Joe Bower teaches in Red Deer, Alberta, Canada. And he is on a personal mission. His blog For the Love of Learning takes on the traditional model of education and challenges its assumptions and practices. His latest post is a passionate call for action for educators everywhere. It opens with Ken Robinson’s latest TEDTalk (see below). It’s a follow up…
Learning about Sprout Creek Farm is a big part of the kindergarten curriculum but what exactly are they learning? Readers of this blog know I am a supporter of all things kindergarten but some things just go too far. Take this morning for instance. In the active play area hay bales and straw were being hauled by the pulley into…
Pete Seeger came to PDS yesterday. He came for the lower school musical – an original production on a subject dear to his heart – the magnificent Hudson River for which he has done so much. The show – A Hudson River Journey – was written and produced by lower school drama teacher Dorothy Penz with music directed by Bill…
A must read article from the Times of London. Playing Games Makes Your Child Clever
A school in May is like a two year old deprived of a nap. That’s how my colleague Liz describes it. Everyone is stressed out, too busy and cranky. The weather is unpredictable with storms and frost one moment and sunshine and blossoms the next. The calendar is stuffed with culminating events, showcases, performances, final assessments, report writing deadlines and…
A video from BBC News about the world’s latest favorite education destination: Finland
It’s not about the tools and the testing, it’s about the learning and the thinking. Digital literacy is an important entitlement for all young people in an increasingly digital culture. Every school should have an organized policy for language across the curriculum… Two documents, two eras. The first from FutureLab (UK) – a wonderful introduction to, and handbook for, digital…
April 23rd 2010 – Shakespeare’s birthday and Poughkeepsie Day School begins live streaming Diary of a Scoundrel – Alexander Ostrovsky’s cynical play about hypocrisy and the trouble with literacy! You can see it here. Thank you David Held- for the live streaming and the videography. David assures me that it only takes half an hour or so to learn how…
“To succeed…it’s the fire within that must be lit.” Purpose, mastery, autonomy (mission not money as motivation.) Watch the video and then think of the implications for school. What do we reward students for doing?
Math makes sense of the world: Here’s math teacher Dan Meyer speaking at the TEDxNYED conference in March.
If blogging is supposed to have an element of timeliness then I have given up on that ideal. After all – I am still writing about stuff from the NAIS annual conference in February. Fess Parker died in March and while my mind went instantly to the Davy Crockett craze of my childhood, it’s only now that I have found…
The ratio between success and failure remains pretty constant. To succeed means we must fail. And the more often we fail the more we succeed. The key is to fail frequently and fail fast. Then move on and try something else. That was the message of Tina Seelig who works at the entrepreneurship center at Stanford. The focus of her…
Here’s an article to read by David Elkind in the NYTimes Playtime is Over It’s an important topic. It’s an interesting article. And it’s one well worth reading and talking about. There is one piece though, that I have to comment on right away: For children in past eras, participating in the culture of childhood was a socializing process. They…
I’m more than a bit late with my NAIS annual conference round up but then …excuses, excuses…what with returning to Poughkeepsie with a rotten cold, the remaining effects of a mega storm that closed school for three days (ably dealt with by Steve Mallet and the division heads) and then all the catching up…. So – a few random and…