I was reading my Twitter feed a few days ago, and one person was sharing some innovations at their school. This drew the comment from another tweeter that ”we could never do that in our school.” This made me think about how change occurs in education, and what sorts of qualities are required in order...Read More
I received an email last week from someone who said his school had required him to buy a book that claimed Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences was a myth. Naturally, as someone who has written and taught about this theory for the past thirty-four years, I was disturbed by this revelation. To help set...Read More
Concerned about your child’s behavior at school? Think he might have ADHD? Looking for help from the school’s special education program? A new study reveals that when two groups of primary school children are matched in terms of identical behavioral issues, but one group is diagnosed with ADHD and the other is not, the kids...Read More
Over the past thirty years, I’ve sought to explain to educators and parents that each child is a natural genius, born with innate curiosity, creativity, playfulness, imagination, wonder, wisdom, and many other qualities besides. As many great thinkers have pointed out, the challenge is not how to get our children to be creative or curious,...Read More
Most educators are familiar with at least three different categories of assessments: Formative assessments – which are essentially ”on the fly” assessments that provide a snapshot of where students happen to be with respect to their on-going competence on a subject being assessed; these assessments have been increasingly used over the past two decades; Summative...Read More
If you close your eyes and visualize a typical high school classroom, chances are you’ll be imagining a class where students are sitting at desks listening to a teacher lecture or working on written assignments. Now we’re learning that this scenario may increase the risk of depression in adolescents. A new study in the journal...Read More
In this blog post, I’d like to talk about what they call ‘’value added’’ measures in school reform. Basically, this means judging teachers according to the standardized test results that their students get over the course of the year. First, let me say something about the term ‘’value added’’ because at first glance an unassuming...Read More
When I was seven years old, I was at the local barbershop in my hometown of Fargo, North Dakota, when I picked up a Life Magazine that had Anne Frank on the cover (August 18, 1958 – see image on the left). I remember looking through the magazine and seeing pictures of people with black...Read More
Our culture is a speed-driven culture. We celebrate individuals who race fast cars (even when they die in them). We eat fast food. We are clock-driven at work. We like the idea of accelerated learning. I just googled the term ‘’accelerated learning’’ and found scores of sites, books, programs, and other paraphernalia that put a...Read More
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