A Teacher’s Thoughts

How do you know when science has happened?  Ask Doyle. “A child muttered in class this week that she keeps knowing less than she thought she knew. Success.” The dismantling, disintegrating, demolishing, disassembling, trashing, throwing away, rooting out of misconceptions is hard work for teachers and students. Seeing things that did not exist moments before [...]

As we look to our portfolio implementation next year, these are the guiding questions for faculty discussion. Why would a portfolio benefit students? What would a good portfolio to show? How can the core values be reflected in the portfolio? What school experiences could be included in the portfolio? What type of work would you [...]

So, I have come across a few posts referencing Wordle lately and here is my try. I chose to use the text of the first of the year post on my class blog- from way back in September. I also added the text of all the student comments. The title of the post was “How [...]

I spent a good deal of time in middle school staring out the windows, often despite the redirections of my teachers to focus on my work. There wasn’t much to look at so if teachers said I wouldn’t learn anything staring outside they were probably right. My classroom now is different. If a kid wants [...]

Those of you who read my blog know that I teach middle school science but I also teach some adult education computer classes for our career and technical center. I’ve been at it now for four years and it is hard not to appreciate the courage some of my students have to come to these [...]