Category Archives: Classroom

Watching Jaws

We watched Steven Spielberg’s Jaws three times last weekend – once with a group of rowdy 5th graders but the other two times allowed for better viewing, actually stopping and backing up the DVD, to deconstruct and marvel at some … Continue reading

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Family Life & Human Development. What we once called Sex Ed.

The past few days, our 5th grader and his classmates have embarked on the district’s Family Life and Human Development unit – what we once called Sex Ed – and it’s provided for rich conversation on the car ride home … Continue reading

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From David Ginsburg: Learning and Leading by Listening

Fellow educational consultant and all-around good guy David Ginsburg has a great blog for teachers at the Education Week Teacher site, and I liked what he had to say about listening in a recent post. And so here is that … Continue reading

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Student engagement and Phil Schlechty

A school district superintendent asked me to dig into the issue of student engagement, and while I found several pieces that discuss this issue, it was this review by Elizabeth Bowen that provided some quick answers and a summary of … Continue reading

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The value of homework

My son brought home a great assignment a few weeks ago – to identify around the house obtuse and acute angles – and he and I went a step further, taking pictures of the angles we found and emailing some … Continue reading

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Prospective parents visiting classrooms

Jay Mathews had a great post in today’s WaPo, highlighting two schools, one private, another public, and their refusal to let prospective parents visit classrooms. He wrote that, “I suspect many other schools, public and private, have the same knee-jerk … Continue reading

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