September is a great month to tour the United States. The crowds of summer are thinned after most children are back in school and their parents have returned to work. Just fellow geezers and international tourists and occasional newly-weds. Most … Continue reading
Who Is Their Socrates?
Only in School Is a Year Less Than 150 Days
We use imprecise language when talking about the time between the first and last days of the annual school calendar. I hesitate to use the words “school year” because a school year is not a year. It is not even … Continue reading
Does Who Sits Where Affect the Academic Achievement of Children in Your Class?
You bet it does. Separate your thinking about past practices from your thinking about the future. The dividing line between the two is educational accountability. In the past, educational achievement was the record of how well individual children learned. Some … Continue reading
If I Did One Thing Differently
Big changes take time. They are achieved by blending many small changes through consistent and conscious effort overcoming innumerable obstacles arguing for the status quo until an aggregate of change is accomplished. Big changes are hard to accomplish because personal … Continue reading
Ready! Aim! Fire at Which Target?
This writing will start on the firing line at a local gun club and finish on the teaching line in every Wisconsin classroom. I have watched my friend Buzz when he shoots trap and skeet at the local gun club. … Continue reading
An Expert Pedagogue
Finding really strong teachers is not easy. Principals and superintendents must look closely at every teacher and teacher candidate to find expert pedagogues. If a teacher was an onion you would find that, as in a bushel of onions, teachers … Continue reading
To Cause Learning – the Power of Causation
Teachers cause students to learn. Let’s expand this. Expert teachers use their mastery of instructional strategies and learning to “cause” all students to demonstrate their incremental mastery of significant and enduring knowledge, skills and problem solving strategies and their capacity … Continue reading
Adults Muck With Education Not Learning
The discussion about public education is blessed and cursed by the fact that most adults in the United States are educated. Let’s investigate several facts regarding this state of affairs. Fact one is this – most adults have some level … Continue reading
Expert Teachers Only
“I don’t want to be my heart surgeon’s first patient,” is a way of saying “experts only wanted here.” Perhaps in the circumstance of heart failure in the high plains of Nevada on a road known as “America’s loneliest highway” … Continue reading
Competition Is the End Game of Choice
School leaders have their pants in a bunch over school choice. Get over it. The world of education is changing and it is not done changing, yet. The school of the future will be the school of choice. Be that … Continue reading