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education is a carnival
For thought-provoking education posts galore, check out the 134th Carnival of Education at Matthew K. Tabor’s site – many thanks to Matthew for hosting it. There’s a mention of my post “Mean ’til Hallowe’en,”, as well as lots of other good stuff to chew on. Continue reading
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A Little from Column A, a Little from Column B
Tell me, does this make for a good first day? Or not? 1. Before I’d even arrived at my office, a student showed up at my door and, when I turned out not to be there, asked my colleagues in the surrounding offices whether it would be worth her while to come to my class… Continue reading
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Effective Reasoning and Prior Beliefs
Klaczynski and Narasimham demonstrated in a 1998 study that if children and adolescents are presented with evidence that contradicts beliefs they already hold, they will often ignore or reject the evidence, rationalize as to its real significance, or otherwise do whatever they can to hold on to their preconceived notions. As educators, we can certainly… Continue reading
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the pre-semester roundup
My fall semester starts officially tomorrow. My sincere intention is to continue blogging very regularly. We all know, however, how during the semester, nothing but teaching, grading and preparing seems to get done. So I wanted to mark this day in a few ways, both to celebrate the enjoyment I’ve gotten from blogging so far… Continue reading
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What is a CEGEP?
Those of you who don’t live in Quebec may not know what a CEGEP is or how it works. And you may want to. Happy to oblige. (CEGEP teachers: please feel free to comment on what I’ve gotten wrong or left out.) Students in Quebec spend five years in high school (Secondary 1-5, equivalent to… Continue reading
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the adolescent brain
This article from today’s Globe and Mail discusses a book by Robert Epstein, the former editor of Psychology Today, which claims that the psychology of “adolescence” has no basis in biology or neurology, but is socially constructed – that adolescents are, at the biological base, intellectually and emotionally no different from adults. This strikes me… Continue reading
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I really do like my job. Here’s why.
1. The people in my department are totally awesome. (With a few, easily disregarded, exceptions.) 2. Even when the bookstore loses my book orders, they are so freaking nice about it that I can’t possibly get mad at them. 3. We have holidays so long that, at the end of them, I look forward to… Continue reading
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what would Bertrand Russell do?
On Education has posted an essay by Bertrand Russell that jibes with some of the ideas/questions/comments in my post on discipline and the beginning of the semester. I particularly love Russell’s final paragraph: Unfortunately, it is utterly impossible for over-worked teachers to preserve an instinctive liking for children; they are bound to come to feel… Continue reading
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Adolescent and Adult Decision-making Processes
When we look at our students, we can see all sorts of choices being made that make little sense to us, unless we look back to some of the choices we made when we were students, choices that may seem foolish to us now. According to R. Kail et al’s Human Development: A Life-Span View,… Continue reading
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in case you were wondering
So today I took the Book Quiz (thanks to LearnLearnLearn for the link) and, to my consternation, this is what I got. You’re Invisible Man! by Ralph Ellison Most of your life, people have either ignored you or told you that you were wrong. You’ve been duped, mistreated, misled, and neglected. Maybe it was because… Continue reading
About Me
My job is to teach people to read and write; aside from that, I like to learn things.
Classroom as Microcosm 