The bees are gone

The bees left last week. It was a rare warm winter day on the mountain, a day when they might have been inclined to emerge briefly from their warm hives to buzz around a bit and answer the call of nature so to speak. So my wife and I decided to go check on them…

The squandering of enthusiasm

When I was 5 years old, I decided I wanted to take swimming lessons. I had been to the swimming pool many times with my family, and while I played around in the shallow end I had seen the older kids and adults actually swimming in the deeper water. I thought it was some kind of magic to be able to float and move around in water that was over your head without drowning, and I wanted to learn this mysterious and magical power.

An English teacher, a cosmetology teacher, and a math teacher walk into a bar

A few weeks ago an English teacher I work with was telling me about a problem she used to have with her senior English students. They had to complete a fairly extensive research paper over the course of several weeks, and during those several weeks she would schedule certain days to take them all down to the school library to “do research.” Which was fine, except she discovered…

Great Classroom Action (2)

The theme for all of these examples of Great Classroom Action seems to be: simple, but highly effective.

Great Classroom Action

Another teacher and I were recently trying to come up with a list of the top five best teaching strategies or activities that we had ever seen. I remember thinking, “Man, it’s really tough trying to narrow it down to just five,” and then I remember thinking, “Hey, this reminds me of Dan Meyer’s Great Classroom Action posts.” I’m still not sure what my all-time top five...