Be a good person: Get into college. Well – it’s not quite a simple as that but it is true that the rules of the game of college admissions are changing. This week admissions deans and other leaders from the nation’s top colleges and universities joined together to announce the launch of Turning the Tide: Inspiring Concern for Others and…
We celebrate Martin Luther King’s birthday on Monday and that means a day off. It’s a recent habit to use a part of the weekend to read or re-read something he wrote and give it some thought. Seems the least thing to do. Last year it was Have Courage: The Letter from Birmingham Jail. This year it’s the speech he…
“The secret of quality is love,” Avedis Donabedian, a professor at the University of Michigan’s School of Public Health, expert in the field of quality measurement. That’s a rather remarkable statement from a scientist whose expertise was accountability measures and quality control. It’s from a NYTimes article How Measurement Fails Doctors and Teachers by Robert M. Wachter *. The article is a…
I never met Joe Bower but it seemed easy to imagine knowing him. He was one of those people you meet online who exude warmth and seem larger than life. When Joe burst into the Twitterspere in 2009 it was like a blast of fresh air. He was ready to take on the world and he generated an energy and…
A small selection of New Year’s greetings from a a century ago.
On Christmas Day 1915 David Lloyd George the former radical liberal,then Minister of Munitions and soon to be Prime Minister addressed a crowd of restless shop stewards and trade unionists in St. Andrew’s Hall, Glasgow. He was there to try and forestall strikes in an area where labor relations were contentious and complicated. He also needed to make the case…
The winter solstice – the shortest day of the year in the northern hemisphere. The earth – tilted away from the sun – receives the least amount of sunlight today. Here’s Winter Solstice by Barbara Hepworth – originally created in 1970 as part of Hepworth’s suite of screenprints and lithographs known as ‘Opposing Forms’. This work expresses Hepworth’s interest in exploring a…
Finding the Heart of a Progressive Education What follows is the text of the article recently published by Hudson Valley Magazine Q&A with Josie Holford, Head of School, Poughkeepsie Day School How does the no testing/no grading philosophy work? The traditional assessment system is designed to rank and sort out winners and losers. At Poughkeepsie Day School, we think of…
Learning styles – they used to be everywhere. You know – learning styles – that notion that the way children learn is this way or that – visual, auditory or kinesthetic – or some other more complicated variation on a theme. There are three, there are four and sometimes many more styles or types of learners. There used to be…
Here’s some good advice from Superman worth sharing in these political times of divisive politics and inflammatory anti-immigration rhetoric. “…and remember, boys and girls, your school – like our country – is made up of Americans of many different races, religions and national origins, so … If YOU hear anybody talk against a schoolmate or anyone else because of his religion,…
This is (only slightly) adapted from the original (without the typo) that you can see here “All Poughkeepsie Day School employees use their common sense, have respect for others, grow professionally and personally, create value and treat our families’ children as if they were their own.” Kind of sums it up right? Good guide for what to do and how…
There’s a new book available it’s packed with practical ideas for teachers from teachers: Meaningful Making: Projects and Inspirations for FabLabs and Makerspaces. And even better it’s available as a free download. You can’t beat that for a bargain. The book is an initiative from the FabLearn Fellows who are part of a larger project sponsored by the National Science Foundation entitled “Infusing Learning Sciences Research…
Coloring books for adults are apparently a big new craze. Amazon’s #1 bestseller in stress management/ self-help is a coloring book. And there are many to choose from with beguiling names like Calm and Balance and Enchanted Forest and Secret Garden. Now I have no problem with people of any age coloring inside or outside the lines, with doodling, drawing,…
Here for one way to start is Derrick Gay’s TEDx talk exploring the challenges of the word “diversity.”
Common Sense Media announced a new report, based on a survey with 2600 tweens and teens, that they say depicts the current state of media usage in the United States. Among their findings are several which are likely troubling to one or another of us: “Low-income kids lack access. Children growing up in lower-income homes are far less likely to…