I got this from John Piazza: Ben, On the Latin list recently, members have expressed anger and frustration at those who publicly say that teachers are overpaid and work very few hours. In response, a few of them have been keeping a log of their work hours: all those hours spent grading, planning, designing online […]

I got these questions from Chris. Any responses are welcome: Hi Ben, I’ve been invited by a methods teacher to her undergrad class about TPRS.  I’m one of the only teachers in the area around here that uses this method so she would like for me to come in and do a little demonstration of

I got this from Brian about the current grading discussion: Hi Ben, I thought the attached file was too long to put up on the blog as a response to the “Case against grades” post, but it’s the extended exerpt from Chap. 16 of Zen and the Art…that I referenced in the reponse that I

Ben, I just had to share a quick story from my class today.  After reading your post about the “he talks too much” story that you used last week, I thought I would try to use a story to reach one of my students.  I have a kid in one of my classes – bright,

I got this from a colleague and group member today: Hi Ben, I need to cancel my membership to your blog. It’s nothing personal, but I’ve decided to leave teaching after this year. Thank you for all of your support and thoughtful discussions. I really admire what you do.  I wish I were strong enough

I would like to share the reading that I wrote from Jim’s wonderful Halloween story and thank you Jim – it looks like a lot of people got some good stories from it. Embedded new (i.e. never seen, not part of the story) vocabulary is underlined. It’s pretty free form. I certainly didn’t choose to embed from

Jody sent this important link today: http://www.alfiekohn.org/teaching/tcag.htm

I got this from a colleague today. I publish it here just to remind us that the opposition to what we are doing is not just coming from kids who don’t know how to act in our classrooms, but from our own colleagues. We can’t forget how hard what we are doing is. We can work together

Please accept my thanks for all the bios that have come in and other blog posts. I will get to them. This standards based discussion, however, is something I want to keep front and center for now. Here is where I am now on this thread, which, in my opinion, if nothing else, is great in terms of its

This is a comment by Drew that I don’t want to lose so here it is as a blog entry. What he says here and what Robert is pointing to is nothing less than revolutionary. The recent discussion here on this site has a transparency to it that reveals certain change hidden beneath it: the

This is republished from September, as it bears heavily on the current discussion: Robert in your May 8th blog entry on assessment you wrote: …at the moment I am pondering how to fit other aspects of the Standards into these three modes…. I made a few connections between the your focus on the three modes

Here is the reading from Jim as per his comment today: Halloween de Matthew Hace dos años, Matthew le dijo a su padre, “Quiero ser Batman para Halloween.” Su padre le dijo, “No debes ser Batman! Debes ser Barney para Halloween.” Entonces, Matthew era barney para Halloween y estaba muy triste. Hace un año, Matthew