I watched a video game trailer last week – an amazing one – that raised for me this bevy of non-rhetorical questions: Are my kids collaborating on anything, let alone a multi-media project? Am I acknowledging and asking kids to use their non-print talents in my classroom? Am I admitting in my teaching that print …
Out past the printed word are dozens of modes of expression available to our students. Just as school devalues play, it devalues the accumulation of unsanctioned knowledge and “critical” thought. Standards and scores are deck chairs. Moreover, reading and writing – perhaps, one day, even as embodied by coding – will all be done through …
Mary Beth Hertz (@mbteach) wrote here about #ISTE10′s “Dissecting the 21st Century Teacher” panel. I commented on a few of the lines that caught my attention regarding curriculum and a teacher’s role in maintaining and delivering content. I’m torn there. There’s so much discoverable content maintained out there that it’s useful for a teacher to …
I’m very grateful to be able to share with you the work going on at Murray High School in Charlottesville, Virginia. Murray High School is “the world’s first Glasser Quality Public High School.” The school uses William Glasser’s Choice Theory and Quality Schools framework to re-engage students with the joy of learning. The creation of …
Walter’s Struggles and Accomplishments by Charlotte Wellen Read More »
Virginia Secretary of Education Gerard Robinson visited my school today to see it in operation and speak with division personnel, school leaders, and teachers about how we can work together to met students’ needs. I appreciated the visit, the attention to our school, and the time we spent talking as a group about how to …
We carry around really idiosyncratic and sometimes competing notions of games. When we hear someone talking about games, some of us think about children’s games. Some of us think about board games. Some of us think about sports. Some of us think about card games. Some of us think about collectible card games. Some of …
I asked my 7-year old son a simple #blog4reform question: If you could change school so that you’d love to be there, what would you do? Here’s what he said before going back to drawing: Don’t tell people how long they should write their sentences. Let them pick out what they want to write so …