As I’ve tried to get a grasp on a logical means of writing a daily blog, I’ve settled into the idea that Saturdays should be my day to review what I did during the week, both as a means of keeping track of various activities and doing some self-reflection about how things are going. The …
Category Archives: Uncategorized
Restoring Civility to the Dialogue
Sometime during Jason Sudeikis’s run on Saturday Night Live, he played the Devil on Weekend Update, offhandedly mentioning that one of his contributions to mankind was the comments section on the Internet. There’s no doubt that the anonymity of the place where many of us spend way too much of our time has contributed to …
The Apology: Judging Books By Their Covers
When I started teaching social studies in 1993, one of the courses I had to teach was World History. Those who teach the subject in my school today cover the Renaissance to the present day, which seems like a rather expansive time period — but our directive was to cover all of human history from …
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Yes, You Do Need To Use That Microphone
At my school I am the “stage equipment manager,” which mostly means I have to make sure the lights are working on the stage and provide microphones to people who need them in the cafeteria and auditorium. Recently I was asked to provide a microphone for a large gathering in the school auditorium. I gave …
Social Studies “Labs”: The Game Changer
A few years ago at a summer workshop I was given a book by Nancy Sulla, called Students Taking Charge: Inside the Learner-Active, Technology-Infused Classroom. As I read through the book I thought there were some ideas in there I could utilize in my classroom, but there was a major distraction: the phrase “Learner-Active, Technology-Infused …
Inside a Nigerian Scam: The 411 about the 419
This post is not really education-related, but it’s a lot of fun, and actually quite educational. I’ve learned a ton about how scammers operate from the last month or so. On August 18, my friend Robbie Rist posted the following exchange from a Twitter direct message chat on Facebook. As you will see, he recognized …
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Commenting on and at the Board of Education
Members of a board of education in any district deserve praise for taking on an utterly thankless job. They are relentlessly and constantly criticized by any number of individuals and interest groups in the community ranging from unions to disgruntled parents to members of local government. This criticism is all over social media, in public …
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The Federalism Goose Chase
The old paradigm of the social studies teacher who lectures on a daily basis to a passive, note-taking audience — the sage on the stage — was properly vilified over the years. While I still lecture about once a week, my lectures typically include a few small activities (e.g., “think-pair-share”) or at the very least …
My, How Things Have Changed
When I began teaching in 1993, I had a supervisor who was about as hands off as one could imagine. This had both positive and negative aspects. As a new teacher who had a single methods class, I had to learn on the fly. I didn’t get much advice from my supervisor, who seemed to …
Madison and the Federal Negative
In August I spent three days at Harvard Business School being trained in the pedagogical approach known as the Case Method. I wrote about it in general terms, but I had yet to actually teach using this form of instruction. Over the past week my two AP US Government and Politics classes worked through the …
Fenster on Education 