Teaching Climate Change in Sandy's Wake

When asked what was the greatest threat a statesman might face, British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan is said to have replied, "Events, dear boy, events."

Hurricane…

Time will tell if the grand plan to measure everything in education in the name of reform will produce more engineers, mathematicians, or scientists.   Having recently seen the Broadway production of Wicked I find it hard to fathom that the next generation of artists, musicians, stage production coordinators, choreographers and the like will benefit by SLOs or any metric that the data wonks may create.  Creativity is in fact the most jeopardized commodity that we risk losing if we…

Problems with Value-Added Teacher Evaluation in Secondary Schools

In this Education Week article, Stephen Sawchuk reports on two new studies that question the accuracy of value-added teacher evaluation in middle and high schools. What undermines the validity of value-added data, say the studies, is students being grouped by achievement. Value-added analysis compares a statistical estimate of students’ projected growth with…

I am a huge fan of twitter and continue to use it as a 24/7/365 portal to learning.  As an instructional leader, I am constantly looking for ways to discuss topics on leadership and…

What High-School Students Should Learn About Race

“Americans, especially white Americans, don’t like to talk about race,” says University of Massachusetts professor Lawrence Blum in this thoughtful Harvard Education Letter article. “Many Americans think we are in a ‘postracial’ society, partly because a black man is president, so they don’t need to give much thought to race anymore. This view is completely and deeply…

Today I attended the 39^th Annual Conference for the Association of Middle Level Education in Portland, Oregon. I actually presented for this group for a couple of times about 25 years ago when it was The National Middle Schools Association. That was back in the day when we had far fewer middle schools. The model most often employed back then was the Junior High School. Junior high schools were 7-9 mini high schools. Little kids, little problems (what were we…

Education

Why Kids Should Learn Cursive (and Math Facts, and Word Roots)

Visit my Literacy Connections blog to see what I learned from snake-sitting during Super-Storm Sandy, including the fact that if you really want to test a friendship and see if someone loves you, bring a python to their house.

Hoping you are drying out and recovering from the storms,

Christine

November 7, 2012

What Questions Reveal About a Leader’s Mindset

In this Wharton Leadership Digest article, Marilee Adams (American University) distinguishes between “judger” and “learner” questions and says they make a significant difference to the quality of a meeting. Here are some judger questions:

• Who is to blame? Why can’t they perform?
• How can I prove I’m right?
• How…

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Over the first few months of school I've had the…

Schools may be closed, but children in storm-ravaged areas are getting the best lesson in community service that they may ever recieve.  Click on my Literacy Connections blog to learn about the ways teachers, students, and other community members are coming together in the wake of Sandy.