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Long Island Schools
AUSSIE consultants are currently active in several of the Districts of Long Island and there is a great deal of enthusiasm amongst this team of AUSSIE professionals about what is happening in their schools. A recurring theme is the wonderful openness of the teachers, with whom they are working, to embracing new ideas and a keenness to learn new ways of working. The other great advantage is the...
Paragraph Six - Testing - Do Not Disturb
“Welcome, O life! I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race,” exclaims Stephen Dedalus in James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. In my last blog, I suggested we let the question, “What is school?” guide us through the next decade. Following my own suggestion, ready to define the nature of education at every pass, I sallied forth to encounter for the umpteenth time the...
Paragraph Six - Students' Questions and Planning for Surprises
Update on “The Question that Fed My Writing Unit.” You noticed the title change, didn’t you? From “The Question that Ate My Writing Unit” to “The Question that Fed My Writing Unit?” I may be jumping the gun, but my hope is only growing that teacher Tom McMurrer’s second grade writing unit on letter writing is becoming more meaningful in response to the students’ unexpected questions: (“Where do you get a stamp?” “What happens...
Paragraph Six - Living with Questions
Promised update on The Question that Ate My Writing Unit: Tom McMurrer, the second grade teacher at PS 124 whose unit was in peril, has decided to contact the United States Postal Service to see if he can organize a class trip to answer the students’ questions. We have trepidation. What if the recession has caused the USPS to cut back its...
Paragraph Six - The Question of Questions
Last blog post, I settled on the piñata as a metaphor for how big ideas work in the classroom. You whack it hard enough, and out bursts a hailstorm of essential and guiding questions.
Essential questions are the crown jewels of the curriculum. They dazzle us with their value and beauty at the front of the classroom, posted above blackboards (or whiteboards, or smartboards.) They are a constant point of reference during the year’s, the unit’s, the week’s, the day’s lessons. They inspire and...
Paragraph Six - Big Ideas, Essential Questions, and Piñatas
Consider, for a moment, the metaphor, how it works and what it does for us. Martin Luther King, Jr., was in Memphis, which, yes, does have bluffs, but is hardly on top of a mountain, when he declared that he had seen the mountaintop. We knew what he was talking about, though: a spiritual apex. When the Chinese proverbists say, “Give a dude a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach him to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime,” they’re not talking about...
Pre-K Interest Group
What a turn out for the inaugural meeting of the AUSSIE Pre-K Interest Group! Eighteen AUSSIE consultants met on the evening of Thursday, November 5th and though our backgrounds and experiences are diverse, we were connected by our shared belief in the capacity of all children to learn, and our commitment to creating learning environments where young children are excited about learning. We shared our backgrounds and our interest in...
Paragraph Six - Big Ideas and Bodhisattvas
In my last post I claimed, with the help of Zhongkui the Demon Queller and a few statements of understanding, to have vanquished the teacher’s main demon of time. I can tell from the looks on some of your faces that you’re not quite convinced. Let’s take the time to go into it a little deeper. (When the revolution’s complete, that’s what all teachers will be able to say instead of “We have to move on because we have so much to cover.”) Let’s hear what a few writers have to say about...
