professional development
Paragraph Six - Pelicans
I’m asking myself two questions in this last blog of the school year. How many students are celebrating the ideas that have inspired them throughout the year, along with the skills they’ve developed? Conversely, how many are feeling the sting or the exhilaration (or, worse, the indifference) of their standardized test scores?
I suspect the latter number is far higher. John Dewey, who I mentioned in an earlier post for his concern about...
Paragraph Six - Let Us Now Continue to Praise Freewriting
Last week I was politely interrupted by my word monitor Gina while giving evidence for the benefits of freewriting. I promised to move beyond the dry research to hear the more liquid anecdotes this week. And so I will deliver.
First a spanking fresh one, from a workshop last week. I had planned a session to introduce the International Baccalaureate’s Primary Years Programme to the staff of PS 201 in Queens. My task was to promote questioning, inquiry, connections – all hallmarks of the...
Paragraph Six - Let Us Now Praise Freewriting
Pardon me while I pause to praise freewriting.
The topic has come up several times in past posts: as a way to respond to essential questions, as a phenomenon that liberated a middle schooler named José when he wrote, “Seeing is not believing,” as a vehicle for the unique poetry of her ninth grade mind when Jasmine wrote, “…a quiet, spacious room, reaching and stretching and acting….” It was Jasmine who went on to...
Paragraph Six - Beefy Neurons, Branching Dendrites and Snappy Synapses
I ended my last post promising to quote physicist Leo Kadanoff on the theme of close observation. Here he is, from James Gleick’s remarkable book Chaos:
It's an experience like no other experience I can describe, the best thing that can happen to a scientist, realizing that something that's happened in his or her mind exactly corresponds to something that happens in nature. It's startling every time it occurs. One is surprised that a construct of one's own mind can actually be realized in the honest-to-goodness world out there. A great shock, and a great, great joy.
Now that’s seeing, isn’t it – to have the...
Paragraph Six - Something Incredibly Wonderful Happens
I’ve been rattling on about “seeing” quite a bit in my blog posts of late. This is all well and good. But can seeing be taught?
My colleagues Avram J. Kline, Rebecca Krucoff, Loel Lowy, Jody Madell and Alison Ritz at The New York City Museum School certainly thought so a few years back when they designed their Global Studies World Religions module. In this unit, students were...
Paragraph Six - Seeing and Believing
In a fit of pique a couple of blog posts ago I wrote my suggestion that DaVinci’s exhortation to “Develop your senses, especially learn how to see” be extended to read, “learn how to see the students.” Wouldn’t you know that the words had hardly been written before someone picked up that thread and wove it into a...
Paragraph Six - The Golden Thread to the Teenage Brain
Here is the story of the wolf boy, who I will call TS for the purposes of this blog, continued from last week:
Having resolved that he wanted to go to college, earn money, buy a house on Long Island and work with wolves, he needed an action plan. His goals were shimmering in the far distance like a desert mirage. He needed to work on something short term, something smarter. (We all know about “SMART” goals, don’t we? Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Timely.) So I conjured up from the magic lantern of my computer a...
Through the Classroom Door: An Inside Look at Differentiation
Outstanding, Creative, Beneficial, Informative, Motivating, Recommendable, Inspirational, Awesome, Wonderful, Insightful, Useful, Excellent, Helpful, and Educational were just a few words to describe last week’s AUSSIE workshop Through the Classroom Door: An Inside Look at Differentiation.
