In his The Schools our Children Deserve Alfie Kohn has a quick and easy chart for what to look for in the classroom. It includes this chart about the walls. Give it a try next time you are in Gilkeson. In the last couple of weeks I have captured a fraction of the learning as reflected on the walls . Sometimes…
As a follow-up to my post The Perils of Education I was preparing a piece on play. My chief concern being that the word play – like the word progressive – is itself so plastic and open to so many interpretations that defining it is like holding water in your hand: However hard you try to hang on it dribbles…
Alfie Kohn is coming on April 25th. Just look at the great header Christina Powers created to herald the news: Go here for more information and to reserve your seat In association with Vassar College and Oakwood Friends School Alfie Kohn will present “The Progressive Schools Our Children Deserve: Helping Students Become Critical Thinkers and Lifelong Learners” on Thursday, April…
…and we’ll make winners out of them” There’s a good article in the latest edition of Independent School magazine that challenges some cherished notions of excellence and the hypocrisy of so many claims about diversity, equity and justice. It is starts with a question and a well-aimed slice at the euphemisms of so many school mission statements. What does it…
The November Educational Leadership is devoted to the topic of grading. It includes an article by Alfie Kohn an expanded version of which you can read here: The Case Against Grades. I’ve given grades. For years I worried about how to get a system right, tried to focus students and their parents on the learning not the grade. I’ve spent…
Two of my favorite education videos in 2010 have to do with motivation. In this first one, Stanley schools Dwight in “The Office” with commentary from Alfie Kohn. And in this one, those wonderful animators at the RSA deliver the message from Daniel Pink’s Drive: the Surprising Truth about what Motivates Us. And now Laura Graceffa has suggested a book…
Many years ago I wrote an article with the title The Carrot and the Cattleprod. It’s so long ago that although I wrote it on a word processor I no longer have an electronic copy. It’s buried and yellowing deep in a file cabinet somewhere in the basement. So I don’t know where it is but I do remember what…
Every year at the annual Eagle Society poetry reading a lower school student demonstrates that s/he has spent homework time memorizing Shel Silversteins’s twelve line epic that begins: Homework, oh homework I hate you, you stink. I wish I could wash you away in the sink. If only a bomb would explode you to bits, Homework oh homework you’re giving…
An article by Alfie Kohn in The Nation is a timely reminder of how language is so easily co-opted to mean quite the reverse of the usual understanding. The polluters bring us “Clear Skies” and the armaments industry brings us the B36 bomber – “The Peacemaker”. And now those touted as school “reformers” are heralded for ushering in a new…