It ain’t pretty when your chickens come home to roost. In education, we are often guilty(far too guilty) of not policing our own. Examples of that would be ineffective teachers left to damage student learning year after year. Unprofessional behavior left unchecked. Superintendents that love the Baldridge Award more than […]
Valuing Uniqueness: What Albert Einstein, Walt Disney, and Steve Jobs Can Teach Us About Creative Learning Environments
We had a superintendent several years ago who wanted cookie cutter students, cookie cutter teachers, and cookie cutter buildings. Everything from instructional delivery to minimalist classrooms to pacing…the same. Our school system was treated as a business. Our people were treated as human capital. The classrooms which once fostered creativity […]
Pro-Voucher Talk: School Systems Are Not Businesses and Our Tax Dollars Are Not Their Earnings
The power rests with the people. Our tax dollars are…ours. If you want to make a teacher angry, refer to them as human capital. That sounds proprietary in nature. School systems do not own people. Not students, not parents, not faculty, not anybody. The power of school systems should rest […]
School Vouchers: If your product is good, then why force people to stay in your system?
School choice. Republican Governor Bill Lee faces opposition from his own party in Northeast Tennessee. Or does he? The people who are the strongest opponents to school choice are those who run public education systems. Why is that? Take a minute and read this by the Kingsport Times News about […]
Black History Month February 2025: An Essay about True Professional Diversity and Its Vital Importance to Our Schools
After I finished this essay, I realized that I am not gonna be able to say all that I need to say in one post. This will be the first of what I hope will be several essays about the value of true diversity – not the forced kind but […]
David or Saul: Who are we going to be as educators?
Saul had the mandate. Israel wanted a king. God gave them a king. The problem is that Saul kind of did things halfway. He never fully committed to doing what God asked. He had a son who would have been a wonderful successor. But Saul couldn’t get it together. It […]
Let Teachers Work Independently on Professional Development Days…..
I cannot count the number of wasted ours that I have spent in really bad professional development. I know that today many teachers are sitting through professional development today – well planned, maybe useless, and very, very, very boring. I would guess that adds up to tens of thousands of […]
TRI Education Year in Review: Focus on KCS
Well no “Year in Review” can begin without the electoral and popular vote win by President-elect Donald Trump. We will begin with the Trump political wave election and move to the local level from there.
Distance Running: Book Recommendations for Youth Runners, Their Families, and Youth Distance Coaches
I get asked a lot about what books I would recommend for youth runners, their families, and for coaches. The books listed below will cover eating correctly, sleep, hydration, various philosophies of running, the historical context of distance running(it is a relatively new sport!), recovery, injury prevention, training ideas, racing […]
What would Jesus do at a data conference?
I started thinking the other day if he would approve of these things that we call data conferences. I don’t think that he would. I don’t speak for God, and I don’t claim to know the mind of God. But in reading the bible, I do think we need to […]