The first week and the exhilaration and energy are like a tide that sweep you along. But those lazier days of summer have left you unused to the sheer adrenalin surge and when the Welcome Picnic finally winds down with the sun setting behind the Shawangunks on Friday you are happy, but tired! So here are just a few glimpses…
A few tips storified from an #ISEDchat courtesy of @LaneYoung. This is by no means a complete list of course. There are many more but here a few basics for beginners. And, while others may find this a laughing matter: [
Unless the mass of workers are to be blind cogs and pinions in the apparatus they employ, they must have some understanding of the physical and social facts behind and ahead of the material and appliances with which they are dealing. – Schools of Tomorrow John Dewey; Evelyn Dewey 1915 Children today need to understand, just as fully as did previous…
Tool #1: Twitter With so much out there it’s hard to know where to begin. But Twitter is by far the number one online professional growth tool for educators. It’s the link and the glue that connects and brings colleagues and our collective knowledge together. While others may use Twitter for celebrity gossip, news updates, relentless self-promotion* and recreational outrage…
The Poughkeepsie Day School difference. for those of you who don’t like movies, you can view the slideshow below instead.
Here’s a interestingly provocative article for all of us in education. How Much Do we Need to Know? by Peter Evans-Greenwood. It opens with: We used to be defined by what we knew. But today, knowing too much can be a liability. Here are some of the key threads from the article: Expertise matters in a few narrowly highly technical…
We have a new website in the offing and I was working on some of the language for the new landing page. This is where to place what is known as the value proposition meaning the promise statements or the reason why families should invest in the school for the education of their children. It’s not a tagline, not…
I was listening to Noam Chomsky on ranking and the dangers of standardized testing. This is some of what he had to say: First of all, you don’t have to assess people all the time… People don’t have to be ranked in terms of some artificial standards. The assessment itself is completely artificial. It’s not ranking teachers in accordance with…
I’m tired of the weasel-worded politicians who trot out “I am not a scientist” when asked a rational question that has the potential to challenge a deeply held, irrational, ignorant ideology. When the threat of a shred of reality, logic, facts, knowledge, evidence, truth, common sense, intelligence or science looms they trot out that lame and deeply ignorant deflection. What…
It’s the 30th anniversary of the Commodore Amiga computer. This is apparently the machine that introduced a whole new world of computer gaming for a generation of users. This is a cause of great celebration in the retro computing crowd. Back in 1985 personal computers were primarily either game machines or beige boxes from IBM used for business. Then the…
This post inspired by the #blimage* invitational series. Take a look at this picture and what do you see? That wall – at least on the right – has a serious case of efflorescence – the salty, crystalline eruption that commonly disfigures porous brickwork exposed to damp. On the left the wall seems composed of old bricks of diverse origins…
I haven’t read Go Set a Watchman and I’m not sure I will. I did read the first chapter in The Guardian and was not particularly impressed. If Harper Lee did not want it published then she didn’t want it read. But read it or not, it’s hard to miss all the controversy over the publication and the revelation of…
Finally – at long last – the old desks were taken to the basement for storage. There they sat for two decades -surplus to requirements, replaced by moulded plastic, steel and aluminum – gathering dust and shedding memories. The lidded oak desks from the third form room across from the hallway pressed against the ones with the inkwells on the…
If we want to drive our children into a complete frenzy and soul-destroying meltdown then consider this from The Washington Post: Genius Girl, a Harvard-Stanford admissions hoax and elite college mania It’s the story of a hoax borne of desperation. It’s the story of a student who manufactured success and then had to face the inevitable comedown. The whole story…
For those of you who concerned about our children’s future – and I would think that includes all of us – there was an interesting article in Fast Company magazine: These are the Top Jobs for College Graduates in 2015. Apparently job prospects for new college graduates are looking up according to the most recent report from Michigan State University’s Collegiate Employment…