There’s a story behind every poem. There’s always a story. And the story behind this one is that the poet – Frank O’Hara – was on his way to Staten Island where he was to give a reading with Robert Lowell at Wagner College. It was February 1962 and the weather was nasty. O’Hara picked up a newspaper to read on…
In his new book, psychologist Louis Cozolino applies the lessons of social neuroscience to the classroom. And here are his head (!) lines excerpted from The Social Neuroscience of Education: Optimizing Attachment and Learning in the Classroom The human brain wasn’t designed for industrial education. It was shaped over millions of years of sequential adaptation in response to ever-changing environmental demands. Over time, brains grew…
The November Educational Leadership is devoted to the topic of grading. It includes an article by Alfie Kohn an expanded version of which you can read here: The Case Against Grades. I’ve given grades. For years I worried about how to get a system right, tried to focus students and their parents on the learning not the grade. I’ve spent…
Do Happier Students Work Harder? When PDS high school students took the HSSSE (High School Survey of Student engagement) the results were astonishing. They outperformed their peers in other schools across the spectrum. Our students reported high levels of involvement, feeling safe and supported, deep engagement in their work and feeling positive about their school and classroom environment. And the…
Children: How will they ever know who they are? The question is the last line of “The Things we Steal from Children” by Dr. John Edwards. You can read the whole below. I found it via Leading and Learning – a blog and website from New Zealand that I have long found valuable. In a different time and context William …
Two of my favorite education videos in 2010 have to do with motivation. In this first one, Stanley schools Dwight in “The Office” with commentary from Alfie Kohn. And in this one, those wonderful animators at the RSA deliver the message from Daniel Pink’s Drive: the Surprising Truth about what Motivates Us. And now Laura Graceffa has suggested a book…
I rewrote Seth Godin’s blog entry for today: Organizing for joy. I hope he doesn’t mind. The word “joy” made it irresistible. Traditional schools, particularly large-scale high schools, are organized for efficiency. Or consistency. But not joy. Traditional schools crank it out. Students show up. They pay attention. They get grades and awards to measure success. The problem with this…
“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?
Many years ago I wrote an article with the title The Carrot and the Cattleprod. It’s so long ago that although I wrote it on a word processor I no longer have an electronic copy. It’s buried and yellowing deep in a file cabinet somewhere in the basement. So I don’t know where it is but I do remember what…
Turns out that we may be hard wired to co-operate and help out. And this behavior occurs in children before, and in the absence of, specific training and in babies as early as twelve months. Biologists are concluding that even infants are innately sociable and helpful to others. And it’s not a matter of etiquette and social training and it’s…
When I’m in the car I listen to WAMC, and yesterday I heard Roland Fryer’s Dowmel lecture. His specialty is race-based economic issues, and his research projects seek to answer the question of why African-Americans are harder hit by poverty than other demographic groups in America The focus was education and the data dismal. Fryer is a brilliant economist, an…
Good reminder about how not to praise from Stephen Currie in a recent post to the PDS Math Guy Blog. It’s all to do with the effort effect and how to talk to kids about their work. Researcher Carol Dweck’s work has shown that praise for being smart is a great demotivator. Here are the researcher’s tips for a better…
Great essay by Daniel Roth in Wired magazine about “geeks” and school. Some extracts: “The driving force in the life of a child, starting much earlier than it used to be, is to be cool, to fit in,”….”And pretty universally, it’s cool to rebel.” …. “The best schools….are able to make learning cool, so the cool kids are the ones…
I caught this Lehrer Newshour segment on cash payments for learning – one of the latest in a series of appalling ideas spawned by testing mania. Surprise: A startling effect- the cash only made things worse. Watch the video and see what you think about this latest example of disincentives for learning. Can you think of a better use for…
There’s a good article in the latest Educational Leadership: “The Perils and Promise of Praise”. It’s by Carol Dweck. The wrong kind of praise creates self-defeating behavior. The right kind motivates students to learn. We often hear these days that we’ve produced a generation of young people who can’t get through the day without an award. They expect success because…