Three graduates students at the Harvard Graduate School of Education asked a number of their professors and their peers what makes good teaching; the result is this video. For those who may have let Connected Educator Month (October) get away, here is a TeachThought piece about hashtags. If you do not even know what a hashtag is, this might be the place to start. November 2 – Former student & colleague Andy Arcand sent along this New York Times piece about Goucher College President José Antonio Bowen.  He certainly has some innovative ideas about the future of education.

October 29 – Two people – Ben Schloat and my brother – have sent this article along. It is from a familiar blog, The Answer Sheet (see blog roll at right), but I confess I had missed it.  It is by an experienced teacher who “shadowed” two high school students for one day each – attempting to do everything that was asked of them.  It was, to put it mildly, an eye-opening experience.  If you do not have time for the whole article, scroll down to the sections – there are three of them (one for each “key takeaway”) – in which she says “If I could go back and change my classes…”  There you will find some thought-provoking stuff.  For example, having seen school through students’ eyes for two days, she decides she would “make my personal goal of ‘no sarcasm’ public and ask the students to hold me accountable for it. I could drop money into a jar for each slip and use it to treat the kids to pizza at the end of the year.”  October 28 – Here is an interesting TED Talk by Susan Cain, keynote speaker at the upcoming TABS Conference and the author of the award-winning New York Times bestseller QUIET: The Power of Introverts in A World That Can’t Stop Talking.  In it, she makes a powerful case for allowing introverts to be introverts.  It may be that you do not have nineteen minutes (length of the video) to give Susan Cain, and it may be that you are uncertain how this relates to education, so I will just tell you that she points out that schools, like workplaces, are set up for extroverts and that we often push people to be more outgoing and de-value quiet, reflective time.  Specifically, she says we should “stop the madness for constant group work.”  Of course, she is not completely opposed to collaborative work:  “We need to be teaching kids to work together, for sure, but we also need to be teaching them how to work on their own. This is especially important for extroverted children too. They need to work on their own because that is where deep thought comes from in part.”  October 23 – Here is an interesting TeachThought post about Chris Lema’s presentation “The ABCs of Sticky Teaching.” It is another presentation based on brain research, and it reinforces a number of things we have known intuitively for some time but potentially do not make a habit – as we should – of practicing.  For example, begin and end often.  Enjoy.  October 22 – Here is a New York Times post about teenage sleep patterns.  It includes links to a number of related studies and other articles, and, of course, it includes a conversation about school start times.  Here is another NYT article about sleep and learning – this one suggests specific sleep strategies that depend on the next day’s agenda.  October 21 – Interested in making videos as a way of providing review materials or presenting content to your students?  Avon colleagues, I have made a short video which explains the process by which I make videos using Snagit and iMovie – two programs already loaded onto your mac.  Enjoy, and let me know if you have any questions.  October 17 – Andy Arcand – former student and colleague – tweeted a Taylor Mali video, and I have added it to the links at right (under “videos”).  It is a poem called “Undivided Attention,” and it is well worth a look.  Enjoy.  October 14 – It is Connected Educator Month, so I give you this message from a Head of School about the value of twitter to him and his staff.  Also: this TeachThought post about being a Connected Educator.  October 9 – Brad Carpenter recommended this New York Times article called “Better Ways to Learn,” which applies some brain science to the task of learning content.  It recommends dividing study up into segments, with each segment at a different time and place.  (Assuming you also study other things in between, this is “interleaving,” which is frequently recommended by those familiar with brain science.)  It also recommends different sleep patterns depending on what one is studying – study at night and then sleep in if it is a math test – which is something I had not seen before.  October 7 – Connected Educator Month is here again.  Avon colleagues: be inspired to join @headmasterken in the twittersphere and start building your PLN (Professional Learning Network).  Need further inspiration? – Read this Edutopia post in which Tom Whitby, a connected educator guru, quotes some recent converts describing their transition from unconnected to connected.  Here is an article that advocates for day-dreaming in a school setting!  October 6 – Here is another thoughtful piece on the efficacy of unfettered use of devices in class.  It begins with these words: “I teach theory and practice of social media at NYU, and am an advocate and activist for the free culture movement, so I’m a pretty unlikely candidate for internet censor, but I have just asked the students in my fall seminar to refrain from using laptops, tablets, and phones in class.”

September 25 – Ben Schloat passed along this HuffPost article, which is a good explanation of growth mindset and its importance in education.  September 23 – Given my own interests, this title “Education: No Innovation Required” certainly caught my eye.  That the article is on TeachThought – a valuable resource in my view – gave it instant credibility.  Having read the article, I can see the author’s point, but I am skeptical.  The gist is that John Hattie’s research into what works in education yields a list of practices that includes “nothing ‘innovative’ at all.”  “Nothing blended, mobile, connected, self-directed, or user-generated about it,” the article’s author, Terry Heick, concludes, “[j]ust good old-fashioned solid pedagogy.”  Briefly, I am skeptical for two reasons; first, while Heick points out that Hattie’s list of the top ten effective practices – click the link above and have a look – consists of “good old-fashioned solid pedagogy,” that does not tell me innovative practices do not work.  For example, that face-to-face teaching is effective does not in and of itself make blended teaching ineffective, and in any event I know of no one suggesting using a blended model where face-to-face is a possibility.  Second, as Heick points out, there are some very real questions to be asked about the methodology of the study.  Heick’s sixth question is “Why does innovation seem unnecessary?,” but the first five questions should give one pause about drawing any far-reaching conclusions from this study.   Also – here is another thought-provoking article about grades and grading.  September 19 – This article in The Atlantic is about why girls get better grades than boys do, so it is worth a look to those of us engaged in teaching boys.  It also gets at the point I was making in the post about failing; our grading policies can lead to grades that do not necessarily reflect a student’s mastery.  Through most of their schooling, this works to the disadvantage of boys, who lack what the article calls “conscientiousness,” or self-discipline.  For me, the implication is clear; we should be helping our boys improve their self-discipline, but we need to be careful about grading it.  September 11 – Kate McSpadden passed along this article, which includes a number of ideas touched on here last year (but which are well worth revisiting), including the value of taking notes by hand and the value of “interleaving” instruction.  It also credits psychologist Robert Bjork with coining a phrase I had not seen before: “desirable difficulties.”  September 10 – This video is an interview with Jessica Lehey, who wrote The Atlantic article “Why Parents Need to Let Their Children Fail.”  Read the article; watch the video (it is longish – 18 minutes).  This is a very important idea, and it needs to be part of our conversation.  September 9 – I like this David Brooks piece about “Mental Virtues.”  It is not about teaching and learning per se, but it is about the life of the mind…  September 7 – I have several copies of Michael Reichert and Rick Hawley’s recent work  I Can Learn From You in my office; do come and borrow one.  I have already mentioned I Can Learn From You in a couple of blog posts, so you know it is an examination of the role of teacher-student relationships in boys’ learning.  Reichert and Hawley have done extensive research on the subject, and the book is filled quotations from students and teachers who were a part of that study.  This quotation, which is from Reichert and Hawley themselves, sums up one of their conclusions: “The teacher’s ability to establish [a positive] relationship was clearly the threshold to their (boys) productive engagement, but that engagement was sustained by their teachers’ persuasive mastery of the subject taught as well as their ability to create a stimulating and emotionally safe classroom space.”  These days, you do not often see newspaper articles arguing for testing, but that is what this New York Times piece by Benedict Carey does.  In discussing the value of testing as a means of promoting learning, Carey joins the “failure IS an option” advocates.  September 5 – Watch this video (a Diana Laufenberg TED talk about teaching).  Watch it.  September 3 – Thanks to Tim Roller who passed along this piece of recommended viewing – a Khan Academy video that reminds us that “failing is just another word for growing.”

August 22 – Here is a great NPR story about a California school with a progressive approach to educating boys.  Thanks to Michelle Custer for passing this along.

Summer of ’14 – This Edutopia post contains not my summer reading recommendations but those of Josh Block, who breaks them down into recommendations around creativity (example: Writing Down the Bones), technology (example: Alone Together), and education (example:This Is Not A Test).

May 28 – This Edudemic post is very good on the question of what to do about “screen distractions” presented by student use of technology in classrooms.  I have just added three Edutopia posts to my Scoop.it page.  Two are about blended learning, in which a course involves a combination of face-to-face and online work.  (We are offering two such courses next year – the semester courses for math students who have gone beyond BC Calculus.)  The third is a piece about “backchannel” applications, which allow students to contribute to an online discussion even as other students participate in a different activity.  May 19 – There is a new entry on the Blogroll at right; it is NPR’s Education Blog.  Michelle brought it to my attention, and I think it has a great deal of promise. For one thing, in addition to whatever good work the folks at NPR do, the Comments section is likely to have a reasoned, thoughtful debate on the salient issues – a rarity indeed on the inter-webs!  This Chronicle of Higher Education article adds to the conversations about grit and about grading.  In it, Anne Soebel, a film-production professor, argues for injecting a bit more failure into our students’ experience.  She cites both Angela Duckworth (TED talk) and Tony Wagner (Creating Innovators: The Making of Young People Who Will Change the World) on the value of failure and observes that “traditional academic settings often penalize failure and discourage risk,” and “students quickly discover that ‘knowing the right answer is far more important than asking a thoughtful question.'”  Soebel has five suggestions for teachers who wish to give their students permission to fail while still maintaining high standards and encouraging students to earn good grades. They are: create a classroom ethos in which students are encouraged to fail while trying (as opposed to failing for lack of effort), re-define “success” (create rubrics that reward process as much as finished product), give feedback early (do they really look at feedback on a graded exercise?), build it into grading (“degree of difficulty” in the rubric?), and reflect on failure (class discussion after the fact).  May 15 – This Edudemic post about “Device-Agnostic” tools is well worth a look.  “Device-Agnostic” is another way of saying BYOD (Bring Your Own Device), which is the model at Avon.  I think BYOD is the right approach for us, but the one big concern is whether a chosen app or website will work properly with every student’s device.  This article discusses five helpful tools that work on any device.  May 14 – There is some very good advice in this TeachThought post about how not to be a boring teacher.  Ken LaRocque sent along  this Atlantic article, which reminded me of the time I struck up a conversation with Westminster’s Zamboni driver, who turned out to be a retired Air Traffic Controller.  I agree entirely with the author’s defense of the humanities, but I recommend the article for the power of the last few paragraphs, which inspire us to fan the flames in our students – all of them.  May 13 – This article is at the core of an upcoming post on Relational Learning. Read all of it (it is a short piece), but pay particular attention to the paragraph that begins “In addition to conveying mastery of their subjects…”  May 6 – Here is another article – this one was in the New York Times – about the struggles of boys. You may find the article, and some of the many comments attached, interesting.  This is a nice tribute to teachers in honor of “Teacher Appreciation Week.”  The Spring edition of Independent Teacher is here.  May 3 – This Larry Ferlazzo post includes a link to part one of a conversation about grading and an invitation to participate in part two.  May 1 – If you do not know what Pentecostal Pedagogy is, watch this TED talk.  If you did not read this Edutopia article about mistakes when I first posted it to Ideas For Teachers, have a look now. It points out that, while we all appreciate the value of mistakes in learning, our students do not, and they therefore miss important opportunities to build understanding. The post contains some ideas about how to change that, and it reminds us of the value of mistakes in how we learn …

April 30 – This thoughtful piece about cheating presents cheating as an epidemic in American high schools and middle schools and suggests five steps a school can take to promote academic integrity. They are: strive for buy-in of honest academic practices, emphasize mastery and learning over performance and grades, establish a climate of care, revise assessment and grading policies, and reduce workload without reducing rigor.  April 17 – Reading this Teach Thought post called “8 Tips For Updating Your Teaching to Something Messier” would give you a good sense of our recent Faculty Coffee conversations…   April 15 – In this Chronicle of Higher Ed article, Craig Owens recounts a revelation he had while watching his university’s women’s basketball team prepare for a game. In short, he saw a more interactive, collaborative model than he found in his own classroom, and it gave him pause. “I witnessed questions and answers, discussion and debate, part Socratic dialogue, part collaborative problem solving … In contrast to that locker-room exchange, my approach invites students into an inauthentic mode of learning. They aren’t investigating open, urgent questions essential to their understanding of our material. As one observer has noted, they’re ‘throwing darts,’ hoping occasionally to score.” Owens, who went on to create a program called “Coaching in the Classroom,” acknowledges that the style of coaching he describes is not stereotypical, but it is widespread at his university (Drake). It is an interesting article, and it might cause you to examine your own practices – as a teacher and as a coach.  April 9 – The author of the “flipped learning” article recommended on April 7 has written another blog post in response to what he sees as some negative overtones in the many many comments the original post inspired. This one is called “The Problem is Not the Students.  April 8 – In an EdWeek article entitled Embracing Teachers as Critical Thinkers, David Ruenzel discusses a shift in teaching he sees coming about as a result of the Common Core. It involves teachers as critical thinkers rather than purveyors of information. “Teachers cannot push students to think more deeply,” he writes, “unless they do so themselves.” I would hope that most of us had turned this corner long before the Common Core came along, but I like the thinking.  April 7 – Brad Carpenter sent along this article about “flipped learning” (as distinct from “flipped classroom”). It lays out an interesting and detailed definition of flipped learning, and the “Comments” section contains a lively debate about the roots of flipped learning and the efficacy of lectures.  April 2 – For those interested in cognitive science as it relates to teaching, Jerome Rekart’s The Cognitive Classroom is now available on the Recommended Reading shelf in my office (Eagle 32).  April 1 – It is not reading, but I recommend this video. In it, Rick Wormeli discusses his thinking with regard to “do-overs.” Fair warning, Mr. Wormeli speaks pretty directly; if you are opposed to re-takes or re-dos of any kind, you will not enjoy the video.

Spring Break Note – While I continue to look out for interesting reading on teaching and learning during the break, I will be spending less time reading and posting about it. Therefore, I am putting even more on my Scoop.it page called “Ideas For Teachers,” which is among the links at right. March 7 – Given my connection with the College Board, it will surprise no one that I recommend this New York Times Magazine article on the new SAT and the thinking behind it. I do not know whether the new SAT, or any test, can deliver the kind of equity and access the College Board is hoping to foster, but I see the changes as a strong move in the right direction. March 4 – There are any number of reasons for those of us who work with boys to read this Op-Ed by Charles Blow, but with Kyle Kosofsky’s rather thought-provoking Chapel talk still fresh in my mind, I though first of the perils of “labeling” (and potentially mis-labeling) students.

February 24 – Ken LaRocque called my attention to this Thomas Friedman editorial about Google’s hiring practices. I find it particularly interesting in the context of our conversation about what attributes we seek to develop in our students and how that might inform our curriculum and pedagogy. I really like this Larry Ferlazzo post on web creation tools as much for the creative assignment ideas as for the online app recommendations. February 20 – For those who are just starting out (or just about to start out) with Google Docs, this blog post, which Brian Cugell spotted, has some very helpful advice for organizing student work in ways that make sense. February 18 – This Teach Thought post is called “What Every Student Needs,” and is well worth a look. As is usual with Teach Thought, it is thoughtful and thought-provoking (I guess the name “Teach Thought” is well chosen), and it presents things that ought to be self-evident – such as “Every student needs feedback – not judgment” – in a way that makes one take a moment … You may get a kick out of this video, which is also in the list at right, called “Bruno Mars Education Song.” February 15 – Brad Carpenter called my attention to this article on the BBC News website. It concerns the impact of lack of sleep on students and cites a Boston College study that suggests U.S. students suffer the most. It includes an interesting video with snippets from a video diary of a girl whose school starts at 7:00 AM. February 11 – This New York Times column by David Brooks, What Machines Can’t Do, is ostensibly about the skills that will be important in the marketplace in the “Age of Brilliant Machines,” but it speaks as well to the skills schools ought to foster. Early on, he points out that “Being able to be a straight-A student will be less valuable — gathering masses of information and regurgitating it back on tests.” Brooks says the “Age of Brilliant Machines” will reward several characteristics, such as enthusiasm, which he defines as “an almost obsessive need to follow their curiosity.” February 6 – Someone at The Association of Boarding Schools has “storified” last night’s excellent #TABSchat about grades and grading. On the off chance you missed it, you can revisit it here. This is a great way to get in on the conversation, and it serves as an example of Twitter as professional development. Thanks, TABS! In this EdWeek essay, middle school principal Tom Bonnell discusses a question he finds at the heart of the search for a student-centered classroom. “What are you doing in your classroom now that you could turn over to your students to do themselves?” It is a daunting and challenging question in that an honest answer would push most of us toward real and dramatic change in the way we operate, but daunting and challenging questions are the best kind, no? February 5 – Have you heard the term “authentic assessment” and wondered what it means? This Teach Thought post spells it out nicely. February 4 – This post on Teach Thought reminds us to keep the tail from wagging the dog when it comes to technology integration, and it includes an interesting infographic.

January 27 – An article in The New York Times‘ Learning Network reminds me of the power of current events. Most of our students are very interested in the NFL playoffs and will have seen both the controversial comments offered by Richard Sherman in the immediate aftermath of the NFC championship game and a number of pundits’ responses. These sorts of events give us an opportunity, even a week later, to expand the conversation to wider issues. How does this mini-controversy fit with our core value of sportsmanship, and what does that mean for those of us who have not (yet) participated in a conference championship game? January 24 – This blog post is somewhat deceptively called Is It Plagiarism or Collaboration? The author, who is at Ransom Everglades School in Miami, does not seek to distinguish between plagiarism and collaboration exactly; instead, she argues in favor of essentially turning plagiarism into collaboration. It is a thoughtful piece. This post – Smartphones in the Classroom? Let Students Decide – appears on a blog aimed at higher ed. It argues in favor of allowing students to collaborate – within established parameters – on a set of rules governing the use of technology in the classroom. While the rules cited in the article are decidedly higher ed (you can listen to music during class as long as it does not bother others?!!?), the thinking could certainly apply in a secondary setting. The idea is that putting students in charge of rule-setting will forced them to think clearly about what is and is not appropriate – and why – in class, and they will be more likely to abide by rules they themselves have created. January 23 – I am indulging in a personal preference by recommending this Edutopia post, which is called The Oasis Within: Mindfulness Practice for Teachers. January 20 – This post on Edutopia is worth a look. Its title is Five Steps to Foster Grit in the Classroom. As is true of many posts, some of what is suggested is more appropriate for younger students, and there is some educational jargon (“scaffold” is a verb?!), but the concept of “grit” is certainly a valid and important one for us (think of our motto, after all). There is lots of food for thought here. Watch the short video; it involves first graders and is not very fast paced, but it is easy enough to see how this would translate in our classrooms. January 14 – A piece of advice I have found myself giving repeatedly over the years is to let a student squirm a bit longer in the awkward silence after you have asked a question. In a recent EdWeek article called “Sticking With Students…,” Brooke McCaffrey discusses this very concept. She points out that staying with a student even after an initial incorrect answer sends the message “I believe in you. I will not give up on you. I have high expectations for you.” Some of what McCaffrey says suggests she works with younger students, but the general point is equally, if not more, valid for secondary school students. By the way, McCaffrey cites The Skillful Teacher, by Saphier, Haley-Speca, and Gower, a work which is – courtesy of a Rob Dowling recommendation – available on the Recommended Reading shelf in Eagle 32. January 9 – Recommended viewing; go to the Cool Cat Teacher Blog (see blog roll at right) and scroll down until you see a Youtube video called “Thank You, Mom.” I hate it when commercial operations try to attach themselves to the heartfelt emotions we feel about things such as moms and kids, but there is a message here for teachers. The brilliant athletes will watch in Sochi did not spring from the womb as finished products; they had to fail – over and over again – and to learn from that failure in order to reach the heights they have achieved. How do we put the lessons of failure back into education? How do we create a scenario in which it is safe for a student to fail – and to learn from failure – on his way to mastery? January 6 -Having long pondered the idea of teaching history entirely through primary sources, I was drawn to an EdWeek headline “Steering Clear of the Textbook.” While the article does not directly suggest abandoning textbooks altogether, it sings the praises of closely reading historical sources, particularly in the context of the Common Core’s nonfiction requirement. The author, Sam Wineberg, points to three things. First, adolescents are best served when they read a wide variety of texts (in terms of genre & style), and primary sources reading can deliver that. Second, students learn to slow down while reading (properly) primary source work; he points to the “barely noticeable ‘perhaps'” in a well-known Lincoln quotation and the need to think about how words were used in the speaker’s time and place. Last, the internet age makes it essential that students be adept at discerning fact from fiction in what they read. He cites a Virginia textbook that suggested to 4th graders that “thousands” of African-Americans had volunteered to fight for the Confederacy and that two battalions of blacks had served with Stonewall Jackson. When challenged, the author said she did her research on the internet and had relied for that information on the website of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. I may have friends in that august organization, but I would hesitate to cite them on the issue of African-American contentment in the Old South! The article serves as a great reminder that we need to turn away from traditional texts as often as we can, and we ought always to ask our students to think deeply and critically about what they read. This is not “reading,” but watch this video – link also on the right under “Videos” – entitled “Taylor Mali – Miracle Worker.” You will get a kick out of it. If you are unfamiliar with Taylor Mali, look also at “What Do Teachers Make?” Enjoy.

December 16 – Joe Lampe passed along this PBS Newshour story on the flipped classroom. As he pointed out, there is nothing much new here, but if you are still unfamiliar with the concept or just want a bit more information it is worth a read. It includes a brief video about making brief videos. December 11 – Given the widespread interest in discussing grades and grading, this blog post will be of interest to many of us. In it, author Scott Goldstein argues for standards-based grading and against a number of traditional grading practices. It is called Reaching Students By Ditching Points. Speaking of grading, Acting on a suggesting stemming from our professional development day, I have been in touch with Tim Quinn, who has graciously agreed to get together via video conference with any of us who would like to discuss grades and grading with him. Let me know if you are interested. December 5 – This short post is well worth the seconds it will take to read it. The title is “Before We Ask Kids to Do Their Best, Ask If the Task is Meaningful.” December 3 – Kathy Leis recommends this opinion piece on CNN’s site. The author, Andreas Schleicher, is responding to another round of PISA scores suggesting that others – in this case Shanghai specifically and China in general – are doing a better job than we – particularly in math. I find several things intriguing; one is that the math disparity cannot be written off simply to superior rote memorization. “But the most impressive performance of Shanghai’s students is actually not on the tasks that ask them to simply reproduce what they have learned, but on tasks where they need to extrapolate from what they know and apply their knowledge creatively in novel situations.” This is, she points out, the most important aspect of education. “Google knows everything,” so it is what you can do with what you know that matters. Another intriguing aspect of the article is that she sees Asian students’ adherence to the Growth Mindset (she does not use the term) as an important factor in their success  “The fact that students in most Asian countries consistently believe that achievement is mainly a product of hard work, rather than inherited intelligence, suggests that education and its social context can make a difference in instilling values that foster success in education.” Schleicher also attributes Asian countries’ success to their respect for, and work with, teachers. “They support their teachers to make innovations in pedagogy, to improve their own performance and that of their colleagues, and to pursue professional development that leads to stronger educational practice.” It is a thoughtful and thought-provoking article.

November 22 – What I like most about this blog post by Kathy Schrock is the straightforward and well illustrated definition of the SAMR model, which is a way of looking at technology integration. The post provides a specific example of each of the four levels in the model, so it is a great place to start if you are unfamiliar with – or a little fuzzy on – SAMR. November 21 – This EdWeek Blog post starts out “Crank up the music. Move around. Take time to chat. Throw in some humor. Not the typical advice for how to run a classroom…”  I disagree; I think that is typical advice for how to run a classroom, but I was glad to have it confirmed in the post that followed, which describes a session at a recent Learning & The Brain conference. The post is short and worth a look. (If the link does not work, there is a paper copy on the table in Eagle 32.) November 18 – I had already begun to plan our December 2 Professional Development day when I saw this post on Teach Thought (see blog roll at right), but it makes me feel as though we are on the right track. If you are still uncertain about what an EdCamp is, read this post; it spells it out better than I have. Again, our own “EdCamp” will be a bit contrived in that there will be some session proposals in place before we get there, but there will be room for more proposals on the day of the event, and we will have the freedom to attend the sessions we want to attend. Thanks to Brad Carpenter, who submits this TED Talk for your consideration. It is an eight minute talk in which the speaker recounts several tales of very young students accomplishing amazing things out of school and submits his formula for having them accomplish amazing things in school. His conclusion (spoiler): “Give them something meaningful to work on, give them powerful tools and access, get out of their way, and let them be amazing.” Good stuff, but it will take courage… November 14 – Are you terrified or skeptical about innovation in education? Spend seventeen minutes with this TED Talk by Geoffrey Canada. He is talking about failing public schools, but much of the talk is both universal and compelling. November 13 – I follow former colleague Nate Green on twitter (@MrShakedown), which is how I came across this article about how he uses Prezi. Nate is pretty creative with his use of Prezi (I saw this approach in action last year during his unit on the American West – very effective). If you are looking for different ways to present familiar material, or if you doubt the power of technology to have a positive impact on our work, read this article. When I saw a blog post called “Do You Know Me Well Enough to Teach Me?,” it reminded me of Michael Reichert and Rick Hawley’s research into the importance of relationships in boys’ education. Reichert was at the conference I attended last week, and he is convinced relationships are one of the most important aspects in boys’ success. He is looking forward to starting a conversation about what it means to be a “relational school.” November 5 – Jim Detora sent me this article from American Educator. In it, John Dunlosky, a professor at Kent State, reviews research regarding a number of learning strategies. He and his team rate two practices as “Very Effective” and three more as “Promising,” but they are not very sanguine about a number of widely-used techniques, such as re-reading, highlighting, or cramming. The techniques they see as “very effective” are practice testing and distributed practice. Practice testing is largely self-explanatory, but it can include class time. The team recommends, for example, giving a low-stakes quiz at the beginning of each class, with the quiz focused on the most important information. Distributed practice refers to breaking one’s study into several shorter sessions rather relying on one lengthy one, something we have long recommended. The “Promising” techniques include “interleaved practice,” which refers to weaving problems of different types in amongst each other rather than solving all the examples of one type of problem before moving on to another type, and “self explanation,” which involves students explaining to themselves how new information relates to what they already know. Also “Promising” is “elaborative interrogation,” by which a student tries to figure out why a particular new fact is true. The article goes on to discuss five other techniques, including some that are widely practiced, in which the team sees less promise. In short, Dunlosky and his team confirm some of what we have been doing for a long time, but they also have some research-based recommendations that will be new to some or all of us (for me, that includes a greater emphasis on practice testing and all of the techniques they see as “promising”). November 4 – Are you “bad at math?” I recently came across this article about math mythology in The Atlantic, and it called to mind the Growth Mindset conversation. The article substitutes the terms “Incremental” and “Entity” Orientation for growth and fixed mindset, but it cites Carol Dweck and other Growth Mindset gurus in asserting that those of us who are “bad at math” would become good at math if we simply believed in ourselves and worked at it. As teachers, we have known this on some level for years, but Dweck and others now have the research to prove it, and it both can and should have a profound impact on how we talk to students about their performance and their potential. November 2 – Graham Callaghan called my attention to this article by Tim Quinn on the subject of grading. If you are interested in his book On Grades and Grading (see below), it might make sense to start here. November 1 – The Headmaster’s Holiday gave me the chance to finish Tim Quinn’s excellent brief work On Grades and Grading, and I recommend it wholeheartedly.  (There is one post about it on the main page of this blog, and another will appear shortly.) Tim writes thoughtfully about the nature and purpose of grades, the efficacy of rubrics, the dangers of inconsistency, and a number of other topics. Overall, he urges us both to demystify and to de-emphasize grades and grading “so that the focus of teachers, students and parents is the learning itself and not the grades.” As I write this, I have one copy available in Eagle 32, but I hope to have a few more arriving soon.

October 30 – If you have seen this article in USA Today suggesting the “Flipped Classroom” may not have any real benefit, you should also have a look at this response, wherein the researchers in question counter that their research is unfinished and the article was misleading. October 21 -If you are interested in learning more about the Growth Mindset, this blog post is a great place to start. The author is an administrator at a school that has embraced the idea, and the post includes a couple of short videos that really get at the meaning of Growth Mindset. As an independent school, we do not concern ourselves with the Common Core, but given the massive volume of the misinformation currently making the rounds, I thought I would pass along this article from the Tampa Bay Times. It effectively debunks a great deal of Common Core mythology, even as it illustrates how ridiculous that mythology can be. October 16 – I recently was directed to this short article in the Journal of Higher Education. The author sings the praises of block scheduling such as is in place at Colorado College (& at the author’s institution, Quest University in Canada). I was particularly intrigued by this quotation: “Numerous studies have demonstrated that multitasking degrades performance while simultaneously promoting an “illusion of competence”—not optimal for a successful educational paradigm.” I know the block system has been implemented at the secondary level; what would it look like at Avon? October 11 – Here is a thoughtful Edutopia article about student engagement. Most of it is pretty intuitive and happens at Avon all the time, so it will offer some reinforcement and perhaps a new idea or two. October 8 – I have asked Deb Garber to order Strings Attached: One Tough Teacher and the Gift of Great Expectations by Joanne Lipman and Melanie Kupchynsk. I learned about the book in a Wall Street Journal article by Ms. Lipman about its subject – her high school music teacher Jerry Kupchynsky (“Mr. K”). Apparently, Mr. K was a taskmaster to the point of meanness, but when he died, the students who returned to play a concert in his memory “formed a symphony orchestra the size of the New York Philharmonic.” Citing her experience with Mr. K, along with the results of several recent education researchers, Ms. Lipman issues a call for a return to the old ways in education, including strict teachers who maintain high standards, provide “constructive, even painful, feedback,” and care little about their students’ self-esteem. (In fairness, perhaps they simply believe that self-esteem comes from hard-fought victories.) I hope to have a copy of the book on the Recommended Reading shelf in Eagle 32 soon; in the meantime, there is a hard copy of the WSJ article on the table. October 7 – An Edutopia article on “Strategies to Prevent Neurotoxic Impact of School Stress” turns out to be mostly about  the dangers of boredom in school. It seems the idea of “neuro-plasticity,” which I have cited in my recommendation of meditation, works both ways. The author, Judy Willis, MD, points out that sustained or frequent boredom in school has “measurable consequences in cellular brain changes.” In other words, just as meditation can bring about physical changes in the brain that are positive for student learning, sustained or repeated boredom can yield negative changes to the brains – a sobering thought! I am pleased to say the strategies she suggests to combat boredom are strategies I see in use here every time I visit class: make the content relevant to students’ lives, incorporate physical movement (by students), student-centered learning, etc. Nonetheless, this article is worth a read as a cautionary tale. October 4 – As you may know, Kate Barzun is currently making the rounds to the academic departments to discuss the future of our online programs. Intrigued by the possibilities, I am anxious to add some summer foundation-building to the A.P. World curriculum, so when I saw an article in EdWeek about Blended Learning I seized the moment.  The author, Charles Mojkowski, decries the general lack of creativity in most examples of Blended Learning and reminds us that the goal is not simply to use technology – it is to use technology to enhance our teaching and our students’ understanding. This quotation, which applies equally well to classroom technology, sums it up:   “… as Apple cautioned long ago, the importance of technology is not technology. It is rather in the nature of the partnership that humans form with technology.” (If the link above will not work for you, I will soon have the “hard copy” of this article in Eagle 32.) October 2 – I ran across this article about rigor on the Teach Thought blog (see blogroll at right). The premise is that one can add rigor to any topic, and the article concludes with a “purposefully absurd” example of an assignment involving analysis of Spongebob Squarepants. There is a somewhat intimidating rubric by which one can measure the rigor of both curriculum and instruction and a somewhat more benign list of 10 ways to inject rigor into any lesson, unit or assessment. If you look at the list, you will likely find that you are already doing some of the ten and that doing more of them would be be a relatively simple (for you) matter. Or, if you want to laugh at the current situation in Congress, read this post at The Answer Sheet.

September 26 – Larry Ferlazzo’s blog – see blogroll at right – today leads me to a new New York Times education feature called Text to Text. The idea is the the Times will juxtapose two texts – at least one of which comes from the Times – which they feel “speak to each other.” The main goal is to show students the “real world” relevancy of the work they do in school. Early examples include pairing the story of Edward Snowden with that of Daniel Ellsberg and pairing a video called “Where Do Your Genes Come From?” with a Times article entitled “DNA Double-Take.” It looks as though this could be a helpful feature; I suspect that occasionally their choices will correspond with our lesson plans pretty closely; on other occasions, they might make for a nice break from the routine. September 24 – I’ve recently added a number of articles to my Scoop.it page “Ideas For Teachers.” One is by a Fulbright-winning teacher who travelled to Finland to compare the Finnish education system to our own (the hot comparison these days because Finland consistent does so well on standardized testing). The basic point in this article is that while American schools move on with the curriculum according to a pre-arranged timetable, schools in Finland move on when the students have mastered the concept. Another one is a Tech Tips article about embedding your Google Docs in a wiki or web site. Three of them have to do with using Twitter in teaching or to build your PLN. For example, this one bills itself as a “refreshingly simple” guide to twitter for teachers, while this one contains a list – albeit last year’s – of popular education hashtags. Enjoy! September 18 – Two articles in the September 11 issue of Education Week caught my eye. The first is about the Growth Mindset, which emphasizes the notion that intelligence is fixed (the “fixed mindset”). Students who feel they either are or are not smart, and there is not much they can do about it, are much less likely to learn than those who see success as a result of effort rather than innate ability and who are willing to learn from failure along the way. Teachers who embrace the growth mindset work consciously to undercut students’ perceptions of themselves as of fixed intelligence; the SciAcademy in New Orleans has gone so far as to ban the word “smart” on campus. This reminded me of a vignette from The Smartest Kids… (see below) in which the American mother of a successful student tells him/her “that is what smart people do” (essentially ‘you are smart’), while the Korean mother of a successful student says “you succeeded because you worked so hard.”  This is a new concept for me; I am interested in earning more about the growth mindset and its implications for teaching. The second article is called Brains and Schools: A Mismatch, and it is a call for school reform based on our growing understanding of brain science. The article describes learning as a process of building, regression, and re-building of neural networks, and it debunks the idea that emotion is an impediment to good thinking and decision-making. Insights such as these, the author (Alan Blodget) argues, would do far more to promote effective school reform than “bickering about testing and standards and more of the same old failed practices.” If the links here do not work, there is a paper copy of EdWeek in my office (Eagle 32); feel free to stop by. September 17 – Brad Carpenter sent me this article in The Atlantic about a Flipped Classroom study done at the University of North Carolina’s School of Pharmacy. It recounts the improvement – statistically significant but not earth-shattering – one professor’s students made after he switched from lecture to flipped classroom. The words that jumped out at me were “Because more of the work was upfront, students crammed less, so they wound up devoting the same amount of time to the class.” I have been trying to convince my students of the efficacy of that statement for a long time; if the flipped classroom model imposes that wisdom on them, I am for it. By the way, if you are not sure what a “flipped classroom” even is, the link (video: Flipping the Classroom) to the right is a good pace to start. September 13 – After hearing an interview like this one on NPR, I was quick to order The Smartest Kids in the World & How They Got That Way by Amanda Ripley. The words that drew me in: “rigor matters.” It seems Ms.Ripley had asked – as many have – how students from so many countries can consistently out-perform American students on standardized tests. To find the answer, she followed American exchange students to two high-performing countries, Finland and South Korea, and one country, Poland, whose students’ scores have been rising steadily even as U.S. scores remained flat. She wanted to compare the students’ experience abroad with their experience at home and to see for herself what Finland, South Korea and Poland were doing so well. She also surveyed students from those countries who had come to the U.S. on exchange, and she spoke with teachers and administrators at schools home and abroad. What she found is that these three countries all emphasize rigor in education. They do it in vastly different ways, and Ripley would not argue we should emulate any of them “lock, stock and barrel,” but in each of those countries everyone associated with education – teachers, parents, students, indeed the citizenry in general – buys in to the notion that school should be a place of rigor where teachers challenge students and students stretch themselves in serious pursuit of excellence. It is a thought-provoking piece, and I recommend it highly. (The New York Times review is here.) Borrow my  copy of The Smartest Kids…from the Recommended Reading shelf in my office (Eagle 32).