Corinne out in Redding, CA reports in on how the Star is making it easier for her to teach online: People are going to love being taught a language online the way we have been practicing together in our Zoom group this past summer, with stories that they help to create. Last night the all-staff […]

In schools, we don’t really offer languages (I know there are exceptions like Alisa’s team in Chicago), to young kids under the age of 12, but then when they are in secondary school they start. Think about that. This conflicts glaringly with the idea that kids learn their first language starting at birth. What is

I see a parallel with what is happening with police and what is happening with teachers. Both are being asked to do too much. This brings a certain meanness into them.  Look at how we grade kids. It is divisive. Some deep kind of dark principle, the same one that divides cops from the people

We take the data-collection piece of our work as a true and valid thing. It is not. We are serving a monster – the data collection business that makes millions of dollars off of us and our kids each year. It is sucking our souls, vampire-like, and we are letting it. COVID is here as

We have discussed the importance of the artists and their work. Here is some further discussion on this important subject: One morning I was doing my morning routine of sitting at the kitchen table answering emails, the usual. My eye caught the mess on the sink and countertops of my kitchen and my brain said,

If you are pushing the CI now, doing the Star, etc. I would say to wait a bit. If you are not your own department, and you have to align with someone else to prepare for common assessments, etc. make sure you do that. You want to have your kids exactly where your traditional grammar

I refuse to let the molders of my world, esp. right now, influence my mood. We will eventually break down – to dust – the old curriculum, and happiness and unforced communication will define our days doing our jobs. Yes, we have been slaves to the corporate suck-need, their view of education, their need to

Some kids engage at the right amount. Some too much. What about the kids who withdraw? It is my position that, generally, kids who withdraw from interacting in a CI class have a reason to do so. We all know that kids withdraw in traditional textbook classes from pure boredom. But when things are interesting

I’m enjoying reading some of what Robert has written here over the years. It’s a ton. Here is something he wrote in 2016 on assessment: Hi Ben, Relative to the discussion about assessment, I thought I would share the following e-mail exchange I had with a student today. Since the student asked, I decided to

A repost: Here are some quotes from the documentary on Mr. Rogers’ life that resonated in my own mind with the work we do. They point to the way in which we might design future curriculums, with more interest in what the child is really experiencing in our classrooms and less on the subject matter

The mental health of many people in our profession is unraveling before our very eyes. Many are retiring early, quitting, etc. There is no small amount of suffering involved. You know what is happening because you are in the middle of it. My prayer in this post is straight to our Creator who doesn’t want

Some may remember a month ago when I kicked those three guys off the PLC because they weren’t able – no blame – to wrap their heads around the truth and the new heightened levels of awareness around the George Floyd murder. There was that stink those guys brought. I chose to kick them off