I feel sorry for kids sometimes. All too often they have stuffy boring teachers who just drone on-- day in and day out. And with all the standardized tests, benchmarks and the No Child Left Behind Act , there is little time for anything else. Much less anything that might be fun. I suppose some will accuse me of approving of those teachers who make fools of themselves "acting just like the kids." But I really believe the kind of thing this geometry teacher did, gives everyone a break and, in the end, promotes a learning environment: As far as I know, no one ...
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Do you remember back in school where most of us had to practice circles and loops endlessly in the quiet of the classroom? Do you remember having your pen taken away from you and being told you had to write with a pencil until you got the loops right? Those are my memories of learning cursive writing, and theyre not really yippee skippy memories. In 1991 when I was at a Handwriting convention in the States, I was excited to be part of a presentation by Liora Laufer of Virginia who had developed a Handwriting Exercises program called Callirobics (Calli for caligraphy and robics ...
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This was brought to my attention by one of our friend name Ursula via email. "Parental rights are under attack in our nation, with the first threat originating from within the federal court system. Across the country many judges are beginning to deny the vital role of parents in the lives of their children, instead inserting the government into a "parental" role in a child's life. I copied the above paragraph from the parental rights website . Please visit the website I provided below, read about whats going on and sign the petition so they can add parental rights to the constitution. Right now ...
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The role of the teacher. Great question, with so many answers...More angles, as my favorite college professor used to say "than a 4 way cold tablet." As I write this post, I do so with some strong feelings towards some of my co-workers, A couple of days ago, I emailed my team... In the interest of trying to further my advisees' progress, I was wondering if it would be possible if we could communicate with one another regarding assignments. Many of my guys (we have single sex advisories) don't know what their HW assignments are, or when major projects are due. If we could ...
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Are we to facilitate the lucrative test company's heavily lobbied NCLB law? Is my job to help children pass standardized exams? Exams that even the author's own children do not take? Am I being charged with creating a class of student who follow directions and complete tasks well without asking why? Is my job to remove any iota of critical thinking from my coursework? or Are we trusted as educators to do what is best for the students? How can I sit back and give tacit consent to Regents exams, when I know they are only in place to maintain a class structure? Will ...
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