“Process all you heard today and set your intentions from here on out.” –Sara Ahmed I intended to write this post on the plane on the way home, but the internet wasn’t working. I reviewed my notes in my writer’s … Continue reading
This post has been percolating for a while now, ever since I left NCTE in Houston. Until now, all I’ve been able to cobble together so far are a few disconnected notes in my writer’s notebook: I need to sit … Continue reading
Urgency. That’s what today created for me. A strong sense of urgency to change how we are doing things, collectively, for the benefit of every single one of our students. This urgency has been building from the other sessions I’ve … Continue reading
One reason I go to NCTE every year is to listen. There are people I try to see every year, just to hear what they are thinking about and working on. Just to hear what they think the rest of … Continue reading
Escalators were the theme of the day for us. We took the bus from Boulder to the Denver airport and took a very long escalator up from the bus depot to the terminal. A bus driver had told Tracy that … Continue reading
My colleagues and I did our #StopGrading presentation at our state ELA conference a few weeks ago. Seeing as we’ll be doing the same presentation later this month at NCTE in Atlanta, we distributed notecards to the teachers who came … Continue reading
It was fortunate that the moment I decided to stop grading, my assistant principal was sitting right next to me listening to Alfie Kohn make his case against grades in a conference presentation at NCTE in Boston in November of … Continue reading
This video was posted by a teacher friend this week. It’s Japanese (by Takuya Okada, from 2011, judging by the youtube channel), and from a bit of peripheral reading I picked up that it was inspired by conversations in Japan … Continue reading
If you’re not reading Diane Ravitch’s Reign of Error, you should be. I’ll take it upon myself to post a few tidbits while I’m reading it. Here’s today’s installment: From Chapter 4, “The Language of Corporate Reform”: Recognizing that most … Continue reading
Nicholas Kristof, NYTimes columnist, recently published “Professors, We Need You!” This piece argued that academics are essentially irrelevant in the biggest debates in our society because they isolate themselves in the ivory tower and cultivate a culture that values nearly … Continue reading
