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Thanks to a tweet this morning by Will Richardson (@willrich45), I came upon the article “Why Self-Discipline is Overrated” written by Alfie Kohn and published in the Phi Beta Kappan in November, 2008. 5 bullet summary Self-discipline is a trait that generally gets high praise from both progressive and traditional educators. However, Kohn points out [...] “But I’m multitasking!” -What nearly every student tells me when I tell them to get off their MyBook and focus on their academic work. “If you’re multitasking, why is it you’re not getting anything done?” -A rough paraphrase of my usual response Somehow all my students have been sold that multitasking is a wonderful thing [...] My last school required that all teachers have web pages in order to (at minimum) communicate the daily schedule to students and parents. I used it for my schedule, but also as a jump-off for online assignments. My new school does not require all teachers to have web pages. Yet I enjoyed the benefits of [...] I’ve been using the laptops a good bit in my classes recently.¹ Students often stray off the assigned task to check their MySpace, Facebook, check their email, or one of many other options. I realize that it may be a rare and wonderful activity that captivates my 14 year old students’ mind more than reading [...] I have a decision to make. I don’t want to make it. I already know what I’ll end up doing in the end. Think you can figure it out? The situation My new school has two laptop carts per floor. That works out to two classroom sets of laptops for every 20-22 teachers or so. [...] Week one of my new job is done! We only had students on Thursday and Friday (today), but the rest of the week was jammed full of “professional development” and meetings. This semester I have mainly upper level freshman classes, which means the last couple days has involved lots of wide eyes and not a [...] Do you remember your first day in high school? Perhaps you were in a new building- more likely than not surrounded by many new, unfamiliar, and large faces? I vaguely remember being excited, yet apprehensive and anxious. Would I be able to hack it? Would I make some good friends? Would it be a fun [...] Rocks If you poll my students on what they feel is the most boring subject matter in geology, you would almost certainly hear: “rocks.” Let’s face it, even for this teacher with a degree in geology, rocks aren’t the most compelling of subjects. Now, let’s imagine you need to cover a whole assortment of technical [...] For the last several weeks I’ve been following the story of a student teacher who has been blogging his triumphs, failures, and frustrations of his credential program and of teaching in the classroom. Recently a teacher from within his department confronted him on it with the ominous: “We, the department, know you’re blogging.¹” The blog [...] I’ve just wrapped up a class in which I was required to participate in online threaded discussions. I was hoping for some good discourse on curriculum theory and development. Instead it turned into a lot of, “Why, yes, I agree with you completely,” and “I couldn’t have said it better myself.” I found myself becoming [...] |
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