Category: Ed News

These blogs have to do with education as a whole. I write about different topics concerning ed reform and educating our 21st century youth.

I Celebrated Too Soon

I wrote Shift Happens just a bit too soon. I was celebrating the fact that we started our year without achievement awards or student of the month awards. Then I noticed that PBIS was on the agenda of our upcoming faculty meeting. When the topic came up it was mentioned that nearly half the year …

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Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2013/01/14/i-celebrated-too-soon/

Shift Does Happen!

Very close to two years ago I wrote a post and one of the main topics was school awards ceremonies. That spurred some conversation with kids in my classes and with kids in my advisory. You see, our student advisory groups, each led by an adult staff member, are the ones mostly responsible for putting …

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Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2013/01/09/shift-does-happen/

Testing or Arts?

I saw this video again and thought I’d post it. We need to see this often, at least until the test craze ends. Sir Ken Robinson’s Changing Education Paradigm animated by RSA (It’s only about 11 mins).

Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2012/12/26/testing-or-arts/

Microscope Repair Anyone?

So I’ve been looking at what we can do to replace or repair our broken-down microscopes. We have about 20 Boreal Skopes compound microscopes about nine of which are still working well. Asking around about who can fix them I learned that there are no microscope repair people anywhere in the peninsula (the North Olympic …

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Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2012/11/12/microscope-repair-anyone/

What’s a Startup Weekend?

The weekend of Oct 19 I got to participate in a Startup Weekend, specifically the Startup Weekend Seattle EDU at the Evergreen School! From the About Section of the Startup website: “Startup Weekends are 54-hour events where developers, designers, marketers, product managers and startup enthusiasts come together to share ideas, form teams, build products, and launch …

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Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2012/10/30/whats-a-startup-weekend/

How Valuable is My Time?

Last week we had our parent/teacher/student conferences in an “arena style” format. What that means is that all the middle school teachers set up shop in the commons. Families come in, get their child’s progress report and visit each teacher in turn. In about half an hour or so a family could meet with all …

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Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2012/10/29/how-valuable-is-my-time/

Letter to the President

Diane Ravitch writes, speaks and blogs about education reform. Not the kind of reform that jeopardizes education but the kind of reform that will make education a priority for all children (click on my education reform tab for more info). Ravitch is coordinating a Campaign for our Public Schools on her blog. She’s urging us …

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Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2012/10/15/letter-to-the-president/

The Homework Dilemma

Homework is a tough one. We all have our opinions about it. Reading Alfie Kohn’s work on the subject reveals that the research can’t really agree on whether homework is valuable or not for young kids. For my son, who is 15, homework is not pleasant but with prodding he’ll do it. We make sure …

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Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2012/10/04/the-homework-dilemma/

Beginning of Year

I teach 6th and 8th grade Science. I have all three of our school’s 6th grade Science classes and two of the three 8th grade Science classes. I’ve been teaching 6th and 8th grade Science for a few years now and I really enjoy getting kids as they enter the middle school and getting many …

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Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2012/09/17/beginning-of-year/

Response to Intervention

One of the activities I did during August, Connected Educator Month, was take part in a free Response to Intervention (RTI) workshop by eLearning Innovation, Struggling Readers, Differentiated Instruction and RTI. RTI is one of those things that we hear about but that I couldn’t quite put my finger on exactly what it is. Sure, …

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Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2012/09/03/response-to-intervention/

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