Classroom management – how to nip potential troublemakers in the bud (2)
Re-arrange the furniture Assign seats Assign bell-work. Coming up with good bell-work (work that actually engages them and keeps them quiet yet productively busy) is difficult. Problems: Today’s bell-work was not so hot. I was so busy photocopying and cutting and pasting (literally, not digitally) to prepare for today’s classes (which run back-to-back with just [...]
Just to Sum Up… « Scenes From The Battleground
I came across this article I’d printed out last year, and I want to write about how it compares with Japanese education: are there lessons here for teachers in Japan? The author of the post below (Old Andrew) is an experienced teacher in the British state and private school systems. He writes with wit and [...]
» What’s the point of education? Early Retirement Extreme: — written by Jacob Lund Fisker, Freelancer
One of the blogs I currently read daily is Rate Your Students. It is a helpful antidote against any desire to become a professor, whenever — or if-ever (it seems to be somewhat of a black swan event as of late) — I start developing a, uh, “passion” for teaching undergraduates. RYS offers professors a [...]
Caring and teaching: only one is difficult
Cover of Stand and Deliver I recently saw “Freedom Writers“. The reason I hadn’t watched it before then, apart from it’s general unavailability in Japan, was Dan Meyer’s review of it, wow! 3 years ago. Thanks to Google Search, it took me less than a minute to find Dan’s review. After watching the movie, I [...]
“Why don’t children like school?” and “How to teach critical thinking”
Cover via Amazon Why Don’t Students Like School? – Because the mind is not designed for thinking. (pdf) Don’t be put off by the ludicrous-sounding subtitle (what he means, as he explains later, is that thinking is hard work and we avoid it wherever possible, usually by relying on memory instead). It’s well worth reading. [...]
Is it ok for teachers to use corporal punishment? Discuss.
Image via Wikipedia I left the following comment on a blog entry about corporal punishment in (UK) schools (I’ve reposted it here so that I can add stuff and edit the writing). A succinct summary, with rebuttals, of the various arguments against corporal punishment. The non-aggression axiom provides a principled argument to the responses which [...]
Needs
Image via Wikipedia Here is a comment I posted to a discussion about Needs, a blog post at Scenes from the Battleground. I suggest you read the original Needs article first. It will hopefully make the following more intelligible. Update: I have edited this slightly (tho it is still too long and wordy) after reflecting [...]
Facing The Future
Facing The Future Originally uploaded by duncmc [Update: Comments have been closed.] So, where to, now? I tried direct instruction. It “worked” in that,* students meekly did what they were told* it gave students a feeling that they were in a “proper” class, taught by a teacher “in charge”* it was easy to sort the [...]
Looking back (5)
Where To Now? Originally uploaded by Katelyn Gibson Gatto and Holt made the most convincing arguments, and provided the most practical help. Holt pointed out that children (people) learn most from what they themselves actually do, rather than from what teachers do (or don’t do): “Learning is not the product of teaching. Learning is the [...]
Looking back (4)
facing the wall Originally uploaded by NEINmeister I began to question my own values and assumptions:* was it necessarily A Good Thing to offer more choices, more autonomy?* what if my cultural values and those of my students were different, like Lisa Delpit describes? If that were true here, too, then I might not be [...]
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