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A friend shared this with me and it's a good read. It also summarizes the way that many of our teachers think, and could be an interesting article to share with a teacher and have a discussion about. Ultimate, I have a huge problem with the assumptions and conclusions that are being made here: "Now I'm not calling for abuse; I'd be the first to complain if a teacher called my kids names. But the latest evidence backs up my modest proposal. Studies have now shown, among other things, the benefits of moderate childhood stress; how praise kills kids' self-esteem; and why grit is a better predictor of success than SAT scores. All of which flies in the face of the kinder, gentler philosophy that has dominated American education over the past few decades. The conventional wisdom holds that teachers are supposed to tease knowledge out of students, rather than pound it into their heads. Projects and collaborative learning are applauded; traditional methods like lecturing and memorization-derided as "drill and kill"-are frowned upon, dismissed as a surefire way to suck young minds dry of creativity and motivation. But the conventional wisdom is wrong. And the following eight principles-a manifesto if you will, a battle cry inspired by my old teacher and buttressed by new research-explain why." Why are these seen as two completely different and opposing philosophies of education? That's my question. From my experience, teasing knowledge and understanding out of children stresses the hell out of them. They struggle to give you an answer initially, but when when you are unwilling to spoon feed them or provide them with a "drill and kill" answer, they finally make a connection. In doing so you show the students that their grit and determination has helped them gather a better understanding of the material and become a better student and learner in process.

I may write a decent response to this. She plays just about every false argument card in the book. It needs this treatment - http://www.al.com/opinion/index.ssf/2013/10/huntsville_teacher_common_core.html

This take down of Gladwell's dyslexia chapter http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=8123 makes for a similar parallel.

"My hope is that I'm providing a starting point, not an end point, with each post. I never know for sure if what sparks my own curiosity will kindle a similar fire with readers, but if it does, I want readers to be able to pursue the subject beyond the confines of my short posts and tweets. The history-pics accounts give no impression of even knowing this web of legitimate, varied historical content exists. Given their huge follower counts, this is a missed opportunity-for their readers, and for the historians and archivists who would thrill to larger audiences for their work." This is why I love "The Vault," and why anyone interested in history should explore its contents every once in a while. I've found great starting points for lessons here. And thinking about it, I know there's a lesson somewhere in this article too. I just don't know exactly what it is yet.

"My students are really great at describing what things look like in their writing. They are not as skilled at putting smells, tastes, sounds and feelings into words. As a result, their narratives often feel flat, one-dimensional, and unreal. In an effort to get my students expanding on their descriptions, I decided to do a sensory walk using Instagram. *Check out my blog on using Instagram for scavenger hunt activities." Seems like a neat idea for English classes to teach various writing skills

"This theory says, "For math to be engaging, it needs to be real. The fake stuff isn't engaging. The real stuff is." This theory argues that the engagingness of the task is directly related to its realness. This is a limited, incomplete theory of engagement. There are loads of "real" tasks that students find boring. (You can find them in your textbook under the heading "Applications.") There are loads of "fake" tasks that students enjoy." I agree completely that there are plenty of REAL tasks that aren't engaging, but in my personal experience as a math student and as a teacher that occasionally creates math lessons, I find the most engaging problems are those that have a real application to my personal interests and life. Personally, I believe that if teachers present "real" tasks to the students that they are passionate about and have fun teaching, that rubs off on the students.

"When I get a taxi for the 15-minute ride from my office to the airport, I have two choices. I can hail a cab on the street, and pay a metered fare for the 4.6-mile trip. Or I can walk to the local Marriott and pay a fixed fee of $31.50. Truthfully, I'm always a lot happier paying the fixed fee. I'm happier even though it probably costs more in the end. (A congestion-free trip on the meter comes out to about $26.) Sitting in a cab watching the meter tick up wrenches my gut: Every eighth of a mile, there goes another 45 cents-tick ... tick ... tick." ...this provides interesting context for a math problem using linear equations. When is it worth it to pay the fixed fare vs. paying the per 1/8th of a mile rate? You could "3-Act" this scenario pretty easily: -Take a short video of a taxi fare display clicking upwards. Ask students to give you the first questions that come to mind. When the students ask for it, provide them with a photo of the rate schedule on the side of the taxi and your destination address.

"The best long-term strategy I can see for continuously getting better is for the process of improving to be fun. If I want to get better at teaching, it's got to be fun for me to do so, because that's the only way for me to stare down the abyss of my current craptitude and the probability of my own immediate failure. That's going to look different for different people, because we've all got different tastes. I enjoy planning lessons, so I spend a lot of time on that. You like giving feedback, so you spend your time on that and you get great at that. I hate it, so I suck at feedback and am decent at curriculum." Agree completely with this statement. I think this holds true for our students too. The best long term strategy for improvement in school is that kids needs to have fun in the process.

"Solving a math problem means unfolding a mystery, enjoying the pleasure of discovery. But in every geometry lesson that year, I blundered along and blurted out the secret. With a few sentences, I'd manage to ruin the puzzle, ending the feast before it began, as definitively as if I'd spat in my students' soup. Math is a story, and I was giving my kids spoilers." This post speaks directly to math, but can be applied to any content. When we provide students with the answers rather than developing lessons that let the students ask (and answer questions), we take the fun out of learning.

"Can bookmarks make you more productive? Admittedly, I'm more passionate about bookmarks than most but for good reason. My bookmarks are my digital memory."

"The GIF below runs through the plates in sequence, from 2348 B.C., "The Deluge" (Quin, not unusually for his time period, was a Biblical literalist) through A.D. 1828, "End of the General Peace."" So my initial thought upon seeing this GIF was that it is eerily similar to the "fog of war" effect from Warcraft, Starcraft, and other similar games from my childhood. Based on this idea, you might be able to do something with these maps related to the essential question, "How has expansion changed our perception of the world?" (This is probably not phrased perfectly, but gets to the general idea...) Additionally, this could be an interesting item to analyze when discussing the essential question, "Have we made progress?" Students could make similar Gifs for shorter time periods to show their understanding of change over time.

"In my honors Algebra II class of sophomores, I always look forward to doing a culminating project on quadratics.  We start at the beginning of the chapter with introducing the project and having the kids break up into groups of 3 and 4 and start designing and building a catapult outside of school.  " This seems like a fun activity that could be enchanced by Logger Pro and/or Desmos (www.desmos.com). Logger Pro would allow the students to video a sample shot of their catapult and then break down the distance of their shot at specific intervals/times. Desmos would allow the students to graph the quadratic and place their catapult at the correct location in order to hit their target.

"While killing time in the airport last weekend, I watched a series of Jimmy Fallon Tonight Show clips. While watching Jimmy Fallon and Bryan Cranston playing "Word Sneak," I was inspired! I decided to use this game format for a vocabulary review in my class." This sounds like an interesting method to learn/review vocabulary. As an addition to the game, you could give students a specific discussion prompt to focus their talk, and then they could "sneak" the words into this particular conversation.

I actually did this with a class, a variation anyway. Remind me to share the videos with you the next time we are all together.

...so much good stuff here. Will post some more specific stuff to my HST blog, but this is too good of a resource by itself not to bookmark. Worth sharing with WH and US History teachers.

"While preparing for the upcoming school year, Twisted Sister's epic protest song began playing as I read the Declaration of Independence. Obviously my mind drifted to imagined Thomas Jefferson and John Adams letting their hair down and dancing around the streets of Philadelphia during a break from drafting the epic document. I realized then that I serendipitously uncovered something that I could use in the classroom - pairing music to primary documents to demonstrate understanding!" Taylor - I read this and immediately thought of you. Assignment for student - Remix the text of a primary document or famous historical speech with a song or multiple songs that add to the theme of the document/speech. Example included in the post.

""What's the sine of π/2?" I asked my first-ever trigonometry class. "One!" they replied in unison. "We learned that last year." So I skipped ahead, later to realize that they didn't really know what "sine" even meant. They'd simply memorized that fact. To them, math wasn't a process of logical discovery and thoughtful exploration. It was a call-and-response game. Trigonometry was just a collection of non-rhyming lyrics to the lamest sing-along ever. Some things are worth memorizing--addresses, PINs, your parents' birthdays. The sine of π/2 is not among them. It's a fact that matters only insofar as it connects to other ideas. To learn it in isolation is like learning the sentence "Hamlet kills Claudius" without the faintest idea of who either gentleman is--or, for what matter, of what "kill" means. Memorization is a frontage road: It runs parallel to the best parts of learning, never intersecting. It's a detour around all the action, a way of knowing without learning, of answering without understanding."

Had this in my email drafts since June to share with Mike R so I figured I'd share it with everyone. Looks like it could have some good possibilities

Possible idea to encourage and celebrate student understanding of numbers/math

I wonder how doing a generic student's homework for a week might impact teacher/principal views on homework.

This seems like a fun and interesting way to discuss/learn several different math topics. Here's a sample lesson plan that popped into my head when I saw this post: 1. Show to students a GoogleMap/GoogleEarth image similar to the one on the website, but more meaningful to you/them. For example, several different grocery stores around your house. 2. Ask the students, "Which one should I go to?" Have the students justify their answers using the image and mathematical topics that they have learned up to this point. 3. With appropriate questioning you could work in several mathematical topics here (I know I'm missing others as well…) a. Overlay a grid on the GoogleMaps and have the students give each of the locations points on an x,y axis. Use this information to determine distance. Have a conversation if this is the best way to determine which location is easiest to access. When students start to bring up the fact that even though some points are technically closer, but could be slower to get to, bring in… b. Rates, ratios, etc. Discuss how fast you could possibly travel on each route according to number of stop signs, streetlights, speed limit etc. Have students use this information to calculate the appropriate answer.

Share with graduating/leaving students. Directions to transfer emails, contacts, calendars, documents to personal gmail account.

My children are feral but I'm working on taking them to the next level. I do wonder if it's less about wilderness per se and more about real experiences. You could probably do many things in the city/suburbs that would engage kids in a similar way.

I agree. "We foster and reward a narrow set of skills."