Category Archives: Classroom

Rural school profile: Magazine School District in Magazine, Arkansas

During the course of my career, I’ve worked a great deal in very rural school districts, and one that I visited quite a bit over several years of work is Magazine School District in Magazine, Arkansas. A town of about … Continue reading

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Revise Back to School Night

Back to School Night last week, and it felt the same as those other Back to School Nights the last seven years: Very unsatisfying. As I think is typical in other school systems, parents got the schedule of their child … Continue reading

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Whiteboards and helping students get organized

Last year, I visited a school that had teachers do something that I thought, at that time, was a little too Stepford Wives-ish: At the front of each classroom in that building, the whiteboard was configured in the same way, … Continue reading

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Tech in the classroom – looking ahead to this school year

I asked two of my favorite elementary school teacher peeps, Jennie Lopez and Claire Vincent, 5th grade teachers at Westbrook ES in Bethesda, MD, to think about this coming school year and technologies that they want to implement in the … Continue reading

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Schools designed for learning

This article in Ed Week, called Form Meets Function in Finland’s New Schools, reminded me of a couple of high schools I visited when in North Carolina last year: Monstrosities. Huge. Impersonal. Architecturally and design bereft. Just boxes built next … Continue reading

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Teaching cursive and handwriting

My handwriting is awful. Just awful. I signed some forms at the doctor’s office last week, and the nurse looked at my signature and commented that I “should’ve been a doctor.” I guess the cursive writing instruction I got back … Continue reading

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