Earlier this week I spent a good chunk of time in a waiting room at Children’s Hospital Boston. The patients ranged in age from infants to the early 20’s. One thing was common for all the school/college age children, everyone was doing homework and every parent, myself included, was trying to get their child to focus on schoolwork. I heard echoes of the following: “Please just get your homework done, I don’t need another call” “You are missing lots of…
I work as a technology integration specialist, an instructional coach if you will. Every year my role is different. The focus keeps changing and it takes on different dimensions. At times I am evangelist, troubleshooter, tinker, researcher, dreamer, clerk, record keeper, obstacle and teacher. As the summer begins I look back on the past year and the work I have done within my district and with educators outside the district. I am beginning to reflect on the highs and lows, strengths and weaknesses,…
Its been cool and damp on Cape Cod the last few days so I thought I would take the opportunity to work on material for a workshop, Web Literacy: Researching the Web for a Different Perspective, I am facilitating in July. There is a section of the workshop that covers how search engines work. This was pretty straightforward a few years back, before social media and behavioral advertising became main stream. At a basic level search engines ranked material on the…
Public education is a schizophrenic system. On one hand we talk about differentiating instruction and personalizing learning and on the other we group and target our non-readers, poor math students, those at risk for not passing the state tests. We speak of individualism but act on collectivism. These words carry a variety of meanings, but I want to use them in terms of education. We, for the most part, agree that people have different skills and talents and learn at…
The end of the school year tends to cause me to reflect on where I have been and where I am going. This year it seems to be more about where my fellow public school educators are going. I have been to several weekend educational events recently and chatting with friends and colleagues from across the country. Many are leaving public education or considering it. Some are retiring early, others moving to private education or a career change. These are…
I have trying in vain to write a coherent piece about some things that have me thinking. Failing that I am sharing some ramblings. In education we often find ourselves trying to wrap our heads around and carry out new mandates and policies. Just when we think we are getting things settled it is out with the old in with the new. In Massachusetts MCAS tests and frameworks are becoming PARCC and the Common Core, the old ELL trainings will…
This morning while browsing through my feeds I came across this article “Why Don’t Top Private Schools Adopt Corporate Driven Reforms?” (Thanks for sharing Skip) As someone who has worked in private and public schools it has always fascinated me why public schools do what they do. I am often bewildered by my experiences in public education. This may be because I began my career in private schools and have never fully transitioned my thinking into public education. Before you…