https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OvVPg3y_ug&app=desktop

So as we move forward into the 2017-2018 academic year let’s focus primarily on what we can do to keep our mental health strong. To me this means figuring out ways to do far less planning than we have in the past. We will also study and go narrower and deeper on the great new idea of making

In the vein of defending the right of textbook teachers to not align with the research and standards since they are doing the very best they can, and in the spirit of free and open dialogue, I must apologize to Neal and Robert. When they correctly called me out on the Pooh cartoon, I responded

This is what I am working for, the feeling here, the feeling in this voice, the feeling that we can find in language and have in our classrooms, moving closer and closer to the Pure Land with each new story, if we look for it, if we keep trying. What is language, after all, than

We never talk about the distant future here. It’s always some issue we hack through with our mental machetes. But we will keep hacking away, clearing out the brush. Guess what will happen one day? We will see the sky and it won’t be what we have been used to. It will be what we

If most of those who read here are like me, this work is a real meditation. I wish it wasn’t, but it is. Right? It’s like we teach and so we think about our teaching. Way too much for me. Esp. when I wake up. I just want to wake up regular, but I wake

Here is a post that I wrote in the past few days, after reading something Tina wrote and then talking with her for an hour about it. But it was written from anger and so doesn’t fit into the goals we are identifying for the PLC for the coming year. So if anyone sees me posting

Jim Tripp is on a roll. This is such good stuff and we all need to know it: http://www.trippsscripts.com/single-post/2017/06/05/Vocabulary-Timelines-Are-Arbitrary-And-In-General-Unnecessary

A repost: Here are 30 points about teaching using comprehensible input. Most were taken from points made over the years by Robert Harrell and now located in various articles in the Primers section of this site (hard link above): We emphasize the gradual acquisition of language that follows a different timeline for each individual learner. We

http://www.trippsscripts.com/single-post/2017/06/05/No-Prep-Final-Exam-For-Non-Targeted-Classroom

I tend to want to bash well-intentioned people who are dragging the movement down. Along with the mental health piece and the non-targeted piece, avoiding doing this is, in my view, a kind of third wheel on the tricycle that we might ride into the 2017-2018 academic year here on the PLC. I am competitive in

Besides the mental health theme, which is moving now into its third year here on the PLC, what other themes have risen to the top of the heap? Which ones remain in our group consciousness enough that we might want to keep them in our minds as we transition now into a period of rest