I love Ted Lasso, and I love what Ted Lasso stands for. He self proclaims that he was been underestimated for his entire life. He says to, “Be curious, not judgemental.” It is a quote by (not) Walt Whitman. Take a second and watch this clip. The writing is awesome. […]
Creating a Culture Where Students Desire Honest Feedback
My freshman English professor in college often noted that learning can be uncomfortable at times, especially the learning that sticks with you. As noted in an earlier post, he gave very clear feedback on what we needed to improve. I think he often told us that learning was uncomfortable, because […]
Thoughts on School Improvement Plans (SIP)
I believe in school improvement. If we are going to maintain relevancy in public education, we have to have continual renewal. However, we must make sure that we are actually writing plans which promote actual improvement which includes long term retention of learned material. Many of these SIP plans look […]
Out of the Box Lessons: Tying Flies, Maclean’s Montana, and the Works of Mark Isham
The soundtrack for A River Runs Through It is cinematic perfection, specifically the main title. When the fiddle begins to hum the familiar music, I am immediately taken to early 1900s Montana. It is a time when the modern world was growing out of frontier America. Mark Isham, the composer, […]
The Great Purge: A Supplemental(s) Story
Effective teachers have a broad bank of instructional materials to supplement lesson design and delivery. Some of that material is purchased by teachers, and some of it is just material that school systems purchased during past textbook adoptions. It is a vast and valuable library that is often found in […]
The Arts Embedded: How to Incorporate Visual Arts and Music into Your Classroom
Happy Friday!!! Our goal as teachers is to give all parts of the brain a good workout. I used to kind of look down on brain based research workshops, but I think there are some really good, common sense things which we can draw from brain based research. Music has […]
Pacing Guides are #@!%
Let them eat cake. It is a phrase associated with telling poor, starving French souls to go eat something even more expensive than bread(which they didn’t have). In other words, the queen was so out of touch, she didn’t even realize they couldn’t afford cake. To quote Britanica, “She was […]
Relevancy in the Age of Information: Montessori Instructional Design vs Data Driven Instructional Design
Our school system’s convocation years ago featured a man who noted that within just a few short years our public schools would be rendered antiquated relics due to technology advancing so quickly that schools could not keep up with it. He was right. In my previous post, I was critical […]
The Switch to All Digital was Poorly Planned
Sometimes, I just have to get things out of my system. The switch to digital a decade ago is one of those things. I mean really in my school system it was a total disaster, and I am not yet sure that we have that mastered yet. The digital platforms […]
Raising Courageous Young Men
How do we develop young men who possess the courage to stand up for what is right? Whew. That is not an easy answer. In our gender neutral society, I know it is unpopular to differentiate between the sexes. I am not going to bombard you with Bible verses which […]