I was reading about the Chappaqua Children's Book Festival and read this reference to the Summer Reading Round-Up that I wrote for the July issue of Parenting magazine.  Surreal!



Happy reading,

Christine…

Getting Students to Take On Seemingly Impossible Challenges

(Originally titled “I Can Climb the Mountain”)

In this Educational Leadership article, former New York City educator Maddie Witter describes how a 17-year-old incarcerated youth exploded when his teacher asked him to read in class. He had dropped out of school after numerous expulsions and had spent most of the last two years on the streets. 

The…

Here is my annual update:

http://www.free-press-release.com/news-k-12-education-reform-starts-here-1380753376.html

 For those not familiar with the site, my emphasis is on identifying and explaining the worst theories and methods used in the public schools. Generally speaking, I don't know if there are any good ideas in the public schools. It is as if some of…

100 Best Children's Books of the Past 100 Years

“We Tried Advisory and It Didn’t Work”

(Originally titled “Designing Advisories for Resilience”)

In this Educational Leadership article, consultants Jeffrey Benson and Rachel Poliner describe their work with a number of secondary schools that have had difficulty implementing advisories and list the elements they believe are essential to success:

• The advisor’s role – The purpose of advisories is…

Bill Gates: ‘It would be great if our education stuff worked but…’

Why the new SAT scores are meaningless

September 30, 2013

Interested in flipping your classroom, but not really sure how to do it?  Want to incorporate more STEM topics into your teaching?  Wondering about the best practices for implementing the Common Core?  Discuss all of these topics and more with fellow educators during Connected Educator Month which starts tomorrow.

Happy reading,

Christine…

For the past decade, I have championed the cause of building reflective communities and collaborative conversations as vehicles to impact teaching and learning. So, it would follow that even in retirement from public…

All the new digital and Internet tools should make this the Golden Age of Educating Everyone.

That's what it should be and what I want it to be. I'm a democrat with a small d and really do believe in universal education. How about you? If only our Education Establishment did.

The slower the kid is, the more I want to say: yeah but if you did it right, you can reach that kid.

And now, like never before in history, it's easy to do…

Why the New Teacher Ed. Standards Matter

Ed Week

For some time, the central challenge of teacher preparation has been ensuring that new educators are prepared to help the nation’s increasingly diverse students meet…

I have a confession. When I started teaching in 1992, I really didn’t know what I was doing. I walked into my first classroom as a 5th grade teacher with a strong work ethic and an idealistic enthusiasm to change the world through children. However, no undergraduate program can properly prepare one for the rigors of having one’s own classroom. I wanted to be a teacher that promoted local and global social awareness and a passion for learning. What I knew for sure was that my priority was to…