Education

Here I keep a running list of articles, clips, and general thoughts on education, teaching, learning, ideas, creativity.  I am particularly interested in articles on reading and writing, but all sorts of things may find their way onto the list.

If you have any articles you like, let me know in the comments.  I'll check them out.

• "An Open Letter to Students Returning to School" video.
• "Teachers Expectations Can Influence How Students Perform" NPR, audio.
• "John Hunter:  Teaching with the World Peace Game"  TED, video.  Hunter's 4th graders use a board game to simulate world politics, diplomacy, warfare, social issues, and environment.  If I could get this level of engagement, critical thinking, problem solving, and spontaneous ingenuity...   
• "Salman Khan:  Let's Use Video to Reinvent Education" TED, video.  The Khan Academy features thousands of free instructional videos on a wide variety of topics. These videos can be a great supplemental to classroom learning, allowing students to learn at their own pace.  This is more difficult to apply to an English classroom, but is thought provoking.
• "Where is the Love" Black Eyed Peas, video.  This can be used in discussions on race and discrimination or poetry and assonance.  Some serious craft went into the writing of these lyrics.
• "How A Middle-School Principle Persuaded Students to Come to School" NPR, audio.  This could be seen as bribery, or you can take it as a principle who really cares about his kids and found a way to connect with them, to get them enthusiastic and motivated to come to school in a school full of absentee and at-risk kids.
• "Seattle High School's Teachers Toss District Test" NPR, audio.  There's a saying that weighing a cow more often won't make it fatter.  The same applies to testing students over and over and over.  When a test doesn't match the curriculum, the test is a useless waste of time.  Kudos to these teachers for standing up to the man and doing what's best for their students.
• "In Fair Glendale, the Bard's Super Bowl Play" NPR, audio.  Students think Shakespeare is boring?  No more.  The 2008 Super Bowl summed up in a play in the style of the Bard.
• "Tony Steinberg:  Brave Seventh-Grade Viking Warrior" Taylor Mali, video.  This is the kind of classroom environment I want to create and the kind of teacher I want to be. Also, if you haven't seen his poem "What Teacher's Make," watch it right now.