Blogs on High (9-12)

More Blogs on High (9-12)RSS
Elena AguilarJune 11, 2012

On June 12, Anne Frank could have celebrated her 83rd birthday had she not died in a Nazi concentration camp. It's not a stretch to imagine that she would have been surrounded by loved ones, celebrated for her literary contributions, and acknowledged for her compassion and contributions to peace and justice.

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Mark PhillipsJune 8, 2012

School's out. Politics is in. Five months of presidential political combat lie ahead. So I'm psyched to revisit the challenge of effectively educating kids to be active participants in our democratic processes. I plan to post a number of columns over the next months that focus on student voice, the teaching of democracy, civic engagement and political literacy. I'm hoping some of you will join the discussion and toss in your two cents.

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Matt LevinsonJune 7, 2012

In her Wall Street Journal editorial, What's Wrong With the Teenage Mind?, University of California at Berkeley psychology professor Alison Gopnik highlights two key areas of the brain that dictate adolescent and human development: (1) emotion and motivation and (2) control.

She cites Berkeley pediatrician and developmental psychologist Ronald Dahl who uses the perfect metaphor to describe adolescence: "Today's adolescents develop an accelerator a long time before they can steer and brake."

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Jeffrey PflaumJune 6, 2012

As an inner-city elementary school teacher for 34 years, I made up and tested my original curricula in emotional intelligence, character education, values clarification, writing, reading, thinking, creativity, poetry and vocabulary. Call me an educator, developer, researcher and experimentalist in the classroom.

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Elena AguilarJune 1, 2012

Where there is no vision, the people perish.
--Proverbs

Does your school have a mission or a vision? Does it mean something and inform decision-making? Or is it just something posted on some wall/paper/handbook that you vaguely remember? Do you have a vision for yourself as a teacher, principal, coach, etc.? What do you feel is your mission?

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Matt LevinsonMay 31, 2012

"Your clicks have consequences," says Clay Johnson, author of The Information Diet. Johnson writes about the impact of consuming a poor information diet, "unhealthful information deep-fried in our own preconceptions."

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Nicholas ProvenzanoMay 31, 2012

I often get emails from teachers looking for the perfect tool for their class. I love that teachers are excited to find new tools and integrate them into their lesson plans. As someone who has experience with different tools, I'm a logical person to ask for help when looking for something new. I have a dirty little secret, though.

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Tony BaldasaroMay 30, 2012

As a junior in high school, I was finally able to enroll in the photography class. Offered only every other year, this was the only time the course was available to me (it was not open to freshman), and since there was only one section, the period three class was my only shot.

So, when my guidance counselor pulled me into his office on the second day of school to tell me I had to drop photography to take a more college-friendly Spanish class, I knew my opportunity was lost. This was in 1988, five years before Mosaic was introduced to the world, seven years before Netscape made the World Wide Web available to the masses, and a decade before virtual schooling was an option. Unless I could find a private mentorship, my only access to formally learning photography was period three during my junior year of high school and, since I had to take Spanish, that was no longer an option for me.

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Mark PhillipsMay 29, 2012

Some years ago I was hired by Norway's Ministry of Education to train vocational education teachers. Having myself attended a comprehensive high school where vocational students were those who couldn't make it academically, and having taught in a suburban high school where there was zero vocational education, it was eye-opening to be in a country where vocational education had high prestige, was well-funded, and included students who could have gone to medical school if that had been their preference.

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Lauren GriffinMay 23, 2012

I am a 24-year-old college student who sometimes just wants a grade, but most of the time wants thorough, purposeful and encouraging feedback that helps me strengthen my writing skills. As a Secondary English Education major at East Carolina University, I have been exposed to various methods of teaching literature and writing, and have archived all of my past papers in binders and file cabinets for future reference. My friends think I am in need of an intervention for being over-organized, but I think that being more aware of how my instructors teach and assess students will improve my writing and provide me the opportunity to identify assessment methods that I can make my own in when I start teaching composition.

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