Your experiences in the field will serve you well as you teach. Your examples and stories will help your students understand the context of the ideas they study, see connections, and they will make your class more engaging and effective. Your experiences will limit you, also. We all adapt to the culture in which we Read More
Category: Teachers
Effective Teachers are Perpetually Learning about Teaching
Each instructor’s experience with teachers and learning has been unique to you. The strategies your teachers used and the approaches you brought to your own learning worked for you; you would not be in this position otherwise. Do not be fooled into thinking your path to becoming educated is the path that will work for Read More
Getting on Twitter… A Quick Guide for Teachers
Twitter is a method of quickly publishing text, pictures, and video to the Internet. Many educators avoid using Twitter and other social media because of high-profile embarrassments that are reported on a regular basis. Those embarrassments are largely the result of the ease with which one can post information to the Internet. It takes only Read More
Effective Teachers Use Technology
Early in the history of computing, no one could predict the degree to which digital information and devices were going to affect communication. Early in the 21st century, it was common to quantify the speed at which humans communicate and the vastness of the information available, but those comparisons are no longer relevant. With the Read More
How I Started in Education
I recently rediscovered a piece I wrote about why I entered my profession… “It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain, but, once conceived, it haunted me day and night.” Those words begin the second paragraph of Edgar A. Poe’s short story “The Tell Tale Heart,” in which the narrator attempts Read More
Thoughts on “Education for Misinformation”
I’ve been kicking around the concept of “red herrings” for a few years, at least since I started to recognize them. I attribute this skill to the habits I developed while a doctoral student, but we all know how “reliable” such stories are about ourselves. For me, red herrings always appeared in our school structures, Read More
Education and Science Are Political… and That is A Good Thing
My social media feeds recently have been filled with calls that “you” not be political. I am included in the “you” because I am an educator (retired from almost 30 years in K-12 and continuing to teach and support teachers in community colleges). I am also included in the “you” as I have a background Read More
ADA Compliance & Inclusivity
In recent months, I’ve been working with faculty who have been asked to make the resources in their online courses accessible…. make sure alt-tex is available, use colors that exceed 4.5:1 for a color contrast ratio, run accessibility checkers before releasing files, closed caption videos, and provide transcripts. These are all steps they should have Read More
Education Needs More Cynics
Some have said that I am more than a skeptic with regard to educational reforms. “Cynic” has been used to describe me. In response to some proposals by school leaders, I have been quite accurately called a “tick-off cynic.” I continue to be cynical about much that is presented as education, especially by outsiders. I Read More
Why I Can’t Say “All Lives Matter”
Social media allows people to have public arguments. We can observe them and judge the participants and the soundness of their arguments in anonymity. Such lurking on public argument between one who argued “black lives matter” and another countered “all lives matter” motivated me to finally figure out why the “all lives matter” argument has Read More