What is the experience of attending your school teaching? — Here’s what I learned in Middle (“Junior High”) School: I learned how to smoke, how to drink alcohol, and how to consume other substances not considered great for a growing boy. I learned a whole range of new provocations that would get me thrown out of a classroom. I learned…

A 9/11 story, originally from 2006, and the whole idea of “why we write.” Let’s face it. Way too much of what we ask kids to write in school is nonsensical “make work” that devalues the art and purposes of writing in the minds of our young people. Whether it is “reflections” on something the teacher thinks is important, a prediction of what another…

You need to hear both sides of every “disciplinary” incident and you need to hear about every disciplinary incident. A teacher gives a student a zero for not doing her homework. A student is told to stop talking in class. A teacher…

What is technology? Who gets assistive technology? Who gets privileged? — “If technology enables a kid to read above grade level, why wouldn’t we allow that?” Dan McGuire, a leader in open-source educational tools, quoted me in a post. I responded, “If technologies aren’t allowed to help kids read, eyeglasses and contact lenses need to be banned.” …

You’ve already cried wolf about living in the present too many times. Now you’re panicked by ChatGPT in schools. I might concede that you have a right to be nervous. We do live in a world (or at least in the US, UK, and certain parts of Western Canada) where a large percentage of the adult population seems unable to either tell…

Assumptions that destroy kids’ opportunities Long, long ago, when I was in the New York City Police Academy, I needed a short break from listening to law books as I rode the subway and stuck cassettes of Joseph Wambaugh’s seminal police procedural novel The New Centurions into my Sony Walkman for a week’s worth of…

Begin with a pure mission, dedicate to the future, commit to continuous change and adaptation, raise the bar for everyone. — In the late 1960s, the US Navy and Marine Corps faced a critical issue. In the skies over Vietnam, new Surface-to-Air Missiles (SAMs) and the capabilities of new and improved Soviet MIG fighters were resulting in a horrific loss rate for fighter pilots (or, “Naval Aviators” and “Marine pilots” to…

I’ve been trying to count the number of days I spent on the campus of Michigan State University, but I can’t. It’s a lot of years, more than ten. I’ve been an undergrad there, a grad student, taught classes, and even been a parent. I have a few bitter memories…

Choosing to present your text in unreadable forms seems self-defeating. So why do so many in education do just that? — A month of discontent. Repeatedly this winter, I’ve been asked to work in and with documents that I cannot read at all. I mean, yes, reading — the decoding of text — is not my strength. Not at all. So I listen, using text-to-speech apps. But if asked to edit…