Why and How?

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Redefining Reading

Agree here wholeheartedly. What a door of opportunity that the NCTE has finally recognized (formally) as “open” for so so long.

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Innovation: "This Must Be the Place"

Innovation: “This Must Be the Place”

We keep trying to push innovation. Let’s not forget millions of artists around the world have been innovative for time immemorial. This is about one who embodies so much of innovation’s intent.

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Listen: A Guiding Power in a World Between Worlds

Listen: A Guiding Power in a World Between Worlds. An examination of how we might provide navigational software for students growing into a world in crisis. Overtly optimistic in that it suggests a way to potentially save us all. Listen...

If you’ve followed my blog here for a while, you’ll know I champion speaking and listening as cornerstones of my classroom. And while I was an accomplished student in my HS and College seminar classes, it wasn’t until my introduction to and adoption of the Touchstones Discussion Project in 1996 that I shifted not only how I used speaking and listening in the classroom, but also the entire culture…

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Evaluation and The Betrayal of Learning

Evaluation and The Betrayal of Learning

A necessary precursor to this post is the beautiful, romantic, and wholly human post that Carol Black wrote several years ago on the Evaluative Gaze of schooling and the effect it has on the human spirit to spend 7.5 hours a day under such surveillance.   What is the effect of knowing that we exist in a system that is constantly measuring us and whether we meet the “standard student” profile? …

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STARTedUP At Fluxspace: Feb. 17

STARTedUP At Fluxspace: Feb. 17

On Wednesday, February 17 at 7PM, the Central and SE Regional Chapter of the STARTedUP Foundation will be linking you to the national discussion on Changemakers and the Entrepreneurial Spirit. STARTedUP is a National Foundation created by educator Don Wettrick to help spread the wealth of learning that comes from youth entrepreneurship. Don’s work as an educator in Indiana has garnered national…

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Writerly Ways of Being

Writerly Ways of Being

I’ve spent the better part of my life helping young adults become better writers. In all that time there has been no exercise, no trick, no clear and easy path to a better final draft. Sure, I can point to easy tweaks to tighten up writing like “Focus first on verbs–strong, specific verbs create stronger, tighter writing.” But on the whole (and I’m not saying anything new here…don’t look for…

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Just a bit on Joy...and Boy

Just a bit on Joy…and Boy

You know, at 52, and as a teacher of HS-aged students, I look back at my own HS years sometimes with sanguine eyes, and others with embarrassment. No one is, in their aging, any different. Our history is always a story in revision. And sometimes, sometimes that revision is one where we have to forgive ourselves for the quick and ignorant judgments of youth.

To whit…As a teenager, I had had…

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Grace. Now...and For all(ways).

Grace. Now…and For all(ways).

My principal has been posting some moving items on her Facebook page about the upcoming year.  I am grateful for them, for they speak to the affective afflictions that all people in school systems–from admins to students to staff to teachers–are going through.  Today she posted onethat resonated with me for the single word it points to, “Grace.” For decades it has been one of my favorite words…

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A Gnostic Gospel: Gradelessness in the Time of Covid

I just published "A Gnostic Gospel: Gradelessness in the Time of Covid". It's not as Heretical as it sounds.

From Amy J. Ko

(Like many teachers, I’m suffering from so many feelings right now.  July is winding down.  I’ve been taking classes on distance learning, working on new units, and rethinking how to build a culture of caring, community, and creativity on-line, as it seems that’s the way things will be heading for a while.  I’m also, as my friend @MonteSyrie notes of himself (and so many…

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Purpose and the Story We Tell Ourselves: Wayfinding our own Oceans.

Purpose and the Story We Tell Ourselves: Wayfinding our own Oceans.

In 1995, the prolific warbler Neil Young (and members of Pearl Jam) released Mirror Ball.  The album featured one Young’s iconic declarations of independence, “I’m the Ocean.”  With a chorus declaring the title’s metaphysical conceit and lyrics probing smaller, stranger metaphysical comparisons (eg.“I’m an accident/I was driving way too fast), Young contrasts being a trivial, single thing (“I’m…

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Bill Lyon: An Homage, of Sorts.

Bill Lyon: An Homage, of Sorts.

I learned today of the passing of one of the great sportswriters of any time.  The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Bill Lyon deserved far more accolades than he ever received.  In my estimation, he represented the tail end of the great writers of the early to mid-twentieth century.

Though slowed in his later years by Alzheimer’s, Lyon’s work, even about his battle with “Al”, was a pure pleasure to read,…

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What (Should) We Talk About When We Talk About Education(?): Freedom, Growth, and the Right Question.

What (Should) We Talk About When We Talk About Education(?): Freedom, Growth, and the Right Question.

I’ve been reading this morning an incredible overview of bell hooks’ book, Teaching to Transgress. (Huge thank you to Chris McNutt at The Human Restoration Project (HRP)).  hooks should be required reading for all educators, for she persuasively reveals why structures that empower all students are crucial to the continued pursuit of education as a human endeavor in freedom and liberation, and,…

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To What Avail...?

To What Avail…?

I was rereading the blog of Prof. Paul L. Thomas the other day when I came across the quotation below.  (But first, massive props for Prof. Thomas’ work with pre-service teachers.  We need more people like him in those positions.)

    Thomas quotes Dewey:

What avail is it to win prescribed amounts of information about geography and history, to win ability to read and write, if in the process the…

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Just add water--Is Instant Curriculum in Your Future?

Just add water–Is Instant Curriculum in Your Future?

It’s not an overstatement to note that most curricula in American Public High Schools are bloated.  There’s too much to learn and so our toxic love affair with memorization and regurgitation continues, and only those students who like to play the memorization game feel loved by the system, and those who don’t find themselves jilted or just plain lost.  And while I note that the AP system has made…

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I Am The Stories I Tell Myself: Teaching, Learning Narratives, and Our Responsibilities as Collaborative Authors

I Am The Stories I Tell Myself: Teaching, Learning Narratives, and Our Responsibilities as Collaborative Authors

We, that is this thing we call our “self”, are a narrative construct.  We are the stories we tell ourselves. This should come as no surprise to teachers and other educators.  We know that positive self-talk is correlated with higher levels of success and happiness in all students.  But these narratives are not crafted in a vacuum. We are, after all, social creatures, and thus our narratives…

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The Privilege of Teaching

The Privilege of Teaching

I woke up this morning, as I do many mornings, full of doubt about what I do in the classroom.  As a teacher who is trying to shift the narrative of teaching, to improve the cultures of learning, to accelerate change and improvement in my classroom and also my school, I often assume a Sysiphean mindset.  I often feel like I’m just not getting anywhere, so why keep trying.  (Of course, this is all…

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Kodak Moments

Like many children who grew up before the advent of digital photography, I inherited numerous, neatly labeled shoeboxes full of what pop culture used to call “Kodak Moments”—real, tangible photographs, snapshots of my family processed and printed on photographic paper via the local Fotomat.  These artifacts, talismans of light and time captured by kodachrome and chemically fixed on paper…

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