Time for Tomato Chutney

When it’s getting near the end of fresh tomato season and the freezer and shelves are full of sauces it’s time to think chutney. Lots of good recipes out there but my all-time favorite is adapted from the indispensable Madhur Jaffrey. I’ve been making it for over thirty years and it never fails in spite … Read more

Art is Messy, Team Building is Fun

Great to see these video tweets yesterday. Thanks Jenn and Jill. Making art is messy! @PoughkeepsieDay pic.twitter.com/EL9jE1nx5q — Jennifer Jordan (@artteacherjenn) September 16, 2015 "Air Lock" at the middle school cooperative field day today! @PoughkeepsieDay pic.twitter.com/7ioWh8Jlnr — Jill Walsh (@JillDoesPE) September 16, 2015 Hoppity hops were GREAT! pic.twitter.com/lNDkSpNDX4 — Jill Walsh (@JillDoesPE) September 16, 2015

One Week Down

The first week and the exhilaration and energy are like a tide that sweep you along. But those lazier days of summer have left you unused to the sheer adrenalin surge and when the Welcome Picnic finally winds down with the sun setting behind the Shawangunks  on Friday you are happy, but tired! So here … Read more

“Let’s Make It”: Education Comes Full Circle

Unless the mass of workers are to be blind cogs and pinions in the apparatus they employ, they must have some understanding of the physical and social facts behind and ahead of the material and appliances with which they are dealing.  – Schools of Tomorrow John Dewey; Evelyn Dewey  1915 Children today need to understand, just … Read more

Two Key Tools for Teachers

Tool  #1: Twitter With so much out there it’s hard to know where to begin.  But Twitter is by far the number one online professional growth tool for educators. It’s the link and the glue that connects and brings colleagues and our collective knowledge together. While others may use Twitter for celebrity gossip, news updates, … Read more

Every Student Is An Honored Student at Poughkeepsie Day School

I was listening to Noam Chomsky on ranking and the dangers of standardized testing. This is some of what he had to say: First of all, you don’t have to assess people all the time… People don’t have to be ranked in terms of some artificial standards. The assessment itself is completely artificial. It’s not … Read more

“I am not a scientist”

I’m tired of the weasel-worded politicians who trot out “I am not a scientist” when asked a rational question that has the potential to challenge a deeply held, irrational, ignorant ideology. When the threat of  a shred of reality, logic, facts, knowledge, evidence, truth, common sense, intelligence or science looms they trot out that lame … Read more

Creativity in the Classroom: The Commodore Amiga and PDS

It’s the 30th anniversary of the Commodore Amiga computer.  This is apparently the machine that introduced a whole new world of computer gaming for a generation of users. This is a cause of great celebration in the retro computing crowd. Back in 1985 personal computers were primarily either game machines or beige boxes from IBM … Read more

To Kill a Mockingbird on Trial

I haven’t read Go Set a Watchman and I’m not sure I will. I did read the first chapter in The Guardian and was not particularly impressed. If Harper Lee did not want it published then she didn’t want it read. But read it or not, it’s hard to miss all the controversy over the … Read more