Today’s Task - September 16, 2022 “Our students are falling behind,” they said. Enter the open classroom. “Our students are falling behind,” they said. Enter Mastery Learning. “Our students are falling behind,” they said. Enter Performance Assessments, more technology, and STEM. And still….our students are falling behind. Experience has taught me that there are only [...]
Today’s Task - September 6, 2022 If you have a competitive marching band, your improvement is measured by the scores from your weekly contests. Concert band? Well I suppose progress is measured there through adjudication festivals. I might argue, however, that measuring only as a function of exit outcomes is not the most efficient and [...]
Today’s Task - August 29, 2022 You have pressing work on your mind and plenty of deadlines. And having them interrupt you at this moment is a guaranteed inconvenience. But this isn’t about you….it is about them. If you pass up your chance to help your students, they will seek out someone else, and then [...]
Today’s Task - August 19, 2022 As I am sitting here writing this, I am watching the Little League World Series. It is such a joy to watch these young baseball players doing what they love to do. Certainly, they are very skilled for their age, but the thing that impresses me the most is [...]
Today’s Task - August 15, 2022 People sometimes mistakenly believe that they are going to the doctor to be healed. Yet in spite of all the advances in the medical field, no doctor has ever mended a broken bone or caused a wound to heal. The best they can do is provide assistance in the [...]
Today’s Task - August 3, 2022 Last weekend my wife and I attended Steeler training camp. It was quite an experience to be among the 17,000 people there wanting to watch, or perhaps get the autographs of, the likes of TJ Watt, Cam Heyward, and Coach Tomlin. For me, the best part of the experience [...]
Today’s Task - July 27, 2022 “Great teachers have an uncanny ability to make an imprint deep within a student that goes beyond the teaching of book knowledge. In fact, great teachers leave their mark so profoundly that their ideas reappear in your consciousness at the times either when you least expect them or when [...]
Today’s Task - July 19, 2022 Henry David Thoreau said “the price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.” I like this a great deal because it reminds me that we all have the same amount of time in a day, and how we choose to spend it says a great [...]
Today’s Task - July 10, 2022 Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go. I think T.S. Eliot was right when he said this. I didn’t know if could run a marathon, until the risk led to the reward. I didn’t know if I could make [...]
Today’s Task - July 5, 2022 I am sitting here watching as my wife works in her garden and our neighbor works in hers. Each is meticulously ridding the garden of all the things that are NOT what they are trying to grow….weeds, plants that have gone to seed, etc….leaving only those things that ARE. [...]