Award Winning Teacher – International Speaker – Author
Teachers have to give homework and have to grade everything their students do. This is a belief that many teachers still hold and certainly the belief that nearly all students and parents have. I remember as a student asking my own teachers, “Will this be on the test?” If the answer to that was, “yes” […]
Continue ReadingAs many of us head back to work tomorrow, or if you are lucky like me you will be heading back the following week, we think of the second half of the school year. If you are like me you are excited about the new things you will be trying whether it is a new […]
Continue ReadingI wanted to step off the soap-box for a few moments to share some student work that will hopefully generate some ideas for those of you returning to work after your holiday break. All of these are my students and work they did for my classes. The first video was created by a student as […]
Continue ReadingMany people have written lately about listening to students and using their feedback to guide instruction and decision making. Recently, a colleague of mine and I created a survey for the students to take in our junior high. One of the questions was what you would tell someone about your experiences at our school. This […]
Continue ReadingAs many of us approach the New Year we often reflect on the past year and set goals. We call these New Year’s resolutions but I think they are the same as goals. This is my list of goals for the upcoming year and I feel like posting them might help make me stick to […]
Continue ReadingI was not planning on posting a new blog today since most people are busy with family, friends and holiday preparations. The reason for this post is that I realized today that I am a hypocrite. I have always been an opponent of incentives and rewards systems in class. I have tried to even downplay […]
Continue ReadingRecently, I posted about being an agent of change, and I would like to clarify and change some of my previous statements. The word change sometimes freaks people out because it implies that we are doing something wrong and need to change. While there are cases where this is true, I like to think that […]
Continue ReadingThere is a lot of talk about best practice in education right now and the changes that need to be made. First and foremost, the fact that we are at least thinking and talking about change this is a positive sign. In an effort to increase motivation and learning in my class we have been […]
Continue Reading A lot of people are talking about innovation and what it means in education. Simply having students use a computer is not innovative. I summed up my thoughts on innovation with two pictures and a short video clip. How do you define innovation? This is a revised version of my orignal video posted earlier this […]
Continue ReadingMy week was busy even by my standards… In my Social Science classes students were creating Photo Story projects for Ancient Greece. They were tasked with creating a story of the role culture played in Greek life. We used creative commons sites to gather pictures and a graphic organizer to get out facts together from […]
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