Category: Uncategorized
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school ain’t your business
Comparing school with business is bad business. There are huge differences between school and business: Learning is personal Learning is messy Learning is abstract Learning Is Personal One of the most chilling moments in The Godfather is when Michael reveals his talent for strategy and his cold objectivity when it comes to the political…
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trigger warning (redacted)
I wrote a 1500+ word post for this week that was motivated by the news of the six-year-old who shot his teacher. It’s a good piece and I think you’ll like it. But it’s also edgy. My family depends on the consulting income I earn from schools and I can’t afford to get canceled this…
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I deserve an A
I was clearing out my Zoom cloud when I ran across this conversation from April 2021. We teach and learn a lot in school that has nothing to do with the course content.
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new year’s resolution to finish what I star
I constantly look for new beginnings. Every culture has rituals and traditions for ending and beginning chapters, and I celebrate them all. But we don’t really need a calendar reminder to be our better selves. Today* (*whatever day you’re reading this) is the perfect opportunity to reinvent yourself. Do that thing or practice that quality…
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writing is dead long live writting
Over the last few days I received notes from friends and colleagues expressing concern that ChatGPT will be the end of writing. These are intelligent, caring people. I can’t imagine any of them ever outsourcing their expressions of thoughts and feelings to an AI Chat Bot. Each considered the issues and wrote to start a…
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do or do not do. there is no essay.
Before the pandemic I asked 150 high school juniors in four separate classes to think of a word they associate with writing essays. After giving them a couple minutes to think, I stood at the board and wrote down the words they called out. Here are the lists: As you can see, the students’ feelings about writing…
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The OSL Making of an Ironman
The meaning of life is to give life meaning. Viktor Frankl Everything I do means something to me. At 3:45 on Sunday morning I pulled into the parking lot of the Indian Wells Tennis Gardens and did something I’d never done before. I wrote a prayer. I wasn’t asking for anything. I just had a…
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“I never learned to read!”
About 15 years ago one of my brightest, most articulate students told me that she hated to read. I was shocked. She went on to describe reading as a painful chore she associated with school, something she was forced to do on threat of punishment. I looked at the assignments and assessments through her eyes…
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thank you
The Thanksgiving holiday has a troubled history that remains our troubled present. Abraham Lincoln’s 1863 proclamation was a patriarchal, overtly religious, plagiarized lie intended to distract Americans from genocide, slavery, and race rioting. Here we are, 159 years later, still dealing with some of the very same issues. Today I am putting all that aside…
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the right tool for the job
I originally wrote this 10+ years ago on a course blog for high school students – it applies now more than ever. -dp ______________________________ In the words of Thomas Carlyle, a Scottish philosopher whose work influenced prominent writers and thinkers from Charles Dickens to Ralph Waldo Emerson: Man is a tool-using animal. Without tools he…