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I wear an identification tag on my wrist whenever I run. Should I meet misfortune while pounding the pavement, whoever finds me will have at least a few critical details, literally, at hand. When I ordered this thick rubber band with its aluminum data tag, I had one line I could customize. My . . . → Read More: Inscribed Upon My Wrist: Emphasizing Effort to Empower Learning Struggle. It’s a term we usually reserve for extreme situations. The struggle for freedom. The struggle for power. The struggle for survival. The struggle to learn? Is this a struggle we should welcome? Yes. After researching “hotbeds” of various talents, Daniel Coyle concludes in his book The Talent Code that “deep practice” is . . . → Read More: The Necessary Struggle: Deep Practice and Skill Mastery It’s that time. The nametags, the desk arrangement, the classroom book collection, and a cadre of other concerns fill hours, days, even weeks before school begins. Many teachers approach classroom arranging and decorating as if a royal wedding were imminent. Bulletin boards become 3-D spectacles, multicolored mobiles generate movement with every bit of . . . → Read More: Creating a Classroom in which Minds Can Thrive “Um, can you tell me one way this can be applied in the classroom?” The question was sincere, and the questioner, earnest and frustrated. Several dozen slides and ninety minutes of lecture lacked a single practical application for teaching. “No, that’s really not my area of expertise,” replied the scientist honestly. “I intentionally . . . → Read More: Taking Neuroscience Into Teaching Running gives me a daily dose of thinking time. It also cranks my cognitive wheels into action. Since I spend much of the rest of my day focused on teaching and learning, my running thoughts often flow in the same direction. And, on occasion, these two pursuits merge into a lane where one . . . → Read More: How Teaching & Learning are Like Running Observing a master teacher in action is like watching an artistic scientist (or scientific artist) at work. And the results, like great artwork or a scientific breakthrough, challenge and inspire. A school in Mobile, AL invited us to observe writing instruction taught by a teacher who attended a Writer’s Stylus course last summer. . . . → Read More: What Teaching Can Be What should we be teaching? This question received significant attention at the November 2011 Learning and the Brain Conference in Boston. With the changes in our world and in our students, what should we, then, teach? The question reveals a consequential recognition: some of what we’ve taught and how we’ve been teaching it . . . → Read More: What should we be teaching? It seems contradictory. The brain seeks and sees patterns, but when asked to find patterns, many people become uneasy. (Shelley Carson suggests that up to 80% of people find this type of thinking “uncomfortable.”1) This conundrum is the result of effort. When the brain instantly sees a pattern, it seems like a new insight has . . . → Read More: Patterns: Learning, Thinking, Creating A mallet and chisel in my hands will not a sculptor make. I could certainly do some damage to a piece of marble—or, more likely, to myself—with these tools. I could probably produce enough evidence for a television detective to conclude that I had been there, but no one would look at the results . . . → Read More: Tools Do Not Determine Quality You’ve likely heard the chatter. Educational reform seems to be to be the obsession of the moment in Educaburgh.
No matter your position, you can broadcast your opinions at high volumes in the modern media vortex. In an attempt to hit the mute button, at least momentarily, may I suggest a topic that seems to be missing from the megaphones of rights, power, money, influence, etc.? That topic: wisdom. CONTINUE READING |
 
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